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How to Market Fintech in a Bear Market
Poor market conditions force marketers to drive value through brand
Brad Michelson
June 28, 2022
It’s been a minute. But I'm back.
The newsletter has been less than weekly this year, but with the crypto bear market upon us, it’s time to come back with some ✨ fresh content ✨.
If you’ve liked Market Mix content so far, please share with your friends. 🔺
Well, the bears are back.
Markets are down, sentiment is down, and so is user growth. Fintech brands are still adjusting to this post-bull market reality. Whether it’s layoffs or evaporated marketing budgets, the paradigm has shifted and we’re all scrambling to adjust.
But where do you start?
Budgets are getting smaller, which means your marketing mix is getting leaner.
For some teams, that means cutting back on paid media. Crypto brands had a massive 94% increase in spend between Q1 2022 and Q4 2021. Since then, performance marketing spend, on sites like Facebook and YouTube, is apparently already down by at least 90%. Yikes, right?
So that’s mostly out.
Sponsorships? Maybe. News websites, native ads, podcast and newsletter sponsorships – they’re all seeing cuts across the board, mostly because these channels aren’t particularly performance-focussed.
In a reality where your addressable market is thinning and your budget is gretting thinner, where do you spend your resources?
The correct answer is brand. But that can mean a number of things. Today we’ll look at some examples of how you can make your company’s voice a key driver of growth.
Teach them something
The key here is content. Blogs, resource centres, TikTok videos -- it’s all on the table. But what makes the most sense for your brand?
Start with your objective – what are you trying to do? There are a million possible answers to that, but the core to your strategy should be education.
Are you marketing a trading platform? Focus on making investing approachable.
Promoting tax services? Teach them simple ways to make the tax code work for them.
Growing a yield-generation platform? Quadruple down on building trust by dumbing down how you generate that yield -- and do everything you possibly can to not be these guys.
I’m planning to do a newsletter on how to build a scalable content strategy soon, so I’ll dig into that a bit more in the coming weeks.
Listen. Engage. Promote.
One of the things that define the crypto ecosystem is community. This is kind of step one for growing a brand in this space. When your budgets are scaled down, for a lot of brands, it’s important to revisit some of those sources of early success.
One particularly interesting opportunity is social media monitoring. Bear market Twitter is frothy. But people tend to stick with the products they like even when prices are down. These are your best customers. And those customers tend to stick up for you online.
It’s important to find these opportunities to engage-with and reward those customers. And maybe even turn them into influencers of your own making. Always be looking for opportunities to evangelize your most vocal supporters and solve problems expressed by your competition's community.
I’m going to be writing up an interesting real-life example of this in a couple weeks, so more to come on this idea, too.
Be an ever-present authority
PR is an underrated, often under-invested channel. To a lot of people in our industry, that means buying articles on crypto publications that no one’s going to read.
That’s not PR.
PR is about being a go-to authority on a topic and telling an interesting story along the way. It’s about networking and being available. It’s also about driving thought-leadership content you can use as a demonstration of expertise. Use this as a magnet for media opportunities.
It’s not easy, but it’s important to be the person journalists want to talk to on your topic of choice. Also consider the SEO value of being quoted over and over about the industry your brand is in. Can’t put a dollar value on that.
There are a lot of talented PR (and marketing) professionals in our industry, so I'll be bringing back some Q&A content with the people in this space you should learn from.
The core insight here is this: when markets are down, it’s an opportunity for you and your team to focus on creating utility through your marketing. Take this opportunity to teach your audience what they need to know about your brand, your industry, and your product. When the market comes back, your brand will be the first they think about.
It's all about being top of mind.