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Inbound marketing is the attractive approach to getting customers

Inbound marketing focuses on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content. By optimising its distribution across a wide range of channels and customer touchpoints, potential customers find you through channels like blogs, search engines, and social media.

Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing does not need to fight for potential customers attention. By creating content designed to address the specific problems and needs of your ideal customers, you attract qualified prospects and become a trusted expert in their regard.

Why must FinTech companies embrace inbound marketing?

Technology has changed the way users search for information. Thanks to smartphones, tablets and computers, tech-savvy buyers are using their digital skills to complete the first part of their purchasing journey totally unaided. This has empowered buyers to block out and ignore traditional outbound tactics which are interruptive and intrusive.  

To regain control of the buying process, businesses must provide high level insights on a regular basis. Answering your buyers’ questions in a way that favours their preferred online habits ensures prospects are nurtured with timely, relevant and valuable information. This is essential for moving buyers along in the customer journey. Over time, you will earn the trust of your buyer and become an expert in their regard.

How do I identify my target audience?

Customer experience is one of the most important success factors to any FinTech business. That’s why it’s essential to focus on what information your ideal buyer is seeking before you can start attracting them with valuable and relevant content.  

To identify your FinTech audience, you need to:

Know your customer Who are you attracting? Understand what channels your customers use Do they live on Facebook or Twitter? Identify your competitors Which companies do you most want to resemble? Benchmark your competition? How can you capitalise on the weaknesses of your competitors?

Rather than trying to reach everyone in the market, appeal to your niche and the value of your product/service will become much clearer to those who need it. The way to do this is by creating 2-3 buyer personas.

What are buyer personas?

These are generalised fictional representations of your ideal buyer. Creating a profile of the customer you are trying to attract will help you align the value of your product/service with the unique challenges and problems your ideal buyer is trying to overcome.

Who are they?
What is their job?

What is a day in their life like?
What are their primary pain points?

What do they value most and what are their goals?
Where do they go for information?

What’s important to them in selecting a vendor?
What are their most common objections?

Once you understand the ways in which you can help your buyers solve an issue or achieve a goal, you can effectively start attracting your audience with valuable content that answers their questions.

How do I attract my ideal buyer?

Create a list of keywords

When buyers seek a technological solution they turn to Google. That’s why it’s critical to be ranking well for the words that your ideal buyers are searching for. 

Keyword research

Ahrefs allows you to carry out an analysis of the keywords that your competitors are using, and why they are ranking higher than you. It also enables you to improve visibility and ranking on search engines by analysing backlinks for keywords.

Crafting keyword rich content that speaks to the common questions that your buyer personas have when they encounter a marketing trigger ensures you are attracting the right kind of traffic, at the right time, to your website.

Topic clusters

As search algorithms have evolved, searchers have too. Users are entering longer, more conversational search queries. This is especially true if they are using voice search, which makes up 20% of queries on Google mobile apps.

To provide users with the answers they are seeking, you need to have the type of cohesive site architecture Google craves. Topic clusters use one broad keyword as a hub for specific topics. This model connects web pages and blog posts to other URLs, as well as the primary keyword via hyperlinks, which signal to Google that there’s a semantic relationship between the content. This allows you to rank higher in search engines.

Pillar page

A pillar page is a comprehensive resource page that covers a core topic in depth and links to high-quality content created for the supporting subtopics.  By creating content around core topics that are highly relevant to your customers' challenges and goals your content drives more organic traffic and keeps audiences on your site for longer.

CTA’s (call-to-action)

To convert prospects you need to show them that you’ve got something valuable to offer. A well executed call-to-action makes it clear which action to take next and helps remove friction in moving the user down the sales funnel.

It’s important to make sure that CTA’s always navigate the user to a page that will convert them (such as a landing page/opt-in form). That way, sales can nurture leads that have expressed an interest in your company.

Lead nurturing

Once sales and marketing have agreed on a lead scoring strategy, leads can be met with more timely and relevant communications in accordance with where they are in the buyer's journey. Marketing can nurture leads that are not ready to buy with valuable content, whilst sales kicks of relevant conversations with warm leads further down the sales funnel.

How do I set my inbound marketing goals?

A good inbound marketing strategy should take a holistic approach using multiple channels and personalised workflows to generate leads and nurture sales.

Think strategically

It’s important not to get bogged down in individual tactics and instead concentrate on strategy. Each tactic you deploy should take you in the direction of your ultimate business objectives.

think smart

Let’s talk finance

Inbound marketing costs almost 2/3 less than traditional outbound marketing in order to get the same results. Whilst it may take longer to see those results, it’s important to remember that inbound marketing is a long-term growth tool.

Inbound marketing is also highly accumulative, meaning the money you spend creating valuable content today will continue to attract your ideal buyers and spark conversations so long as the content remains relevant. Compounding blog posts make up 10% of all blog posts and generate 38% of overall traffic.

How much budget is enough?

A good rule of them is to designate roughly 10% of your revenue to your FinTech marketing budget. If your company is more established, then you can designate a bit less. If your company is on the newer side, then you can designate a bit more.

Start small and grow with unlimited scale

A major challenge for FinTech companies is the ability to scale properly. Executing a long term growth strategy that maximizes revenue while keeping costs as low as possible is the dream ticket for any FinTech start-up relying on crowdfunding or angel investors to grow their business.

Lower cost per lead

Cost per lead calculates how much money (and effort) it takes to get a new lead into your CRM.

Cost Per Lead (CPL) = Marketing Spend / Total New Leads

Rather than getting your product in front of as many people as possible, the best thing you can do is make yourself available to people who have a problem you can solve, and then help them solve it. This results in a more targeted and effective marketing strategy and therefore a lower cost per lead.

Pave the way for ROI

Return of investment (ROI) is one of the most important things to pay attention to as a marketer, it’s also one of the greatest challenges. 

For FinTech startups, calculating ROI is an essential part of showing potential investors that you have a plan in place to generate revenue. Those that can prove ROI are 1.6 times more likely to receive higher budgets.

Sales & marketing alignment

To have relevant, authentic two-way conversations with customers, marketing and sales must be on the same page. Aligning sales and marketing with common goals and clear communications tactics means the two departments can work hand in hand, feeding insight back and forth to refine and tailor the way leads are dealt with through every stage of the customer journey.

Define a strategy together:

Lead scoring - Agree when a leads is “sales-ready”. This helps determine whether prospects need to be fast-tracked to sales or developed with lead-nurturing. 

Lead generation metrics - MQL, SQL, Opportunities - Outline what, specifically, qualifies a lead as an MQL SQL or Opportunity. Mutual understanding between the two departments avoids marketing handing off unqualified leads.  

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) - Outline service level agreements for each phase of the revenue cycle and agree on necessary steps to move buyers further down the funnel. As these systems become automated, everyone performs at a higher level. 

HubSpot’s inbound marketing software helps you align your sales and marketing teams with shared goals and metrics that can be tracked and measured in an integrated fashion. This leads to better holistic decisions about each account and allows you to make tactical decisions based on your strategy which can lead to revenue growth – the ultimate proof of ROI.

Click here to use our free ROI calculator to see how you could get more revenue by improving your conversions!

 

Here are key metrics you can use to prove to your Marketing ROI:

Attract

As you pump out valuable and relevant content you will attract more traffic to your website. Showing an increase in the number of visitors who find their way to your site via organic search will help you determine the reach of your content.

Convert

The overall quality of those leads then have to measured. This will reveal the impact each tactic is having on your strategy based on the number and quality of leads you’ve converted. Tracking this will allow you to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not.

By using something like lead scoring, whereby contacts get assigned different point values for accomplishing specific tasks or having certain qualities, you can keep an eye on the overall “score” of all your leads as a whole.

Close

Closed-loop reporting, or the ability to attribute each customer to a specific lead source or path through your content, is a great way to draw a direct connection between your inbound marketing activities, closed customers, and your company’s revenue

Reports of all customers closed by the referral page that led to a conversion, as well as attribution reports, should be your go-to for this data.

Delight

Keeping track of what content your existing customers have accessed prior to and at the time of upsell provides insight into the influence that content is having on their sales experience.

Using social media monitoring tools tuned into your existing customers’ mentions of your product or service allow you to track customer referrals, which is the most effective and cost efficient form of marketing.

Drive more traffic and generate higher quality leads with SEO

Search engine optimisation is pivotal to an effective inbound marketing strategy. It means your content gets found by and attracts the right people.  61% of Hubspot users put SEO and growing organic traffic to their site as one of their top marketing priorities.

There are two types of SEO you need to consider in your inbound marketing strategy.  

Onsite-SEO

Onsite SEO is the process of making your website search engine friendly.

Long-tail keywords:

Using specific phrases that match what your ideal buyers are searching for ensures your content reaches your niche. This helps you rank better in search engines and avoids you competing with vague generic search terms that are harder to rank for.   

 

Page titles and descriptions:

  • Keep titles close to 60 characters and the description no more than 150 characters. A strong title & meta that hinges on your ideal byers pain points will encourage readers to click through.
  • Your primary keyword should be used in both the title and description (without “keyword stuffing”).
  • Use Google Adwords to determine search volume, difficulty of ranking and how your competitors are displaying their titles and descriptions.
  • Determine which keywords are relevant for your page and write content around those which are performing best.

Optimise Images:

Search engines can’t identify an image’s content. It is the text with an image that helps them rate how relevant a page is. Adding descriptions, alt tags, and titles increases the chances of getting found in search listings.  Ensure they include your primary keyword and are relevant to the image.

Internal Linking:

    • Each page of your site should link to other relevant pages, blog posts or articles within the site
    • Every page on the site should have a call-to-action with a hyperlinked phone number and link to the contact us page
    • All pages need to have a mini-contact form to reduce the amount of effort it takes to contact you

Backlinks: For a search engine, backlinks are an endorsement of a website. A guest blog on another site that links back to yours will drive traffic to your website.

SSL Certificates: An SSL certificate changes your website’s “http://” to “https://”. This makes it more trustworthy and protected.

 

Offsite-SEO

Offsite SEO is the promotion of your website and content to external websites.

Link building and Authority Development:

When a searcher is entering a query, search engines have to determine who and what content to display, and in what order. Linking out to authoritative content that is relevant to your field will boost your domain authority and help your content rank higher.

Influencer outreach:

Seek new, relevant thought leaders in your field and offer to collaborate. If they promote your content, you’ll leverage their authority and trust.

Social Media:

Your content should not live in a silo on your site. When you create great content, share it. This will help your content get indexed on search engines and build your domain authority. Leveraging your content (blogs,pillar pages) drives more traffic and allows you to become recognised as an industry leader.

Position your business as an authority with a blog

Increase brand awareness and credibility

Blogging is an excellent way of gaining brand awareness and credibility in FinTech’s highly saturated market. When customers search for content and are directed to your blog for answers, you will become viewed as an expert in their regard.

Drive more traffic

Companies that blog get a 434% chance of ranking higher on search engines. Key to being discovered is to keep the buyer at the core of your content marketing strategy. Buzzsumo allows you to search for trending topics in FinTech. This will help you start writing content that addresses the concerns of your industry. 

Generate high quality leads

Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to experience positive ROI for their marketing efforts.

Humanise your brand with social media:

The future of FinTech is human. Whist it may involve chatbots, advanced machine learning and automation, these technologies pave the way for a more transparent, customer-centric experience, which Financial Services finds itself at the mercy of. Speaking to the customer in a language they understand gives FinTech a competitive edge with social media.

Don’t mix business with pleasure:

Social media is where 86% percent of millennials (your buyers) live. Focusing on helping rather than selling is essential for building trust and loyalty. This is pivotal for creating a lead generating social media strategy within an industry that relies on strong customer relationships.

Engage and interact:

The opportunity to speak and listen to your audience, responding directly to their wants and needs is central to the inbound marketing methodology. This helps you connect with your audience on a human level, showing that you are listening, understand, and care about their concerns.

Share videos:

54% of online customers prefer to see videos from their chosen brands in comparison to emails and social media-based content. Leverage video on social media to highlight your brand values and thought leadership.

Create a blog and post regularly

Social media is an excellent channel for increasing the reach of your blogs. Doing so will help you to drive more traffic to your website and position your company as an expert within the FinTech landscape.  

Leverage data

Use social media data to find out the best days/times to post and what forms of content generate the most engagement to shape the learning of your social media lead generation strategy.

Connect with social media influencers

Social media influencers often have vast audiences who are very demographic specific. Recruiting a FinTech social media influencer to help grow brand awareness and connect your with a key audience.

Flourish in the face of GDPR

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) brings tighter controls over how business collect, store, use and discard customer data of EU citizens.

For FinTech, this is especially important with the current ways cloud and internet technologies generate, gather and store individual’s identity. Non-compliance or breaches can result in up to €20 million or 4% of your global annual turnover (whichever is greater).

How can my business comply with GDPR?

As of 25 May 2018:

Data must be transparent

You must know where, how and for what purposes personal data is being processed.

Legitimate interest

Data collected must be for a valid reason in the eyes of GDPR. 

Security

Security processes must be robust for companies to keep EU citizen’s personal data safe. 

Governance

You are accountable for keeping records of all personal data that you collect.

Accountability

You must be able to demonstrate, compliance with the principles” of handling an individual’s personal data.

How FinTech can benefit from inbound marketing post GDPR.

Proving a valuable piece of content such as a whitepaper or eBook in exchange for a prospects contacts details ensures compliance with the new regulations whilst benefiting from inbound leads which cost 61% less than outbound.

Put marketing automation to work

In the financial sector, the best marketing channels can be difficult to identify without the use of software that keeps track of traffic and marketing activities. That’s why 49% of companies are now using marketing automation to assist with repetitive marketing tasks such as emails, social media and managing leads.

How can marketing automation help my business?

With HubSpot’s marketing automation software you can:

Save time

Create a whole month’s worth of social media posts and schedule them accordingly.

Tailor to the size of your business

Pick from different packages on offer based on the stage your business is at.

Track ROI easily

From attract to close, you will be provided with engagement levels and the ability to compare that with the effort you put in.

Leverage data

By automating important marketing processes such as website optimisation, driving traffic to landing pages and content distribution, you are able to analyse the results of your campaign with the aid of real time insights and make seamless adjustments based on your performance.

The future of fintech is human

Ultimately, moving to inbound marketing is an investment you can’t refuse. It will help your FinTech company drive more targeted traffic, attract higher quality leads, and convert more leads into delighted customers.

 

Grow your fintech startup with smart inbound marketing strategies

Inbound FinTech are creative, focused, intelligent, professional and driven on results. They are a pleasure to work with, and I cannot recommend them enough for any type of inbound or PPC digital marketing campaigns business' may need.

Becky Stables, Marketing Director at Vohkus

Inbound FinTech are creative, focused, intelligent, professional and driven on results. They are a pleasure to work with, and I cannot recommend them enough for any type of inbound or PPC digital marketing campaigns business' may need.

Becky Stables, Marketing Director at Vohkus

Inbound FinTech are creative, focused, intelligent, professional and driven on results. They are a pleasure to work with, and I cannot recommend them enough for any type of inbound or PPC digital marketing campaigns business' may need.

Becky Stables, Marketing Director at Vohkus

Inbound FinTech are creative, focused, intelligent, professional and driven on results. They are a pleasure to work with, and I cannot recommend them enough for any type of inbound or PPC digital marketing campaigns business' may need.

Becky Stables, Marketing Director at Vohkus

Something Powerful

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JOHN DOE

CEO - Amazon India

“We first learned about COS Studio when shopping for templates on Hubspot. I loved the simplicity of their designs, but needed help customizing, migrating and implementing. COS Studio took care of my requirements quickly and seamlessly. The are our go to resource for Hubspot customization.”

JOHN DOE

CEO - Amazon India

“We first learned about COS Studio when shopping for templates on Hubspot. I loved the simplicity of their designs, but needed help customizing, migrating and implementing. COS Studio took care of my requirements quickly and seamlessly. The are our go to resource for Hubspot customization.”

JOHN DOE

CEO - Amazon India

“We first learned about COS Studio when shopping for templates on Hubspot. I loved the simplicity of their designs, but needed help customizing, migrating and implementing. COS Studio took care of my requirements quickly and seamlessly. The are our go to resource for Hubspot customization.”

JOHN DOE

CEO - Amazon India

“We first learned about COS Studio when shopping for templates on Hubspot. I loved the simplicity of their designs, but needed help customizing, migrating and implementing. COS Studio took care of my requirements quickly and seamlessly. The are our go to resource for Hubspot customization.”

JOHN DOE

CEO - Amazon India