The fintech space is an exciting place to be right now. New innovations seemingly dropping every month that promise to revolutionize everything from mobile payments to blockchain networks to AI investing platforms.
But the hype also means competition for attention is fierce. As a fintech startup, you’re not only battling the other fresh-faced disruptors out there. You’re also competing with the big guns – the major banks, financial service leaders, and venerable institutions that reporters already cover closely.
Breaking through all that noise in the financial trade press feels brutal. So how can an ambitious new fintech operation possibly craft stories that grab the attention of overwhelmed banking journalists? How do you win mindshare against both the scrappy upstarts and giants?
This post will walk you through a proven blueprint, from thoroughly researching relevant fintech publications to uncovering your unique angles to the best ways to use a fintech press release platform.
Know the Fintech Media Landscape
First, familiarize yourself with the significant fintech trade publications and sites on which you want to be featured. There are standalone fintech media sites, more general finance publications, and even tech/business-focused sites that would likely be a good match.
Spend time searching through these sites by keyword to identify specific fintech journalists who cover relevant topics to your company’s offerings. Look at some of the existing articles these reporters have put out to better understand their particular beat, reporting style, and depth of fintech coverage.
From there, you can check their social media profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn to gain additional insight into their perspectives and focus areas. Follow them to understand the types of stories and viewpoints they respond to best.
Also, take note of publication schedules and editorial calendars for the short and long term. Knowing when outlets have planned fintech product roundups, future-of-finance trend pieces, investment analysis features, or special issues can help you recognize the perfect timing to pitch your story.
Craft a Killer Fintech Story
The foundation of intense media relations is crafting a story angle that people want to cover (and will want to read). It should be compelling, timely, and newsworthy for fintech industry journalists.
- Time it strategically – While you likely have an upcoming product launch or funding round, that news needs to tie into trends, innovations, or current and timely events in the broader fintech space. Anchor your announcements with what’s happening right now for maximum interest.
- Highlight market impact – Don’t just state you’ve launched a product. Quantify your current user traction, growth metrics, business model innovation, or disruption potential. Use data to demonstrate the concrete ways you’re altering the fintech landscape.
- Find a fresh angle – Uncover what’s genuinely unique about your product and its features, your startup’s founding team or executive experience, target market differentiators, or your fresh approach to driving innovation in this financial sector.
- Use visuals – Have images, charts, video testimonials, product demos, founder headshots, and other visual assets readily available. These add an essential flair that brings stories to life online.
- Write tight releases – Break your company’s core messages, announcements, product capabilities, customer wins, etc. down to hard-hitting facts and description bullets. Lead with the most essential info up top instead of burying key details.
Together, these elements will allow you to post a financial press release, pitch emails, and quickly create briefing documents that grab journalists’ interest.
Build Real Relationships
Even the most potentially viral fintech story won’t get picked up if you don’t have a rapport with relevant journalists. Here are some proven fintech PR relationship-building tips:
- Engage on social media – Comment on fintech reporters’ latest articles. Share their content through your startup’s social channels when relevant. Reply when they pose questions to followers.
- Offer exclusives and value – Send reporters nascent fintech data points, suggest potential story ideas based on intel in your niche, and connect them to customer sources for interviews.
- Personalize everything– Customize your messages using reporters’ full names and publication names. Proofread that info since errors undermine perceived reliability.
- Respond lighting fast – Fintech journalists often operate on tight deadlines. Set up notifications and be ready to answer their follow-up questions exceptionally quickly.
While this relationship-building work takes time and consistency, it pays off. Gradually, these actions build genuine connections with key journalists that get your pitches and stories priority placement and coverage interest when news breaks.
Fintech PR Distribution
Doing all the manual outreach work to contact hundreds of fintech journalists and outlets individually can be incredibly time-intensive. While pitching reporters yourself may still make sense for tier-one flagship publications, fintech PR distribution makes much sense for broader market reach.
These platforms take your press release and blast it out to precisely the right publishers and journalists who cover emerging fintech space stories daily. Rather than burning hours upon hours doing manual research and outreach, distribution services offer huge efficiency advantages:
- Massive targeted reach in one click to fintech trade journals, tech blogs, finance publications, and other niche outlets that journalists turn to daily.
- Laser-focused beat targeting to match your announcement angle with reporters who cover that exact territory. This makes your story pitch automatically rise to relevance.
- Cost and effort savings over individual outreach to the same broad scale of publishers and writers.
It’s hard to ignore the value these targeted distribution platforms provide by packaging up niche fintech media lists and relationships. In many cases, the fee for their fintech media database access pays for itself in time savings and targeted publicity, making it well worth spending.
Follow Up and Optimize
After sending your story out, follow up with the top fintech journalists. But tracking results is even more critical. You’ve got to keep testing what follow-up tactics and story angles get attention vs. what doesn’t land. Study the data to learn and improve:
- See who engages – Check who opens emails, clicks links, or asks for more details.
- Check for coverage – Look if your story gets reported by key journalists. Watch if articles lead to more site traffic and shares on social media.
- Spot popular narratives – See what parts of your story, facts, or angles create the most reporter buzz and coverage.
- Repeat what works – Keep pushing angles that get attention—Downplay stuff with less interest.
This process helps turn an average story into one with real traction. Based on the results, you make it better bit by bit through constant tweaks. The ultimate goal is getting your startup’s story featured by top fintech journalism brands. Track results, learn, and adapt to make that happen.
Final Word
Getting on journalists’ radars takes work. You must research news outlets, build connections, and craft killer pitches. But now you’ve got the game plan to make it happen.
When your big announcement is ready, put together targeted press kits and use fintech PR wires to distribute wide and far, follow up personally with key reporters you identified who cover innovative startups.
From there, it’s about tracking, testing, and doubling down on what story aspects get the best pickup. Refine those angles into something journalists want to share with their finance industry readers. Soon, you’ll land those all-important media placements that influence customers, partners, and potential investors.
