The FinTech market is a competitive space. Companies come and go, so how do you set yours up for long-term success?
The trick is to develop a FinTech marketing strategy to build strong brand loyalty and predictable revenue.
No matter the type of financial service, these are the tactics you can apply.
Create Predictable Revenue
The goal of any FinTech marketing strategy is to create a predictable revenue stream, and this can be achieved by using a three-pronged method that covers all bases.
The thing is, venture-backed FinTech companies have aggressive growth targets, so recognizing the need to balance rapid scaling with long-term sustainability is crucial.
To understand more, we can look to the book, Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross, former VP of Sales at Salesforce. His method helped generate around $100 million in recurring revenue, skyrocketing Salesforce’s early growth.
He uses an analogy called “Nets, Seeds, and Spears.”
- Spears: The proactive targeting of desirable customers via cold outreach. Leads are precise and scalable when approached correctly.
- Nets: Attracting leads using advertising, SEO, content marketing, and social media. Leads are less targeted but abundant.
- Seeds: Organic growth from word of mouth, customer satisfaction, and referrals. Leads are high-quality, but slow to grow and scale.
For B2B marketing, it works best to tackle the spears first. Get the quick revenue rolling in so you can concentrate on the nets (the slower growth marketing methods).
If you’re a B2C company, the same principle applies. For B2C, “spears” are affiliates, partners, and influencer sponsorships. “Nets” and “seeds” are the same whether you’re selling to consumers or businesses.
Eventually, the seeds will start to grow.
Brand awareness, word of mouth, and the narrative you put out there will influence customer perception and lead to long-term sustainability.
1. Advertise
Unlocking fast revenue is key to fueling the early growth stages of a FinTech startup.
Paid advertising is widely recognized as one of the quickest ways to scale FinTech services, so it’s a smart investment, even if it’s a hefty upfront cost.
With well-optimized, paid digital marketing strategies, a FinTech company will see measurable results within days or weeks of launching the campaigns. Especially on platforms like Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
However, running ads will only get you so far. Yes, you get to cast your net wide and catch many fish, but the ocean quickly gets depleted. As we can see by the graph, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising scales fast but eventually plateaus. At this point, additional ad costs produce diminishing returns. In contrast, SEO and organic channels have slower growth but scale over time.
So, although paid ads and social media marketing give you a rapid injection of cash, they are also very quick to plateau. You’ll be left floundering if you don’t back them up with other digital marketing methods.
The key is to tap out advertising first to kick off growth, and then you can start investing in slower-growth strategies.
2. Influencers & Affiliate
Affiliate marketing spend in the US is set to increase to $12 billion in 2025, and that’s because it works so well.
For brands, it’s a win-win situation. You get people talking and generating hype around your business for zero upfront cost, and only pay when a customer signs up for your FinTech services.
Although conversion rates are on the lower side (about 20% of your affiliates will generate 80% of revenue), it’s still free publicity. And, since you only pay for conversions, you really have nothing to lose.
There are lots of affiliate sites where you can find the right partners to work with: Impact, PartnerStack, and FlexOffers are some of the most famous ones.
Fintel Connect specializes in the fintech industry. CJ has a decent finance affiliate network also. And if you’re looking to monetize credit cards inside of your software, Red Ventures’ affiliate program can give you access to the top affiliate credit card issuers.
I have done some business with Fintel Connect. They are nice people who run a tight ship.
(Red Ventures is the multibillion-dollar company that owns CreditCards.com, BankRate, The Points Guy, and other finance websites.)
And, of course, there’s influencer marketing.
We’re not just talking about your typical Instagram influencer. For FinTech marketing, it’s wise to look beyond social media and approach renowned podcasters, websites, and bloggers in your niche.
Even getting featured in industry email newsletters can be a viable way to increase exposure.
The trick is to find influencers who engage with your desired audience and have a proven track record for effective FinTech marketing.
Unlike affiliates, this type of partnership marketing does have an upfront cost. However, using it still often gives you a better ROI compared with PPC.
3. Content Marketing
FinTech content marketing is great for influencing all aspects of the sales funnel, from generating brand awareness to increasing customer engagement and closing the sale.
There are a ton of ways to do this.
First, you have all the social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Even consistently posting in relevant sub-Reddits will be of benefit.
TikTok, too. But keep in mind that TikTok’s audience is young and might not fit the right demographic for B2B FinTech companies.
YouTube is another top way to put out content. It’s the second-most visited website in the world (behind Google), and the most popular social media platform in the US.
Plus, if a video is well optimized, it’s 50 times more likely to get you featured on the first page of a Google search.
Then, you have your email marketing, website content, and blog. Regularly posting content drives organic traffic directly to your website, and each new visitor is a potential customer.
Of course, SEO feeds into all of this.
Your content marketing has to be optimized for the right keywords – the ones that people are actually searching for. And, by adding quality backlinks to your text, you increase the authority and rise through the search rankings.
4. SEO
Speaking of SEO, this has long been the backbone of any FinTech marketing strategy, and this still holds true today.
Showing up for highly relevant keywords is essential for driving relevant traffic to your FinTech company. And it’s generally the best method for achieving sustained growth over time.
You can research the right keywords using a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Surfer, or hire an expert (like us!) for the job.
However, keep in mind that if you have a very niche FinTech product, people might not be Googling the terms.
In that case, you have to think wider than the product itself. Find keywords around the problem your product solves or the broader pain points your audience is experiencing. Or, maybe SEO is not the best FinTech marketing strategy to apply.
But for many financial products, FinTech SEO has proven to be the answer.
Let’s take Wise, for example.
Widely recognized as a pioneer in FinTech SEO, Wise experienced massive organic growth after launching thousands of highly optimized landing pages for every combination of currency pairing and user scenario.
Using programmatic SEO coupled with attracting quality backlinks by publishing original research, Wise exponentially grew its total addressable audience.
Today, its organic monthly site visits sit around the 90 million mark.
5. Optimize Support Content
An often overlooked area for driving traffic is optimizing support content.
The FinTech industry is notoriously complex. Therefore, people frequently search for guides on how to use financial technology and services.
It’s simple, really.
Help people onboard for free by putting out great content, and you’ll help your sales.
Provide good, comprehensive support, and you’ll get satisfied customers and a boost for your FinTech brand’s reputation. Plus, customers who can quickly find the information they need are less likely to leave, so you’ll also decrease your churn rate.
Payment gateway Stripe can be looked at as a model for how effective this digital marketing strategy is.
By prioritizing well-structured, technical documentation designed for both human readers and search engines, it experienced a huge leap in organic traffic.
Stripe achieved this by:
- Performing keyword research for high-intent, long-tail key queries that directly address user needs.
- Publishing content that has been written by technical experts to ensure accuracy.
- Ensuring a great user experience with an easy-to-navigate interface and well-designed documentation.
- Implementing a strong internal linking structure.
- Localizing content to reach multiple markets and having levels of content available (basic through to advanced).
If you apply this to your content marketing strategies, then you’re onto a winner.
6. Product Marketing
Once the product is out there, how do FinTech marketers drive interest beyond SEO and content?
The answer lies in generating audience hype and getting them to do the work for you. But you’ll need a good incentive for this to happen.
So, work to identify what type of reward your audience wants, then find a way to make it shareable.
In the late 90s, PayPal burst onto the scene with something that no one had ever really seen before. Its viral referral campaign offered referrers and the new user a cash incentive.
The program accelerated PayPal’s customer base from one to five million in a matter of months, reaching 100 million by 2002.
Cofounder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, explained:
“A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too. This is how Facebook and PayPal both grew quickly: every time someone shares with a friend or makes a payment, they naturally invite more and more people into the network. This isn’t just cheap—it’s fast, too.”
In another example, the trading FinTech company, RobinHood, also enjoyed massive growth due to an original campaign.
The strategy revolved around a waitlist and a referral scheme. Potential users signed up for early access to the FinTech app and could move up the waitlist by referring others.
This was incredibly effective for tapping into exclusivity and FOMO (fear of missing out), making users keen to invite others and secure a top spot on the waitlist.
After launch, the referral scheme continued, offering small amounts of stock or crypto as incentives.
7. AI and LLMs
It’s no secret that any FinTech marketing agency has had to drastically adapt to the growing use of AI and LLMs.
AI marketing revolves around getting picked up in the generated results. And that circles back to getting yourself mentioned across the internet in other forms of content.
AI relies on gathering information and collating results, so if your FinTech solution is frequently mentioned in “Best” articles, listicles, and even Reddit posts, then it stands a much higher chance of appearing in an AI-generated result.
This is particularly true for Google’s AI overviews.
When a user searches, Google sources from the various “Best” articles and comparison tables and displays them in the overview.
So, get your brand awareness, SEO, and influencer marketing on point, and AI will pick you up.
Overall, AI displays sources that are similar to those produced by search engines. For instance, after heavy investment from Microsoft, there is now a strong overlap of results between Bing and ChatGPT.
However, what’s really interesting is that a recent Semrush study revealed that ChatGPT is more likely to give visibility to smaller domains compared to Google.
A useful thing to note for growing brands in the FinTech space.
8. Podcasting & PR
Don’t disregard the power of the podcast!
Podcast listeners are highly engaged and pay close attention to what their favorite hosts say.
To back this up, a recent report by SoundsProfitable found that 71% of podcast fans were willing to learn more about the brands featured on podcasts.
Therefore, guesting on a FinTech podcast or even starting your own can be a highly effective way to increase trust and customer loyalty.
For example, FinTech Nexus began podcasting in 2013 to expand its reach. The podcast now reaches over 225,000 industry professionals and has proven to be a very effective B2B FinTech marketing method.
If you prefer to be a guest on an existing podcast, you can use platforms such as PodMatch and MatchMaker.fm to find the right podcasters to work with.
Other PR marketing efforts can include:
- Interviews via traditional marketing channels
- Getting featured by journalists or on notable websites such as TechCrunch
- Experiential marketing, such as participating in live events or panels
If these channels appeal to you, then it’s worth hiring a PR FinTech marketer to handle things for you. It’s relatively inexpensive and gets you in front of the right audience faster.
Putting It All Together
Everything in this article ties together to bring you FinTech marketing strategies that not only bring fast results but also sustain you for the long term.
To start right, tailor your digital marketing campaign to the growth stage of your business:
- Small companies or startups should begin with paid ads to gain quick revenue before moving on to the slower-growth methods.
- Medium-sized FinTech firms should establish affiliate and community marketing and get their SEO and content marketing on point.
- Large and well-established organizations need to be doing all of it to keep momentum going.
Remember, applying one strategy will only get you so far. You need to aim for the nets, seeds, and spears to maximize revenue potential.
It also doesn’t hurt to get an expert marketer on board.
If you’d like to understand more about hiring a FinTech SEO agency, get in touch with GB Digital for your free consultation and Discovery Call.
