Can There Be Irresistible Charisma… in FinTech?

Investing and managing money might be a savvy skill, but it’s far from the… most seductive topic. And when something is complicated, traditionally privy to older generations or at least people with more established finances, and not exactly irresistible, the last thing you would think to do is target Gen Z or the Millennial college crowd.

But this might be thae market you didn’t realize would actually be the BEST to tap into.

Caffeine Balls & CEOs

College-aged kids (and yes, kids… we all are until we forget we were faking it) are oftentimes caffeine-overdosed stress balls running around with student loan debt, credit card debt, and a car that definitely shouldn’t be driven anymore given the sounds it’s making. (I say this as a recent college grad.)

But, it’s these exact same people that are starting the biggest startups in the world. It’s the same people that get hired by JPL in their second year at school, while on weekends they’re hungover and talking with friends about how everyone’s lives are falling apart.

These are not two different demographics. They’re the same people, and these traits exist in the same place. And the well-known strategy of creating desire through innuendos and charisma isn’t your only way in when trying to market to them, as tempting as that might be (I mean… everyone tries this appeal route if they can; it’s the easiest). You can exist in their same realm even as a finance product normally designed for a more settled down crowd.

Do What Makes You Nervous

Pluto knew this when they launched. Here’s the gist about them, as found on >Angel Co:

“We make it very easy for Gen Z college students to take the first, right steps towards their financial goals & we grow with them. Students can smartly set aside savings for goals by doing simple money challenges suggested based on their unique finances and similar peers. Students can also anonymously compare finances with others on the same campus.”

And Betterment? Robin Hood? Easy investing, targeted towards young working professionals and college students. Helping them make passive money while they go to school, teaching them that the stock market isn’t a vague, scary term that they need to take a class on before thinking about dipping a toe in. Gamifying.

Basically? They created a way to help people manage, save, and invest money super easily. In hindsight it seems natural, but they made the greatest leap of faith in targeting their software towards Gen Z. How much easier would it have been to target single moms? Upper-middle class employees? Grad school students? Would it have been less risky? Are app-savvy kids going to care about a finance app when their phone storage is already full and 3+ hours of their day go straight to Tik Tok?

The world doesn’t quite yet see Gen Z as the newly voting, about to graduate, innovating generation. In fact, most people are still making fun of Millennials as being the young people messing up the world and economy even though the YOUNGEST of the tail end millennials are 25 and the oldest are 37.

You can’t have the right idea at the wrong time. You can just have a marketing team that doesn’t know how to execute.

Something tells us that, when these fintech startups had this right idea, even though it was riskier, it either came from a young team (who knows them better than themselves?), or a badass fintech digital marketing agency that wasn’t afraid to make them nervous.

Because not just any advertising agency, finance realm or not, can successfully and consistently do the unexpected. You can’t just Google your way into the best fintech marketing agency (trust us, we’ve watched our competitors try to SEO-their way to the top for years).

You can’t summarize your entire fintech product, company culture, mission and vision for the future in one sentence. But making sure people know it just the same — that’s our business. Even if your idea doesn’t seem arousing.

Don’t bank on traditional marketing. Don’t bank on what worked before or what works for others. Getting you to stand up and out in a sea of emerging fintech startups is our specialty as a growth and performance marketing agency. Let’s chat.

The way our boss targets and talks to you might be surprising, nerve-racking, or straight up bizarre. But that’s just how we work, and we know how to make you feel never-ignored.