FinTech Guide for Startups and Founders (Pt. 3)
For readers who have just stumbled on this 3rd (and final) part of the guide, please first check out Part 1 & Part 2 so that the overall discussion flows in order. The marketing and growth discussions below build off the foundational areas of product categories, MVP, and business (revenue) models (from Pt.1); the banking services providers, and application development discussions are from Pt. 2. With product, infrastructure, 3rd party partners, and app in place — it’s time to focus on brand messaging and scaling new platforms.
Fintech Marketing at the pre-LAUNCH stage
Marketing is the voice, branding, content, and value proposition of a company — all rolled into one. For emerging early-stage startups building a community of early adopters, targeted messaging is especially critical. In particular, fintechs need to create early buzz, share resources across a wide audience, and convert users via various marketing techniques. This should be balanced with strategies that align with regulation and avoid misinforming customers (through unfair, deceptive practices).
With the amount of data and content available, target markets are able to quickly learn about your platform, product, and benefits before signing up. Messaging, content, keywords, and marketing materials all play a role in aligning brand, value proposition, and ideal users as early as possible.
These discovery techniques can lead to strong gains for early-stage teams as potential users are educated upfront and empowered to act sooner in choosing one program over competitors.
In pre-launch, founders should freely experiment with a mix of marketing strategies:
Branding: A critical first step for all businesses, but especially new companies looking to breakthrough in a saturated market. Beyond a logo or a tagline, a brand should quickly establish the right expectations for users — mission, values, and differentiation all clearly defined. In the long run, there may be slight changes made to branding but the overall tone stays consistent;
Content marketing: A key component of fintech marketing is quality content and media development. More than messaging about a company’s platform — sharing resources, education, and recommendations in solving a user’s challenge is the priority. Many potential clients are often in ‘discovery mode’ as they start with general searches of product and capabilities. Delivering the best materials in an easy-to-follow format through channels that users most identify with (social media, blogs, podcasts, webinars, etc.) is the overall goal.
Partnership marketing: There’s a synergy between two companies in this marketing path — both firms stand to gain equally based on the success of the program. There’s collaborative messaging and co-branding to help reach a broader audience of users that benefit from services offered through the partnership. In fintech, this can be a home insurance company partnering with a mortgage lender — qualifying for a mortgage would require homeowner’s insurance; most homeowners rarely switch their insurance provider;
Affiliate / Referral marketing: This strategy involves an affiliated platform with existing users. In referral marketing, the 3rd party is referring (or sending) clients to the new app/website — for each successful signup, the platform pays a flat fee. Influencer marketing has a similar dynamic — the followers (or audience) of an influencer is being marketed to and often a ‘referral code’ is in place to confirm a new signup came from this source. There are numerous affiliate marketing networks that can run a similar play across thousands of websites at a time;
Community marketing: As the name indicates, the focus is engaging a large group of potential users that share a common interest or goal. For an early-stage fintech, this community needs to match with target demographic (e.g. millennials, immigrants to the US, freelancers in LATAM working for US firms). Marketing becomes specific to this group — tools and education are customized and help build brand awareness;
Gamification: one of the newer marketing strategies, gamification delivers the experience of completing levels, gaining rewards, and accomplishments through a non-game app. Some fintech platforms do this through sweepstakes offerings, bonus rewards for a certain level of activity, and attaining a premium status. Many savings apps are adding gamification as a way to change the perception of budgeting and long-term goal setting;
For young startups, early marketing efforts are more about experimentation and feeling for what works best towards converting users. This may mean doubling down on one of the above strategies that showed immediate success or mixing multiple plays as campaigns. Iterating on messaging, media, advertising, and channels leads to uncovering what solutions deliver the best return on investment (ROI).
Similar to our discussion in Part 1 of this guide, a new platform first focuses on delivering value and brand differentiation of its MVP — this in turn comes through in their fintech marketing. Value-add content goes beyond basic marketing collateral and provides solutions that help users solve a specific painpoint (and places your platform as the best option). Many of the problems in the financial services industry remain the same — the method in which these challenges are addressed does change. Showcasing unique value proposition (differentiating from competitors) is at the heart of fintech marketing initiatives.
FOCUSING ON GROWTH STRATEGIES AFTER LAUNCH
MVP in place. Check;
BaaS provider integrated. Check;
App developed and tested. Check;
Marketing plays executed for wait list signups and brand exposure. Check;
With all the above areas in place, it’s time to launch. A great milestone is reached and time to celebrate with your team and early customers. Your product is openly available and the next level of of work comes into play in terms of scaling the activity and overall growth of your platform. It’s a good problem to have if you get to this point as an early-stage startup.
Before transitioning to post-launch growth strategies, it’s important to take a quick step back and:
Ensure capabilities in supporting additional volume: Serving 1K active users is very different from 10K; some platforms find themselves with huge demand for their program after launch, but the inability to onboard this jump in user volume. Capacity constraints can come from BaaS providers, bank partners, KYC vendors, card printers, etc. This leads to new users deciding not to sign up (because of delays) and wasted marketing dollars in new customer acquisition. It’s important to verify limits of internal teams and 3rd party partners/vendors, especially if there’s a need for manual reviews. How often have these 3rd parties run into operating delays? What’s the maximum onboarding that can take place in a day/week? What experience do these companies have with high-growth platforms?
Check for a scalable business model: The above overlaps with business model discussions as well; is their a certain volume of users or transactions that increase operating costs beyond revenue streams? This tends to be the case when a fintech is working with 3rd parties that have high variable costs or % of volume pricing. Certain BaaS providers and tech infrastructure is best for platforms with minimal monthly users (such as business banking or expense management), while high-adoption fintechs really need a sustainable setup ready for scaling (with flat fixed costs);
Confirm roadmap expectations: it’s helpful to have a sense of growth potential in terms of future product initiatives; the majority of established fintechs with success in scaling added one or more services to their core offering. Having a clear sense of what’s next helps manage product building & launch expectations. Is another provider or additional funding needed for Phase 2? Do we hire for new roles? Each of these areas has its own dependency and timeline to account for;
In parallel to planning, early-stage platforms remain focused on establishing & building trust in the first months of go-live. This is a lengthy process that starts with marketing to potential users, onboarding, through facilitating transactions and managing customer service requests. Traditional banks maintain long relationships with clients based on trust, which came over time via in-person transactions. Fintechs don’t have the same ‘face-to-face’ channel or time horizon.
Security is also part of the topic of trust. Keep customer data and funds secure at all times is the industry standard. Proper vendor due diligence, compliance controls, fraud management, and data encryption all come to play as operating procedures. Account takeovers and security breaches immensely damage the reputation of tech companies, especially startups trying to quickly scale in the first year. Investing in added risk mitigation and security services upfront helps prevent issues from cascading towards financial loss or platform suspension.
Overall, growth strategies may change based on the performance of your core product, user feedback revealing a new product you hadn’t planned for, regulatory conditions (i.e. compare crypto startups in 2021 to 2023), or macroeconomic factors (such as reduced investment in the fintech sector).
It’s important to be ready to iterate on core business models based on current & anticipated industry trends. Doing so helps a platform build positive growth curves over time and show an ability to weather downturns.
managing fintech marketing AND GROWTH
Going forward, marketing and growth initiatives in the fintech space will be expected to have a keen understanding of regulatory standards. Promoting sign-up bonuses, advertising high-yield deposit interest, showcasing programs as FREE, stating balances have FDIC insurance, etc. all have requirements preventing customers from being deceived or treated unfairly.
Early-stage startups working with agencies or managing their own messaging need to be mindful of this risk — lack of oversight can disqualify potential bank partners or mislead users (than complain to regulators). This may the first venture for founders & product teams, but having a compliant + informative website/app quickly builds confidence with 3rd party vendors/partners and customers.
The same level of scrutiny is still required post-launch from fintech platforms. If a change to marketing or disclosures needs to be made, it’s best to get bank partner approval before making it public. This may result in a longer process, but doing so helps prevent a costly error or misinformation.
WRAPPING UP the fintech GUIDE for founders and startups
Meaningful change and innovation is difficult. Facing headwinds from the economy and regulatory developments is making it even more complex for fintech startups.
Over the last 5+ years, we continue to be inspired by individuals and product teams committed to broadening and improving access in the financial services industry.
The same questions tend to pop up regarding starting point, what’s available in the market, best practices, and blockers to avoid. The topics (from Part 1 - 3) aim at addressing these recurring themes in a single, comprehensive resource. Even though each area can have its own in-depth discussion — we chose to keep the material condensed with an emphasis on awareness and best practices.
For the future fintech founders and startups willing to jump into the tornado of building a new platform against all odds, this guide is for you. It’s a resource that highlights a path forward and critical topics addressed along the way — from idea, concept, to prototype and launch. The goal is to help the newest startups be directionally accurate as they embark on this journey.
Well-known fintech brands and enterprises all began with an idea and a scrappy team. Here’s to the next 5 years of new platforms, product, and innovation throughout the industry — and this guide helping more startups realize success sooner.
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