Leading marketing at high-growth fintech GoCardless

When Neil Morgan was assessing the options for his next career move, having left Sage in the summer of 2018, he decided his future would lie in one of three areas – in the world of fintech, AI or blockchain.

He spent his summer reading up on these three areas, and having considered a number of offers, the invitation to become the CMO at GoCardless was too good for him to resist – in particular as the whole company is located in one office in London. “I’ve not really done that as CMO, and had this massive passion for it,” he says. “The job of marketing is to translate the value of technology and that’s something I’ve done all my career.”

Culture is hugely important at the fintech business, and that too was a big factor in Morgan’s decision to jump aboard. “I’ve never seen a company as strong as this where they’re living the values,” he adds.

These four core values are; Be humble, start with ‘why?’, take pride in what you do, and act with integrity. The importance of culture extends to the recruitment process, where anyone applying for a job isn’t interviewed by the hiring manager initially, but is first  evaluated on whether they’ll be a good cultural fit for the business.

“If you don’t pass the cultural test, you’re probably not going to get hired,” Morgan says. “[CEO] Hiroki Takeuchi is very passionate about keeping that culture as we go, even if it slows down hiring.”

GoCardless began as GroupPay in 2011, set up as a way to split household and sports team expenses. This initially evolved into a platform for clubs and societies to collect membership dues. It’s now a bank debit network that allows businesses to collect and process direct debit payments, processing $1 billion of transactions with around 40,000 customers.

It was founded by three Oxford University graduates – Hiroki Takeuchi, Tom Blomfield and Matt Robinson – who have been likened to the initial six founders of Paypal in the US who subsequently went on to found a number of other major tech start-ups. Takeuchi remains with GoCardless as CEO, while Blomfield went on to found bank Monzo and Robinson launched the data-based estate agency Nested.

In February, GoCardless raised $75 million from new and existing investors including GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) and Salesforce Ventures. This investment will be used to grow the company internationally – and marketing, with Morgan at the helm, will be central to that expansion.

“We are disproportionately investing in marketing this year, around twice as much as other areas of the business. The board and executive are fully behind it, and it’s a real joy to see that commitment,” he says.

Building marketing capability

There are three main areas that underpin the fintech’s growth strategy. The first is to target a new segment of customers. The majority of GoCardless’s 40,000 merchants are small businesses. Although the company counts The Guardian, Thomas Cook and easyJet among its customers, the intention is to increase the number of enterprise businesses it works with.

The second dimension of growth is the company’s international expansion. It will be investing in France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, North America and Iberia, and hiring marketers in each of those locations.

The third element will be adding more product capability to the platform. The company has a number of product developments to bring to market in the year ahead.

Neil took up the role in November 2018 – having previously led global digital marketing at Sage and held marketing leadership roles at Socialbakers and Adobe. He set out his marketing strategy for the business in January, and now he says it’s about getting ducks in a row and executing it, working out what the core competencies and best assets are, and how to build upon them.

He says the priority for the first half of the year will be to build marketing capability within the function. The marketing team is around 20-people strong at the moment, and the aim is to double this number by the end of the year, with the majority of new hires on-board by the summer. These will all be based in the UK, along with one each in France, Germany and Australia.

“The lesson I’ve learned is don’t create different teams in different markets, doing different things,” says Neil. “We don’t want five different marketing speeds, as you can’t leverage the advantages. I’ve asked everyone to think globally. No-one has the job to do just one country. If you’re writing content, for example, you have to think how that’s going to land in each market.”

There will be a focus on establishing career paths for existing and new staff, and the key attribute Morgan is looking for among his marketers is curiosity. People who are keen to try things, even if they may not work. “I think the role of the CMO is to provide a vision, inspiration and strategy and direction, and to stay out of the detail,” he adds.

In fact, this aim extends further. “My vision of marketing at GoCardless is very much a leadership function. In a global company, marketing should play a role in leading the business where it’s going by identifying new opportunities.”

Tackling immediate priorities

Traditionally the company’s focus has been on acquiring smaller customers, which has worked well, with lots of inbound interest. Neil has already brought in an SEO expert he’s worked with previously to widen that opportunity, and the company now has 100 pages of recommendations for its SEO strategy.

Half of GoCardless’s web traffic comes from the guides it produces, and Neil is also keen to build upon the power of this organic content. Previously he developed the Sage Advice blog platform, which provides small firms with support on a host of issues. He’s keen to do something similar at GoCardless. “We’ll do the same thing here around the payment space and try and broaden the scope so we become the leading source of advice for businesses around payments.”

The focus on repositioning to be able to attract enterprise customers will also be among the key priorities for the next 12 months and beyond.

“One of the biggest projects is how do we take this brand and proposition and preserve that, and develop a new one that will support that longer sales cycle and enterprise customer,” he says.

“How do we change the perception of the business to cater for these bigger companies? If we could crack that this year, I’d be over the moon – we need to get these people in place so we can have a really good go at it.