When you’re running a new and exciting startup, you’re going to be hyper-focused on product development, customer acquisition, and finding product-market-fit. Typically, marketing falls to the backburner for many new companies. Marketing can feel like an overwhelming amount of work, especially when you start thinking of all the content and distribution you have to do. As you scale your operations and achieve product-market-fit, there are a lot of components of a robust B2B fintech marketing strategy you will need to implement but in the early days, it’s smart to get your base going and start understanding which channels perform best to acquire customers. Below, I’m going to share some of my favourite quick and easy wins (and even some automation!) that you can implement to help your brand grow its credibility plus drive awareness, traffic, and conversions on your channels.
Your fintech startup needs a blog
Assuming you have a website in place, you should have a blog on your site that hosts all your exciting content and new releases. It is always recommended to start your blog early and it doesn’t have to be a task that overwhelms you. Not everyone loves writing or can maintain a regular schedule to publish content when there are a lot of other things to attend to running a fintech startup. Commit to publishing one blog post per month and make it on your favorite topics about your company: your industry trends, your product releases, highlighting your customers. Content marketing is the best way to build longevity, thought-leadership, and organic growth for your brand. As you scale your operations, you can create purposeful and profitable content for your financial technology company.
Your fintech startup needs email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to engage with customers regularly. Email conversion rates sit between 1-5% depending on the type of email campaign and the industry your company is in. Email marketing, especially when factoring drip campaigns and account-based marketing campaigns, can be time-consuming for an early-stage startup. Start with something easy: an automated email for new customers who sign up for your mailing list or product. This helps you gather open and click-through-rates for new customers (and ensure the email they signed up with doesn’t bounce and is valuable) plus allows you to push some content or new product features in the welcome email. Beyond that, personal outreach emails to customers who are in the product onboarding process are important to do.
Your fintech startup needs a social media presence
A social media presence helps build legitimacy around a brand. Beyond that, it is a great way to connect with customers and partners publicly. Engaging on social media regularly can be difficult for new founders, so aim to check social media for about one hour per day. It is recommended that you have a personal social media presence across the same channels as your company to further amplify your brand and to put a personal face to the company, as well.
Your fintech startup should get involved in events
Having a presence at events is important, but fintech events can be pricey – even with startup offers. It’s best to attend virtual or local fintech events in the early days to spare your new startup any travel costs. Specifically, look for virtual or in-person events that offer a networking or demo aspect. You need to get yourself and your product in front of as many people as possible and nothing beats having a couple minutes of someone’s time to perfect your pitch and build relationships with potential customers, partners, or investors.
Your fintech startup needs partnerships
Every company, especially startups, can benefit from the support of partnerships. Partnerships are a great way to connect with similar companies (yes, even your competitors!) or startups in your industry. It builds your network, from a personal perspective, but also drives the spread of your efforts. The best way to begin any partnership is through marketing. Offering to do content swaps, social media shares, and newsletter features for companies you’d like to partner with.
Your fintech startup needs analytics to track all your efforts
Attribution is key to know which channels are worth scaling. There is an overwhelming amount of analytics and tracking tools available. Start with free options, such as Google Analytics: Universal Analytics, which is quick to implement on every site (many site builders even have integrations with Google Analytics to make it easier!). As your traffic grows and you need more granularity in your tracking, you can explore additional tools. Google’s Universal Analytics allows you to understand basic traffic and behavior, demographics, attribution and channels, and set conversion goals. This will set you up for success when you begin implementing a more robust marketing stack.
Your fintech startup can benefit greatly from implementing an early marketing base to drive awareness, traffic, and conversions. As you scale, your top growth channels will emerge and you can push a full strategy forward. In the meantime, publish blog posts, automate email marketing, post on social media, and get your company out there in the community through events and partnerships.
