Hosted by Araminta Robertson, 'Market like a fintech' is the new podcast for fintech marketing professionals and enthusiasts who want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry, and level up their marketing knowledge. Subscribe here to never miss an episode.
In this episode of "Market Like a Fintech", Araminta is chatting with Michelle O’Connor, VP of marketing at TaxBit. Michelle has extensive experience working in the fintech marketing space. She set up her own marketing agency helping small businesses in 2009, and since then has worked as the VP of marketing at Uphold, and currently advises startups in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.
TaxBit is a tax software platform and accounting firm that helps traders, merchants and exchanges manage their crypto taxes. It supports over 4,200 cryptocurrencies, equities and commodities, and is the official IRS partner for data and reporting on taxes. They recently raised $100 million in their Series A this January.
In their discussion, Araminta and Michelle talk about what makes the crypto community a different kind of community, how to produce content that is reliable and trusted, and how crypto and fintech companies should be managing their social media.
According to Michelle, the top 3 crypto marketing tactics are:
✅ Building a community,
✅ Turning customers into community members, and
✅ Generating word-of-mouth through education.
This episode is brought to you by VC Innovations.
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Podcast summary:
"I think what's really different with the crypto community and special, but requires the knowledge and understanding, is engaging in education, but also having
some contrarian conversations."
"[Converting a customer into a community member] has been one of the most invaluable strategies that didn't even start out as a strategy."
"Well, how do you grow your brand? The best way to do it is 'word of mouth' because [Twitter and other ad platforms] can't prohibit or block word of mouth yet, thankfully. So building those customers who see the leadership is engaged, they believe in the product, and they believe in you, those voices are so much stronger than any ad you ever run ... So it's really building that trust and consistency, and the community members, the leadership of the company, as well as what you're doing. And really staying true to that."
"How I approach, especially with consumers, is a lot of education and conversation."
"I'm ensuring that our customers feel empowered and know how to really leverage the software that we have throughout the year."
"I think it's important to just continue to emphasise that people should educate and work with brands that they trust."
"The education nurture that we have built out, a lot more since I started, was invaluable, because it was people starting and really needing that nudging and nurture, more so with taxes than when they do to sign up for a wallet. They want a lot of different types of content to really understand what they're doing, but also feel supported by the people who are running the company. So it's been interesting to find out how much people value and trust tax bit because our founders are tax lawyers and a CPA, and we have CPAs on file."
"I can't tell you how many people I've interviewed or surveyed or heard from on social that had moved from someone else over to us, because that trust point was so important."
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"So in order for [other governments etc] to keep up and not just clamp everything down, it's companies like TaxBit who are bridging the knowledge gap, and really leading the industry that are playing integral roles to help this entire industry move forward."
"We want to make sure that the regulatory bodies across the board - and they fluctuate in the different areas - who's involved with what and who, who oversees taxes, and who has influence and regulators outside of just tax specific, because we definitely have offerings that we're building out for tokenised equities and things like that. So it's not just crypto, it's kind of the tokenised, economy and world. Definitely building those relationships. And those are built or being built now ahead of any launch in any country because we don't want to just come to a country and then build the relationship."
"Anything that's on our blog is accurate to date when it was published and follows a pretty rigorous approval process. It slows our process down a little bit, but it makes sure that end goal when things go live people can trust us as another source of truth."
"We're actually ramping up our video production because I recently hired a lead designer to build a few different styles of videos. So the traditional explainer video that takes you through the process flow of our product, but then also, the talking head videos where there's someone explaining these concepts that are incredibly complex, because not everyone wants to read it, some people want to hear it, some people want to see it with captions."
"As far as influencers and how we work there, I traditionally don't pay influencers. I usually work with them through our affiliate and referral model, because then that way, it's more organic and authentic, because they're getting incentivised, based on the quality of their audience."
"There's an element in social media of each platform has a personality. And you have to stay true to that personality. Because if you just cross-post the same content, the same tone across all these platforms, it doesn't perform well."
"Especially authenticity and transparency, is where I think a differentiator on social is, and it's important now especially as you see a more heightened level of sensitivity around content and what people are saying and how they say it. It's really important to take a minute, or two, or five, and think about what you're putting out there is it authentic to the brand is the voice authentic to you."
"And if someone's complaining about the issue on social and it gets ignored, people snowball and they jump on and one person's issue becomes 500 people's issue and then 1000 people's issue. And if no one's responding, or at least showing empathy or addressing it, it becomes just this thing so much bigger than what it actually started out being."
"If we're not on and engaging [on Twitter], we're not doing well. And it's going to impact the brand, the brand perception."
"But generally, what I see coming through our Twitter now is more, 'How are you different from competitors?' Or 'if I sign up for this plan, but I have to upgrade, how do I do that?' [etc]."
For more insights, listen to Michelle's complete story below.
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