If you were ever in doubt on why fintech start-ups need marketing, this article will assist you in understanding the key reasons. A FinTech firm is one that combines technology with financial services to create efficiencies in which ever specific area it focusses on. The sector has seen significant growth in recent years, with entrepreneurs across Africa being increasingly creative with the type of solutions created. With the growith in the amount of new fintech firms, we have also seen a significant growith the demand for fintech marketing services.
Around 5,200 new businesses were established in Africa’s tech sector during the two years spanning the years 2020 and 2021. A little less than half of these are classified as fintechs, which are companies that have made it their mission to challenge and improve traditional financial services.
Growth of Fintech In Africa
According to an analysis conducted by McKinsey, the market for financial services in Africa could expand at a rate of approximately 10 percent each year, resulting in revenues of approximately $230 billion by the year 2025.
Fintech companies that are nimble and quick to adapt have lost no time in carving out a portion of this growing industry. The success of financial technology start-ups in Africa is being driven by a number of factors, including rising smartphone ownership, falling internet costs, and increased network coverage, as well as a population that is young, rapidly expanding, and increasingly urbanising. This makes the fintech industry the start-up sector with the quickest growth rate in Africa.
Even though it has caused significant hardship and disrupted lives and livelihoods across the continent, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated existing trends toward digitalization and created a fertile environment for new technology players. This is despite the fact that it has accelerated existing trends toward digitalization and created a digital environment.
As digitalization spreads across the continent of Africa, the groundwork has been laid for the subsequent stage of growth in the fintech industry.
There is a window of opportunity for African fintechs and other stakeholders, including governments and venture capital investors, to evaluate how the sector may attain sustainability over the long run. In spite of all the activity that has been observed on the continent, Africa has only created a few unicorns, which are start-up companies with a valuation of at least $1 billion, and the success of many businesses is uncertain.
This shows that a significant amount of work is still required to establish the circumstances necessary to harness the potential of the industry.
Although there is a considerable possibility for the expansion of fintech across the African continent, there are particular locations on the continent where the total addressable market (the relevant category of feasible clients) is restricted because of infrastructural limitations. These mainly consist of low mobile and internet penetration in some countries, a lack of identity coverage, and restricted payment rails. Payment rails are the fundamental component of all digital transfers of money. Only three nations on the African continent have the infrastructure in place to support real-time payments and have payment rails in operation.
It is possible that fintech companies that want to expand across the continent will need to take this geographic variability into consideration and tailor their approach to each country based on the inherent characteristics, infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, and varied customer needs and habits of that particular nation.
This indicates that there is a product available to fulfil any and all requirements that a consumer may have, regardless of how little they may be. This also means that every consumer will have an excessive number of options, but a limited amount of information to choose from in order to make an informed decision. If a consumer has an issue, it is quite probable that they are looking for a rapid solution, and they most certainly do not have the time to search for and spend hours researching the many FinTech solutions that are now available. A perfectly balanced mix of push and pull methods is what new businesses require in order to successfully grab consumer markets like these.
The question that arises therefore is how a FinTech firm that already has a great product may successfully reach out to customers. To put things into perspective, this is where visual marketing comes in.
In spite of the fact that it may appear reasonable to direct all of your efforts toward the primary business, here are a few reasons why your FinTech company will flourish if you devote even a little portion of those efforts on visual marketing.
At 1st Content Digital we have spent many years to develop markeitng strategies for fintech startups.
Reasons Why Fintech Start-Ups Need Marketing
1. Effecient Transmission of Information
Imagine if someone has an interest in learning more about a particular idea. She can watch a video that is only two minutes long and will show her all she needs to know in a flash, or she may read a paper that is twelve pages long and will likely take her hours to fully comprehend. Do you want to place a bet on which choice she will select?
After all, as the saying goes, “time is money,” right? And the less time potential buyers have to invest in comprehending your idea, the more money you make. When it comes to enticing clients, it is evident that less is more. Since visuals are processed 600,000 times quicker than text, less is certainly more.
Through the use of visual marketing, you can quickly convey to clients the meaning behind your FinTech offering.
2. Make an impression that will last a lifetime
Because humans are visual beings, we recall around 80% of what we see, in comparison to our memories of all other stimuli. When you use a visual approach to marketing, you can be certain that your brand will enter and remain in the visual memory of the people you are trying to reach. Visual marketing is widely recognised as an effective method for increasing both remember and retention of a brand.
Visual marketing ensures that consumers keep your FinTech brand in their heads by utilising images.
It is not enough for a startup in the financial technology industry to simply recruit clients; they must also keep those customers interested. When this occurs, the recall of the brand and its identity become extremely significant. Visual marketing makes use of human qualities and inclinations; this is one of the reasons why it is so successful; it truly gets through to people. Let’s look at this situation from a different angle, shall we? The value of brand memory to consumers should go without saying, but let’s not forget about the role it plays in attracting investors and venture capitalists. It is essential to build and project your brand as one that stays distinctively in the thoughts of the investor, regardless of how many identical initiatives he or she is assaulted with. If you are a FinTech company looking for funding, it is crucial that you establish and project your brand in this way.
3. Make Your Business Idea More Straightforward
The financial technology industry is a young one that is just getting started. When it comes to understanding, the majority of customers aren’t familiar with it, and even if they have heard of it, they find it to be too daunting. Let’s face it, FinTech is a combination of finance and technology, both of which are highly technical subjects in and of itself. Let’s look at it another way: Additionally, due to the intricate nature of FinTech products, a customer may shy away from a brand whose procedures demand a great deal of effort to understand and be drawn to a brand that sounds simple and inviting, even if it means missing out on a product that is ideal for him or her. This is because of the complex nature of FinTech products. This is especially true for business-to-consumer fintech companies.
Visual marketing makes it simple to explain even the most difficult aspects of emerging financial technologies.
The most effective strategy for entering the preferred category of FinTech businesses is to present an image that is friendly and uncomplicated. You can construct that route for yourself and make your FinTech firm stand out from the competition with the help of a well-executed infographic or explainer movie. These aspects of visual marketing have the potential to divert the viewer’s attention away from the complicated language and processes that are involved and instead bring it to the actual value that is included in your startup.
4. Harness the Potential of Your Younger Audiences
We know that youunger audiences are often the first to adopt new technologies, including Fintech solutions. Younger members of the demographic group are already interested in and receptive to the financial technology business. Simply focusing their attention on your company is all that is required. In addition to a hunger for excitement, individuals in the age range of 18 to 30 years have another preference: originality above conformity. It is probably reasonable to anticipate that reaching out to these customers will need developing a novel approach that is tailored to the mentalities of the target audience.
Due to the fact that so many young people use platforms like YouTube and Instagram, we might deduce that younger generations are more receptive to visual forms of communication. They are more inclined to click on a short movie that explains something or an infographic rather than a lengthy study piece.
A fantastic product or service alone is not going to be enough to bring in customers from this demographic of people looking for FinTech products and services. They need to be shown, in a succinct manner (no more than 140 characters), why the product is so excellent and how it may bring value to their lives. Okay, fine, that is just applicable to Twitter, but the problem of brevity persists, and it is one that visual media can solve with relative easy since it is a problem that involves brevity.
5. The Real Results: Conversion and Return on Investment
It is logical that you would put more stock in figures than in words if you worked in the financial technology business. Then, how about we speak about some numbers?
Video content is rated as having the highest return on investment (ROI) by 51.9% of marketing experts throughout the world.
After seeing a video on the product, consumers are 85 percent more likely to make a purchase of that product. (Image courtesy of Imgur)
A landing page that features video may achieve a conversion rate boost of up to 80 percent.
After watching a video on a product or service, fifty percent of executives seek for further information online.
After seeing the video, 65% of executives go to the website of the marketer, and 39% phone one of their suppliers. (Image courtesy of Hubspot)
To make a long tale short, graphic marketing may increase conversion by multiples at a cost that is acceptable.
A one-time investment in a visual marketing campaign will generate returns for a significant amount of time after the initial expenditure has been made. It not only increases the number of real conversions, but it also gets people talking about your company. An investment in a visual marketing campaign will, over the course of time, provide a return that is far greater than the expense it entails.
In addition to this, material that is visually appealing fosters trust. Statistics are trustworthy in our eyes because they allow us to quantify the claims and statements made by companies. The same principle applies to pictures; infographics, gifs, and videos are far more reliable sources of information than written text. They illustrate the true appearance of the product or service as well as the development of the brand over the course of its existence.
6. Harness The Influence That Visuals Can Have on Social Media
Customers may be attracted, impressed, and kept via the use of a robust social media presence that is powered by visual marketing.
It is a widely held belief that the marketing arena presented by social media is one that is more suited to firms that are quirky and creative and not the field of fintech. That is not the case at all when one considers the fact that the genuine consumers of financial technology spend significant portions of their time online on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
If you ask any marketer what the ultimate aim of any business on social media is, the straightforward response you will get is “engagement.” This is because engagement is the one metric that truly matters. Because visual posts receive 650 percent more interaction than those that solely contain text, it is clear that attracting and keeping followers on social media is much simpler when the components of visual marketing are utilised.
Take a look at these numbers:
According to eMarketer‘s findings, Facebook posts from marketers that contained photos received 87 percent of all engagements.
# Tweets that included graphics received up to 18 percent more clicks, 89 percent more likes, and 150 percent more retweets, as stated by Buffer.
Even while the majority of fintech companies may not place a primary emphasis on social media, its influence is not something that should be disregarded, particularly when it comes to new businesses. A solid online presence can do wonders for creating a client base, which can be of tremendous assistance to a FinTech firm as it attempts to get off the ground.
7. Conquering Competition on a Local and International Scale
The term “FinTech” refers to an industry that encompasses a wide variety of subsets, such as crowdfunding platforms (like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and GoFundMe), payment processing platforms (like Xoom and Paytm), data collection, education lending, credit scoring platforms (like ZestFinance and ClearScore), thematic investment platforms, and cyber security platforms. Due to the fact that the FinTech network is dispersed across nations all over the world, new rivals are introduced each time the network expands.
Finding and conveying the distinct personality of your FinTech company through visual marketing not only puts you in a league of your own away from your local competition, but it also puts you one step ahead of the worldwide competitors.
Visuals offer a number of benefits, including adaptability to several languages and cultural norms, as well as versatility. You may contact clients in a variety of nations by utilising the same visual marketing strategy. When it comes to clients, a benefit is a benefit, irrespective of the currency it pertains to.
The crux of the matter is as follows:
Visual marketing, which is a tool with many applications, has the potential to significantly raise a FinTech startup’s market value. Visual marketing offers a one-of-a-kind answer to a variety of challenges, including acquiring finance, expanding your consumer base, and outcompeting the competitors. This tactic is being utilised by an increasing number of FinTech companies, with astoundingly positive outcomes. Your FinTech business should reach new heights, don’t you think?
Contact us for free consultation on how we can support your business with findinga and keeping more customers.
