When you are feeling like your marketing progress is slow, it’s important to remember what Chuck Close said:
“Today you will do what you did yesterday, and tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually, you will get somewhere.”
We are here to provide some inspiration to accelerate your efforts.
Marketing campaigns require a lot of resources. So, they should be based on what works.
Let’s dive deeper into some of the best fintech marketing campaigns and the good practices that can be learned from them.
| Table of contents |
|
A marketing campaign is any coordinated strategic effort used to achieve a company’s marketing goal(/s). These goals can include brand awareness, increased revenue, lead generation, and more.
These campaigns promote products and services through various channels.
These include social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Or online pay-per-click marketing platforms like Google Ads. And offline channels like television, newspapers, radio and billboards or posters.
(Fintechs like Monzo and Starling still effectively use TV and billboard ads to reach consumers offline.)
A marketing campaign’s success usually depends on many different elements.
For online campaigns, this includes targeting options, creative treatments, ad copy, landing pages and more.
Great marketing campaigns help fintechs to stand out.
But ‘standing out’ should be based on clearly defined and measurable objectives that lead to growth.
Below, we’ve listed the main benefits of marketing campaigns.
Increased brand awareness can help build trust. This is especially valuable to start-ups looking to establish themselves.
Salsify reports that 46% of US and 47% of British consumers buy more from brands they trust (2022).
This is why planning a campaign to specifically to achieve brand awareness is useful.
A campaign like this can be followed up with another that is aimed at CTRs and conversions.
In fintech, customers need to trust a company before they allow it to handle their money.
71% of consumers are more likely to use a product or service from brands they recognise.
Business-to-business (B2B) fintech marketing is not that different to business-to-consumer (B2C) fintech marketing. B2B buyers also do market research before purchasing a company’s product or service.
In fact, 90% of B2B customers begin their buying journey with an online search.
One B2B campaign by NatWest resulted in 13 million impressions in 6 months, and 2.5 million video views with more than 428,000 engagements.
It achieved a 15-point increase in attribute that NatWest Business "provides expert advice" among decision-makers on LinkedIn and an 11-point increase in attribute that the bank "supports UK business".
This was a great way for NatWest to raise brand awareness and build a market perception that it was a champion of UK SMEs.
Running a fintech marketing campaign doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, we would recommend starting with a low budget and using a test-and-learn approach. See how your target market reacts to your messaging and visuals. A/B test them to achieve optimal performance.
Platforms like Google and LinkedIn can reward you with lower ad costs when you get it right.
For example, with a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign, Google rates the quality and relevance of both your PPC ads and keywords. This is known as Google’s Quality Score.
Google rewards ads gaining high clicks and engagement as this is a signal to them that the ad is helpful and relevant for their users.
This is usually, but not always the goal of a marketing campaign. As mentioned above, sometimes campaigns can be about building broad awareness before a more focused campaign is launched to achieve conversion of new customers further down the sales funnel.
Through testing different fintech ad copy and graphics (A/B testing), you can build a better understanding of what is effective for your target audience.
It is important to find out what your target audience responds well to, and A/B testing is one of the best ways to do this.
A/B testing for fintech marketing is the practice of testing variations of a campaign to see which performs better. The goal is to then optimise your ads based on that data.
You can test a range of elements such as ad copy, images, calls to action and landing pages. You can even test various colours to see what draws the attention of your fintech audience.
For example, you may find that a short video is most effective in engaging your audience than an image at specific points in your campaign.
You need to utilise the settings on your website or ad platform that automatically at random shows audiences one of two versions of a page/ad. So, afterwards, you know that 50% of users have seen one version, and 50% have seen the other.
Examples of successful A/B testing include when Ubisoft increased its lead generation by 12% and Zalora increased checkout rate by 12.3% by optimising product pages.
Both brands used relevant data to make informative decisions.
Now that we’ve covered some background information, let us dive into some of the best high profile fintech marketing campaigns for 2022.
Social media marketing campaigns involve posting and sharing content on those channels that engages your fintech audience. You can start with organic (non-paid) posts and then boost the most successful with some budget.
Creating engaging and useful content on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok and LinkedIn help enforce your marketing messages and improve brand recall.
Wise does this well with its video ad campaigns.
The ad begins “with over 50 currencies in one account, who exactly is Wise made for?
This ad targets people who would benefit from opening a Wise account for international transactions. The unique selling point (USP) of this ad is the range of currencies people have easy access to in one app.
As Wise puts it: “Wise is the everyday account made for the world”. This social media ad campaign gets its USP across in 15 seconds.
This is important when using channels like TikTok where users are constantly scrolling through short-form content. Generally, TikTok audiences are likely to have shorter attention spans amid consuming mass content.
The Science Times reports that users who spend over 90 minutes on TikTok can shorten their collective attention span overtime.
Wise captures this attention with entertaining voice-over and eye-catching visuals. This is a solid example of creating a 'pattern interrupt' on social media platforms.
Social platforms running this ad include Facebook and TikTok. Conversely, Wise use reports and informative ads on LinkedIn to target businesses.
Wise has considered its various audience segments by platform. Segmenting this way can be helpful as traffic behaviour can differ depending on the overall intent of a platform.
While a TikTok audience engages with content, a LinkedIn audience may look to professionally learn and connect.
In fact, TikTok statistics reported entertainment was number 1 with the most hashtag views (535 billion).
In this Linkedin ad campaign, Afterpay markets its gated content using relevant events for their B2B marketing. By mentioning relevant keywords “inflation” and “shoppers”, the ad is targeted towards retailers.
The ad copy points towards the problem and then hints at the solution. In this case, the biggest pain point for B2C businesses is declining business amidst inflation. Following this, the creative and headline tease a way to solve this pain point.
They do not immediately promote BNPL (buy now pay later). That may only confuse audiences as to how BNPL is relevant to them. Instead, Afterpay underlines the pain point to evoke emotion and then allude to BNPL as a solution.
Email marketing campaigns are a sequence of emails sent over a period to reach a specific objective. The emails should be structured so subscribers receive them at the optimal time in the buying cycle with valuable content and relevant offers.
The goals for email campaigns, like other types of campaigns, can be long-term brand awareness, market positioning or sales conversions. Campaigns may cover all of these objectives at different points in its lifecycle.
The presence of email marketing is still strong today with Statista estimating email marketing revenue will reach $11 billion by the end of 2023.
A good email marketing campaign will spread communications across a period of time to avoid being spammy. They will join up as an overall narrative that usually attempts to draw people through the company's sales funnel towards the overall goal of conversion
An important distinction must be made between email marketing and email newsletters. Firstly, email newsletters typically include informative, helpful and relevant content.
Newsletters are, by nature, recurring communications. As well as the quality of its content, the structure is also likely to be a critical success factor. Newsletters should have better engagement rates when done right.
On the other hand, email marketing can be used to develop a persuasive argument on a specific topic such as a single product or service in which the recipient has expressed an interest.
Let's use this newsletter from Coinbase as an example.
Coinbase provides 3 bulleted points at the top. This gives viewers a helpful and instant overview of the content which they can assess for relevance before reading further.
What’s key to note is that these emails are inherently informative and educational. They include plenty of their article links and statistics.
It is also important to note that newsletters are just one part of email marketing.
For example, if the campaign objective was to increase conversions, the content of the Coinbase newsletter could include stories that support and develop the messaging contained in the email campaign.
Here’s a fun fact: experts predict the knowledge industry (e-learning market) to surpass 1 trillion USD!
This means the demand for knowledge and skills is increasing, making it time-appropriate to invest in content marketing.
In fact, 67% marketers report that content marketing generates demand.
The number of videos watched per person every week has almost doubled in the past 4 years. Wistia reported it was 10.5 hours per week in 2018 whereas this has increased to 19 hours in 2022.
Videos can be one of the most engaging and effective ways to capture the attention of your audience. They can captivate, tell a story and stir emotions.
Fintech brands have created video campaigns across various platforms including YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
They can be high production with slick editing skills. Equally, they can also be simple with an amateur production feel. As long as content is valuable with a relevant message, your videos are likely to be impactful and create engagement.
Here Wealthsimple combines both high production values and a relevant story that speaks to viewers.
Wealthsimple’s main target audience is millennials (people aged between 25-40).
The video tells millennials an engaging story in 1 minute and 30 seconds. This is important as the Technical University of Denmark discovered people’s collective attention spans are narrowing down.
With people having shorter attention spans, brevity is a key requirement.
Postdoc Philipp Lorenz-Spreen explains: “…content is increasing in volume, which exhausts our attention and our urge for newness causes us to collectively switch between topics more rapidly.”
Wealthsimple deals with this by constantly changing scenes to maintain the audience's attention. And the catchy music in the background increases brand favourability.
The marketing campaign highlights Wealthsimple’s origins while making it relatable to the everyday person.
The key phrase in this campaign was “half a million Mikes” and the founder just happened to be another Mike. In other words, the founder is a regular person, making the brand more relatable.
Here we have a video marketing campaign by Starling. Again, this video is short, visually engaging, and relevant to Starling’s target audience’s needs.
Starling addresses an issue with traditional banking and offers their services as a modern alternative. This is implied in the video with a woman flying and breaking free from the confines and frustrating queues of a bank branch.
This example is slightly older. However, we think it’s a prime example of a good offline fintech marketing campaign.
Quite simply, an offline fintech marketing campaign is executed without using online channels. These include billboards, radio, tv, events, banners on transport vehicles, and posters.
Campaigns are often largely online with some carefully selected offline elements. They are generally approached with caution by marketers as they are regarded as expensive, and engagement is difficult to track. They can be effective as an element of an overall joined-up campaign but are usually avoided as stand-alone marketing.
In this example, Current launched its offline campaign in New York to spread their brand message. With this campaign, Current is distinguishing itself from traditional banks.
There are plenty of examples of how fintechs and legacy banks are now collaborating. However, exposing consumer frustrations with legacy banks is still rich pickings for fintech marketing messages…
To quote them in their own words: “We’re not a bank. There we said it” and “We wondered what should banks stop doing? And started Current”.
They are clear and direct in their messaging and are intent on solving issues that their target audience have with traditional banks.
Current also used meme formats to get their message across while connecting with their audience.
“Banks: we’re here for you”
“Also banks: You owe us money for running out of money”
This is one of the popular meme formats at the time and people will recognise it. The format gets the message across in a few words. It’s simple and stands out.
In subways, Current expresses their thoughts: “Did anyone miss bank branches during quarantine? We rest our case.” This is a similar message to what Starling promotes.
Through this offline campaign, Current has demonstrated their understanding of their members and target audience. They have tapped into an emotional response from frustrated banking customers they hope will propel clients towards Current.
Being able to consistently prove relevance and value helps you build trust with your fintech audience.
It helps reinforce your brand’s authority and nurtures a good relationship with the relevant audience. Current achieves this by being the solution to the common problems people have experienced with traditional banking.
Growing your brand’s identity is important, but it’s also important to not forget what your fintech brand specifically solves.
A question to ask: “What problems do I solve for my audience to differentiate myself in the fintech industry?”
The three ways that a fintech brand can evolve:
1) Providing a better service than your competitors
2) Developing your brand (trust, authority, connection)
3) Innovative fintech products/services that your customers love
Developing your brand awareness is fundamental. A brand can have exceptional services or innovative solutions, but if no one knows this, then there is a clear problem.
The fintech campaigns we have highlighted display brand personality, engaging stories and meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is a key attribute to developing your brand’s identity.
Fintech influencer marketing is when a brand pays an influencer to promote a fintech’s products and/or services. This can bring a lot of attention to your brand over a short space of time.
Campaign goals for influencer marketing can include building awareness, generating leads (sign-ups) or increasing conversions (or all three).
Influencer marketing can be expensive. The more influential and popular a person is, the higher the cost of working with them will be.
However, the ROI can be high with the right influencer and a good marketing strategy.
The below influencer marketing campaign remains a great example from 2022.
Klarna launched its “Smooth Dogg” campaign back in 2019, featuring Snoop Dogg.
One thing that differentiates this influencer marketing campaign is that Snoop Dogg had genuinely invested in promoting Klarna: even becoming a minor shareholder in the business.
The common issue with influencer marketing is that influencers may promote a brand only for the money. On YouTube, this is commonly labelled as sponsorship.
Ideally, an influencer would have an authentic interest and appreciation of a fintech's product or service and would bring it to the attention of their subscribers, regardless of payment from the brand.
At Blue Train Marketing, we have worked on many successful fintech marketing campaigns.
We are a fintech content marketing agency based in London. We specialise in both the B2B and B2C categories. And we work with a number of platforms and mediums, including SEO, PPC, social media, and more.
Whether it’s providing engaging content, relevant value, thought leadership, benefit-driven solutions or brand development, there’s clear value in looking at the results of other fintech campaigns.
We would never recommend copying another fintech's marketing campaign but they can inspire new ideas.
Taking inspiration from other fintech campaigns can speed up your marketing efforts. And continuous A/B testing will provide insights into improving those campaigns.
There are many factors to consider when planning a campaign (costs, brand perception, brand growth over time), but it is absolutely essential to agree the objective of every campaign before plans are put into place. Failure to do so will mean you do not know how to measure or demonstrate the success of your campaign.
No fintech marketing manager should be in a situation where a campaign designed for mass brand awareness is judged as if it was a lead generation campaign with high CTR. The objectives are completely different, and the metrics should be too.