What is Fintech marketing all about? Why is it different to other kinds of marketing? And how can a Fintech stand out in an ever more crowded market?
I love interviewing Fintech marketers to hear about what works and what doesn’t - at the end of the day, marketing is simply testing different strategies and tactics until you find something that works.
In today’s interview I sat down with Hakon Junge, Chief Commercial Officer at Capdesk. Hakon worked as an account manager for Pleo in the UK, and is now based in Copenhagen where he works in the growth team for Capdesk. He’s got his own podcast over at Unsung Heroes and is an active Fintech nerd. I thought he would be a great person to interview for Mint Studios on Fintech marketing.
Pleo: what worked and what didn’t work
Pleo is a Fintech that helps company employees manage business spending. Instead of paying out of your pocket and then asking your company for a refund, you can now get a Pleo account with a card and use the company’s money directly. The company’s CFO opens an account with Pleo, and then employees just need to download the app, snap a photo of the receipt and the app manages everything else. They’ve called themselves “Monzo but for businesses” and their slogan is “Power to your people” (I like it). Hakon worked for them over 3 years ago, just when the Fintech challenger banks were getting more and more popular.
What worked: short videos on Facebook 🎥
Hakon explains that a key part of their marketing strategy was advertising on Facebook. Pleo’s target market was Chief Financial Officers of relatively large companies. Instead of heading to LinkedIn like most B2Bs, they focused on Facebook. Turns out there are a lot of CFOs hanging around Facebook! They created a fantastic video that explained what Pleo does in under a minute and boosted it on Facebook. The video worked so well that the marketing team didn’t need to do any outbound sales for several months! Thanks to a clever video and targeted ads, Pleo grew without too much marketing.
Although I don’t believe this is the video in question, the original was probably pretty similar:
What worked: piggybacking off Monzo 🐷
The technical term is “brand association”, and it basically entails using another brand’s name to market your own. Hakon explains that Pleo and Monzo had many things in common, and because Monzo was becoming ever more popular, piggybacking off their brand was a great way to explain your product in 10 seconds as well as profit from their popularity. Like Monzo, Pleo makes spending simple (but for employees).
Having said that, other companies have tried piggybacking and failed - such as a Fintech called Viola Black. If you spend too much money on piggybacking, remember that you’re also providing free advertising to your competitors. Check out this ad to see what I mean 😬:
Have you heard of Viola Black? Most likely not. The piggybacking does need to make sense and be financially viable.
What worked: Meeting customers in person 🤝
Since Pleo is a B2B Fintech, meeting customers in person is powerful and a great way to build good relationships with customers. Right from the beginning, Pleo doubled down on meeting with customers in person, getting into the right Slack channels and asking for referrals.
Hakon says that simply talking to customers and meeting them can go a very long way. This may seem more complicated for B2C Fintechs, but I have seen some startups do it very well. Examples include Revolut’s Rev Rallies in London and Dozens’ Community events.
What didn’t work: 400 unicorns 🦄
Hakon mentioned a tactic that Pleo implemented when they first started out that he isn’t sure whether it worked or not. When the first launched, Pleo bought 400 pet unicorns to offer their first 400 customers. This is because the pet unicorn was the first thing they bought with their Pleo card, and they wanted customers to be a part of the experience. Although we can imagine the customers thought it was cute and funny to receive unicorns, it likely didn’t add much value or encourage them to refer Pleo to others.
However, brand awareness, brand trust and community are hard to measure. It’s also possible that the unicorns did increase brand trust as well as build a sense of community, it’s just a little harder to measure. Both Hakon and I agree that just because you can’t measure a marketing tactic, does not always mean it won’t be profitable or worth it.
Capdesk: What they are working on
Hakon currently works for Capdesk: an equity management platform that helps private companies get those most out of employee share plans. Although their primary service is equity management, Capdesk’s goal is to become a “secondary stock exchange” for trading, buying and selling shares in private companies such as Revolut, Airbnb and Monzo. The goal is to give private company shares more liquidity, making them a powerful tool for employees and employers alike.
What’s working: Experimentation 🧪
Capdesk’s growth team is currently focusing on full-funnel marketing: this involves marketing that starts with customer acquisition and runs all the way to the bottom line. The challenge Capdesk faces right now is that its product is ahead of the market. This means the marketing side isn’t so clear cut: how do you build SEO campaigns around a topic that nobody is searching for yet?
For this reason, the team is highly focused on experimentation. It’s this, rather than tried-and-test marketing techniques, that drives their growth. They are experimenting with webinars, podcasting, community building and much more. What will work? It’s too soon to say, but experimentation means they’ll have a lot of data to work with.
What’s working: Educational Content Marketing 🎓
Because product awareness – and audience appetite – doesn’t really exist yet, Capdesk is focused on educating the market. This means explaining what equity management entails, what a secondary market is and the benefits of adding share options to salary negotiation.Educational content marketing is a great way to increase trust and build a community; a company that bothers to educate its customers is (usually) a company that cares. With relevant content, you are empowering your customers to make an educated decision. Yes, it may mean they pick your competitor rather than you, but this shows transparency and genuinely adds value.
What’s working: Partnering Up 👩🏼🤝👩🏼
Instead of going organic and trying to acquire completely new customers, Capdesk is partnering with VCs and other players in the market and focusing on conversions. I’ve talked about this before in my Fintech landscape article regarding the Asian business model: instead of spending tons of money on customer acquisition and organic growth, Asian startups prefer to partner up with the big companies and focus on converting. That’s why most Asian Fintechs are sustainable and their business model isn’t constantly questioned (unlike in Europe).
It seems that Capdesk is also taking this approach in order to speed up growth and spread the word.
What’s different: Not spending on sales 💰
Hakon is passionate about not spending money on sales. As he says, sales teams are incredibly expensive and can stunt the growth of a startup rather than grow it. Instead, Hakon is a big fan of product-led growth: making marketing a core part of your product. Credit Kudos is an example: their free credit score tool is useful and draws you into their product. If you want more information, you need to sign up and become a customer. Hakon uses the example of Zendesk and Slack to show that several companies have managed to grow exponentially without huge sales teams.
What Fintechs need to do more of
I asked Hakon what he believes, as a Fintech marketer, Fintechs need to do more of. He mentioned two things:
- Invest in product marketing
- Keep asking the customers (make it part of the product)
Instead of seeing marketing as something that is separate to your product and having a “marketing team”, you want marketing to be built into the product itself. Yes, easier said than done - but this is a concept that I think will only become more relevant in the coming years.
Big thanks to Hakon for jumping on an interview with me - I very much enjoyed chatting about his experiences working in two Fintechs and there were some golden nuggets of wisdom here in there. The more I dive into Fintech marketing, the more I realise that case studies and real life examples are a lot more useful than simple “theory”.
If you know someone who is involved in Fintech marketing and likes talking about it, please contact me or send me a message on Linkedin - I’d love to hear from them!
