How to Launch a Digital Marketing Campaign in Payments

May 3, 2023 | Gateway, Payments

Every industry has unique challenges regarding Digital Marketing Campaigns: Who is my target audience? What is the best way to reach that audience? Is this the right time to communicate my message, spend resources, and launch a campaign? What platforms should I target? What medium should I invest in…the list goes on and on.

These challenges feel particularly daunting when experienced from within the confines of the payment processing ecosystem. A company may serve several customers, from small mom-and-pop merchants to large, savvy restaurants or not-for-profit organizations. There are also partner relationships to consider including Agent and ISO partners, Developers, and Associations, to name just a few.

With so many different customers, what is a payments company to do?

How can you get your message across to the right prospect, at the right time, via the right channel and medium

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“How can you get your message across to the right prospect, at the right time, via the right channel and medium?“

In this highly competitive and often fragmented industry, creating effective digital marketing campaigns that deliver impressive ROI is challenging. Choosing to single out a target audience and focus on their unique pain point is a smart strategy. This, of course, requires some research, planning, and restraint.

Here are six tips for creating digital marketing campaigns that deliver results.

1. Choose An Audience For Your Digital Marketing Campaign

Don’t try to be all things to all people (or audiences). Maybe you work at a company with vertical-specific resources, in which case this doesn’t apply. Many companies, however, have to decide which audience to target and spend their precious ad dollars on. Often the result is an ad campaign that attempts to speak to everyone and ends up targeting no one. To create an effective campaign, you must have a target audience in mind so you can speak to their specific problems and how you are the best company to offer the solution.

2. Know Where To Find Your Audience

What platforms does your target audience prefer? This information will help you not only know where to place your Digital Marketing Campaign but may also help you identify when to place your ad and via what medium. If you are targeting merchants, you might consider Facebook. Sprout Social says 94%* of Facebook Ad revenue is mobile. If you post an ad on Facebook, make sure it is mobile-friendly.

Are you targeting Agents & ISOs? If so, LinkedIn may be your best option. If you are targeting Developers or ISVs, LinkedIn may still be a good option, but you may also want to explore Youtube or Instagram. LinkedIn has free resources to help you get started if you are new to LinkedIn ads.

3. Start With The End In Mind

Know what your goals are going in. Once you decide which audience you are targeting, whether it is small mom-and-pop merchants, Agents looking for a payment partner, or an Independent Software Vendor looking to add payments to their solution, the task of identifying the goals of your campaign should become a little more clear.

Still, you will need to decide on specific goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Or are you hoping to drive more traffic to your website? Maybe you want potential customers to sign up for a course or newsletter. Once you’ve identified your goals, you need to decide what KPIs you want to measure so you can track and measure the effectiveness of your campaign. If your goals are around brand awareness, you will want to monitor your social media followings. If you want to drive traffic to your website, set up Google Analytics and identify what metrics you want to monitor. Starting with the end in mind helps you track and measure.

4. Cross Pollinate With Supporting Content

Beyond ensuring employees are familiar with the ins and outs of the Digital Marketing Campaign and can help spread the message with their social audiences, there are other avenues at your disposal to ensure you are reinforcing your campaign and creating buzz around your offer. What other content, resources, or channels are available to share or promote the message? Do you have a company blog? Write or promote a recent post showcasing your company’s thought leadership. Your website is another excellent resource. Promote specific content or update content to promote your campaign. Send an email campaign to existing customers if relevant. Promote on your social channels with status updates, hashtags, and other relevant content posts. Check out this blog post if you want ideas on cross-pollinating and re-purposing content.

5. Monitor, Measure, and Optimize

Once you launch your campaign, the fun begins. This is where you see your hard work and creativity in action. The beauty of digital marketing is that you can jump in when something isn’t working or isn’t hitting the right note and adjust. Not hitting the right audience? Adjust your targeting. Did your cost per click suddenly jump? Go back and revise.

There are many advantages that digital marketing has over traditional marketing, and the ability to adjust as you go is at the top of the list. Digital marketing is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. You must be active and engaged and make sure your efforts (and dollars) are working as hard as possible for you. If not, optimize, optimize, optimize.

6. Invest In Your Marketing Strategy

Launching an ad campaign for your payment processing company that hits all the right notes can be daunting. You will reap the benefits by researching and spending time on the front end of your digital marketing campaign in the planning stage. A digital ad campaign is MORE effective when part of a holistic marketing strategy. If that sounds scary, don’t fear. Many (free!) tools and resources are available to help you get started. Hubspot has a good starter template here.

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-plan-template-generator

Your strategy will help you allocate your time, resources, and dollars. If creating a marketing strategy for 12 months seems too big a task, start smaller—plan by quarter. As you get into the rhythm of planning and determining based on data (see tip 5), creating a strategy that covers more significant periods will come naturally.

The world is changing quickly. Each week it feels like there are new trends to follow, new strategies to employ, and new customers to hunt for. We are all having to adapt to stay afloat. Don’t get distracted by all the shiny objects! Some strategies will never go out of style:

Identify your ideal customer
Learn about your ideal customer
Identify your goals
Promote your offer
Measure and optimize
Invest in your strategy

These six steps will help you crack the code to an effective digital marketing strategy for your payments business. Planning your digital strategy is worth your time and will make overcoming the marketing challenges payment processing companies face possible. A carefully planned strategy and consistent execution will help you get the most return from your digital marketing campaigns.