Let’s be honest: most fintechs and investment platforms sound the same. They say “Hey 👋” instead of “Dear Sir/Madam”, they churn out more Dad jokes than financial jargon, and they probably call their customers rockstars or ask for a high-five.   

Ultimately, that’s progress. If you’re a neo-broker, a trading platform, or a challenger bank, your original mission was likely to open up finance and investment to regular folks. You can’t do that if those regular folks have no idea what you’re talking about. 

But with that approach, you’ll run into a few problems – not least the fact that you sound exactly the same as your rivals. 

1. Your existing customers have grown up, and your prospective ones probably don’t speak like this anymore. 
2. You might offer far more services than you did when you first launched. That means you want to reach a broader audience, with varying preferences and levels of financial literacy. 
3. It’s probably not driving engagement or properly informing your users. After all, only 20% of retail investors believe their platforms provide them with all the information they need to make investment decisions. 

Here at Finimize, we’ve developed a voice and style that allows us to talk to retail investors from around the world – no matter their age and experience levels. Our content consistently achieves outcomes that are far above the industry average, with half our monthly users engaging with our content every week. Plus, over 40 million investors have access to Finimize content via our partners’ channels (more on that here). 

Now, you can do something similar.

The Finimize voice essentials 

First off, why bother?

If you’re in finance, chances are you’ve spent many awkward minutes trying to explain what you do to someone who’s already tuned out, confused and uninterested. 

Welcome to fintech marketing. 

But it doesn’t need to be this way. In fact, it shouldn’t be this way. How you speak is how the world sees you and that’s important, especially in a crowded market. 

So make sure your identity is clear every time you open your (collective) mouth.

The way we speak represents our mission to make finance not only accessible, but enjoyable. It’s in the wordplay that makes a long commute feel short. It’s in the turn of phrase that makes a one-off reader a full-blown Finimizer. It’s in the storytelling that makes them open tomorrow’s newsletter, and the next day’s, and the next day’s.

Four rules for creating a voice that stands out and holds attention 

The cliché of modern retail investors is that they’re all crypto and meme-stock hungry millennials. First of all, that’s not true: only 15% of them have ever even invested in a meme stock. And even if it was, millennials are anywhere between late-20s and mid-40s. Equally, if you’re a challenger bank that launched in 2016, your longest serving customers are now almost a decade older. You need to find a voice that works for them and your new Gen-Z and Gen Alpha users. 

And as you grow and your product suite expands, you need to find a way to talk to a wider audience. The voice that attracted frustrated banking customers to your neo-bank might not be the one to engage retail investors to explore your new range of ETFs.  

So rather than focusing on an exclusive tone, think inclusive. Avoid getting bogged down in niche references to win over a few – instead, communicate clearly and concisely to resonate with the many. Think about it: beginners want clarity, and even the know-it-alls don’t want to  be doing mental math while they’re balancing on a crowded morning subway.

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Don’t say: In normal times, investors demand to be compensated a premium for holding longer-dated bonds. Longer-dated yields are therefore higher than shorter-dated ones and the yield curve is positively sloping. When the yield curve is steepening, economic growth tends to be strong and the risk of recession low.

Do say: 10-year bond yields are almost always higher than 2-year bond yields, which makes sense: investors are taking on more risk by holding an asset for longer, so they expect to be compensated with better returns. But how much higher 10-year yields are – reflected by how steeply the yield curve rises or falls – depends on the economic growth outlook.

Give your voice some non-negotiables 

We’re speaking to busy and curious people who are over humorless, impersonal, overcomplicated articles. They’re crying out for someone to knock the industry off balance, and that’s us: a middle finger to mediocrity.

But to make sure our community finds that voice wherever they go, we’ve got some non-negotiables we always stick by.

‍Our readers feel like they’re with a friend. 

We’re conversational but not lazy, funny but not flippant. We write the way we talk.

Always punt for the most “normal” way to say something. If you’re introducing technical terms, explain them and make them useful. And remember, finance isn’t exactly the topic that sets a dinner party alight, so lean into humor and expand your vocabulary to make every day different.

Clarity informs everything we do.

Truly understand everything you’re saying – if you don’t, chances are no one else will either. You don’t want to force your reader to make logical leaps or do double takes, so sense-check yourself by saying everything out loud. You should sound natural, conversational, and above all, human. 

‍We’re really into what we do

It’s our job to make our readers excited about finance. That’s no mean feat, but we have a few tricks.

Get to the point pronto: never leave it till the third or fourth line to reveal the lede. 

Plump for the active voice over the passive. Use “we” sparingly, and lead with the verb. 

Always think benefit-first, framing opportunities in terms of how they work in the reader’s favor.

Sound like your smartest friend, not your friend who thinks they’re the smartest

You stand out by what you say as well as how you say it, so tap into the financial expertise in your team. At Finimize, our analyst team has close to a century of combined experience analyzing financial markets, with cross-asset and cross-sector experience at firms including Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Schroders, and Fidelity. 

Educated retail investors invest more and are half as likely to churn, so it’s important they have a good teacher, not just a cool one. So never try to sound smart by using big words or technical jargon. You’ll sound smarter by making complicated stuff sound simple.

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Don’t say: If earnings disappoint, stocks are likely to lose a key support, making a rally much less likely. 

‍Do say: If earnings updates are a letdown, investors will have one fewer reason to buy into the stock market. That’ll limit the potential for any rally in prices.

Use your voice to answer the right questions

Once you have the voice and the expertise, it’s about using it in the right way. Open chat groups, issue surveys, host events. We constantly ask our community what they’re focusing on and the key questions they want answered. That gives us a real-time source of intelligence about how the retail investor community is feeling, so we can tailor our content to meet their needs. 

We also track five billion data points each year to understand how every single piece of content we publish is consumed. We look at how our members engage with content, whether they find it insightful, and its commercial impact.

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Don’t say: How To Establish A Crypto’s Risk-Reward Profile

Do say: How To Tell If A Crypto Is Risky And Rewarding, Or Just Plain Risky

Finimize’s tone of voice rockstars 🤘

Kidding. But these are brands we think are doing a great job. They’re all different but have built a voice around the same fundamentals:

• They’ve found a voice that matches their mission
• They implemented it effectively across all messaging points 
• They’ve made sure it suits the business they are today

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Creating expert-written, accessible content can be hard. We can help.

Creating a fintech voice that stands out means providing content that’s accessible and insightful. Sure, most companies can offer one of those things, but not many can do both. Even those with the financial know-how tend not to have the content marketing chops to get it off the ground. 

We can help with that. Whether it’s access to our entire content library or expert-written custom content, we can give you a voice that stands out and drives engagement. Get in touch.