Importance of Branding for FinTech Companies

the Importance of Branding for FinTech Companies:

Branding. It’s one of those things too easily

forgotten about – especially by startup tech companies. Tech entrepreneurs, be they in the realms of SaaS or something like FinTech, very easily fall so blindly in love with their solution that they start to believe that it will simply sell itself. And that may be true – to a certain extent. We have worked with many tech companies whose solution is so brilliant that significant business growth has been achieved through word-of-mouth alone. Strategic inbound marketing practices of course, have been put into place to facilitate such word-of-mouth growth, but when a new piece of technology really is as good as it says on the tin, then the product alone can often be enough to get the company off the ground. However, “getting off the ground” is just the first step. For a tech company to become a true success in an increasingly competitive and crowded world, then it needs a strategy to get it flying. And this is why branding for tech companies is so important. If there’s one thing about personality, we could say that it is decidedly human (leaving all the charms of dogs and parrots aside for the moment). 

And if there’s one thing about technology, then we could equally say that it is decidedly inhuman.Branding for technology companies is all about injecting humanness into tech. And this is important because, unlike other sectors where there tends to be plenty of occasion for human interaction, the modern technology company often exists almost entirely online, with users simply interacting with a website over the whole time that they are customers. Tech companies, as such, can tend to forgo a true branding strategy in place of focusing on improving the technology on offer, delivering additional feature sets, or improving the price-performance of the product. These can all be deemed as short-term product marketing tactics, whereas brand building is a strategy that looks to the long-term, with the ultimate purpose of gaining a sustainable competitive advantage. Good branding adds real, tangible value to the technology solutions that you’re selling, and indeed, when all’s said and done, it’s the brand to which customers stay loyal, for, in all likelihood, there are plenty of other similar solutions to yours that they could be doing business with instead.

---Co-branding for FinTech Companies:

Partnerships are not just an emerging trend. They are a new core competency for financial institutions. As partnerships continue to grow in number and evolve in structure, including fintechs, big techs, co-brands and others, collaboration with marketing, sales and customer service becomes critical. In an effort to compete more effectively and meet changing consumer demands, many banks and credit unions are exploring partnerships with fintech companies, other organizations — including, in a few cases, even big technology firms — to deliver better value to their customers. The emergence of new partnerships is customer-driven, not technology-driven. It is caused by customers seeking new experiences, rewards, transparency, and choice from their banking providers. Partnerships can extend products and platforms into new markets, expose brands to new customer segments and create scale. Partnering has been a component of banking for many years under various guises including co-branded credit card programs. But partnering has taken on a new urgency in the digital age as a means for traditional financial institutions to more quickly upgrade their capabilities, enabling them to provide a more robust set of products and services that Millennials and even older consumers now expect. The partnership structures being created today shift the relationships between the participants from competitors to collaborators. Change like that requires financial institutions to relinquish old ways of operating and establish new practices. An important part of this change, is that both sides will need to rethink and effectively integrate marketing, sales and service activities to achieve their common goals and meet customer expectations. Successful growth of partnerships with fintechs or others will focus on delivering value to the customer. This is where a new coupling of marketing capabilities will come into play. This should create meaningful synergies for each partner and more importantly a completely new customer experience — an experience they are expecting. 

---Co-branding by MasterCard:

Category :
Financial services: Payment solutions  , Owner of the brand: Mastercard Inc
Key competitors: Visa, American Express, Discover, PayPal

A co-branded credit card is sponsored by two parties. With co-branded credit cards, cardholders may get merchandise discounts or rewards points when they buy from the sponsoring merchant, but can also use the cards any other retailer that takes cards from the bank or card network. Also spelled cobranded. A co-branded card is a credit card that a retailer of consumer goods or services issues in partnership with a particular credit card issuer or network. Often bearing the logos of both the credit card company and the retailer, co-branded cards earn merchandise discounts, points, or other rewards when used with the sponsoring merchant, but they can also be used anywhere the cards from that network are accepted. Recently, Mastercard launched co-branded cards in partnership with Flipkart-Axis Bank, Matrix-Federal Bank and so on.By dropping the word “Mastercard” from its logo, the company is turbo-charging its ability to succeed in a fast-changing marketplace. It is, at once, a smart branding move and a smart business move. It is able to connect with consumers in a way that is not disruptive but, rather, is woven into their lives in a subtle way, all the while cutting through the clutter. And, it is using its logo to communicate its evolving technology payment story, utilizing the most relevant real estate in a most relevant way. The old saying goes that a picture is a worth a thousand words. In the case of Mastercard, it may only be one word. But, in this case, the shift in branding strategy may be priceless. Mastercard has arrived at a simple solution. Literally simple. Among the best ways for a brand to break through the clutter is visual clarity. By dropping the name and focusing on the iconic design, Mastercard is taking advantage of one of its unique branding strengths. It is one of a handful of brands, Apple, Target and Nike among them, which can communicate who it is and what it stands for with a strong, simple visual. More than this, without the name, the logo works symbiotically with the very product the company is selling – online payment. It’s a seamless and powerful connection between brand logo and brand offering, not to mention in line with how younger consumers are connecting to the world around them. With a visual-only brand mark, MasterCard is freed up to use its streamlined logo in this – and many other - applications relevant to anyone with a two-inch by three-inch screen.

Harshada Shinde[MBA FA]

Manager Fintech

Aircrews Aviation Pvt Ltd

www.aircrewsaviation.com

Harshadashinde.aircrews@gmail.com

Aircrews.harshadashinde@gmail.com