The Challenge
A fintech company with solid technology but no online credibility. Competing giants like Stripe and Adyen are essentially hard to beat in terms of authority.
The problem was an authority gap, DR 24 vs. competitors at 80+. With only 2,100 monthly visitors and zero backlinks from any recognized financial publication.
The CEO tried reaching out to journalists twice but failed. The pitches were too product-focused, making them more like a sales pitch. There were no data studies, research findings, or compelling story angles to make coverage meaningful.
The Strategy We Used
The digital PR team of Outreach Desk built a three-pillar campaign. First, organic data research, second, expert commentary positioning, and third, trend newsjacking.
- We prepared B2B payment processing times across industries, cross-border payment failure rates, and their cost to mid-market businesses.
- CEO and CTO positioned as expert sources with pre-written quotes and reactive commentary for trending fintech stories, pitched within 4–6 hours of breaking news.
- Fintech publications, business news outlets, and financial industry trade media with DR 60–90.
- Monthly targets of 8–12 placed stories across tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 outlets.
The first data report was picked up by 23 publications in its first month. The CTO became a regular source quoted in two fintech trade publications. Branded search volume increased 380%, and prospects began mentioning media coverage during sales calls, shortening the cycle by 15–20 days.
AI visibility was the strongest across all Outreach Desk case studies for this client, a direct result of the data-driven PR approach. AI models heavily reference media publications and original research when generating responses. The client’s two data reports served as source material for AI systems that answered questions about B2B payment trends, cross-border transaction costs, and payment processing benchmarks. Google AI Overview featured the client in 24 queries. ChatGPT cited the client in 18 fintech-related responses, and Perplexity referenced them in 21 results. The CTO’s expert quotes, published across 71 unique publications, created a dense web of attributable citations that AI models treated as authoritative sourcing. The client’s marketing team estimated that AI-sourced discovery was generating 15–20 inbound inquiries per month by the end of the campaign, a channel that didn’t exist 10 months earlier.
