This is article 3 of a 3 part series.
Once you’ve nailed the basics of digital marketing and have started to make some waves in the FinTech industry, it’s time to start planning a growth strategy to retain and increase your customer base.
To keep your audience engaged, and to make the most of the traffic you get, we’ve narrowed down a list of 10 marketing essentials that you need to know about.
1. Blogging
Blogging provides a great way of maximising your footprint in search as it reinforces the terms that you want your customers to find you for, and makes it easier to plan a social media strategy, as there will be a stream of fresh content to share.
Devising a blogging strategy is not easy. How often you blog, what topics you blog about and the optimum length for blog posts are all things that it will take time to find out. Publishing a couple of short blog posts per week may work better for your audience than a 2,000 word in depth blog once a month; however, it’s important not just to blog for the sake of it. If you don’t have anything to say, don’t invest time and resource into writing a blog.
Planning is key – think about evergreen topics (non-time sensitive posts that typically answer a question) and develop a content calendar to schedule in newsy events and reports that you can talk about.
In addition, if you have written a cracking blog, you can repurpose the content to be pitched elsewhere and vice versa.
2. Thought leadership
By now you’ve hopefully made a few friends in the industry who know about what your FinTech company has to offer, and they want to hear your opinions. Thought leadership articles are a great way of showing your peers and potential clients that you know your stuff, but bear in mind that they should be non-promotional in nature. Save selling your solution for interviews and advertorials.
It can be difficult to come up with blog content and original thought leadership topics, which is where ‘big content’ can help.
3. White papers/reports/guides – ‘big content’
As well as day-to-day content marketing, it’s good to plan a campaign around a piece of ‘big content’ – this could be a white paper, a report, or a guide. Expect to spend a lot of time and effort creating this type of content and be mindful that an equal amount of effort needs to be put into marketing it too.
To ensure that efforts invested in producing this type of content are not wasted, finding channels to promote it is very important.
4. Content amplification
Content doesn’t make much of an impact if it just sits there, hoping that someone will stumble across it. Promoting your content, whether it’s blog content, and article or a huge report, is something that should be considered carefully. Think about who you want to see your content.
Beyond sharing on social media, seeding content into relevant niche communities is a good place to start. If there are influencers you know that have covered the same topic, reach out to them too (and it doesn’t hurt to reference something they said on the topic to show that you admire their opinion, and would appreciate their insight).
Piggybacking current trends can be a great tactic. If something is trending within the news agenda that is relevant, then ensure you highlight the connection to your own content to your now ever-growing group of fans (media, customers, investors, industry influences etc.)
You can also do the same on social media – although this tactic can be more risky. Feel free to hijack a hashtag for your own benefit but only if you are adding something to the argument or providing something educational. Hijack a hashtag with something overly promotional and you’ll get shot down immediately.
Sometimes, no matter how good it is, your content will need an extra push to get in front of the right people.
5. Choosing the right partners
With so many different FinTech publications out there – particularly in the payments space – it can be difficult to know who to buddy up with to maximise exposure for your brand.
We’ve run campaigns with a number of major payment and FinTech publications, and costs vary hugely depending on what it is you require. Before you commit to anything, ask to see results from previous campaigns within your niche, and see if you can blag a freebie or discount before signing up for anything long-term.
Membership and partnerships with industry bodies and networks, such as Payments UK, Emerging Payments Association, FinTech Circle, FinTech Connect and Innovate Finance (to name but a few) are all great organisations to partner with – and chances are they’ll be willing to share your news and give you a heads up on opportunities to showcase your brand too.
6. Speaking opportunities/webinars/podcasts
Always be on the lookout for speaking opportunities, and ask your partners to consider you as a guest for webinars and podcasts. There are plenty of them out there – find out what the hot topics/issues are and pitch accordingly.
It’s a good idea to have content that you can reference that demonstrates your company’s pedigree, (such as a case study) that shows you have first hand experience in solving the issue being discussed.
For personal appearances in particular, it can be good to prove that your spokesperson is suitably capable. You can do this by producing some video content in advance which can be shared with the organisation offering the speaker opportunity. And if you aren’t successful then video content isn’t wasted as you it gives you another string to your content bow – to share online via social media, YouTube, your blog or email marketing.
7. Case studies/testimonials
Building marketing collateral that showcases the great work you do can open doors to more than new clients. While primarily it is used to provide evidence of your expertise to prospects, it can also be valuable when pitching content and as a starting point for entering awards.
8. Awards
If you are going to enter awards, be aware that entries can require a lot of information and input from multiple departments. Plan which ones you really want to aim for well in advance, and once you’ve entered one, build a repository of information (logos, financial information, standard company description) that can be accessed easily to save time on future entries.
And if you do get shortlisted, ensure you use this as an opportunity to shout from the rooftops – remember ‘survival of the loudest’ not ‘survival of the fittest’.
9. CRO testing/user feedback
One thing that FinTechs are typically great at delivering on is the user experience. It’s important to apply the same principles to their websites too, though.
Once websites are receiving a steady amount of traffic per month, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is a great way to find out how to increase conversions through analysis and testing of your website.
Getting user feedback is also invaluable – sometimes it pays to ask your users what they think to refine the UX of your solution further.
10. Keep building relationships
Most importantly of all, keep building relationships. Connect with new people frequently, and stay in touch with key contacts on a regular basis. The little black book may now be digital but it’s certainly not outdated.
We’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg in bringing you these ten tips for FinTechs but if you would like more detailed advice on developing a digital marketing strategy in general, or on any of these areas specifically, then get in touch today!
