Before we launch into how inbound marketing is going to help you secure FinTech investors, let’s take a closer look at what you need to do, with or without inbound marketing, to win investment and make the most of your inbound marketing efforts. What’s involved?
Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing focuses on attracting your audience with content.
If you have watched any of the popular business programmes such as The Apprentice or Dragons’ Den, the first thing you will notice as being the most important thing that makes or breaks the participants’ chances are the numbers. Any inbound marketing strategy will need to bear this in mind.
If a contestant wants to stay out of Lord Sugar’s firing line, they have to avoid being on the losing team, and that means their team has to demonstrate more profit than the other team. On Dragons' Den, it’s all about figures. What’s the company’s turnover? What sort of a profit margin does it have? How many customers does it have and what is its plan for growth?
“It’s having the right stuff in the right place at the right time – and neither too much nor too little of it.” - Lord Sugar
You see, it’s all about credibility and trust. How can inbound marketing enhance your credibility? What tools and mediums can you use to reach your target audience? (Search engine optimization for example). When you present a business proposal to an investor, whether that’s an elevator pitch initially or a meaty boardroom presentation, you need to convince the angel, bank or other funding body that you are a safe(r) bet and can offer them a return on investment (ROI).
They need assurances and figures. They need to know that you have a valid USP, that you understand your marketplace and your customers’ pain points. There needs to be a real purpose that you serve as a business. So any inbound marketing strategy must address these issues.
Of course, the problem with being a startup is that some figures can only be estimated because...you’re just starting up.
“You can’t possibly value it at £20 million to an investor unless they are completely stupid… Are you talking to people that are over five years of age or under?” - Peter Jones, Dragon’s Den
Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
The good news is that by implementing best inbound marketing practice from the perspective of attracting your ideal customers, having an effective funnel, retaining their interest and converting them, you will also be appealing to investors. A successful inbound marketing campaign will be great, but you need to do that and more than just creating valuable content to win the funding you wish for.
Know Your Ideal Customer Personas
You don’t want the wrong people coming to your site, do you? Neither does any organisation that invests in you. They will want to see that you are slick and educated where your business is concerned.
Having a deep understanding of who you are targeting and their specific pain points that you are addressing will not only help you to attract the right prospects to your site, it will significantly increase the likelihood of engagement with them and conversion. Demonstrating this understanding to investors, as part of your inbound marketing strategy, will inflate the amount of faith they have in you and your FinTech company’s chances of success. Inbound marketing works as much as you do. Your inbound strategies will define the trajectory of your marketing and customer relationships.
Create Highly Relevant Content
This illustrates expertise and knowledge in your industry. It gives you meaningful assets that will be valued by your customers and prospects alike, and again demonstrates to would-be investors that you are an authority with a unique value proposition for your client base.
Customise Your Content
Furthermore, you can even create content that is geared towards impressing the investors while still being stimulating and useful to your target market.
Measure Statistics That Will Turn On Investors
Investors want to see figures. They need to believe you can be trusted to grow and pay them back with big returns. How can you do that? By measuring data that will show that your business plan has substance. An ever growing database of contacts, documented enquiries and leads, and lead scoring will all show you are on top of your game.
Did I mention figures?
Identify the metrics that you want to measure, that will help you build a case for investment, and collecting this will be part of the backbone of your inbound marketing strategy. Part of your sales funnel will involve steps to capture this data as well as leading to conversion.
Adopt a Client Retention Strategy
A client retention inbound marketing strategy will tick many of the boxes that investors will want to see while making excellent business sense.
If investors can see you are building an online community on a network such as Facebook or LinkedIn, they will get a tangible handle on how you are being perceived, how you handle customers, what your customers think of you, your relevance in the marketplace and your knowledge of industry.
Winning trust, demonstrating authority and expertise through the generation of excellent, customised content and assets, will go a long way towards improving your image as an investment bet.
As a FinTech company, you are likely interested in Generation Y, and they are heavy users of their mobile phones and even the older generation are now shifting increasingly to mobile use. You need to ensure that you are easily found and engaged with on mobile because 68% of the adult population are now using mobile phones and using them for a whole range of online purposes.
Transparency is key in maintaining trust and being seen to be credible. Think about it. The more people can see how you operate, the safer and more secure they feel and the same goes for investors. This transparency includes very loudly showing how much you value the privacy and security of people’s data.
At the end of the day, if you want an angel to put their money where your mouth is, you have to show you know what you are doing, that you are going to a promised land that exists and not some pie in the sky concept with no evidence to back up its existence, and that you are the safe pair of hands to bring your company’s plans into fruition.
And finally…
Tell the Story
Making it clear where you have come from and how your company has come about will make your front face more personable while presenting you with a vehicle to show that you recognised a niche opportunity that others had not spotted. Investors will see your thinking.
The story acts as the bones of your brand, and something that your audience can identify with. Remember that your company’s story is ongoing, so keep everyone interested in what you have in the pipeline. Make it very clear that your customers are a major part of your story and you are listening to them.
Last but not least, you can show everyone involved in your story that it will always come with a happy ending. Show off your business insights because if you are seen to be the most forward thinking, to be predicting trends and events before anyone else, your authoritativeness goes through the roof, and so does your brand loyalty. People like to be associated with success and to feel that they have an edge over others. Be smart and forward thinking and they will love you forever. And so will investors.
If you want to attract investors and secure your next round of funding, book your mini or full strategic marketing consultation now. Just fill in the form on the sidebar.
