Fintech PR: How Financial Brands Earn Media Trust

Every New Fintech Starts With a Trust Gap

Most brands need people to notice them. A fintech brand needs people to notice it and then feel comfortable enough to hand over a bank login, and that second step is where a lot of PR programs stall out.

Edelman and LinkedIn’s research on business buyers found that 73% of decision-makers consider a company’s thought leadership a more reliable way to judge its capabilities than its marketing materials. Buyers put more stock in what your leaders say in public than in anything your ads say.

That’s the opening for PR. Your own marketing can say the company is safe and well run, but earned coverage means a reporter or producer looked at the business and decided it was worth putting in front of their audience. It’s why we spend less energy on the announcement itself and more on where the company shows up in the months after it.

Why Business Media Outweighs the Trades

Plenty of fintech PR programs focus on trade and tech outlets. Those placements matter to investors and partners, and they’re usually the easiest wins to get.

The person deciding where to keep their paycheck probably isn’t reading the trades, though. They’re more likely catching a segment on CNBC or Fox Business, scrolling Yahoo Finance, or listening to a personal finance podcast on the way to work, and a mention in one of those places lends the company some of that outlet’s credibility.

Those outlets are also much harder to crack. Business producers hear from fintech companies constantly, and a pitch that leads with product features usually gets passed over. What tends to work is knowing which producer is building a segment on credit card debt or the latest Fed decision this week and offering a founder who can speak to that story. Fintech media relations is mostly that kind of matchmaking, and it sits at the center of how we approach media relations.

Your Founder Is the Face of the Company

When a founder sits across from a business anchor and explains the company in a sentence or two, viewers get a sense of the business that no product page can give them. People are far more willing to try an app once they’ve watched the person behind it handle a few tough questions.

As agency of record for Credit Sesame, we paired the company’s announcements with an ongoing run of broadcast and digital thought leadership. CEO Adrian Nazari became a familiar voice on consumer credit.

This is also where we see the biggest gap between agencies. Firms that come out of the tech world are often very good at launches and trade coverage, but fewer of them can put a founder on air and keep that founder getting invited back. TV booking runs on relationships, and producers lean toward guests they already know will show up prepared and keep their answers tight.

Most bookings start with a pre-interview call, where a producer is quietly deciding whether the guest can carry a segment. A founder needs a view on the day’s news and the ability to make a point before the anchor moves on, which is why we work real media training into the plan well before the first booking.

After a founder has a couple of strong segments behind them, the next bookings come more easily, because producers remember who made their show better. Tax and financial expert Karla Dennis is a good example. A thought leadership campaign built around TV made her a go-to guest in Los Angeles, with recurring KTLA segments on topics from last-minute filing tips to stimulus checks and payroll taxes and new tax laws, as well as regular appearances on CBS and others.

What Reporters Look for Before Covering a Fintech

Financial reporters have covered plenty of hyped companies that didn’t last, so they tend to approach a new fintech with some caution. Before we pitch a founder, we check that a few things are in place.

• A one-line description of the business that a producer could read on air without explanation.
• A view on whatever is driving the money conversation that week, beyond the company’s own product.
• A spokesperson who can turn around a comment within the hour when news breaks.
• Numbers a reporter can verify without three follow-up emails.

The second item is the one fintechs skip most often. Reporters rarely write about a product on its own. They write about trends and look for people who can explain them, so a founder with a sharp take on lending or payments becomes someone a reporter calls back. That’s thought leadership in its most useful form, and it’s also the core of a TV pitch that lands, since producers book people to talk about the news.

For fintech startup Sorbet, we helped design a national survey on unused vacation time, making recommendations on both the questions and how the findings were released. The data ran in Money, SHRM and The Business Journals, and earned Sorbet TV spots including PIX11.

A Funding Announcement Isn’t a PR Strategy

We like funding announcements as much as anyone. They’re genuine news with a built-in hook, and investors are usually eager to see them published.

The limitation is that a funding story tends to run for a day or two. It tells the market the company raised money without giving anyone a reason to trust it with theirs. A press release alone rarely lands much coverage, and a round that gets a single write-up and then disappears does little for the company’s reputation.

The fintechs that get the most out of a raise use the announcement to open conversations with reporters, then follow up with interviews and expert commentary that keep the founder in front of those same reporters for months afterward.

How Fintech Brands Show Up in AI Answers

More people now ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews which money apps are worth using, and those answers draw heavily on what established publications have already written about a company.

That gives earned coverage a second job. A fintech that has been written up in respected financial outlets has a much better chance of appearing in AI search results than one known mainly through its own website and paid ads, so the placements that persuade a reader also shape what these tools say when someone asks about the company.