The fintech market hardly existed 20 years ago, and what was there looked very different from what it looks like today.
These days, with so many new tools on the market for payments, payroll, small business banking, and accounting, it’s way easier to run a company or manage personal finances than it once was. But this growth has brought heavy competition and unclear levels of trust among consumers. Dozens of brands now describe themselves with the same words: easy, fast, secure, transparent.
This overlap makes it harder for fintech marketing teams to demonstrate what actual value they bring to the category that sets their product apart.
By their nature, buyers of fintech products are understandably more careful with financial decisions than nearly any other category. They research across sources before choosing who to trust with their business. A strong website or great SEO strategy alone are not enough. Paid ads are not enough. Trust needs to be earned, not claimed.
Earning is the challenge facing content and brand leaders today, but with the right content strategy, they can be overcome.
Fintech companies often compete in the same channels. Many of them are targeting the same audiences: founders, operators, finance teams, small business owners. As a result, customers see similar phrasing everywhere they look: Company X is “Trusted by thousands of businesses,” providing “Fast approvals,” with “No hidden fees.”
These are all things consumers want to hear. Though when every company they encounter says it, their claims and trust levels deflate. And when brands all sound the same, buyers raise the bar. They begin to look for more tangible evidence that signals that the brand is stable, credible, and knowledgeable.
The moment we’re in, where fintech messages are falling on deaf ears and failing to differentiate is where a strategic content strategy, from ideation through distribution, can help a brand stand out from the crowd and deliver on ROI.
Brands need to prioritize content that provides real value and shows their expertise in a tangible, measurable way, not just churning out more content.
Fintech software is expensive. Companies are doing their due diligence before they hit purchase. They read about how the economy is changing and interest rates. They deep-dive into small business conditions in their region. They want to understand the landscape before they make a financial decision.
Fintech content leaders like Range, Ramp, and Paylocity are meeting the needs of potential buyers with service journalism.
Service journalism is content that helps people understand a topic, make a decision, or learn something meaningful. It is grounded in data over advertorial slogans. Even if the term is unfamiliar, you’ve seen service journalism in action, which includes:
Yes, this type of content gives readers something useful. But it also shows that the brand understands the market it serves. Brands that do service journalism well are smart to use content as a way to reach newer market segments with the right vehicle for distribution.
If your strong research only lives on a company blog, its reach, and consequently its ROI, is being actively hindered. Blog audiences are small, maybe mostly employees, competitors or investors. Social distribution can be challenging too with frequently-changing channels and paid promotion that can become expensive to maintain.
So how can a fintech content strategy ensure a company is seen without breaking the budget?
Business readers, founders, and operators spend time on local and national news sites every day, so the most strategic fintech brands meet them where they are with service journalism stories placed wherever these people are already reading.
Traditionally, in PR when a brand is mentioned in research-backed stories in legitimate publications, the brand benefits from the borrowed trust of the publication where it appears and gains more traffic to their company’s website. Earned media also builds up a brand’s presence, signalling to other publishers that the brand is established and reliable.
With Stacker, we help brands scale their trust-building strategies, enabling them to reach far more than traditional earned media tactics ever could.
Here’s how I’ve seen companies take their content strategies to whole other levels using earned media at scale:
A company produces a report on how small business loan approvals have shifted year over year. Instead of framing the report as marketing material or pitching the story to a journalist, the in-house editorial team writes up a service journalism story to accompany the report in neutral, clear language. The story explains the micro and macro changes, which industries saw the most impact, and what this might mean for business owners planning ahead.
With Stacker Connect, brands who write their own stories can gain access to thousands of media publishers, and get their story run across hundreds of news sites with strong readership. Local business desks, finance sections, and general news outlets might pick it up because it is a story that their readers will care about, and provides data they wouldn’t have otherwise. Like that, the brand starts to become part of the broader financial conversation instead of operating outside of it.
The company did not need to claim its authority. It demonstrated it.
We’ve seen this strategy work when dedicated content teams at companies are:
This method supports shorter-term demand efforts for fintechs while beginning to build a longer-lasting reputation. It gives sales teams helpful material to share. It gives PR teams credible coverage to back the case for more stories. It gives leadership a way to show stability and expertise.
We’re at an exciting inflection point where there’s finally a clear way to develop wide-reaching trust.
Companies that create thoughtful, data-backed content and are able to distribute it in credible environments create the strongest foundations for the trust required for customers to make an investment like which financial technology platform to use.
Publishing more often is not the answer for fintech brands that want to get ahead. It’s about publishing with the purpose to gain trust and be seen in places where people already look for guidance.
We unpack more brand journalism that worked well here.
Don’t miss out on one of the best ways to reach audiences with authenticity and boost awareness. Request a demo by clicking below.