Fintech Demand Generation Agency
Demand generation for fintech. Influence the 95%.
Only around 5% of B2B buyers are actively in-market at any given time. Demand generation is how you reach the other 95% before your competitors do, so when they start looking, they know who you are already.
Proven results for Fintech clients
488%
Increase in blog traffic for a global payments business
$3.2m
In pipeline generated for KYC360 through demand programmes
8 yrs
Running demand generation for fintech and financial services
Award-Winning Fintech Demand Generation Agency
Marketing Agency of the Year Finalist
Financial Promoter Marketing Agency of the Year finalist. Recognised as one of the best Fintech Marketing Agencies in 2024.
Recognised by Fintech B2B Marketing as Global Fintech Marketing Agency of the year finalist. Recognised as one of the best Fintech Marketing agencies globally in 2023.
Global Fintech Marketing Agency of the Year Finalist
Paid search captures buyers who are already looking. SEO makes you findable when they are. Both are essential. But if your marketing only activates at the moment of intent, you're competing against every other vendor at the exact moment the buyer is most price-sensitive. Demand generation builds recognition, credibility, and preference before that moment arrives.
Most fintech marketing waits for demand to show up. Demand generation creates it.
Why demand generation is different for fintech
Three things that make fintech demand gen its own discipline
The 95-5 problem is bigger in fintech than most sectors
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's 95-5 rule finds that only around 5% of B2B buyers are in-market at any given time. In fintech, where switching costs are high and buying cycles are long, that number is often lower still. Most of your future customers are not looking today. If you only market to the 5% who are, you're competing for a small slice of a much larger opportunity.
Trust has to be built before it can be tested
Edelman's 2025 Trust Barometer puts global financial services trust at 64%. Hard-won, easily lost. Demand generation is how you build trust in the months and years before a buyer is ready to consider you. It's not brand advertising for its own sake. It's the reason a buyer will shortlist you when they eventually start looking.
Fintech buyers research before they engage
6sense's 2025 research finds 61% of the B2B buying journey is complete before any vendor is contacted. Buyers form their shortlist through content, peer reviews, and independent research long before they enter a sales conversation. Demand generation is how your brand ends up on that shortlist rather than being introduced to it.
Fintech Demand Generation services
01
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn is the most efficient reach channel for B2B fintech demand generation. LinkedIn's research with Nielsen finds LinkedIn advertising 5x more effective than TV and display for financial services brands. We run sequenced campaigns that reach the full buying committee and move them from awareness through to consideration over time.
02
Programmatic display and retargeting
Programmatic done well reaches your buyers across the fintech publications they already read. Fintech Futures, Finextra, and the wider financial trade media. Combined with intent-based retargeting, it builds sustained brand presence at a cost that scales efficiently across a larger addressable audience than LinkedIn alone.
03
Content and thought leadership
Fintech buyers form opinions through content. Research reports, expert commentary, and category-defining thought leadership. We help you produce content that positions your business as the credible source in your space, then get that content in front of the audience who need to see it.
04
SEO for demand and category education
Ranking for informational queries at the awareness stage builds recognition long before a buyer is ready to talk to sales. We build SEO programmes that own the questions fintech buyers ask during their research, so when they progress to a vendor shortlist, your brand is already familiar.
05
Sponsored content and industry partnerships
Fintech media, trade associations, and analyst partnerships extend your reach and lend credibility that owned channels cannot match. We identify which partnerships produce genuine audience exposure versus which produce logo placements. Then we run the ones that actually work.
06
Events and webinars
Live and virtual events remain a strong demand generation channel for B2B fintech, particularly when they're substantive rather than promotional. We help design event programmes that generate genuine engagement, produce content that lives beyond the event, and give sales teams something worth reaching back into their pipeline about.
Richard Hoffman - Head of Marketing, Alto IRA
"Curious Cat was an incredible partner to us as we rebuilt our Marketing function from the ground up. They never shied away from the work."
The 95-5 problem
Why fintech marketing that only chases intent underperforms
A fintech marketing team invests heavily in paid search. Their MQL volume looks reasonable, their cost per lead is defensible, and the CFO is satisfied. Two years later a challenger enters the market and takes 30% of their pipeline in six months. The incumbent didn't lose because their conversion rates fell. They lost because their brand was invisible to the 95% of buyers who weren't in-market yet.
This is the most common commercial pattern in fintech: performance marketing that flatters the numbers for years, then reveals a brand deficit at the moment a challenger appears.
Reach
Reach in the 95% is where future revenue is built
Buyers who aren't in-market today will be in-market in six, twelve or twenty-four months. Demand generation builds the brand memory that makes them think of you when the switching event happens. Marketing that only shows up at the moment of intent has no relationship to fall back on.
Approximately 5% of B2B buyers are in-market at any given time (Ehrenberg-Bass, LinkedIn B2B Institute).
Mix
Brand and response work harder together than apart
Brand-only campaigns produce no measurable pipeline, so they get cut in tight budget years. Response-only marketing produces short-term leads but no compounding preference. The evidence, from the IPA and Les Binet's work, is that a 60/40 split between brand and response consistently outperforms either alone over three-year horizons.
A 60/40 brand-to-response ratio maximises long-term commercial effect (IPA, Binet and Field).
Attribution
Attribution windows shorter than the sales cycle mislead everyone
Platform tools attribute conversions within 7 or 30 day windows. Fintech buying cycles run to ten months. The result is that demand generation activity gets credited to whichever channel captures the final click, and the top-of-funnel work that made the difference gets under-invested for years.
The average B2B sales cycle in financial services runs to ~10 months (6sense, 2025).
Our Fintech Demand Gen Process
01.
Audience definition and positioning
Demand generation starts with a clear view of who you're trying to reach and what you want them to believe. We define the audience across roles, sectors and stages of the buying journey. Then we sharpen positioning that gives the audience a reason to remember you.
Messaging framework
Positioning
Audience segmentation
02.
Channel and content strategy
We map the channels where your audience actually spends time and the content formats that earn their attention. LinkedIn, programmatic, industry publications, events, SEO, thought leadership. Every channel selected based on where reach and credibility come from for your specific audience.
Channel mix design
Content strategy
Media planning
03.
Content and creative production
Content that earns attention in fintech has to have a point of view. We produce research-backed articles, category-defining thought leadership, and campaign creative that speaks to the buyer's actual context rather than generic industry themes.
Research-led content
Campaign creative
Long-form assets
Sales enablement
04.
Activation across the mix
Pillar pages, cluster articles, FAQ content, case studies, and AEO-structured question-and-answer content. Every piece is written by a fintech specialist who understands the sector, the audience, and the quality bar Google applies to YMYL content.
Paid media execution
Content distribution
Cross-channel coordination
05.
Measurement and long-cycle attribution
We measure demand generation on brand awareness, share of voice, quality of engagement, and pipeline contribution over the real sales cycle. The metrics that make sense for a channel designed to work over months and years rather than days and weeks.
Brand tracking
Share of voice
Multi-touch attribution
Pipeline modelling
What Fintech demand generation is not
Demand gen is not lead generation
Lead generation captures existing intent. Demand generation creates the conditions under which intent will emerge later. Confusing the two is why so many fintech marketing teams over-invest in bottom-funnel tactics and wonder why growth plateaus after the first eighteen months.
Results show up in months, not weeks
Demand generation compounds. Which means the first quarter often looks like activity without outcome. By month six you can see engagement lifts, by month twelve you can see share of voice moving, and by month eighteen you can see pipeline shifting. It is not the right channel if the board needs pipeline this quarter.
You need a brand people can remember
Demand generation puts a brand in front of buyers who aren't looking yet. If the brand is vague, positionless, or interchangeable with three competitors, all the reach in the world will not create the memory that matters when a buyer eventually starts researching.
Fintech demand generation questions
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Fintech demand generation is the practice of building awareness, credibility, and preference for a fintech brand among buyers who are not yet actively evaluating vendors. It covers LinkedIn Ads, programmatic display, content marketing, SEO for informational queries, and industry partnerships. The goal is to make sure your brand is on the shortlist when buyers eventually start looking, rather than needing to be introduced from scratch.
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Lead generation captures buyers who are already in-market and hands them to sales. Demand generation creates the awareness and preference that produces those buyers in the first place. Lead gen is measured in form fills and MQLs. Demand gen is measured in brand awareness, share of voice, and pipeline movement over the real sales cycle. Most B2B fintech marketing programmes need both, weighted appropriately by growth stage.
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LinkedIn Ads is usually the most efficient for B2B fintech because it offers precise targeting of the roles and companies that make up the buying committee. Programmatic display extends reach across fintech publications your buyers already read. SEO for informational queries builds awareness at the top of the funnel. Content, events, and industry partnerships add credibility. The right mix depends on your audience, budget, and how much reach versus depth you need.
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Brand and engagement metrics move within the first quarter. Pipeline contribution typically takes six to twelve months to become visible, and full commercial return tracks the length of your sales cycle. Demand generation is not a quick tactic. It's the compounding investment that eventually reduces the cost of every other channel in your marketing mix.
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We measure brand awareness and preference lifts, share of voice against competitors, engagement quality across channels, and pipeline contribution modelled over the real sales cycle. Platform metrics matter as leading indicators, but demand generation is not the right channel to judge on last-click attribution or 30-day conversion windows.
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Demand generation and ABM solve different problems. Demand generation builds broad awareness across a large addressable market. ABM concentrates depth in a small list of named accounts. Most B2B fintechs benefit from both: demand generation to keep the top of the funnel healthy, ABM to work the accounts sales specifically wants to win. The right balance depends on the size of your addressable market and the concentration of your revenue.