Launching and Growing the Fintech

Marketing Strategies

As with any business, once you have the money and a proven MVP, it is time to let the market know about your company and the new solution you are offering.

Launching the Fintech

There are many ways to launch a new brand and product to the market. We have discussed it in the Marketing Module, but let's have a quick re-cap. The launch of a new brand, new product or service requires an advertising or promoting strategy, looking to reach the largest percentage possible of the target market, and aiming for a minimum adequate frequency (meaning how many times the audience will see the message about the new brand, product or solution). There will be a minimum frequency needed for a person to understand a new concept, compare it with other solutions, and decide to make a purchase.

To achieve that the marketing team will use a combination of media and methods that are adequate or aligned to the identified target market. It will usually require a mix of traditional marketing tools, like events, fairs, prospect visits, seminars, TV, radio, outdoors and digital marketing. When talking about fintechs digital marketing plays an important role, due to the audience being technology-friendly or digitally savvy, in line with digital marketing media.

The customer acquisition strategy will be a mix of inbound and outbound marketing strategies.

Inbound marketing is a strategy focused on attracting potential customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to their needs and interests. Instead of pushing messages out to a broad audience, inbound marketing draws people in by offering solutions to their problems or answering their questions. There are many ways to do this. It can be done via face-to-face seminars or virtual seminars (webinars). You can visit key prospects to present the solution. The use of social media marketing, blogs, email marketing and influencer marketing are other examples. This is a customer-centric approach and the better the knowledge of the target market the more efficient your effort will be. It focuses on building trust, educating the audience, and generating leads.

Outbound Marketing is a strategy where businesses actively reach out to potential customers through direct advertising and promotional activities, offering the customer new solutions, and mainly through challenges and smart offers placing a new way of solving a problem in front of the customers, aiming at generating immediate interest and "fast sales". It can be delivered by TV, targeted or cold calls, using social media ads, and direct mail among other methods.

Delivery is much more efficient when it's done with the knowledge and understanding of the target market.

An important difference here is that due to limited scale of the business and lack of financial resources, start-ups in general (and specifically fintechs) begin with a niche approach, trying to gain a presence in a specific segment of the market, and growing from there.

Improving customer value and retention

A fintech must also build strategies to increase the level of its relationship with customers as they first experience and then start actively using the solution. You should use actions and messages that reinforce the customer choices, as this helps the customer to use and navigate the solution and get the most value from it. A constant flow of relevant information, deals, and innovations will reinforce the relationship. The celebration of a relationship anniversary with some sort of a "personalised gift" is always very important.

It's very important to create an open channel of communication. Fintechs must take very good care of the effectiveness of the channels of communication with prospects and customers (with a greater focus on customers) whether that it through chatbots, email exchanges, or call centres. These channels are a very valuable tool for not only building loyalty, but also as a source of information and feedback to improve and adjust the solution.

These efforts should be done through below the line marketing strategies, using the fintech's existing distribution channels, such as its website, apps, social media, email, chatbot and call centres.

The same channels are to be used to manage the customer base. For instance, when customers are reducing the level of their "relationship", actions must be taken to understand why, and where possible reverse the decline.