Our client Payment Pathways provides patented privacy management software and electronic payments identity solutions. As a newcomer in the industry, the company was looking to establish itself as an authority on the competitive landscape with innovative solutions for consumers, merchants, and financial institutions. Because the company is also in the process of raising money, another audience consists of venture capitalists and angle investors.
As is our process, we provided Payment Pathways with a creative brief detailing the sequence and scope of a marketing campaign. We identified the target audience as bankers within small- and medium-sized financial institutions, consumers, merchants, and payment networks. The goal was to promote the company’s flagship product, Greenlist®, and its consulting services for the payments market.
Because Payment Pathways was a new company, it had only a rudimentary website. We used its existing logo and created a clean design that clearly articulates the company’s value proposition. On the homepage, visitors get a quick overview. From the navigation bar, they can learn more about the solutions offered, markets served, needs met, and more. New companies are always encountered with a healthy dose of skepticism, and Payment Pathways’ target audience is a particularly intelligent, discerning, and technically inclined group. That’s why we went the extra mile with Payment Pathways to include useful, descriptive information at the most granular level.
For news regarding Payment Pathways’ new patents, product releases, and company initiatives, we wrote, edited, and distributed branded press releases. Because Payment Pathways was an emerging company that did not have much name recognition, we decided to build a distribution list in-house. Our list included local media, international banking and payments media, small-to-mid-sized payments and e-commerce business executives across the country, and financial institutions of all sizes. We also post news items on LinkedIn groups that focus on payments, banking, and treasury management.
To simultaneously establish credibility in the marketplace and build an email list of potential customers, we researched, wrote, and edited two in-depth white papers. One targeted bankers, while the other was for consumers.
The bank-focused paper was a 15-page report that explains the benefits of participating in the Greenlist® secure transaction network, as well as the logistics of doing so. The level of detail we provide in the report is essential to earning the trust of banks considering adopting the payment solution. The consumer-focused white paper provides a detailed description of the consumer-level electronic payments landscape before introducing a new product from Payment Pathways that improves upon it.
Payment Pathways offers an innovative product within a rapidly changing payments industry. The company reached out to us to provide them the tools and a campaign from which they could go about building a reputation and a client list. With their new website, growing email list, and expanding presence within the payments space, Payment Pathways is quickly becoming a start-up success story.