Fournaise News & Media Releases

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95% of FinTech Companies Struggle to Go Mainstream Because of Weak Product & CVP Effectiveness

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…

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 Tracking & Boosting (MarkEff) companies – in its “Marketing Effectiveness in the FinTech Industry” Report.

80% of CEOs Do Not Really Trust Marketers

80% of CEOs admit they do not really trust and are not very impressed by the work done by Marketers – while in comparison, 90% of the same CEOs do trust and value the opinion and work of CFOs and CIOs.

That’s one of the striking findings identified by Fournaise through its Global Marketing Effectiveness Program, in which it interviewed more than 1,200 Large corporation and SMB CEOs and decision-makers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

83% of Marketers Neglect their Customer Value Propositions (CVPs)

83% of Marketers pay little attention to the Customer Value Propositions (CVPs) in their strategies, campaigns and ads. They do not practise CVP & Message Effectiveness Optimisation (MEO), and then wonder why their strategies, campaigns and ads underperform business-wise when deployed.

Fournaise tracked that:

1) Only 17% of Marketers really understand and embrace what a CVP is

Only 17% of Marketers have (and apply) the correct definition of what a Customer Value Proposition (CVP) is: a promise of potential value that a business delivers to its customers, and in essence is the reason why a customer would choose to engage with the business. It highlights the relevance of a product offering by explaining how it solves a problem or improves the customer’s situation, the specific value against the customer’s needs and the difference to competitors.

a) Data-driven, these Marketers heavily focus their strategies, campaigns and ads on product/service (features) education, and on pains-solving or needs-fulfilling demonstrations.

b) They practise CVP & Message Effectiveness Optimisation (CMEO) as a standard operating procedure, and build their messages around science-based CVP Architectures (that become the heart of the marketing/creative briefs they provide to their agencies).

2) The balance 83% of Marketers think “Form, Style & Awareness” are more important than “CVP & Message” – they are the Traditional Marketers

For the balance 83% of Marketers, the CVP is in the creativity. They (wrongly) believe that a great creative approach (the famous “big idea”), great art direction, pretty pictures, a great piece of music, a celebrity and/or a great tagline are strong enough CVPs in themselves to demonstrate customer value (and therefore generate engagement):

a) Hence, there are no (or poor/weak) product, service (features) value education, pains-solving or needs-fulfilling demonstrations in their campaigns and ads.

b) These Traditional Marketers focus heavily on “how” and “where” the message is to be delivered and not enough (or much less) on “what” message should be delivered to best trigger and engage with the audience.

When it comes to generating business results, their strategies, campaigns and ads usually under-perform, and their CEOs are most of the time not impressed by their Marketing Performance and ROI.

76% of Marketers Track Effectiveness Wrongly

In today’s age of business performance Fournaise tracked that 76% of Marketers still use the wrong Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track and prove the effectiveness and ROI of their Marketing strategies and campaigns (and therefore prove their worth).

1) For 77% of Marketers, Effectiveness is still mainly about Awareness

2) 74% of Marketers don’t pay enough attention to their CVPs

3) For 71% of Marketers, Effectiveness is just about Engagement

90% of Marketers Are Not Trained in Marketing Effectiveness & Marketing ROI

90% of Marketers are not trained in Marketing Effectiveness & Marketing ROI, and 80% struggle with being able to properly demonstrate to their Top Management the business effectiveness of their Marketing spending, campaigns and activities.

These are two of the eyebrow-raising findings identified by The Fournaise Marketing Group – one of the world’s leading Marketing Effectiveness Tracking & Boosting (MarkEff) companies – through its Global Marketing Effectiveness Program in which it measured the performance of Marketers via (1) hi-quant interviews with more than 1,200 CEOs, Management & Marketing decision-makers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia; and (2) the actual effectiveness of 2.5+ million B2C/B2B marketing strategies, campaigns and ads Fournaise Performance-Tracked across all media channels (traditional, digital, direct, mobile) across 20+ countries worldwide.

At a time when CEOs are putting even more pressure on Marketers to generate (and prove they generate) incremental customer demand for the companies’ products/services (i.e their ability to generate more sales, more market share, more prospects and/or more conversions), Fournaise tracked four head-shaking results:

1) 67% of Marketers don’t believe Marketing ROI requires a financial outcome (these are the very Marketers who struggle to give the correct mathematical formula for Marketing ROI), demonstrating a total lack of understanding of what ROI is all about.

2) 64% of Marketers use Brand Awareness as their Top Marketing ROI KPI, 58% place “Likes”, “Tweets”, “Clicks” and/or “CTR” in their Top 5 Marketing ROI KPIs, and 31% still believe simply measuring the audience they have reached is Marketing ROI.

3) 63% of Marketers don’t include any financial outcome when reporting on and presenting Marketing results to their CEOs & Top Management.

4) More than 80% are unable to write a P&L and Balance Sheet correctly when given a simple business scenario. These Marketers are unable to give the correct definitions of basic Financial KPIs used day in day out by CEOs and Boards (such as EBITDA, P/E Ratio or ROE), and are unable to correctly explain the impact Marketing can have on a company’s Balance Sheet – demonstrating an inability to understand and speak the Finance & Accounting language.

78% of CEOs Say Ad & Media Agencies Are Not Performance-Driven Enough

78% of CEOs around the world believe Ad & Media Agencies are not performance-driven enough and do not focus enough on helping to generate the (real and P&L-quantifiable) business results they expect their Marketing departments to deliver.

That’s one of the findings tracked by The Fournaise Marketing Group – one of the world’s leading Marketing Effectiveness Tracking & Boosting (MarkEff) companies – through its Global Marketing Effectiveness Program in which it regularly interviews more than 1,200 Large corporation & SMB CEOs and Management (C-Suite) decision-makers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

The hi-quant Program constantly tracks insights from CEOs & Marketers around the world on several aspects of their Marketing Performance & ROI: from what CEOs expect from Marketers to the effectiveness of Marketing strategies implemented, and the perceived role of Ad & Media Agencies in the performance equation.