Since the 2000s, financial technology companies — aka fintech — have disrupted the traditional financial services space by promising more efficient and inclusive solutions for businesses. They’re competing with elegant payment processing platforms, lending and wealth management solutions, and much more.
The market has responded: Global fintech now has a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20%, and will be valued at over $555 billion by the end of 2023.
Fintech companies have worked hard to woo enterprise-level clients. But lately, 89% of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) feel underserved by their primary banks. Many are switching — or are considering a switch — to fintech.
Traditional financial services organizations are double-timing it to implement customer-friendly digital experiences like online lending and mobile payments. It’s a good start, but winning against fintechs means using other technologies to capture new business and present upsell opportunities to customers.
The Shift to Digital Experiences — Own the Entire Customer Journey
This strategic pivot is absolutely possible for Finserv organizations, but it requires a new way of finding and converting clients. In-market accounts must be identified much earlier in the buying journey, and outreach should be personalized in meaningful ways that align with prospects’ business goals.
There’s no question that SMBs in your bank’s area are actively seeking out loans and other financial service providers. However, if they never visit your website or provide their contact information, you won’t know they’re in-market for a solution — and you’ll lose them to a competitor or fintech without ever knowing an opportunity existed.
Your prospective customers are doing most of their online research far from your marketing and sales teams’ eyes with activities like:
- Researching topics related to your services and industry
- Visiting your website
- Visiting your competitors’ websites
- Reading reviews on third-party websites
By understanding, tracking, and tying these actions to a prospect’s account, you get clarity on their interests and readiness to invest in financial services.
A revenue platform tuned for B2B efforts can capture this anonymous activity to give a full picture of:
- Where accounts are in their buying process
- What solutions accounts are looking for
- Where accounts are conducting their research online
Leverage Intelligence to Deliver a More Personalized, Engaging Customer Experience
Account intelligence provides visibility into which accounts are further along in the buying process (a sign that your marketing and sales teams should engage them right away) and who is earlier in their research (whom you should continue to nurture with educational, helpful content).
By knowing more, you can also speak more directly to buyer needs with personalized messaging, delivering the right messaging at the right time.
You’ve Got a Personal Advantage … and Here’s How to Use It
Don’t let fintech’s growth be disheartening. Your organization has a leg up in a few key ways:
- Local market knowledge
- Recognition in your community, and
- Personal customer relationships
While advertisements for fintech lenders seem omnipresent, you can laser-focus your sales and marketing strategy in ways that best serve your community — and generate better results while reducing costs. The benefit of locality enables you to utilize tactics that fintechs can’t, like advertising on local websites and offering specific products that are geared toward the community.
With this existing presence and trust in your community, you can create a better digital experience by:
- Being where your target clients are. Show up where potential customers are looking for solutions, whether it’s through a digital ad, an email with helpful content, or a call from a banker.
- Offering solutions over products. Intent data gives marketers and relationship managers insight into what a business is looking for, empowering them to engage in solutions-oriented conversations (rather than bombarding them with products and services that don’t align with their interests).
Partnering with a solution that captures buying signals and other intent data helps you stay competitive. By leveraging this data, you can better understand which accounts in your pipeline are further along in the buying process, and identify new verticals and organizations that may be in need of your services.
An ABM platform like 6sense can facilitate more personalized engagement with your target audience while revealing in-market accounts that you didn’t previously know about. Analyzing keyword searches, third-party site visits, and other indicators of buying intent enables you to proactively engage with new prospects — and develop relationships with them before competitors (like fintechs) do.
Conclusion
Fintech may be leading innovation in the industry (for now), but you can leverage the connection and human relationships you have with your community to compete — and win. ABM systems that track intent data quickly uncover higher-value prospects in your area to increase your overall market share.
