Welcome to 2018!

The new year means the same thing for financial technology marketers as it does for financial services marketers — new campaigns to develop and launch, new marketing technology to deploy, and new events to plan and deliver.

I’ve worked on both sides of the industry (first B2C and now B2B with some B2C just to make things interesting). While the tools and methods are often very similar, I’ve found that the “simplicity” of a fintech company’s product and target market allows for a clarity that is often missing when marketing a “complex” mix of products and services to a very diverse audience.

Lessons Learned

After a number of years in the fintech B2B marketing trenches, I have learned numerous valuable lessons that I wish I had known when I was working in the B2C world of financial services marketing. Here are a few to give you some food for thought as you tackle your 2018 marketing plan.

  1. Know the problem your product solves, but more importantly, know when the prospect realizes they have a problem and anticipate what they will do next.
    Sure your company and product are great (dare I say…game-changing) but what does your target audience need you for? Do you know when that need will be realized and what the prospect will do next to address the need? If not, you are missing an extremely powerful “moment of truth.”
  2. Communicate with customers about the product they already purchased. It’s a big mistake to assume that once a product is sold, the product itself will do all the heavy lifting in terms of engaging the customer, building loyalty, etc. You, the marketer, in partnership with sales/customer service, need to do that. What communication plan do you have in place to make sure your customers are still happy with the product they bought from you and are still getting the value they need or expected from it? How do you measure engagement and what can you do to strengthen it?
  3. Build a relationship (trust) before you start to sell “add-ons.” If you are not doing anything related to lesson #2, then how do you know when it’s the right time for cross-selling or up-selling additional products and services? Is the measure for trust “they haven’t left yet”? When a customer is truly engaged and showing signs they trust you and your brand, they will be much more receptive to other offers…and the offers don’t have to be as extravagant as they would be to attract a new customer.

Those are just three of the lessons that stood out for me as I wrote this. I think the common thread is that technology and marketing automation has made it very easy to deploy campaigns, but has also made it very easy to forget the very human problems we are in the business of solving. There is little substitute for personal, human engagement, and it must be a substantial part of your overall marketing, sales and service strategy. It ideally should be ingrained in your overall culture.

I hope you will consider these three lessons as you tackle your long list of 2018 projects. Best wishes for an engaging, prosperous new year.