How Inbound Marketing Can Resolve Fintech Challenges in 2018

Three policy design parameters are driving the growth of FinTech in emerging economies. First, governments in emerging economies are moving towards “less cash” economies because of the discrepancies displayed by the cost of cash model.

Second, the financial inclusion agenda needs the creation and leveraging of digital platforms for payments banks to reach people in geographical terrains that are left untouched by brick and mortar bank branches due to lack of economic feasibility.

Third, the expenditure approach to national income accounting is replacing the traditional way of income and value addition based approaches. The expenditure approach to national income accounting offers advantages over the two traditional counterparts in monitoring consumer spending, liquidating black income  and shifting the taxation paradigm from income taxes to expenditure taxes to augment saving and capital formation.

In 2018 challenges exist and impose constraints on the FinTech vertical’s growth. TIS, the leading digital services consulting company does a dissection of the FinTech vertical’s anatomy to show that inbound marketing is the way forward to navigating these challenges.

1. Customer Led Digital Marketing

The first challenge facing the FinTech vertical in emerging economies is the necessity for customer led product development. The first part of the customer journey at least if not the entire journey is taking place on digital platforms and devices unaided.

Customers are using their personal computers and smart phones to search for financial products, mobile apps and payment interfaces for faster, safer and seamless transaction experiences. A responsive website design, fast loading time and user friendly interface are the basic minimum requirements to cater to the digital customer.

Organic search functions like SEO (search engine optimization) and a content distribution strategy based on insightful competitor analysis and keyword research are imperatives to augment the search potential of fintech brands.

2. High Cost per Lead

Reaching out to the customers in the market through traditional forms of advertising has high costs, yields low returns on investment and is not precision-targeted to reach the prospects. Shifts in the business regulatory framework in emerging economies and greater stress on data privacy are exerting pressures on traditional methods like cold calling.

Fintech brands find it challenging to navigate the high cost per lead and the impending pressure on margins. Organic search engine optimization and social media optimization can enable Fintech brands to reduce cost per lead while providing them better quality leads with a higher probability of being converted.

3. Near Real-Time Relationship Marketing

The next challenge for fintech firms is to curate the customer relationship management strategy to empower customers. The crux of the use of inbound marketing strategy is to empower customers to do the talking and shift the focus from customer relationship management to customer-managed relationships.

This enables customers to be proactive and engage in conversations on social media platforms, share feedback on products, ask questions and offer opinion on online surveys. The millennial generation customers are accustomed to near real-time user experiences and want things on demand, then and there. Inbound marketing on social media platforms and websites with chat boxes for instant responses are the way to go for fintech brands.

4. Product Knowledge and Financial Literacy

A major block in the emerging economies stems from the mistrust and lack of transparency towards new-age financial enterprises and fintech brands.

This owes itself to the lack of product knowledge and an inherent assumption of rocket science knowledge being a prerequisite to transact on payment interfaces, use payment banks, online money transfers, social media banking, and digital wallets.

This calls for fintech brands to augment the search potential of their websites, leverage mobile app store optimization for app marketing using inbound digital marketing to enable users to explore new-age financial products.

At TIS, we are enabling fintech brands grow their business with digital strategy consulting to create an ecosystem that has the end-user at the centre with all marketing channels directed towards the latter to open new avenues of engagements, insights, and sales.