Fintech seems like it’s all technology. But it’s about imagination that transcends this limited perception. And here are fintech marketing campaigns that prove it.
At its core, fintech marketing is like any other industry-specific marketing. The tech complexity and nitty-gritty in fintech oscillate. But the shell framework remains the same.
What’s true for traditional financial institutions is true for fintech- reliability, trust, and credibility. These are essential requirements for even the earliest adopters. Because the to-and-fro of money isn’t mundane.
This automatically makes fintech marketing not about marketing a fintech, but about meeting your customers where they want you to. And transparency isn’t just a marketing trend.
Traditional financial institutions are going to catch up. Digital adoption is becoming imperative. Not a nice-to-have, but a must-have. Transparency or any other elements mentioned above can’t be used as value propositions by fintechs for the long term.
But fintech isn’t done. The revolution hasn’t ended. And that’s the sparkle.
However, this isn’t being leveraged correctly. There’s a dissonance because most customers belong to a non-financial background. They end up feeling disconnected from the brand’s vision. And overexplaining only makes them feel unintelligent. It’s challenging to connect with the audience because, honestly, no one gets up in the morning to feel enthusiastic about balancing their checkbooks. It’s tedious and not all that entertaining. But the demand’s there because it’s imperative to our living conditions.
How do you make your audience feel excited about something so acutely banal?
You build a truly innovative fintech marketing campaign.
It’s nothing new. There are brands out there that have mastered the art of fintech marketing campaigns.
And that’s precisely what we’re here to talk about. Fintech marketing campaigns that broke through the tradition with their bold moments. And made an impression on the industry.
Fintech Marketing Campaigns: Moments that Broke Through the Humdrum Routine of the Fintech World
Catching and engaging the attention of your ICPs is not a simple feat. Especially when it’s something so monotonous. You must be tactical enough not to rub them the wrong way. Or create more problems when you wanted to solve one.
What does that require? Positioning yourself as a credible and trustworthy fintech brand. You can’t mix and match random marketing strategies and expect them to work. Fintech demands finesse and insight. It requires strategy and creativity along with the statistics and features.
We’ve five fintech marketing campaigns to inspire you. And to help you break through the insipidness of marketing such crucial tech-centric solutions.
1. Nuvei x Ryan Reynolds
Nuvei is a payments powerhouse based in Canada. It has an impenetrable audience base of large enterprise merchants- it’s very challenging to reach these accounts. But without a way to reach its potential customers, Nuvei knew it would lose its market positioning.
The company had to find a way out of this conundrum. And the solution was quite unorthodox.
Nuvei stepped into influencer marketing.
Yes, it seems ambitious for a fintech company. But the point is that it actually worked. Nuvei, a Canadian platform, would now have to choose an influencer who would be its poster child and propagate its brand story in the best way.
It chose a Hollywood A-lister: Ryan Reynolds. Known for his humour and quirky demeanor. Actually, it was Reynolds who invested in his homebound brand. And as part of the deal, he became a part of Nuvei’s ads.
Source: Nuvei
These ads became the talk of the fintech world. Because of its unique intersection of a B2B brand such as Nuvei and Reynolds’ B2C storytelling method. He had complete control over the ads and the content, which allowed him to have his humor on full display.
The impact?
“Huge. Especially on brand awareness,” shares Alexandra Bucur, Nuvei’s Head of Content Marketing.
They could reach publications that were difficult to get to unless you paid. SDRs’ job became a tad bit easier because now they could use Reynolds as the opener. And they had millions of views, that’s impossible without paid ad channels.
It didn’t come down to leads and sales for Nuvei. But the awareness that it brought? That had long-term effects on Nuvei’s brand positioning.
Maybe it’s not always about the numbers. But about creating memorable impact.
2. Your Way In by Revolut
Revolut is as ambitious as it was years ago. It aimed to become the leading digital banking platform globally.
In 2022, Revolut teased a special marketing campaign to “reach” each and every UK consumer wherever they were at home, outdoors, and online. It sought to meet its potential customers wherever they were. And that was quite a strategy.
Source: YouTube
Your Way In was Revolut’s most significant brand awareness omnichannel campaign. And it made substantial splashes because the brand hadn’t published campaigns at such a scale previously.
The marketing strategy revolved around a unique message: financial inclusion. It spoke directly to the financial underdogs, not experts. For example, one of the clips illustrated a woman trading on her phone in a bathroom. And then the wall breaks and collides with a room full of traders.
Revolut challenged financial stereotypes with this campaign. The rooms that were previously too difficult to crack? Cryptocurrencies? Trading? Investing? The most rewarding opportunities were only accessible to some segments.
Revolut wanted to show its audience that it was possible to enter these “closed off worlds of money.”
As ordinary characters (or regular people) crash through these barriers, the digital banking services platform illustrates them bursting through walls of financial arenas and through challenging financial situations by leveraging the Revolut app.
This campaign worked because the time was right. As the cost of living surges, ordinary people want more channels to gain confidence, financial advantages, and financial freedom.
Revolut understood the timing. And it delivered the campaign, full of relevance.
The impact? It resonated because users could enter a world they couldn’t before.
3. Monzo: “Money Has Never Felt Better”
The anxiety of money management plagues us all. And Monzo wanted to be relatable.
Its “Money Has Never Felt Better” campaign was a humorous juxtaposition- published across OOH and a 60″ hero film. This campaign was based on two sides of the same coin: the good and the bad.
In a consecutive series of shots, the video illustrates what managing money generally feels like and how it feels with Monzo. It’s creative and built to highlight Monzo’s value proposition. The former is cold, stressful, unsatisfying, and even painful. Meanwhile, using Monzo feels warm, peaceful, and zen.
Source: YouTube
The imagery is commendable.
In one part of the film, money management feels like the middle of your workday, and you keep on banging your head on the keyboard. Meanwhile, with Monzo, it feels like learning Kung Fu to break through a wooden board with your head.
That’s hope. And the power of learning. And that is propagated through a bunch of juxtapositions. Anxiety with celebration. Screaming match with a loving moment. Cold with warmth. Failure with success. The list goes on and on.
The idea is simple. And it requires no further explanation. The campaign delivers Monzo’s message straightforwardly. It’s placing Monzo under a bright light, but also showcasing that it cares about its users’ feelings.
“Leveraging us will dispel the discomfort that you feel in your daily lives.”
The campaign promotes Monzo’s solutions for customers. Not about itself and what it can do for them. Monzo’s VP of Marketing puts it quite simply- “
Across the country, money evokes a variety of feelings, usually stress, anxiety, and avoidance. However, our customers tell us that on Monzo, money feels different, so much so that they’re seven times more likely to use the word ‘love’ when describing us than any other bank.”
The Gross Error Fintech Marketing Campaigns are Making
There are specific things to learn from these three fintech marketing campaigns.
The messaging comprises a similar authoritative and informative tone across all channels. Even if the customers at the end of the day are humans. Those who feel and partake in critical thinking.
But fintech companies must grasp that not all buyers are CFOs. CFOs, Controllers, and Treasurers have financial literacy. But they’re just one segment of the buying committee. Most of them are motivated by financial business and operational needs. IT Directors, Operations team, or even end users don’t really entail expansive financial knowledge.
Talking in terms that only make sense to your own brand can drive your potential customers away.
Most buying decisions are made with problem-solving in mind. It’s not about having the financial or technical acumen. Even fintech companies orchestrate solutions with non-financial users in mind. It’s not about who the buyer is, but the end users who will leverage the solutions down the line.
That’s why fintech requires storytelling. Clarity in what they offer and merely presenting the same information isn’t enough. Your fintech campaigns rely on financial jargon neatly packed with ribbons- “zero fees” or “instant loans.” But these copies only end up feeling spammy.
There’s no real value- A tempting yet bare minimum offer.
Do you really think buyers remember these statistics? They don’t need more reasons to make a purchase. They are scared of the investment that could turn futile. Your buyers aren’t simply confident in their decision. And that’s what you need to help them weather this dilemma.
They need reasons they shouldn’t hesitate. Leaning into the uncertain is scary. How do they know if these solutions will reap rewards? They don’t. But they need to move past the hesitation. And feel safe in the decision they’re making. It’s not a fintech problem. It’s a market problem.
Fintech Marketing Campaigns: What They Should Be
In a far-fetched scenario, your competitors have it all figured out. The top to bottom of fintech marketing. It’s all about presenting valuable information for them.
The same message circulates in the industry like a single meme. You laugh at it again and again until it loses its essence. That’s what happens with marketing messages. Your fintech company requires its own unique storytelling to penetrate the complexity and oversimplification.
Beyond the financial tidbits, you must humanize your brand. The brand-building front isn’t the maturity of your marketing operations that align with market structures. It’s merely a single part. In fintech marketing, the emotional part is always a bit neglected because, honestly, which business leader needs emotional gibberish?
That’s incorrect.
If you don’t instill storytelling across campaigns, you lose your customers. Product differentiation in fintech is at an all-time low. And you need a truly disruptive product to stand out. There’s only an incremental or marginal difference in solutions, such as Stripe v/s PayPal. Where’s fintech’s true worth? It gets lost in all of the noise.
Your fintech marketing campaigns should revolve around empowerment- that’s what this digital transformation trickles down to. Traditional financial institutions have neglected financial inclusion for the longest time. Especially in the domain of asset and wealth management. It’s time for fintech to change that. And that should reflect in their messaging.
Marketing Campaigns as a Growth Lever for Fintech.
For most investors and newcomers, fintech remains a sparkling diamond. When combined with the promise of digital transformation, the spark becomes brighter. And that’s what fintech is trying to master now- A balance.
In the midst of chasing the tech fever, this up-and-coming industry has forgotten a crucial aspect- storytelling. Storytelling with emotions. Fintechs might be great at underlining the how, but they aren’t that good at explaining the why.
Underneath all the layers of security, complex features, and algorithms, the story gets lost.
Numbers are easy to explain. But this has erased the human story. Fintech must bring this back.
Because numbers may stale. But human experiences and their story doesn’t.
