Key Takeaways

• Knowing what customers want has evolved from knowing exactly what they want to understanding how they want it. Understanding this concept can make a difference in whether they listen to your company or not.
• Cryptocurrencies have become increasingly important to the Australian financial consumer with a 56% increase in adoption in 2021. This interest is growing primarily because of people they know, what they see in the media, and portfolio diversification.
• Targeting marketing spending to electronic media, including podcasts and social media influencers, is the fastest way to stimulate crypto clientele.
• Combining demographic models shows that the predominant force on social media is young women. Finding the right influencer among young women, and cultivating a trusting and educational experience with that influencer, can craft a message to address trust and risk aversion.

The old model in business relied on knowing exactly what the customer wanted, often before they even knew they wanted it. The story of Annhueser-Busch in America is a great model. The tandem of beer makers really took hold of the market when they started using refrigerated rail cars to transport their beer.

Who knew people wanted a cold beverage on a hot day?

In the 21st century, knowing what customers want has expanded to knowing how they want it, as presaged by the Budweiser story. For instance, people want online entertainment, but knowing they only want it in 15-second increments led to the rise of Tik-Tok.

So knowing how your customers want their financial advice presented to them can make all the difference in whether they listen to your company at all. Once you’re engaged with your client base, it’s just as important to understand what they consider to be cutting edge. 

If your client doesn’t think you’re on the cutting edge, too, they might look for a company who is.

For the Australian financial consumer, cryptocurrencies have become increasingly important to their portfolio and financial planning. We’ll look into the data to help you determine how to help them.

Why Focus on Crypto?

The simple answer is because there’s more crypto than ever. Australian adoption of cryptocurrencies jumped 56% in 2021, according to Independent Reserve and their survey of 2,000 Australians. But knowing the raw number only tells us that people like beer, as it were.

To use that information, we need to look at why that interest is growing.

• 47.5% because of people they know
• 44.4% because of what they see in the media
• 33.2% for portfolio diversification
• Only 21.6% to “get rich”

This teaches the savvy financial consultant that one of the best ways to cultivate a crypto portfolio base is the old fashioned way. Tell your existing clients to spread the news to their friends and family. Secondarily, don’t tell them it will “make them rich.” All you need to do is tell them about it, period.

Secondly, when allocating marketing dollars, it may make more sense to market in what some people consider non-traditional markets like social media and podcasts.

How to Reach Young People

You can’t reach a client base if you don’t know who they are. Looking first at age statistics, Australians under 24 are the largest crypto market, accounting for nearly a quarter of investors.

Given how young the average Australian crypto user is, it makes sense to look at how to reach that demographic. It turns out, there are two ready avenues.

• 28% of young Australians follow a prominent social media personality
• 72% listen to a financial podcast 

To recap the train of thought on this: the fastest-growing market is young people; over 40% of crypto investors make their choice based on media; three-quarters of young people listen to financial podcasts.

It’s pretty simple, then. To stimulate crypto clientele, target your marketing spending to electronic media, including podcasts and social media influencers.

Combining Segments

The real secret to reaching a demographic is a proven way to significantly increase your return on investment in marketing. By inferring several data points (below) we can see that one underserved segment in Australian crypto finance is women.

• Only 31% of crypto owners are women
• Women are financially more risk averse than men
• 43% of Australians who don't own crypto think that it is too risky
• 32% of non-crypto investors would rather have traditional investments

This begins to paint a compelling picture. The gender divide on risk-taking in financial situations may very well be driving the latter statistics on who thinks crypto is too risky, and may be keeping the ownership by women hovering at under a third.

Now we get to combining our segments. Take the demographic models above on young people driving Australian crypto ownership, combine that with the segmented data we know from who isn’t buying (risk-averse investors and women), further combining what we know about how to reach young people, and we get to: 

Expanding messaging in podcasts and among social influences that young women are likely to follow.

Here’s a few more data points to drive it home:

• Over 50% of all social media users in Australia are women
• Over 36% of all Meta (Facebook) users in Australia are women between 18-44 years old
• 85% of influencers are women
• 86% of Australian women follow an influencer's advice on shopping
• Only 28% of Australian women listen to podcasts

 This paints a slightly different picture than previously in our article. If one is simply working off two or three dimensions of data, then the marketing choices are clear: podcasts, some social media, speak to investments, crypto-use options, and stress word of mouth among existing customers.

When we look into combining demographic segments, however, we see that young women are the predominant force on social media, and they are the centre of the gravity-well known as influencers.

By finding the right influencer among young women, and cultivating a trusting and educational experience with that influencer, a savvy financial advisor can craft a message to address the first block of statistics in this section regarding trust and risk aversion, and deliver that message via an avenue that has a track record among an underserved and under-invested demographic.

Combining Segments by Location

Even in the internet age, there are still great results in location-targeted marketing. That’s why it can be just as valuable to target location demographics as it is to target age or gender demographics.

Looking at crypto statistics, we find:

• 32.9% of Australians in WA own crypto
• Followed by 31.3% and 31.2% in South Australian and Northern Territories
• Only 21.2% of those in ACT owned crypto

This doesn’t at all mean that crafting a financial services message for folks in Canberra is a lost cause. In fact, that seems to be the area with the most potential growth. Meanwhile, the data could mean that Perth is saturated already, and moving on to the larger cities in NSW (coming in at 29.3% crypto ownership), might prove more fruitful.

How to Craft Your Message

Once you know your demographic, and once you’ve reached their platforms, you have to craft your message based on what they want.

• 75% of young people need a company that is “aligned with their values”
• 36% of crypto investors looking for “new uses”
• 40% want to build wealth
• 82% want their banking and crypto linked
• 74% are interested in crypto cards for every-day use

By making your marketing message tailored to those needs, you’re able to tap directly into what crypto users are already telling surveys. This is free market research, and the numbers are compelling enough to act on. 

Combine those numbers on needs/wants with how to contact crypto users, and the growth in crypto usage, and the assignment is clear: target young Australians with crypto packages that are flexible and designed for growth.

Messaging for Values

If we already know that we’re working on a financial message and package for younger people, and we already know that three quarters of young Australians would stop working with a company that doesn’t align with their values, then we should look at what those values are.

• 45.7% of young Australians say the most important issue is COVID
• 38% say it is the environment
• 35.4% responded that social equity was the most important

With those values in mind, we look at the statistics on how crypto has impacted each of them.

COVID and Crypto

• 68% of Australians have been using less cash since COVID
• 66.7% of studies show application of blockchain technology in COVID-related applications

Using either of these statistics to market to younger people can be a springboard for developing a relationship with younger clientele based on their Coronavirus concerns.

Crypto and the Environment

Here the numbers don’t look good. Crypto mining can have a detrimental effect on the environment, though that link is not directly causal. And there are some Australian-born solutions on the horizon, including an article from UNSW faculty.

Also in Australia, a homegrown company could be taking crypto green.

Social Equity and Crypto

Here, along with its numerical association with young people, crypto independently appeals to the Social Values of young people.

• 45% of crypto investors donate to charities
• 58% of donations to Tor Project for internet freedom came from crypto
• 74% of Australians age 25-34 make charitable donations

Not only do these data support the social awareness of crypto users, but along with previously discussed statistics, it should be easy for a financial marketer to develop a strategy that combines the demographics of younger people’s propensity to donate and their penchant for crypto currency, conflating both with the extant crypto donation community.

Messaging for Results

While the current market hasn’t been kind to crypto, it is important to note the numbers of Australians already in the market, and that that market is still projected to grow.

• 4.6 million Australians hold cryptocurrency
• 65.2% of that ownership is Bitcoin
• 400% increase in Bitcoin value predicted by 2025
• 80% of Australians say they’d be willing to use crypto on a daily basis

That means that any successful campaign to increase investments with your financial company should stress the growth and the market ownership. People who are afraid that it’s already “too late” to invest in crypto can be reasoned with, and you can explain that there is still potential for growth in the market.

Final Thoughts

When analysing any market, it’s good to have the numbers on your side. Especially if the numbers have already been gathered by someone else, and you can access them for free. 

The statistics on the Australian crypto market lend themselves to a bullish analysis. Any financial firm looking to expand their market into new territories or demographics can look to the combined segments of regionality or gender, and apply what we already know about how each demographic gets their news, and which media they trust.

This strategy can yield rewards for both the financial firm who heeds it, and for their clientele.

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