As we all already know, COVID-19 has certainly accelerated digital adoption from within enterprises to externally by retail consumers. It is no surprise that we are seeing a large growth in the number of tech startups this year.

Moving into 2021, just in February alone, we are looking at a total of 26,045 number of FinTech startups globally – which is double the number of FinTech startups since 2019 before COVID-19 started. The growth in FinTech startups within a year from 2019 to 2020 alone already saw a whopping 65% increase.

As we spend more time under lockdown, we have more time to ourselves and to think about ideas, coming up with real world solutions, which includes FinTech. The adoption of FinTech would not have been as fast if it was not due to social distancing and mainstream media hype on cryptocurrencies.

Among such a rapidly competitive landscape, what should marketers be focusing on to grow their brand and marketing results? Let’s look at some important factors to the success of fintech firms today.

Building Your First Community

Without actual users, what is the point of your fintech solution? In comparison to other businesses, fintech startups needs to focus more on building and growing their own community.

Problem. When it comes to finances, digital alone is a deterrence to community users or the masses due to the rampant scams revolving personal wealth and investments. Just look at the cryptocurrency landscape, people who are not tech-savvy would not have been able to understand how blockchain and cryptocurrency works, let alone using it right and trusting the right products and services.

Objective. You need to build a community of users who are satisfied with your fintech solution, and are equally invested in wanting to see you grow.

Solution. Instead of the typical channels and platforms, you need to be plugged into the actual community where your target audience is. Forget about writing blog posts and sharing them on LinkedIn. In fact, start exploring quality community discussion forums such as Indiehackers, specific subreddits, Discord channels, Facebook Groups, Telegram Groups and more. Instead of thinking “fast” (leave that to your Business Development Managers), think “on the ground, direct to target audience”.

Retaining Them

Now that you have built and grown your community, you need to retain them. Retention does not just serve the purpose of your growing your MAUs, but also to make sure that the brand loyalty, trust in your fintech solution, and pride in being one of the early adopters stay.

Problem. As a marketer, you need to constantly engage and update your community of people on the business, or even just on the landscape. You don’t have a lot of things to work with due to compliance and regulations, and the industry is so competitive with similar solutions everywhere as long as one keeps looking. How do you stay at the top of your game?

Objective. Create as much conversations, hype, and content as possible on a daily basis. Attend to your community members with good support and service.

Solution. You need to create a detailed content calendar, stay on top of your Google news, subReddits, Twitter hashtags, forum discussions, and even more. It sounds like a lot but it’s honestly nothing a bot can’t fix (especially for tech startups). Convince your CTO to come up with a Telegram or Slack bot to pull the latest related news and feed them onto your channels for active conversations. To be fair, in our experience, all you need is an additional manpower, or more time – whichever works. If you have a designer working with you, the designer can compile these news and information into infographics or banners for further distribution across different channels and platforms – from social media updates, newsletters, to podcasts and community votes and polls on Telegram groups.

Another solution is to be CRAZY with creativity. Explore different ways you can engage and invoke more responses and activity on your platforms. Think memes, polls, word plays and puns, to creating interactive AR games or filters for your community to play with. At this point, nothing has never been done before when it comes to engaging communities and growth hacking. You’ve gotta try or you never know.

Amplification through Leveraging Your Community

As marketers are familiar with, the best kind of marketing is word-of-mouth. Which is also one of the main reasons why some traditional businesses refuse to explore marketing because word of mouth is strong enough for them to survive and do well. So the goal here is that we want to replicate this for our fintech solution.

Problem. You already have a community of users sitting around, using your solution, and are active on the digital space. The issue is that for them to take the next step or further their relationship with you and your brand, is for them to feel even more connected and embedded in your team – enough to feel that they truly belong and are part of the core and exclusive community. When they start feeling like they are one of the founding members or pioneer community members, they start to develop pride for your brand, and ultimately, the obligation to share about how good your product or service is – only if it really is.

Objective. You want to build a sense of belonging within the community.

Solution. For them to feel like they belong, first, they need to feel heard. Some technopreneurs have no patience to see through this part, so this really depends on the team you work with. If they see the importance of this, get them onboard. Run surveys, polls, and ask questions on your product or what could have been done better through your community platforms – be it EDM surveys, reviews, or Telegram Group discussions. Fix problems they have raised and let them suggest new ideas or product functions, and adopt them in the next few phases. This has always worked for beta versions which involves a first batch of people using and being incentivised for their feedback and time giving comments or finding bugs. They ultimately become loyal recurring users of said service/product.

Once the above is done, take it further by introducing referral marketing campaigns or affiliate marketing campaigns. Just remember that incentives should not be a hassle to understand or to redeem. This is why some of the lucky draw and giveaway campaigns fail due to the complex qualification criteria and tasks involved. You want to make it as simple and as straightforward as possible to attract a larger number of participants.

You can also consider engaging community ambassadors from within your pool of users to help with community/user-generated content for marketing purposes.

If you are still at a lost on what you could do or should be doing to market your FinTech solution, drop us an email or hit us up for a free 30-minute consultation.

Need more help with marketing?

Upture Digital is a Singapore-based omni-channel marketing consultancy; focused on helping startups, self employed professionals, and technopreneurs achieve their near-term objective strategically.

We have helped over 20 projects and businesses with launching their products and services by crafting a bespoke strategy to leverage on their uniqueness against competitors, targeted at the right audience, and with constant optimisation based on data collected.

Email us or message Coco on LinkedIn to schedule a free consultation.