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Fintech Marketing Strategy That Actually Fills Your Pipeline

Outbound, content, ABM, compliance, and lead sourcing tactics built for the unique constraints of selling fintech.

How Strong Is Your Fintech Marketing Strategy?

7 questions. Get a pipeline readiness score and see exactly where you're losing deals before they start.

Question 1 of 7 0%
ICP Definition
How specific is your current ICP targeting?
Messaging
How do you handle different stakeholders in a buying committee (CFO, compliance, IT, champion)?
Trust and Compliance
How visible is your compliance and security posture to prospects doing research?
Outbound Email
What does your cold outreach typically lead with?
Content and SEO
What type of content are you primarily producing?
Pipeline Coverage
How many channels are actively generating pipeline right now?
Sales Cycle Alignment
How does your marketing account for a 6-12 month fintech sales cycle?
Your Pipeline Readiness Score
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Where You're Leaking Pipeline

Why Fintech Marketing Is Different - And Harder

Most marketing playbooks don't account for what makes fintech a uniquely difficult category to sell in. You're not selling project management software. You're asking companies to trust you with their money, their data, or their payment infrastructure. That's a completely different conversation.

Here's how different: fintech leads all industries with an average customer acquisition cost of $1,450 - compared to $702 for B2B SaaS and $70 for e-commerce. That's not a rounding error. That's a structural problem caused by long sales cycles, complex buying committees, regulatory friction, and the fundamental trust deficit that comes with touching someone's financial infrastructure.

B2B fintech sales cycles routinely run 6 to 12 months, often involving a buying committee that includes CFOs, compliance officers, security engineers, and legal reviewers - all of whom need different messaging to feel comfortable saying yes. According to Gartner, the average B2B buying committee now involves at least 10 people, and for enterprise-level deals that number can climb to 20 or more. If your marketing strategy is built around a single decision-maker, you're already behind.

The other constraint nobody talks about enough: compliance. Your marketing copy, your claims, your outreach - all of it is held to a higher standard in fintech than in almost any other vertical. The SEC Marketing Rule prohibits misleading claims. GDPR fines can reach up to 4% of global revenue. The FCA in the UK requires financial promotions to be clear, fair, and not misleading. Vague promises get you ignored at best, flagged at worst. Specificity and proof are the only currency that matters here.

And there's one more dynamic worth naming upfront: most fintech buyers have already made up their minds before they talk to you. Research from 6sense shows that in 95% of cases, the winning vendor is already on the buyer's shortlist from day one. That means your marketing has to do the work of getting you on that shortlist before the formal evaluation even starts.

So let's talk about what actually works - from the first touchpoint to the close.

The Fintech Marketing Landscape: What You're Really Up Against

Before you design any campaign, you need to be honest about the environment you're operating in. There are roughly 30,000 fintech startups globally, and the number keeps climbing. Buyers are overwhelmed with options, skeptical by default, and trained by years of overpromised fintech pitches to tune out anything that doesn't immediately signal credibility.

On top of that, fintech buyers are increasingly self-educated. They complete the majority of their research before ever contacting a vendor. By the time a prospect reaches out to you, they've already compared you to competitors, read your case studies, checked your LinkedIn presence, and probably Googled your compliance certifications. Your marketing has to win that invisible pre-sales phase - or you don't get a shot at the real conversation.

The companies winning fintech marketing right now are doing a few things differently. They're hyper-specific in their messaging. They target sub-verticals, not broad categories. They build trust at every touchpoint - through proof, not promises. And they treat marketing as a long game that feeds a very deliberate outbound motion, rather than a spray-and-pray volume play.

That's the framework we're going to build out here. Let's go step by step.

Step 1: Define Your ICP Down to the Sub-Vertical Level

The first mistake fintech marketers make is targeting "the company" instead of the specific people inside it - and targeting "fintech" instead of the specific sub-vertical within it. Payments infrastructure is a completely different sale than wealth management SaaS. Embedded lending platforms sell to a different buyer with different fears than fraud detection tools. If you're using the same positioning across sub-verticals, you're being outcompeted by whoever went narrower.

Start with sub-vertical selection. Pick one: payments, lending, banking-as-a-service, InsurTech, WealthTech, RegTech, or whatever pocket of fintech you actually serve best. Then build your ICP around that sub-vertical specifically - company size, funding stage, tech stack, compliance posture, and geographic market.

Once you've picked your sub-vertical, map the buying committee inside your ICP company. A typical B2B fintech buying committee includes:

Each of those people has completely different fears and goals. Your CFO cares about efficiency gains and payback periods. Your compliance officer cares about regulatory exposure - specifically things like SOC 2 status, GDPR alignment, and whether your data handling would survive an audit. Your IT lead cares about API documentation, SLAs, and whether your platform will create a headache for their team. If you're sending one message to all of them, you're converting none of them.

The fix: build separate messaging tracks for each persona before you pick a single channel. Once you know exactly who you're going after, you can start pulling targeted prospect lists. For B2B fintech companies targeting by role, seniority, or industry, ScraperCity's B2B lead database lets you filter by job title, company size, seniority, and industry to build your initial outreach universe fast. Pair that with an email finding tool to make sure you're reaching real inboxes.

One tactical note on ICP research: before you reach out to any account, know what tech they're already running. If you're selling a payments API and the target company is already deeply embedded in a competing infrastructure, that's a different conversation than going to a greenfield account. The BuiltWith Scraper lets you identify what fintech infrastructure companies are currently using - which tells you both who is a fit and what angle to use when you reach out.

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Step 2: Build a Compliance-Aware Marketing Foundation

This section doesn't exist in most fintech marketing guides, and it's why those guides get marketers into trouble. Before you run any campaign at scale, you need to understand what you can and can't say - and build your content and copy infrastructure around that reality.

In the US, the SEC Marketing Rule governs investment advisers and prohibits misleading performance claims. FINRA Rule 2210 requires that retail communications be fair, balanced, and not misleading. At the federal level, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act governs how you handle and disclose consumer financial data. If you're selling into EU markets, GDPR applies to how you collect, store, and use prospect data - including your outbound email lists. Non-compliance with GDPR can result in fines of up to 4% of global annual revenue.

What this means practically for your marketing:

The companies that treat compliance as a marketing asset - not just a legal requirement - win more deals. When your landing page includes your SOC 2 status, your security architecture overview, and a clear explanation of how your data handling works, you're proactively removing the objections that would otherwise stall deals at the legal review stage.

Step 3: Cold Outbound Still Works - If You Message It Right

I've heard a hundred times that "cold email doesn't work in fintech." That's wrong. What doesn't work is generic cold email in fintech. There's a difference.

In a trust-sensitive category, your cold email can't lead with product features. It has to lead with pain. The CFO at a mid-market payments company isn't opening an email that says "our platform helps you manage treasury." She'll open one that says "most payments companies your size are losing 3-5% of transaction volume to settlement delays - here's how one company fixed it in 60 days."

That specific, pain-first framing matters more in fintech than almost any other vertical, because fintech buyers don't trust promises. They trust precedent. An email that names a specific outcome for a specific type of company signals that you've done this before - and that you understand their world well enough to be worth 15 minutes.

The structure that works in fintech outbound:

For sequencing and deliverability, Smartlead or Instantly handle the infrastructure side well. For personalization at scale, Clay is the tool I'd use to pull in technographic and firmographic data points and auto-populate variables in your copy. The combination of a well-researched list, a Clay-enriched personalization layer, and a solid sending infrastructure is what separates fintech outbound that converts from fintech outbound that gets ignored.

And run everything through an email validation tool before sending. In a regulated industry, a high bounce rate is a fast way to tank your sending reputation and get your domain flagged. Clean the list first, every time.

One more tool worth mentioning for multi-step sequencing that includes LinkedIn touches: Lemlist handles combined email and LinkedIn sequences well, which matters in fintech where a multi-channel touch pattern builds familiarity before you ask for the call.

Want the full outbound framework? Grab the Free Leads Flow System - it covers list building, sequencing, and messaging in one place.

Step 4: LinkedIn as a Trust-Building and Lead-Generation Engine

LinkedIn is the highest-leverage marketing channel for B2B fintech - and most fintech companies are severely underusing it. LinkedIn generates 80% of all B2B social media leads, and 89% of B2B marketers use the platform for lead generation. In financial services specifically, decision-makers are active on LinkedIn in ways they aren't on any other social platform.

There are two ways to use LinkedIn in fintech marketing, and you need both: organic content for trust-building and inbound, and direct outreach for outbound prospecting.

On the organic side, the goal is simple: be the first thing that comes to mind when someone in your ICP is researching the problem you solve. That means posting consistently about the specific challenges your buyers face - not generic fintech thought leadership, but specific, sub-vertical content that signals deep expertise. Video posts on LinkedIn get three times more engagement than text-only posts, so a short explainer on a compliance challenge your buyers face will outperform a written opinion piece almost every time.

According to the Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, 75% of decision-makers and C-suite executives say they're more likely to engage with a company that consistently produces high-quality thought leadership content. In fintech, where trust is the primary conversion driver, that number probably runs even higher. Consistent, authoritative content on LinkedIn is not a nice-to-have - it's infrastructure.

What to post for B2B fintech on LinkedIn:

On the outreach side, LinkedIn is a warm-up tool as much as a lead-gen tool. When prospects have seen your content before you reach out, your message isn't cold anymore. The sequence that works: follow the account, engage with their content genuinely for a week or two, then send a short personalized message referencing something specific about their situation. The goal of the first LinkedIn message is not to pitch - it's to start a real conversation.

For LinkedIn automation at scale, Expandi handles multi-step LinkedIn sequences with smart limits that keep you inside LinkedIn's rate constraints. Use it for warming up accounts before cold email touches, or as a follow-up channel for prospects who opened your email but didn't reply.

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Step 5: Account-Based Marketing for the Accounts That Actually Matter

In fintech, the top 20% of your target accounts probably represent 80% of your total revenue potential. ABM is how you go after those accounts with enough precision to actually win them.

ABM in fintech means identifying high-value target accounts through data analysis and segmentation, then building personalized content and outreach that speaks to each stakeholder's specific concerns. It's not spray and pray - it's a coordinated multi-touch campaign aimed at a shortlist of 50 to 200 companies. Research consistently shows that ABM improves marketing and sales alignment, and precision targeting in fintech generates measurably higher conversion rates than broad-based approaches.

The three-tier ABM structure that works for fintech:

For the ABM research layer - knowing what tech a target company is running before you reach out, or identifying which companies fit your ICP based on their current infrastructure - a technographic data source is essential. The BuiltWith Scraper is useful for identifying which companies are running complementary or competing fintech infrastructure, which changes both your targeting and your messaging angle.

One thing most ABM guides skip: intent data layering. For your Tier 1 accounts, you should know when a company is actively in-market before you invest in full personalization. Tools like Dealfront track which companies are visiting your website and show you what pages they're engaging with - so you can prioritize outreach to accounts that are already warming up on their own.

The enterprise version of this motion - targeting banks, insurance companies, or large payment processors specifically - is something I break down in the Enterprise Outreach System, which is worth pulling if that's your market.

Step 6: Content That Builds Trust with Skeptical Buyers

The fintech buyer does most of their research before they ever talk to a salesperson. Buyers typically don't engage with sellers until they're well into their buying journey - and by then, they've already formed opinions about who's credible and who's not. If you don't exist in their research phase, you don't exist at the decision phase either.

Content in fintech isn't optional - it's table stakes. But the type of content matters enormously. Educational content that simplifies complex offerings and demonstrates regulatory competence is what actually moves fintech buyers. Generic thought leadership doesn't cut it.

The content types that actually work in B2B fintech:

For content distribution, LinkedIn is the primary channel for reaching financial decision-makers. SEO is the long-game play for capturing buyers during their research phase. Email nurture keeps your pipeline warm across the 6 to 12 month sales cycle. And podcast appearances or guest articles in fintech publications give you third-party credibility that owned content can't replicate.

On the SEO side specifically: content marketing costs significantly less than paid acquisition while generating substantially more leads over time. For fintech - where paid CAC is punishing - building an organic content moat is one of the best long-term marketing investments you can make. Start with bottom-of-funnel keywords ("[your category] compliance," "[your category] for [sub-vertical]") before trying to rank for broad awareness terms.

Step 7: Cold Calling Still Has a Place - Especially for Enterprise

I know everyone wants to do everything via email and LinkedIn. But in fintech, where a deal could be worth $100K+ ARR, phone is still a viable channel - particularly for getting to CFOs and compliance decision-makers who are buried in email and rarely check LinkedIn DMs.

The key to cold calling in fintech is the same as cold email: specificity and relevance. Don't call to pitch - call to open a conversation around a specific problem you've seen before at companies like theirs. The opener that works is almost always a version of: "I've been talking to a lot of [sub-vertical] companies dealing with [specific challenge]. Is that on your radar at all?" That's a question, not a pitch, and it gives the prospect something real to respond to.

Direct dials are the difference between getting through and getting voicemail. If you're doing outbound phone for fintech enterprise accounts, use a direct phone number finder to pull mobile numbers instead of dialing the main company line and getting stuck in a switchboard loop. Tools like Lusha are also solid for contact-level data on senior financial executives.

For managing call volume and tracking outcomes, CloudTalk gives you call recording, disposition tagging, and basic CRM integration without the complexity of enterprise telephony. At the volume most B2B fintech teams operate, this is more than sufficient.

One tactical note on call sequencing: cold calls work better as a follow-up to email than as a standalone channel. A prospect who has already received one or two emails from you isn't cold anymore - they're warm enough that your call feels like a follow-up, not a cold pitch. Multi-channel touches (email, LinkedIn, phone) consistently outperform any single-channel approach in complex B2B sales.

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Step 8: Partner and Referral Channels - The Underused Growth Lever

Most fintech marketing guides focus entirely on outbound and inbound. They skip the channel that often generates the highest-quality, lowest-CAC leads in fintech: referrals and strategic partnerships.

In B2B fintech, a referral from a trusted CFO to a peer CFO can compress a 9-month sales cycle into a 6-week one. Trust transfers through networks in financial services more powerfully than in almost any other industry. That's why the smartest fintech companies build systematic referral programs - not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate channel with its own pipeline tracking and incentive structure.

The basic referral program structure that works in B2B fintech:

Beyond peer referrals, technology partnerships are a major growth channel in fintech. If your product integrates with a CRM, a banking core, a compliance platform, or a payments gateway, getting listed in that partner's marketplace or co-marketing with their team can generate significant inbound pipeline. In early-stage B2B fintech, a single strong channel partnership can outperform months of outbound work.

Analyst relations are a related lever for mid-market and enterprise plays. Getting your product on Gartner's radar, contributing to industry analyst reports, or building relationships with fintech-focused research firms gives you third-party validation that shows up during buyer research. For deals over $200K, buyers routinely check analyst sources before finalizing their shortlist.

Step 9: Paid Channels - Where They Fit and Where They Don't

Paid acquisition in fintech is expensive. You already know the CAC numbers. But paid doesn't have to be the main engine - it works best as an amplifier for the rest of your marketing motion.

Where paid works well in B2B fintech:

Where paid doesn't work in fintech: top-of-funnel brand awareness campaigns targeting cold audiences. The trust deficit in fintech is too deep for a display ad to overcome. You can't build credibility with a banner. Spend your paid budget where buyer intent already exists, and use content and outbound to generate the initial awareness.

For tracking what's actually converting across all your paid and organic channels, WhatConverts is useful for multi-channel attribution - especially when your sales cycle runs 6 to 12 months and attribution gets complicated.

Step 10: Close and Track - Don't Let Deals Die in Evaluation

Here's something most fintech marketing guides skip: the biggest conversion killer isn't top-of-funnel - it's what happens during the evaluation stage. Most fintech teams over-invest in awareness content and under-invest in deal-enablement assets that help buyers internally justify the purchase.

Research from Forrester shows that internal complexity - not vendor performance - is a top reason deals stall. When you have 10 or more stakeholders involved, you're not just selling to the person you're talking to. You're selling to everyone they have to convince internally. That's why your champion needs ammunition.

Think about what your internal champion needs to sell this to the rest of the committee: a security overview document, an ROI model they can take to their CFO, an implementation timeline they can show IT, a compliance FAQ they can hand to legal, a risk assessment framework that neutralizes the objections from the most skeptical stakeholder. Build these assets proactively and make them easy to share. The deals that stall in evaluation almost always stall because the champion doesn't have what they need to close the internal sale.

Specific deal-enablement assets worth building for fintech:

On the CRM side, use a system that lets you track multi-stakeholder deals and see where things are stalling. Close is built for this - pipeline stages, email sequences, and call tracking all in one place without the bloat of enterprise CRM. For fintech teams running deals with 6 to 10 stakeholders, being able to see which personas are engaged and which are dark tells you exactly where to focus your enablement energy.

For the full lead strategy picture - from sourcing to close - the Best Lead Strategy Guide is worth bookmarking.

Need Targeted Leads?

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Measuring What Actually Matters in Fintech Marketing

Most fintech marketing teams track the wrong things. They optimize for vanity metrics - website traffic, social impressions, email open rates - while the metrics that actually tell you whether your pipeline is healthy get ignored.

Here's the measurement framework that matters in a long-cycle B2B fintech business:

Data-driven companies consistently report substantially better ROI than those operating on intuition alone. In fintech marketing, where CAC is punishing and cycles are long, flying blind on attribution is how good campaigns get killed before they have time to work.

The Fintech Marketing Mistake That Costs You the Most

Most fintech marketing fails not because the tactics are wrong, but because messaging is too generic. "We help fintech companies grow" is not a message - it's a placeholder. The companies winning in fintech right now are hyper-specific: they name the sub-vertical, name the role, name the problem, and name the outcome.

That specificity shows up everywhere - in your cold email subject lines, in your LinkedIn posts, in your case study headlines, in your PPC ad copy. Precision signals expertise, and in a category where trust is everything, expertise is the thing that gets you the meeting.

The other mistake I see constantly: treating the sales cycle as a sales problem rather than a marketing problem. If your deals are consistently stalling at the compliance review stage, that's not a sales execution issue - it's a marketing asset gap. You need better security documentation. If deals stall at budget approval, you need a better ROI model. If deals stall after the demo, your champion isn't equipped with what they need to sell internally. Every stall point in your pipeline is a content gap somewhere upstream.

Get the messaging right first. Build the trust infrastructure second. Then scale the channels. That order matters.

The fintech companies I've seen break out and fill their pipeline fast are the ones that treat marketing as the architecture of buyer confidence - not as a lead-generation function bolted onto the side of a sales team. Every piece of content, every cold email, every LinkedIn post, every deal-enablement asset is either building or eroding the trust that makes a fintech deal close.

Build the infrastructure deliberately, measure what actually matters, and run the outbound motion in parallel. That's the playbook.

If you want help building out the full outbound and marketing motion for your fintech, I cover the playbook inside Galadon Gold.

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