Many fintech companies, especially the big ones, are buying PR services because it is considered an industry standard. The company should have a special team that would build its image with the public. However, when it comes to actual reputation building, they often resist everything PR teams are trying to say. For some reason, many companies do not allow PR to do what they need it for. Sometimes, they want PR professionals only to announce every possible launch and event, and that is all.
This prejudice may grow from the disbelief in the ability of PR teams to understand the business in detail. Yet, instead of letting them dive into the company’s goals, the management chose to restrain them. The company hires a PR team but never listens to its advice. The communication team, in turn, cannot do its work properly. As a result, all sides are left unsatisfied and disappointed.
Alina Sysoeva, Head of PR at Drofa Comms, believes the most valuable thing a PR partner can offer to its client is the discipline to know which stories are worth telling. Below, we share her insights on this topic, based on years of experience advising companies in fintech and financial services.
Why Do Companies Focus on Coverage Volume
Many companies think that everything they have to do in public is to be as visible as possible. They try to achieve this by making constant announcements in the media, and that is everything they want the communications team to do. That strategy almost never gives meaningful results, because every announcement a company issues enters an already extremely saturated market.
The media generally looks for interesting and relevant stories. If everything a company has to offer is constant updates, journalists will likely skip everything the same sender will suggest next time. As a result, a low-value announcement spends the credibility a firm has among the media.
This mistake is persistent because its costs are invisible while the result appears to be right on the surface. Management sees new links every day and believes that the company’s awareness and reputation are growing. But announcements without a real necessity only make the audience skip the company’s news. Like in the story about a boy who cried wolf, when the firm has something actually valuable, people may miss it because they get used to not receiving meaningful information from it.
PR professionals need to constantly explain the hidden cost and benefit of every piece of coverage. What is more, they need to explain that media publications are the smallest part of the communications team’s work.
Why More Coverage Does Not Mean More Trust
A high volume of a company’s mentions tells almost nothing about who exactly received the message and whether they got it right. That’s why over 80% of PR professionals today judge coverage success by its quality and the audience it reaches. Still, many companies look at volume as the major metric to assess the communication team’s work quality because it is visible.
This arises when the management does not read coverage themselves. Otherwise, they would see that a constant drop of low-value publications does not create trust. They often do so because they consider PR to be abstract and to have low impact on a company’s performance. When a company does not understand what communications are needed for, they will ask to do something they can see.
For that reason, the most important thing a PR team needs to learn and manage to accept is saying “not yet.” Communication is always based on the right timing, and the moment to announce new features or publish a new expert opinion by the founder should always be chosen wisely.
The One Quality Every Fintech Company Needs
Restraint is, actually, one of the biggest advantages in financial services because the audience here is more sceptical than in any other industry. They are trained to read between the lines to find new signals about a company’s state. The constant stream of low-effort publications will be considered as a weakness.
This decreases public trust in a company, and, in fintech, trust is an intangible asset because it clears the way to new partnerships and investments. If a company does not show itself as restrained, it may lose many opportunities and miss the possible capital inflow. Clients who do not see how coverage is converted into trust will still resist any suggestions from communication teams.
To overcome this kind of resistance, PR teams may show that the audience a company actually wants to reach, like investors or regulators, value one meaningful piece of coverage in trusted media much more than twenty short announcements. Management, in turn, needs to learn to trust the people they choose to be the voice of their company.
Conclusion
It is impossible to do everything alone without any help, and working with any partner demands learning to trust them. In some industries, you can see exactly what is done and how it affected your company. But, in PR, a lot of work is hidden beneath the surface and reveals itself months later.
The fear that something may go wrong is fair, but that’s exactly why companies should explain to communication teams what they want to achieve. Knowing actual business goals, PR professionals may build a strategy that suits a company and works towards its aims. Everything that is needed is a belief in your partner’s expertise.
If your fintech company needs a clear communications strategy, Drofa Comms can help you choose the stories worth telling and find the right timing, turning media visibility into lasting trust.
