This year, The Fintech Marketing Hub was an official media partner of Pay360. Here's a brief recap of our experience at the event in London.
I had the pleasure of attending Pay360 in person on the 19th and 20th of March. It was my first time, and I managed to meet a lot of interesting people, hear a lot of great perspectives and have a really great time. There were over 4,000 attendees, 100+ exhibitors and over 120 speakers!
I was especially keen to hear what the marketers at the conference were thinking on fintech and marketing in 2024. Specifically, I went around the room asking marketers the following questions:
What have you been focusing on this year?
What are some top trends?
How is sales and marketing evolving
What’s your marketing focus this year?
1. More face to face interactions and more events
Several of the fintech marketers I talked to said they were investing more in face to face interactions and events. At least two people said that when it came to doing huge B2B deals, there’s nothing quite like in person, face to face contact.
What type of events? Some said they’re focusing on more regional conferences rather than the larger ones, while others mentioned Money2020 and ICE as key ones to attend this year.
Stuart Shingler, VP of Marketing from Tink explains that although they were always focused on events, post-pandemic there is a bigger focus on getting as much as possible out of each event, such as hosting side events, or making the event presence be part of a larger content campaign.
2. Creating more content to properly explain use cases and messaging
Almost every person I talked to mentioned they were using content one way or another. This was either to support sales, account based marketing or as David Backshall from Terrapay mentions, on condensing a complex service into a simple message, as they expand into new countries.
3. Increasing awareness of our product with demand generation
One of the key challenges of marketing a payments company is that you’re targeting people who may not be aware they have a problem, or aware that a solution like yours exists. This is where SEO strategies like DAMming demand (targeting and ranking for keywords that are adjacent to what you do) come in.
For example, Tina Fisher, CMO of Intix explained that SEO is a big focus for them and plays a large role in their marketing mix – however, spending the time doing keyword research is important to get it right.
What’s the future of fintech and marketing?
1. AI will help with productivity
AI of course came up quite a few times in my discussions, but what’s interesting is that there were mixed responses: some people loved it, others not so much. Irina Chuchkina, CMO at Volt, explained that her team is experimenting a lot with AI, specifically to help with productivity, and structuring and summarising information.
On the other hand, Scott Dawson, Head of Sales and Strategic Partnerships, from DECTA said that although they were playing around with AI, sounding human and authentic was even more important now. A lot of people are using AI for the wrong reasons (you’ve probably seen all those AI comments…), and losing that human touch only leads to more problems. Which is why Scott advocates for sounding human as a good way to stand out. As he says: “Good marketing is about having a good message: if you outsource that, humans can’t replicate it”
2. Marketers need to think more like B2C companies
Tina (Intix) advocates for B2B companies to think more like B2C companies and believes that we’ll see more B2B companies acting like a consumer facing company. Her tip is to think like a B2C company, even though that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to implement it.
3. More Account Based Marketing (ABM)
A lot of fintech companies at Pay360 had a key target of selling to banks and other enterprise accounts, which is where ABM makes a lot of sense. David (Terrapay) shared with me an interesting approach they have with a consortium they work with, that helps them create very personalised marketing messages.
Terrapay talk regularly to a group of people from different verticals, banks, marketplaces, licensed financial operators and regulatory people who they’re in constant contact with. The feedback loop allows them to leverage key insights, and understand better their challenges and pains. That way, when it comes to crafting marketing messages, they can use real live stories and challenges of what’s happening in that market. This can then be turned into reports, video blogs, or more.
Stuart (Tink) also says his company is heavily focused on ABM, with bespoke content and even direct mail marketing. For certain audiences, they’ll do 2 - 3 pages of short form content, and promote it via LinkedIn. They also time their content promotion: if they know a prospect is entering an RFP, then they’ll create targeted content for that account.
4. A bigger focus on results
Aidan Grant, Senior Digital Project Managers at Bright Blue Day, says that as an agency he sees more of a focus on performance marketing. He’s seeing more companies focus on lead generation and CRO, rather than brand awareness, content and social. This is also what Irina from Volt was saying, that a big dimension for marketing is to be able to track the ROI of events.
Sales and marketing: what’s happening?
Almost everyone was on the same page here: there is not enough communication happening. Both marketing and sales are part of the same team, the “commercial” team. Various people I interviewed had tips to help enable better alignment:
Laurent Reysbosch, COO of Paytently likes to bring a product, marketing and salesperson with him wherever he goes on the field.
David (Terrapay), encourages his marketing team to join him on the stand and they themselves do marketing.
Stuart (Tink), explains that he has more meetings with the VP of sales than he does with some people on the marketing team, and they’re heavily involved in each other’s objective setting and team development
Scott (DECTA), was saying that he say a more back to basics approach. During Covid, there was a big focus on automated sales and lead generation – and now it’s back to old school personalised emails and talking face to face.
As Tina said to me, “Just because it’s in the sales part of the funnel, doesn’t mean I’m not invested”. There seemed to be a consensus that marketing and sales are slowly becoming one and the same, and it sounds like that’s a positive direction to be in.
I had an amazing time, thanks to the Pay360 for the invite and I look forward to seeing everyone soon at our events:
Thanks to everyone who agreed to chat with me!
Laurent Reysbosch, COO at Paytently
Clara Sanzol Sanz, Field Marketing Specialist at SEON
Tina Fisher, CMO at Intix
David Backshall, Head of UK & Europe at Terrapay
Stuart Shingler, VP of Marketing at Tink
Katre Gaychuk, Head of Marketing at Wallester
Aidan Grant, Senior Digital Project Manager at Bright Blue Day
Irina Chuchkina, CMO at Volt
Scott Dawson, Head of Sales & Strategic Partnerships
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