Fintech marketing with CMO of Hay
Mehdeeka covers B2B, SaaS, and startup/tech marketing. Check out the previous issue; tips on DIYing product videos. Help me grow Mehdeeka by sharing it with a friend or colleague!
I’m kicking off the next topic deep dive which is fintech! Today’s guest is the Chief Brand and Marketing Officer of the neobank Hay, Alex Lloyd. Alex has a background in art direction, which I find to be a fascinating area, so we’ve got a mix of fintech, industry, and art-y questions.
As always, getting straight into the questions.
Kayla: How is marketing in the fintech industry different or unique? What role does regulation play in marketing?
Alex: I think a marketing problem that is not entirely unique to fintechs but certainly a focus for us is the trust concerns of consumers and businesses due to the new business model, mobile-first experience and the inherent complexity in financial products and services. Hay operates in both B2C and B2B markets, and as a startup less than a year old, working to earn trust is a priority in both. Consumers want to make sure their funds, identity and data are safe. Businesses need to trust that you can do what you say you can.
Regulators are importantly concerned about protecting the public and providing good disclosure principles. For example we know how anxiety inducing and tedious a legal document can be to read, so we produce shorter and simpler PDS’s (product disclosure statements) chunking the information into more bite size sections. We use plain English and improve legibility by optimising the documents for mobile device experiences. This helps with consumer confidence as consumers know there’s nothing hidden in legal jargon.
Regulation also adds some complexity to marketing. Our licenses have fundamental impacts on what products we can provide and the way we can describe them.
An interesting use case is in the use of the word “bank”. Seems obvious that you wouldn’t use this term if you were not a licensed bank but there have been some that have, and have been fined for misleading consumers. It’s an interesting and challenging marketing problem when it comes to trust in providing transaction accounts, as most consumers assume that if you are not a “bank” their money isn’t as protected. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Hay’s customer funds are just as safe if not safer, due to the protections we put in place.
K: Do you feel that you're still able to do 'exciting' marketing in a 'boring' industry? How do you go about pushing the limits while staying within boundaries?
A: Boring? Fintech? Surely you’re thinking of another industry 😉 The first 13 years of my career were mostly in consumer goods, but over the last 3 years in fintech, I’ve drunk the kool-aid and become very passionate about how important it is to help provide real change. So I’m now biased but think it’s extremely exciting. But it’s not about geeking out on the tech, most people don’t really care about how the black box works, they just need it to work in a way that helps them take action to solve problems whether that’s on main street or in the boardroom. And when you create marketing campaigns that are focused on the human experience at the top of that value ladder you can be extremely creative.
One extremely effective consumer campaign for us mid last year was called “Financial Self-care. Hay. It feels good.” At a time when everyone was locked indoors, baking banana bread, creating home exercise circuits with pots and pans and meditating to stop cabin fever setting in, we encouraged people to add financial self-care to their routine. As self-care was a priority (1000% increase in search traffic from Jan to Apr 2020) , and as the Hay app is free and automatically helps with budgeting it was an easy addition to their existing routines.
But that’s fairly mundane compared to 2 other examples in fintech recently. The latest Klarna 4 miniature Cowboys spot that aired during Super Bowl LV recently, explaining how you can now afford those coveted cowboy boots in 4 small payments. And the EToro ads featuring the typically sarcastic Alex Baldwin, nullifying the usual excuses to not being able to start investing.
Gaining attention is of course key but you should also be very clear on how you are developing a distinctive brand positioning. As soon as your audience are confused, or god forbid completely ignore the communication, you’ve gone too far.
K: Which areas of marketing does Hay invest most heavily in?
A: Balancing a range of marketing activities for both the B2C and B2B sides of the business is a considerable task with 2 very different funnels and programs, mostly run by our small internal marketing team.
We invest in 3 areas. Tech & people, Growth and Brand.
As a growth stage company we work to keep our teams small so we’ve hired amazingly talented people and spend considerable time and money working with our marketing technology partners to improve automation, data management and reporting.
Paid digital is of course important but we’ve seen a huge amount of growth from word of mouth and spending time in cultivating early customers.
We built an amazing 10,000 strong Founder community and have exclusive channels for them. Engaging them is extremely important to us as build a very strong foundation of advocates and include programs where we co-create product with them. In the first 4 months we released 2 features that they had suggested then voted for.
PR is important and a cost effective way to help build broad awareness but we’ve also seen success in our positioning of something much closer to a lifestyle consumer electronics brand rather than Financial services. It has allowed us to find more unconventional media channels for promotion and get some clean air away from the industry noise. We’ve had both paid and seen earned media across national and international design, architecture, music, performing arts as well as fintech publications heroing, mentioning and wanting to build partnerships with Hay.
We are currently planning our first brand campaign for later this year.
K: If there's one thing consumers care the most about when comparing the neobanks, what do you think they're comparing them on? Is it design and brand, or features and interest rates, or something else?!
A: That’s tricky. The relationship Australian consumers have with their financial products is quite fragmented. They are willing to have their salary, savings, credit cards and personal loans all with separate providers to best suit their needs. For transaction accounts, where Hay is focusing, consumers are looking for improved practicality. We believe it to be a balance of automation and autonomy. They want the complex elements of financial management like monthly budgets automated, while giving them the flexibility convenience and control to spend and send their money in a variety of ways that suits them at a particular moment. There were also existing frustrations like simply searching for a transaction that were in fact quite hard. So we built an experience that’s closer to a google search where you can use a broad range of terms - date, suburb, time, merchant, category - to find transactions.
Only launching publicly 10 months ago in June last year, we’re really pleased with growth and progress. In a January survey with customers the no1 response was that Hay was “user friendly”, 2nd being “innovative” so we know we’re focused in the right areas. A strong base for a big year ahead.
K: You have a background in art direction, what's your opinion on the debate between data-driven marketing and more traditional concept and brand driven marketing?
A: Most of my career has been spent in the creative side of advertising and marketing but I think that has turned out to be a huge advantage. I have a deep respect and love for creative thinking and the power it has to help gain attention and change behaviour. Deeply understanding your customers problems is important but then choosing how to creatively frame the solution can really impact how effective you are.
There is of course pressure in a startup to acquire customers and get results quickly and show you are spending investors’ money as effectively as possible but it’s important to start to work on building long term goals. Data-driven performance marketing and creative-led brand marketing activity are both needed to build long term sustained business growth.
K: What resources do you use for inspiration or keeping your skills sharp?
A: Mostly I listen to audible and podcasts. There are a few industry blogs that I follow but I find LinkedIn is an amazing source of content, ideas, discussions. More recently I make sure I enjoy my weekends off with my family and friends, I tend to feel a lot sharper on Monday
If you found these tips helpful, say thanks by sending a donation or using this link to sign up to Buy Me A Coffee (I’ll get a referral).
Why am I putting this here? It’s part of my year of being selfish when it comes to my work. Read more about that here, and I encourage you to start being more selfish as well!
This week’s inspiration
I’ve shared Really Good Emails before, which is a design focused (searchable) collection of really good emails, and now I’ve found a collection called Good Email Copy! Imagine if they merged.
Atlassian has released a new product called Team Central, and as they’re constantly being cited as a source for incredible product marketing work, here’s the landing page!
Yellowtrace featured graphic designer Masashi Murakami’s recent work with paper. It’s hard to describe, so here’s a preview of the work:
Unrelated to literally anything but I wrote up 6 date ideas that are alcohol free, budget friendly, and can be done at any time of day after Harrison quizzed me on post-pandemic and post-#MeToo date suggestions.
If you do a bit of writing for fun (fiction, poetry, etc) I found this giant spreadsheet of competitions you can enter. Similarly, here’s a huge reference guide for drawing lessons/tips.