95% of FinTech Companies Struggle to Go Mainstream due to Weak Product, CVP & Message Effectiveness
LONDON, 23 October 2019 – Despite the billions of dollars invested in them, 95% of FinTech companies are struggling to go mainstream, mainly because of weak product, CVP & message effectiveness: these FinTechs are therefore struggling to accelerate their growth to meet their business objectives and shareholder value targets, which in turn drastically increases their probability to under-perform and/or fail.
While they may have managed to get some adoption from Innovators and Early Adopters (which combined represent less than 15% of their market), they have great difficulty penetrating the Early and Late Majority audience (that together represents over 60% of the market). They are therefore stuck in the chasm.
That’s one of the findings identified by Fournaise – one of the World’s Leading Marketing Effectiveness (MarkEff) Specialists – in its “Marketing Effectiveness in the FinTech Industry” Report. In this Report, Fournaise tracked, analysed and correlated:
(A) the business, financial and customer growth performance of 150 FinTech companies around the world (across 7 verticals – consumer banking, lending, payments, international money transfers, personal finance, trading and insurance); and
(B) insights from over 10,000 actual and potential FinTech customers (individuals and businesses) – across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific.
Fournaise tracked, measured and identified that in 70% of the cases, two of the core reasons behind this “Failure to Go Mainstream” are:
1) Weak, Ineffective Product Stories
Effective product storytelling is an “outward”, audience-driven Customer Value Proposition (or CVP) science. Unfortunately the Product Stories (and messages) these 95% have been communicating to the Early and Late Majority audience are most of the time weak and ineffective – mainly because these Product Stories are often built the “inward” subjective way, with weak value propositions, little, half-baked and/or incorrect science and data, and/or with little correlation to the pains, needs, wants and expectations of the audience, in the right hierarchy.
On the other hand, Fournaise tracked that the 5% of the FinTechs that have crossed the chasm and gone mainstream have demonstrated a great ability to build and bring to the Early & Late Majority audience Product Stories that are optimised and highly effective, and that directly tackle the pains, needs, wants and/or expectations of their target audience – using the right science, the right data, the right value propositions hierarchy, and with the stories communicated the correct way via surgical precision and discipline.
2) Ineffective Product Innovations
While effective product innovation is also a science, in the vast majority of FinTechs Fournaise analysed, innovation is still done the subjective way: product and marketing teams internally develop a list of potential innovations they think the audience will want, gathering ideas from multiple stakeholders, often using “gut feelings”, hear-say, semi-educated guesses and/or half-baked science or data; from there they decide which innovations to bring to life, with the hope they will be effective on the audience.
On the other hand, Fournaise tracked that for the 5% of the FinTechs that have crossed the chasm and gone mainstream, innovation is an audience-driven product science: product & marketing teams come up with a list of potential innovations that they scientifically track and measure on the audience, to identify which ones may be effective, in which hierarchy, why; and from there they bring the most effective ones to life – not as standalones but as additional value propositions in their (already effective) Product Stories, therefore continuously growing the effectiveness of their Product Stories over time.
“To go mainstream by crossing the chasm, FinTechs need CVP & Message Effectiveness Optimisation, or CMEO (a discipline we have a highly successful track record in) – to ensure the Product Stories and Innovations they build and deploy are audience-driven, optimised, science-based, and with as little subjectivity as possible” says Jerome Fontaine, CEO & Marketing Effectiveness Chief of Fournaise. “Because if they don’t embrace a CMEO approach, they may get stuck in the chasm for a long time, until they run out of money and possibly become another failure statistic” Fontaine added.
About Fournaise – The Marketing Effectiveness Tracker & Booster®
Fournaise is one of the World’s Leading Marketing Effectiveness (MarkEff) Specialists. Using its proprietary MarkEff Solutions Fournaise Tracks & Boosts the Effectiveness of Product, Pricing, Channel, Communication, Brand & Marketing Strategies, Campaigns & Ads, across 20 countries, 13 industries (B2C & B2B) & 20 languages – to push them to deliver better effectiveness, results and ROI. For Fortune 500 & Large organisations, SMEs, Start-Ups and Top Ad/Media Agencies.
Fournaise is rated “Best in CVP & Message Effectiveness Optimisation (CMEO)” by its Product & Innovation Clients around the world – for More Effective Product Story-Telling and More Effective Product Innovations.
