Fintech marketing in the UK has a constraint most sectors do not: a regulator cares about what your adverts, landing pages and emails say, and so do the ad platforms. I plan and run digital marketing for payments, money transfer, business account, savings and lending products, treating search, paid social, the website and measurement as one plan. This page is for founders and growth leads who want to see how I would approach their product before we speak. If you run a bank, insurer, broker or wealth manager, my page on SEO for banks, insurers and regulated financial firms fits you better.
How people choose a fintech product
Very few people sign up to a money app the first time they hear of it. A typical path runs over days or weeks: a recommendation from a friend or a creator, an advert on Instagram, a comparison article, a check of the App Store rating, then a search for the brand name with “safe”, “fees” or “review” added. Business buyers add a finance director or an accountant to that chain, and often a developer reading the API documentation.
Money transfer customers behave differently again. They usually know exactly where the money is going, so they search by destination and by payout method, and they are quick to compare the rate and fee against the provider they used last time. Many send to the same country every month, which means the first transfer is the expensive one to win and every transfer after it is where the value sits. For many senders, recommendations arrive through family, community groups and media in a language other than English, so English-only campaigns can miss them entirely.
The practical point is that no single channel does the whole job. Paid social may introduce the brand, search usually captures the comparison, and the website and app store listing close the trust gap. Marketing that measures each channel only on the last click tends to cut the very activity that started the journey.
What is different about marketing a fintech
Your marketing can be a regulated communication
Under section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity is a financial promotion, which must be made or approved by an authorised firm. Credit, investments and cryptoassets usually sit inside that regime. Payment and e-money products are governed mainly by other rules, but the FCA still expects their communications to be clear, fair and not misleading, and the Consumer Duty applies to how retail customers are treated, including what they are led to expect.
That covers more than adverts. A social post, a referral offer, an influencer video and a rate comparison table can all fall within scope. I am not a compliance adviser and I do not approve promotions. I build the approval step into the plan from the start, keep a record of every version that goes live, and write copy that states fees, limits and risks plainly rather than hiding them in small print.
The ad platforms add their own checks
Google requires advertisers promoting financial services to UK users to pass its financial services verification, which looks for FCA authorisation or registration. Meta has its own financial services policies and reviews such adverts closely. Both can reject wording that a human reviewer would accept, so I allow time for verification before launch and keep approved variants ready rather than writing new copy under pressure.
The conversion that counts is not the install
An install or a started application costs little to buy. A verified, funded account is what pays, and identity checks remove a share of sign-ups that ad platforms never see. If campaigns are optimised towards installs, the algorithms find people who install and leave. I push the deeper event, such as a completed KYC check or a first transaction, back to the platforms wherever your data allows, and judge spend on customer acquisition cost against what a customer is worth over time. My LTV and CAC calculator is a quick way to check whether a channel can pay for itself.
Channels and the order I would use them
- Search. Organic pages for comparisons, destinations, use cases and the “is it safe” questions. The detail is on my page about SEO for fintech products.
- Google Ads. Brand protection first, because competitors and affiliates bid on fintech brand names, then high-intent comparison and destination terms. More on Google Ads for fintech and payments companies.
- Facebook and Instagram. Usually where awareness and app installs come from for consumer products, and where creative testing matters most. See Facebook and Instagram ads for fintech apps.
- Landing pages. One page per offer and audience, with fees, regulatory status and the next step visible without scrolling.
- Email and in-app messages. For finishing abandoned applications and earning the second transaction. Marketing emails need consent or a valid soft opt-in under PECR, and service messages must stay service messages.
Which comes first depends on budget and stage. A pre-launch product with a waiting list needs different work from a funded app trying to bring its cost per funded account down.
How I run the work
- Agree the approval route. Who signs off copy, how long it takes, which claims and offers are off limits, and whether your promotions need an approver.
- Check the measurement. Consent banner, analytics, platform conversion events and app attribution, tested end to end, so each channel is judged on funded accounts rather than clicks.
- Write a channel plan. A budget split, the order of work and a 90-day plan, as I would set out in a digital marketing strategy.
- Launch with approved copy. Campaigns, landing pages and messages built from wording your compliance lead has seen.
- Review monthly. Cost per funded account, retention by channel and what to stop, written plainly.
Mistakes I see in fintech marketing
- Calling the product “FCA approved”. The FCA authorises or registers firms; it does not approve products.
- Referral and sign-up bonuses promoted without the conditions next to the headline offer.
- Optimising Meta or Google campaigns to installs, then wondering why so few accounts are funded.
- Advertising a rate or fee that changed last month, still live in an old ad or landing page.
- Creators and affiliates posting about the product with no brief, no approval and no record of what they said.
- Analytics tags firing before consent, which breaks UK GDPR and PECR and leaves the data unreliable anyway.
Next step
Tell me what your product does, who it is for and where your sign-ups come from now. I will tell you which channel I would fix or start first and what I would need from your compliance team. Book a call about marketing your fintech product.