FinovateSpring 2024 will feature a lot of exciting new fintech products/solutions.
This article reviews some of these industry developments and considers fintech innovation from a marketing and PR perspective.
Startups can grow their bottom line by pursuing new PR initiatives.
Reach out for more information about how UPRAISE can help tell stories about your product, increase positive publicity, generate leads and grow your business.
Innovation at FinovateSpring
FinovateSpring 2024 will feature several exciting new product demos. Among these, AI, software and integrations are expected to serve some of the following purposes:
- API streamlining for easier integration and better performance
- Data gathering and automated reporting for compliance purposes
- Cash flow monitoring and alignment
- Replacement of legacy banking cores
- Crypto integration in banking and purchasing
- Market data access for investment firms
- Identity verification for faster and better security
- Automation of specific finance-related work tasks
- Customer data analysis for targeting and sales proposal timing purposes
- Grant application optimization
Providing demos is an excellent step toward getting the attention of potential clients.
PR agencies can help boost the productivity of fintech startups by generating publicity and growing leads among target audiences.
Crisis Management and Misconceptions about PR
PR agencies are not just about spin. In some cases, PR agencies do get involved when companies have a crisis management problem. A public relations strategy can help in this context, but in general, PR is more about amplifying a company’s authentic qualities to build revenue-generating publicity.
PR Boost for Fintech
In this section, we discuss some key benefits PR can have for companies in the fintech industry.
PR involves leveraging a company’s authentic qualities to express value to potential customers, build stories and brands, and help leverage the media to build publicity.
While PR may have a reputation for being more in ‘image and crisis management,’ most public relations work is oriented toward ideating and taking action toward bringing in leads to generate revenue.
Fintech has a lot of applications that apply to legacy institutions, which often means that fintech companies need to get the attention of key decision-makers in those companies.
However, there are often numerous B2B possibilities and some for consumers as well. It’s often up to the internal product and marketing teams to identify how to evolve products so they can generate revenue from multiple types of consumer segments.
With our fintech clients, UPRAISE focuses on identifying target customers and decision-makers, discovering how and where they can be reached, and providing compelling messaging. Sometimes, this may even feed back into product development, but that is often a secondary benefit.
Media Outreach and Placement
One of the main roles of a PR agency is to leverage media relationships to facilitate carefully placed stories that enhance the client’s public image and effectively reach target audiences.
The connections and experience required to do this effectively can take years to establish.
Relatively new marketing departments in fast-moving startups have more difficulty with targeted access to publicity. Media outreach is also typically outside the purview of most marketing departments, which typically divide marketing tasks into paid ads, organic traffic generation and business development.
A notable exception is when stories occur organically due to innovations making major industry waves. This kind of publicity also happens when innovations are so impactful that they could have implications for the broader society. Still, most companies will not get the publicity they need if they wait for lightning to strike.
Without experience, the delicate process of media outreach often results in lots of wasted time and can even burn relationships with key media figures when outreach fails.
For this reason, UPRAISE provides tangible outreach and media placement services to support fintech companies that might require assistance in navigating these crucial processes.
Market Research, Strategy and Positioning
Market research is often an extension of the sort of product research that leads entrepreneurs to innovate.
The know-how of an industry combined with an entrepreneurial spirit and the unique ability to ideate and execute on developing a product helps fill a gap in the marketplace. In other words, the inspiration for product development goes hand in hand with understanding where to fill a need in the market, and that often reveals a particular client type.
It’s for this reason that leaders often know a lot about their target market and understand the problems and challenges they face in their industry.
Part of the challenge with enterprise clients is in their red tape. Leaders in the target market will likely find the technology exciting, but will be worried about the risks associated with championing a new fintech product internally. This has to do with the difficulty of implementing new fintech software and the potential financial security risks that could be exploited.
For individuals to be able to champion new software, messaging needs to be sound enough to convince not only them, but it has to be something they feel comfortable bringing to their colleagues and superiors such that their own risk is limited. They can do this in a number of ways:
- Elevator pitch: a very succinct summary of what the software does and how it helps clients.
- Test cases that show where big companies or other significant logos trust the software.
- Technical details with demos that display strong security functions.
- A trustworthy security record that displays a lack of breaches or security incidents.
- Test cases about the rapidity and ease of onboarding the new software.
- Detailed and succinct descriptions of essential features and why they matter.
- Clear descriptions of how the software leads to rapid revenue generation or saves lots of money.
The more of these questions a company can answer through publicity and brand marketing, the more appealing it will seem to decision-makers, overcome objections and make it into discussions about moving into a partnership or deal.
UPRAISE can step in by honing and placing that messaging and performing various other marketing functions to help fintech companies maximize market share and get the most out of their products.
PR With UPRAISE
With a variety of skills and valuable media connections, PR agencies like UPRAISE can plug into a company and quickly fill in the gaps in marketing where needed.
Check out our PR services or reach out for more information about how we can help.
