Fintech growth in 2023: The benefits of working with a fintech marketing agency
Like every other industry, the fintech industry has been hit by the turbulent economic climate. But despite all this, the UK fintech market is actually expected to grow with neobanking alone predicted to reach 31.7% in 2024 (Statista).
And, of course, with this expected growth, we can expect the competitiveness to remain.
So, how are fintechs gaining, retaining, and in fact growing their slice of the market?
The answer is simple: with fintech marketing.
The challenge is, finding marketers with extensive experience in fintechs and digital marketing know-how is tricky. Plus, a lot of fintechs are nervous (quite rightly) about hiring permanent pros.
And this is where a fintech marketing agency comes in.
In this blog, we’ll talk through:
Why fintechs are turning to a fintech marketing agency
Top benefits of hiring a fintech marketing agency
Checklist: Must-haves to look for in a fintech marketing agency
Let’s dive in 👇
Quick definition: What is a fintech marketing agency
A fintech marketing agency is a specialist outsourced team that supports fintechs with generating demand. They act as a plug-in extension of your team, working closely with you to create the fintech marketing strategy and deliver the distribution plan to raise brand awareness, generate engagement, and drive contacts down the sales funnel to a purchase.
How?
They can cover everything from SEO keyword research, content marketing strategy, and demand generation strategies like ABM and lead nurturing… Through to creating thought leadership and product marketing.
And most importantly (but surprisingly overlooked), they then share the content on all the digital channels that your market engages. Such as guest blogging sites, email marketing newsletters, social media, and more.
This is the pivotal bit that boosts reach, improves ROI, and generates demand 🚀
Why fintechs are turning to a fintech marketing agency
The key takeaway here is that fintechs cannot afford to switch off marketing.
In fact, it’s widely reported that those that cut back on marketing during an economic downturn see major profit losses and take 5 years to recover (says economist Peter Field).
Yet, in a volatile market, fintechs are in a difficult place to recruit marketers. Senior leaders and investors are hesitant to increase headcount and overheads.
That leaves fintechs stuck. Or does it?
Industry leaders are using fintech freelance marketers and fintech marketing agencies to plug the skills gap, bring in expertise and allow for flexibility in ramping up and down budgets.
Let’s delve into this a little more…
Top benefits of hiring a fintech marketing agency
The right fintech marketing agency is best positioned to market your products and services to boost demand generation.
Here’s how 👇
#1: Promotes your unique selling points
With so many fintech brands providing similar products and services, this unique positioning and pulling out your expertise in blog content is a must! This is what sets you apart from the others and builds a picture of you as an authoritative voice and one to trust.
The right fintech marketing agency will inspire your audience. Not only will they create helpful content that gets you ranking in Google and piques your audience’s interest, they’ll repurpose this in ways to appeal to different preferences (like creating short, scannable ebooks).
#2: Builds trust
We’ve briefly touched on this. But essentially, through creating thought leadership and sharing it on core channels (like your social channels, website, and guest blogs) your target audience starts to get familiar with your business. By providing free guidance to solve their challenges, you add value to them and so they want to learn more. And then when they are ready to buy, they’ll remember you.
💡Top tip: Consistency is key here. You need to keep momentum going with content creation and distributing on key channels to keep that presence and maintain trust.
#3 Actually get you in front of your target audience
So many fintech companies post on just a couple of marketing channels. But to get your thought leadership and product marketing in front of as many potential customers as possible, you need to do more than this (particularly for B2B marketing). Even with just two blogs a month, as a minimum, each piece needs to be:
⬜ Shared on your social media channels at least twice
⬜ Added to guest blogs (and shared from social again)
⬜ Shared via a LinkedIn or email newsletter
#4 Supports retention
While attracting new customers is a must, retaining the current ones is equally as important.
By sharing new thought leadership (free guidance) with your existing customers too - via LinkedIn, newsletters etc - you can continue to nurture contacts even AFTER they’ve signed up or purchased. It’s a great way to achieve cross-sales too.
💡Top tip: Following up on a customer conversation with a new piece of thought leadership is incredibly impactful and drives direct sales.
The bottom line? Ultimately, fintech marketing agencies build brand awareness, generate interest and then nurture contacts towards a sale. And because they are experts in the fintech industry, they’ll be best placed to hit your KPIs and deliver ROI.
Checklist: Must-haves to look for in a fintech marketing agency
Before you look into the credentials of a fintech marketing agency, start with identifying your:
Objectives - even just your business objectives helps.
Budget - how much you have to spend will determine the size of agency you work with (large agencies tend to want a c.£10k a month spend).
Internal capacity - what do you intend to do yourself? So many fintechs get delivered a package of excellent marketing and then don’t have skills or capacity to get it live. Whereas, others have a small or junior marketing team and so prefer to execute marketing campaigns themselves to save costs.
Finding a fintech marketing agency
Now, when you're searching for fintech agencies, there are a few places you can go:
Google and LinkedIn - Just searching on these will bring up a handful of fintech marketing agencies. From here, you can check out their websites and social posts to see if they look decent (regularly post, post helpful content).
Referrals - Recommendations are possibly THE best source. Your networks of friends, colleagues and friendly fintechs will have worked with these agencies and know if they are worth the money.
Guest blogging sites - Fintech marketing agencies that post on sites like Finextra will have been vetted and all their content checked. You’ll be able to see if you like what they have to say and if it's helpful and adds value to you. If they write like that, they’ll be able to help you write too.
Once you’ve created your shortlist, get in touch with the agencies.
Key criteria to look for in a fintech marketing agency
Here are just a handful of must-have qualities:
Fintech expertise - Sounds obvious, but have they actually worked in the industry and for how long? How many fintech clients have they worked with? And how many are they working with now?
Track record of results - Can they share results on the impact of their marketing with other fintech clients? Is it quick or slow to see results? What metrics do they focus on - is it soft metrics like ‘impressions’ or direct qualified leads and sales?
Full marketing experience and service list - What can they do for you? If you can, you want to find an agency that has seasoned experience running every area of marketing. If you can find ex-senior marketers, even better!
Data and commercially driven - What is it that drives them? Is it creative and snappy titles… Or is it strategy development so that they actually generate demand and bring in the money? Do they keep an eye on the performance of the marketing they do for you too?
Communication and collaboration - What processes do they follow? How do they involve you? You want a balance here between getting your input but not leaning on you too much. And what are they like as people? Do you get the impression they want to help and support you? Are they friendly, professional and approachable?
Budget - How much do they charge? Ask them to put together pricing specifically to a proposal that solves your needs. You can ask them to put together a few pricing options so you can choose to scale up or down.
💡Top tip: Heads up, some agencies can’t share relevant fintech case studies on their website if they haven’t had client sign-off. So, it's worth asking them for relevant experience when they send through a proposal.
Grow your fintech today with a fintech marketing agency
As you can see, a fintech marketing agency is best placed to allow you to hit growth targets (despite economic uncertainty). Because they’re flexible, have an in-depth knowledge of fintech AND have tried and tested methods to generate demand, with a commercially-driven agency, you can guarantee your budget is in safe hands.
Just make sure they have the right credentials. Have they got the experience and proven results that you need?
Ready to add fintech marketing agencies to your shortlist? Get in touch with Roo & Eve for a personalised proposal and tiered pricing today.