Fintech Content Strategy: How Founders Build Trust and Plain-Language Messaging
Content strategy for fintech founders.
The short answer for a fintech content strategy is to start with what your buyer needs to feel before they look at what the product does (often that it’s safe, and that it will work for them), then explain the product in the words they’d use themselves, and keep your own thinking running through all of it so your fintech thought leadership sounds like a person and could only have come from you. The sections below go through each part, including a note on where I see fintech posts losing the people they’re written for.
What does your buyer need to know first?
Often it’s that it’s safe. It can be tempting to share the features of the product, what it can do and how it works, which means the pain points of the audience get skipped and the reader is left to either work out for themselves whether it’s for them (money matters carry enough worry already without a feature list adding to it) or they simply scroll on not ‘seeing’ themselves or their problems in your content.
When you’ve spent months or years building something, every detail feels important doesn’t it? … but a buyer coming across your post may only need to know that their money or data is in safe hands and that the product solves the problem they’ve got, with everything else able to wait.
➡️It’s worth asking yourself what your buyer needs to feel before they need to know anything else, and letting the answer decide what goes first.
Do your buyers know they have the problem?
The next thing I’d ask is whether your audience knows this is what they need, because with financial products it’s quite common for people to know something is a worry without knowing what kind of solution to look for, or to put it off because it feels complicated. That changes what your first posts should do, since people who are already searching can hear about the solution straight away, while people who haven’t named the problem yet need to see it described in their own words first, so they recognise themselves in it, and then the product can turn up a little later. I’ve written about the same question for SaaS products, so it’s worth a look at https://www.sheldon.social/post/saas-content-strategy-founders too, because there’s a lot of crossover between the two.
How do you explain what it does in plain language?
This is the part of the work I enjoy most, which is taking someone’s thinking and the concepts behind their product and making them understandable and a bit more tangible for their audience. Jargon is the usual obstacle, since the terms your team uses every day can be unfamiliar to people outside, and a buyer who needs a glossary will probably scroll on (I say that as someone who has had to look up a few myself!). A useful check is to imagine a friend asking ‘is it safe?’ and ‘what does it do for me?’, then write the answer you’d give them over a cuppa, which is often much closer to what the post should say than the version in the product deck.
What if your content has to go through compliance?
In financial services, content usually has to pass through compliance before it goes out, so it’s worth building that extra layer into the process from the start. If you hire someone to write for you, make sure every post is approved by your compliance team or adviser before it’s published (anything regulatory is theirs to decide), and agree how long approvals will take, because that extra layer of eyeballs can slow the process, so having that agreed beforehand can be really helpful.
Once that layer is in place, trust your writer to do the job you’ve hired them for, which is writing in your brand voice and bringing the human side of the company to life. It also helps to agree your voice and language guide early, which I’ve covered in my post on how to make sure your content reflects your brand’s voice https://www.sheldon.social/post/capture-your-brand-voice, so whoever reviews the posts can see what the writer was aiming for and your voice is less likely to get edited away along the way.
Where does your own thinking fit in fintech thought leadership?
All the way through, because trust is what a fintech buyer is weighing up, and a founder who explains in plain language why they built something and what they’ve seen in the market gives the audience something to connect with and start building that brand trust. On LinkedIn especially, that tends to do better from a personal profile than a company page, which I’ve covered in my post on content strategy for founders. In terms of my 3 C’s (Connection, Credibility, Credentials), a newer product won’t have much in the way of Credentials yet, so Connection and Credibility carry more of the weight early on, and the proof can be woven in as people start using it and you get that feedback. (Meltwater's analysis of 9.5 million AI citations found LinkedIn among the top 5 most-cited sources in Financial Services & Fintech, so it's worth showing up there.)
What could you try this week?
Write down in 1 sentence what your buyer needs to feel before they need to know anything else, then take your 3 most recent posts and underline any word a buyer outside your industry might have to look up. Rewrite 1 of them as if you were answering a friend who asked ‘is it safe, and what does it do for me?’, and see how it reads next to the original.
If you’re working out how to put your fintech product into words your buyers would use, pop me a message... I’d love to hear what you’re building.
