If you’re a B2B FinTech marketer who made a New Year's resolution to step up your digital marketing game and boost business this year -- you’re in the right place.
You’ll need to dedicate yourself to creating a marketing strategy that is as varied as your customers. A killer (and well-executed) marketing plan will inevitably add value to your business’s bottom line, but creating value for your customers should be top of mind. When you offer genuine value, your business will be valued in return.
Below, we've outlined five easy ways to start crafting a marketing strategy that leads to success. Whether you need a reminder that your content is only as good as you make it, or a gentle push towards finally optimizing for mobile users, here's your primer on the best practices for FinTech B2B marketing in 2019.
Anybody who's familiar with marketing in today's world knows that creating content optimized for mobile users is the key to a campaign's success. You're going to fall behind your competition quickly if you fail to leverage mobile optimization.
The Boston Consulting Group identified an interesting trend in 2017: They found that mobile usage per B2B professional was anticipated to rise from two to three hours per day by 2020. If your content isn't easily accessible to these B2B experts browsing the web on their phones, it’s safe to say you’re missing out on opportunities and profits.
The phenomenon of mobile banking has spread incredibly fast, almost entirely saturating the demographic of younger customers. In 2018, the amount of mobile banking users in the U.S. reached 115.6 million, with users claiming that they save an average of 45 minutes a month due to the convenience of checking their finances on their own time instead of at a physical branch. The same study revealed that these apps ranked in the top three apps favored by Americans last year.
To properly implement "going mobile," the first step is to make sure that your organization's site is mobile-responsive. This means that a visitor who clicks onto any of your webpages on a smartphone should be able to read, see, and interact just as much as they would be able to on a traditional computer. This will also help to spike Google search rankings. Win-win. Next, you can begin developing a standard app for your users if it makes sense for your ideal customers.
While plenty of major corporations have taken the plunge and made strides to get (and stay) active on social media, it can be hard for B2B professionals to feel that there's space for them on social platforms. Many marketers are wary of coming across too sales-y on a platform that's meant for social interaction (we hear this a lot about Facebook).
That fear should be put aside immediately.
Your social media marketing campaign doesn’t need to be aggressively pushy to be effective. Most successful businesses are mindful of keeping their social platforms a varied mix of info portraying what the brand is about and what it can do for customers, and posts showcasing thought leadership without any overt promotions.
Some companies do not advertise at all on social platforms, but instead use the space to get their name out into the world and drive engagement with current customers. This type of engagement over social media is focused on customer service. For example, Facebook groups provide a great way to for customers to interact with their service providers in real-time. A few years ago, Econsultancy studied the response rates on social media of 16 banks in the UK. The times ranged from just three minutes to one hour and 24 minutes (at maximum). Since then, these rates have reduced even more.
Social media can provide other opportunities for FinTech innovation. American Express has won awards for its process of linking a customer's card with his or her Facebook profile, and based on the user's online activity, offering different deals for their credit card.
When it comes to FinTech marketing, you're definitely losing out if you aren't leveraging social media to market your services.
Branding is undoubtedly a common interest for FinTech professionals. Digital Authority Partners mentions that the number two website in the banking industry is Financial Brand, read by 7.5 million financial CEOs.
If you want to make a splash in the market and stand out amongst your competition, you should be funneling your creative efforts into compelling and exciting branding.
Top-notch content is essential to your marketing strategy, but it won't get you anywhere if your branding isn’t reeling people in. Don't be afraid to test outlandish ideas or go crazy with your artistic vision -- you may be surprised where it leads you.
If terms like "blockchain" and "AI" manage to simultaneously confound and excite you, you may be well-served by starting to research the emerging technologies that are helping marketers across the globe achieve sales success.
If your organization has the capital available, consider investing in sizable undertakings that have the potential to shift your marketing efforts for good. If, however, you're part of a smaller operation, there are plenty of other options to take advantage of when considering emerging tech.
Small, inexpensive additions to your strategy can make all the difference. Chatbots (like Drift, HubSpot's native Chatbot, or Intercomm) are great examples of this -- they're low-risk, statistically show a good ROI, and can help make the user experience throughout your website more positive. Implementing this level of technology into your marketing campaign will free you up to do the work that only you can do. Leave the busywork to the bots.
Nobody should really need to hear this advice anymore, but it's such a central part of marketing that we'd be remiss if we failed to mention it.
Making sure that your copy provides value to both your business and your clients is critical to marketing success. Whether you're putting together content for a specific campaign or you're piecing together pillar pages for your website, you need to be optimizing every step of the way.
What does optimizing mean? A lot.
You'll need to optimize in the traditional sense of the word in order to get your content pushed out to the appropriate audience. This means SEO, PPC, and whatever other tools you can leverage to get your content ranking high within search engines.
Beyond this, though, you should be optimizing for your specific audience. Avoid the temptation to put out junk or filler content that will fluster readers; it diminishes your position as a knowledgeable authority figure. Instead, determine the problems that your potential clients are likely facing and start offering actionable insight or solutions from the FinTech world. Every piece of content you create should be crafted to address your potential clients in a meaningful way.
If you take the steps to make this content mobile-accessible or to bring new technologies into the fold, you'll have no trouble standing up to the competition. B2B marketing in the FinTech sphere can be overwhelming, but if you take the time to implement these best practices into your marketing efforts, success is just a matter of consistency and perseverance.