Adyen, the Dutch payment processor, spent just 0.3% of revenue on sales and marketing in 2023 while growing revenue 21% year-over-year. The company does not run television ads, does not sponsor sports teams, and has no consumer-facing brand campaigns. Instead, Adyen publishes detailed payment data reports, hosts small-scale events for enterprise clients, and lets its public financial disclosures speak for its operational quality. The company’s thought leadership, delivered through earnings reports, data publications, and selective conference appearances, functions as its primary marketing engine. According to CMI’s 2025 B2B research, 58% of B2B marketers report increased revenue from content marketing. Adyen demonstrates what happens when thought leadership is not a component of the marketing mix but the dominant one.
Where Thought Leadership Fits in the Marketing Mix
A fintech company’s marketing mix typically includes five categories: paid advertising (search ads, display ads, social media ads), events (conferences, webinars, hosted dinners), partnerships and co-marketing (joint content with complementary companies), sales enablement (case studies, product documentation, demo materials), and thought leadership (published analysis, industry commentary, original research).
Most fintech marketing teams allocate the majority of their budget to paid advertising and events. These categories produce immediate, measurable results: clicks, registrations, attendees. Thought leadership receives a smaller allocation because its results are harder to attribute directly to revenue and take longer to materialise.
The Boston Consulting Group projects fintech revenues will reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, with embedded finance and digital lending accounting for the largest share of projected growth.
According to CB Insights’ 2024 fintech report, global fintech funding declined 40 percent between 2022 and 2024, pushing the sector toward consolidation and a sharper focus on profitability over growth at all costs.
This allocation is backwards for most B2B fintech companies. Paid advertising reaches people who may or may not be in-market for the company’s product. Events reach a limited audience for a limited time. Thought leadership reaches the right audience (professionals searching for information about the company’s problem domain), at the right time (when they are actively researching), and continues generating returns for months or years after publication.
Content marketing investment in fintech should reflect the reality that B2B fintech buyers spend 83% of their purchase journey consuming content before engaging with a vendor. The marketing budget should align with where buyers spend their time.
Thought Leadership as a Marketing Force Multiplier
Thought leadership does not replace other marketing channels. It amplifies them. Every other marketing activity becomes more effective when supported by a foundation of published expertise.
Paid advertising with thought leadership backing performs better because the landing page visitor arrives at a company with visible expertise. A Google ad for “payment reconciliation software” that leads to a company blog with 30 articles about payment reconciliation converts at a higher rate than the same ad leading to a generic product page. The blog demonstrates that the company understands the problem, which increases the visitor’s confidence in the product.
Events produce more pipeline when speakers have published credentials. A fintech CEO invited to keynote a banking conference because they have published extensively about banking technology generates more qualified leads than a sponsored speaking slot at the same conference. The earned invitation signals authority. The sponsored slot signals a marketing budget.
Sales outreach converts better when the prospect has already encountered the company’s published expertise. A sales email that references “our recent analysis of T+1 settlement costs, published in Finextra” opens more conversations than one that says “I would love to show you our product.” According to DemandSage, content marketing produces over three times more leads than outbound marketing at 62% lower cost. The force-multiplier effect makes the comparison even more favourable when thought leadership supports every other channel. Building credibility through publications creates a baseline of authority that makes every subsequent marketing investment more effective.
Allocation Decisions for Fintech Marketing Leaders
The optimal allocation depends on the company’s stage, buyer profile, and sales cycle length. But general principles apply across most B2B fintech companies.
Early-stage companies (pre-Series A) should allocate 50% or more of their marketing effort to thought leadership. At this stage, the company has limited budget for paid advertising and events. The founder’s expertise is the most valuable marketing asset. Publishing that expertise costs nothing beyond time and generates outsized returns in credibility, investor interest, and early pipeline.
Growth-stage companies (Series A to C) should allocate 30-40% to thought leadership, with the remainder split between events (20-25%), paid advertising (15-20%), and sales enablement (15-20%). At this stage, the thought leadership foundation built earlier supports scaling across channels. The company has enough content to run sophisticated nurture campaigns, equip sales teams with relevant materials, and pitch conference speaking slots with a track record of published expertise.
Late-stage companies should maintain 20-30% thought leadership allocation even as other channels scale. Companies that reduce thought leadership investment after reaching scale lose the authority advantage that differentiated them from competitors during their growth phase. Industry authority in fintech marketing requires continuous maintenance, not just initial investment.
Measuring Thought Leadership’s Marketing Impact
The biggest objection to thought leadership allocation is measurement difficulty. Paid advertising produces clear cost-per-lead metrics. Thought leadership produces a mix of direct and indirect effects that are harder to quantify.
Direct metrics include organic search traffic to published content, conversion rates on content-driven landing pages, and inbound leads that cite specific articles or publications as the discovery channel. These metrics are straightforward to track using standard analytics tools.
Indirect metrics are more valuable but harder to attribute. Sales cycle length reduction (comparing deal velocity for prospects who consumed thought leadership content versus those who did not), win rate improvement (comparing conversion rates for content-engaged prospects versus cold outreach), and average deal size (content-engaged buyers often purchase larger packages because they understand more of the product’s value proposition).
Brand metrics provide long-term indicators: share of voice in media coverage, branded search volume trends, and domain authority growth. These metrics move slowly but indicate whether the thought leadership programme is building the cumulative authority that drives long-term marketing efficiency. Media visibility’s role in fintech growth is best measured through these compounding brand indicators rather than immediate lead generation metrics.
The Competitive Advantage of Thought Leadership-First Marketing
Fintech companies that lead with thought leadership build a competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate because it is cumulative and time-dependent. A competitor can match a paid advertising budget overnight. It cannot match two years of published expertise, accumulated search authority, and established journalist relationships overnight.
Stripe’s marketing is thought leadership-first. The company’s developer documentation, engineering blog, press publications, and economic research attract developers and enterprise customers organically. Stripe’s sales team engages prospects who have already formed a positive impression through content consumption. This is why Stripe can grow at scale with a smaller sales force relative to revenue than most enterprise software companies.
Plaid followed the same model. Its Fintech Effect reports, API documentation, and industry analysis built authority in the financial data connectivity space before competitors recognised the market existed. By the time competitors emerged, Plaid’s thought leadership had defined the category’s terminology and evaluation criteria. Publishing industry insights allowed Plaid to shape buyer expectations before those buyers evaluated any product.
Thought leadership is not one item in a fintech marketing budget. It is the item that determines whether the rest of the budget works effectively. Fintech marketing leaders who understand this allocate accordingly, investing in thought leadership first and using the authority it builds to amplify every other channel. The ones who treat thought leadership as an afterthought spend more across every other channel to achieve the same results.
