Fintech marketing strategy: give people a reason to switch

Opening another financial account is easy to put off.

Your prospective customer already has a way to pay, save, borrow or run their business. It might be expensive or frustrating, but it works. Choosing your product means learning something new, sharing sensitive information and trusting another company with something that matters.

That is the challenge a fintech marketing strategy needs to solve.

A better interface helps. Competitive pricing helps. Neither automatically gives someone a compelling reason to change their behaviour.

To build a campaign that earns its budget, you need to understand what prompts that change, make the benefit memorable and follow the customer beyond the initial sign-up.

Start with the moment someone needs you

“Small business owners” is an audience category. It tells you very little about what an advert should say.

A founder opening their first business account may prioritise low fees and straightforward pricing. An established business considering a switch may need features that support its growth, such as multi-user access, accounting integrations or international payments. Each needs a different reason to choose you.

Start with the situation that makes your product relevant:

• A freelancer has won their first overseas client and needs to understand what getting paid will cost.
• A business owner is spending Sunday evening matching receipts to transactions.
• A finance director needs to replace a payment system but is worried about the integration burden.

Each situation suggests a different message, demonstration and next step.

Read sales objections, support conversations and onboarding feedback. Ask customers what happened immediately before they started looking for an alternative. Pay particular attention to people who considered your product and stayed with their existing provider.

You are looking for the reason to act and the reason to delay. Your campaign needs to address both.

Turn product features into a benefit worth noticing

Fintech briefs often arrive as feature lists: automated categorisation, real-time notifications, integrated invoicing, faster payments.

Those details matter when someone evaluates the product. They rarely make a strong campaign idea on their own.

Take automated expense categorisation. Its value might be less time preparing accounts, fewer transactions to untangle or a clearer view of business spending. Which benefit matters most depends on the customer and the moment.

Keep asking what the feature allows someone to do.

For Tide’s “Time to Lead” campaign, the brief was to reach established business owners managing teams. We built the campaign around the time Tide could give them back to lead their businesses, using real members across TV and outdoor.

That gave the creative a human subject and a clear purpose. The product features supplied the reasons to believe it.

Before approving a campaign proposition, test three things:

1. Can someone understand the benefit without knowing your product?
2. Does it matter enough to influence their decision?
3. Can you demonstrate how your product delivers it?

If any answer is weak, more polished copy will not resolve the underlying problem.

Make trust specific

“Secure, seamless and innovative” could describe almost any fintech website. It asks the reader to accept a set of adjectives.

Useful reassurance answers the question someone is actually asking.

For an international payment, that might be the total cost, expected arrival time and what happens if something goes wrong. For business software, it might be implementation time, access controls and the support available during a migration.

Put the answer where the doubt appears. If someone is comparing fees, make the pricing understandable. If they are hesitating at an identity check, explain what they need and why.

Customer stories should provide the same level of detail. “A brilliant platform” offers little help to a buyer weighing a decision. A customer explaining how they introduced the product, what changed and what took longer than expected is more useful.

Bring the relevant product and compliance reviewers into the development of the central promise. Agree what can be claimed, what evidence supports it and what qualifications are needed before the campaign reaches production.

That makes it easier to create confident, clear advertising.

Give people something to remember

A campaign can explain a product perfectly and still disappear into the category.

Put your proposed advert beside three competitors. Cover the logos. If the same headline, stock image and interface animation could belong to any of them, the creative needs more work.

Choose a recognisable visual approach, a clear tone and a repeatable idea. Then give those choices enough consistency to become associated with your brand.

Humour, warmth and ambition can all have a place in financial advertising when they fit the audience and the product.

Our Making Tax Digital campaign for Tide used the line “MTD-ready means summer-ready”. Working with Tide and partners including Propellernet, we connected a task people delay with the prospect of getting back to enjoying summer. The idea carried across outdoor, video and an ice cream van activation.

The useful principle is to find the feeling behind the task. Relief, confidence, independence or pride can give a functional product a much stronger creative starting point.

Choose channels by the job they need to do

Being present everywhere can leave you with too little investment to learn anything properly.

Map the path from first exposure to meaningful product use, then identify where marketing can help.

• Has a problem but is not looking for a provider: make the problem and brand memorable through video, outdoor or a relevant partnership.
• Is actively comparing options: explain the difference and substantiate it through search, comparison content or a focused landing page.
• Is interested but uncertain: resolve a specific objection through a product demonstration, customer story or sales material.
• Has registered but has not experienced value: help them complete the next useful action through onboarding content and lifecycle messages.

The balance will differ by business. A payments platform selling to finance teams needs material that helps several stakeholders evaluate a purchase. A consumer product may need to explain its benefit in seconds.

Build content around those decisions. A detailed migration guide can be valuable to someone considering a switch. A broad article about “the future of finance” may attract readers with little reason to become customers.

Give every channel and asset a defined role.

Make the landing page keep the advert’s promise

A campaign creates an expectation. The next page has to fulfil it.

If the advert promises easier international payments, the landing page should explain supported destinations, costs, timings and how to get started. Sending that visitor to a general homepage makes them search for the answer again.

Match the page to the campaign:

• Lead with the same benefit.
• Show the product delivering it.
• Address the most likely objection.
• Explain what happens after the call to action.

Choose a next step that fits the decision. A complex B2B product may need a technical conversation before anyone can commit. A simpler product may be ready for direct registration.

Review this journey on a phone as well as a desktop. Read the advert, follow the link and attempt the next step. Notice every point where the customer has to interpret, search or guess.

Measure the customer you actually want

An app installation, a completed registration and a retained customer are different outcomes. Your reporting should make the distinction visible.

Consider this hypothetical campaign:

• Media spend: £20,000
• Completed registrations: 1,000
• Customers who complete verification and take a defined first action: 250

The media cost is £20 per registration and £80 per activated customer. Neither figure includes creative, agency fees or other acquisition costs.

Optimising only for registrations could favour advertising that attracts people who never use the product.

Define activation around the value your product delivers: a first successful payment, a funded account or a completed integration, for example. Then follow acquisition groups over time to understand retention, revenue and contribution.

Brand activity needs care in measurement too. Someone may see a video, later search for your brand and convert through a paid search advert. The final click alone cannot establish which activity created the demand.

Where practical, use holdouts, regional comparisons or controlled tests to assess incremental impact. Set the measurement plan before launch, including the delay you expect between exposure and purchase.

Test a strategic question

Changing button colours will not tell you whether people understand why your product matters.

Start with a meaningful uncertainty. For example:

Will business owners respond more strongly to saving time on administration or having clearer control of their finances?

Develop distinct creative routes around those benefits. Keep the audience, offer and destination comparable enough to interpret the result. Judge performance through to activation and subsequent use, allowing enough time for those outcomes to appear.

A practical first 90 days could look like this:

• Days 1–30: identify the priority customer situation, review objections, establish baseline performance and agree the campaign claim.
• Days 31–60: launch a focused creative test with matching landing pages and working measurement.
• Days 61–90: review customer quality, investigate where people drop out and decide what deserves further investment.

The outcome should be a better decision about where to spend next.

Write a brief that forces choices

Before commissioning the campaign, finish this sentence:

We need [specific audience], when [situation], to choose us because [benefit], believe it because [proof] and take [next step].

Then define how you will know that step led to valuable product use.

If the sentence becomes a paragraph of competing audiences, features and objectives, narrow the brief. A focused campaign gives the creative team something clear to communicate and the marketing team something useful to evaluate.

At Sidekick Studios, we turn those choices into campaigns across TV, digital and outdoor. Talk to us about your fintech brief.

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