Chief Marketing Officer, FinTech Trading Firm

Our client is a large and established global FinTech trading firm with successful revenue streams across it’s product offerings. This client was looking to take its firm to the next level and had identified new and emerging markets that could be penetrated with the guidance and expertise of a marketing champion. 

The client had traditionally been highly sales focussed which was an excellent strategy that had been successful for them. They were now choosing to be more strategic in their approach to build and maintain a lasting marketing message for their company and product offerings. With this more sophisticated strategy goal firmly in place, the decision was made to recruit a highly effective Chief Marketing Officer.

The main function of this Chief Marketing Officer was to ultimately help the company increase its revenues by creating a marketing plan that gave the company a competitive advantage. To help achieve the company’s objectives, the CMO was required to possess skills in business and marketing.

Key skills required for this search included significant experience and demonstrable track record within:

Brand management

The CMO was to be use different strategies to increase brand awareness of the FinTech company’s products and boost the perceived value of the brand against competitor offerings.

 

Digital Acquisition

To be highly versed in building a world class digital marketing function that consistently delivered high quality leads and optimum cost

 

Market research

Using various techniques to collect important information about the target market that helps identify the needs of the market, the competition, and the popularity of the company’s FinTech products among consumers.

 

Marketing communications

With the nature of our client being a FinTech trading platform, the users of their products have a massive internet use. The CMO needed to use the most effective communication tools that allow them to communicate the required information to the intended audience.

 

Product management

Product management involves new product development and product marketing.
Some of this CMO’s role in the product development phase included conducting feasibility studies of proposed products and identifying customer needs.

Qualifications

The successful individual needed several years of experience in marketing and was required to have:

  • Highly effective leadership skills
  • Superb communication skills, both written and verbal
  • Deep understanding of data analysis tools
  • Naturally be able to lead in a constantly evolving environment
  • Demonstrable experience working with various marketing tools relating to market research, data analytics, website development, product branding, visual communication software, written communication, and public relations
  • Proven ability to design and coordinate marketing campaigns across traditional and modern channels
  • Expert in digital and social media marketing

iopa Solutions had a strong network of FinTech Marketing Professionals from competitors and discreetly reached out to 30 of the most experienced and well received individuals within the FinTech space. It was really important that the successful individual was going to be a good cultural fit as they were going to be the first individual to join this organisation within a marketing capacity and would be reporting directly into the CEO.

Without a strong buy-in from the internal teams, the success of this position would be
jeopardised. iopa Solutions advised the client to invite key members of the Sales and Product teams to be involved in the interview process to ensure buy-in for the Marketing Head. This was a new position in unchartered territory for our client so iopa was sure to advise the client of previous CMO hires it had conducted within similar FinTech trading firms.

Over 3 weeks, extensive interviewing was conducted with the top 4 candidates and a final decision was made on the preferred candidate. iopa Solutions helped to negotiate an attractive  benefits package to ensure the candidate had a long term view of their position within the organisation and 18 months on, the company has successfully expanded their revenues within the identified emerging markets by 177%. Upon a courtesy call, the feedback on the recruitment process and eventual outcome was very positive from both the candidate and the client.