What Challenges do Fintech Marketers Currently Face?

“What is the number one challenge you’re facing as a fintech marketer?”

We recently asked this question to over 100 fintech marketers when they joined our recently launched Slack group. We got over 118 responses (and even more as I type) and I thought it would be interesting to categorise the responses and put them into a spreadsheet. 

Some results are surprising, while others aren’t so much. For example, I thought more marketers would mention tracking attribution, or managing compliance, or even building trust. But in fact no one mentioned attribution and only two mentioned compliance.

So what were the responses? Read on. 👇

What is the main problem fintech marketers face?

The specific question we ask people in the form is:  

“What is the number one challenge you're facing when it comes to marketing your fintech company?”

Here’s what the spreadsheets shows:

When put in order from highest to lowest, the table turns out like this: 

There were also specific comments that I found interesting, such as: 

• “Our audience being scared to digitize!”
• “Not relying on rewards to incentivise behaviour change”
• “Working with the right affiliates to grow our user base”
• “Brand consistency while moving into new markets”
• “Adhering to regulations yet ensuring the creative is impactful”
• “Compliance vs creative”

What titles do the people who answered these questions hold? I also put the info into a handy spreadsheet:

Based on several conversations within the Slack community, a few of these “problems” keep coming up:

Hiring good people:

There is definitely a hiring problem going on, with people in the US calling it the Great Resignation. 

In the group there is an ongoing conversation on how to find the right candidates. One year ago they were getting tens of applications, and today it’s barely any. “Hiring” and “low marketing budget” are correlated so it seems not enough budget is being allocated to marketing hires.

However, this is also the case across all departments. People were mentioning that it’s difficult to hire sale representatives as well. Since the problem is widespread, what needs to be done is to retrain people into fintech roles. Is anyone doing that? If not, then there’s an opportunity there to fill a market gap.

Will Thompson, Senior Content Manager at ComplyAdvantage mentioned he used Otta to find a tech job, and it could also be useful for people searching for jobs. 

Branding/messaging

With the fintech market getting more saturated, a lot of fintech marketers seem to be struggling with breaking through the noise. Brand is now more important than ever, especially in B2C; but how do you position yourself when the product you sell isn’t too different to your competitors’?

I thought more people would mention trust, but in fact only a couple did. I think that demonstrates that the industry is still very new and brand awareness is more of a priority than trust at the moment. 

We’re planning to tackle this topic more on the podcast, and we’re even doing a virtual AMA chat on the 26th of November with the one and only Eric Fulwiler, ex-CMO/COO of 11FS on building a brand and positioning yourself in the fintech industry. Join the Slack group to find out more and register for the event!

Brand awareness

And on the same topic, brand awareness came up a lot in the responses. This is related to the issue of cutting through the noise, but also related to education — which is something a couple of people mentioned. Whether it’s crypto or digital transformation, a lot of fintech solutions require the audience to be educated on their problem (hence why content marketing is so intertwined with fintech).

When you’re selling an Open Banking solution, for example, education plays a large part in your marketing since you need to educate your target market if you want to sell to them. Balancing education with branding seems to be quite a thorny issue for fintech marketers.

A few people also mentioned dealing with compliance, and some have mentioned that hiring a marketer that understands and respects the restrictions that come with marketing a regulated company, is also important. This is where retraining for the fintech industry specifically could come in especially handy.

Our plan with the Slack group is to keep having important discussions on fintech and marketing, helping each other out and really building a community. If you want to join like-minded people and nerd out, then you’re welcome to join our community for free:

Join the Fintech Marketing Slack community.

See you in there! 🎉