Aligning marketing with business goals – a Fintech perspective

I’m not sure what’s in the water, but I always come away from the Fintech B2B Marketing Community events buzzing with ideas and new connections. As someone who wasn’t always the most natural of networkers, these events offer the right balance of learning and facilitated group discussion. This then means you have natural conversation starters in your back pocket for the networking drinks at the end.

The lowdown

There were over 50 organisations and 100+ registrations – all of whom were senior leaders at fintech organisations or suppliers. The crucial part is the supplier list is limited, so wider attendees don’t feel over-pitched! 

After an update on community initiatives, plus a lay-of-the-land overview of the fintech market, within your groups, you collectively shared best practices and creative ideas, and discussed individual challenges – working together to resolve them in this ever-changing marketing/comms/sales environment.

Here’s my run-down of the key takeaways from the session:

1. AI – but make it happen: there was no hiding from the elephant in the room of AI trials and tribulations in fintech marketing. From AB testing, Google Analytics AI tool, to the plethora of Microsoft options – but still coming back to ‘the outcome is only as good as the data you put in’. There was also a debate around the value of data analysis vs. cost, and how to get the balance right.


2. “Smarketing” – the holy grail: with credit to Lucy Heavens, VP of Marketing at Salv, for this gem of a phrase. Collaboration, transparency, shared revenue targets and bonus structures for sales and marketing are key to sustainable success. And saying bye to attribution models …it’s all about multiple touch points and avenues to reach the same end goal – sales! 


3. Events are back baby: ramping up events marketing along with content marketing (but targeted and maximised – no 1 hit wonders please!) is key. Also: partnership models, repeatability, data, accountability, customer advocacy and SEO. Think of more consistent marketing strategies that can be repeated to amplify efficiency and efficacy.


4. Prioritising the right channels: PPC is out for some, but LinkedIn is still top dog. Running high-quality events for the C-suite with a good speaker/discussion is a winning combination. There were also discussions around tools such as Lead Forensics, HubSpot, Adobe Analytics, mining Reddit/Github communities for insights, and Influ2 for LinkedIn advertising. 


5. Experiment and see: not everything is going to work. Experiment, adapt, and learn from it to ensure you are putting your strongest foot forward each time. 

Final thoughts

Converging sales, PR and marketing works. And if you don’t believe me, here’s a handy statistic: 52.2% of sales professionals said the biggest impact of sales and marketing team misalignment is lost sales and revenue (HubSpot, 2022). So why lose out?

To find out about how Babel can support the closer alignment of sales/marketing/PR in your organisation to help achieve your overall business goals and revenue targets, get in touch here.