Who should pay for higher education?
It’s a contentious question, and one that The New York Times Writer Tressie McMillan Cottom recently tackled in her NYT opinion piece about the state of student loan debt.
“It arguably matters more how people think college works than how it actually does,” Cottom wrote. “Much of the media discourse about the details of higher education funding overestimates the general public’s understanding.”
That’s where language/market fit comes in. At fintech platform Chipper, for instance, the public’s complicated relationship with student loans colors Sarah Mayer’s daily work as head of brand marketing. The Austin tech company empowers student loan borrowers to make informed repayment decisions — and also engages with the public discourse surrounding student loan debt and repayment plans.
“We are providing unique and comprehensive direct-to-consumer student loan repayment solutions during a pandemic — when payments are paused,” Mayer told Built In Austin when we connected with her about Chipper’s language/market strategy. “Our biggest challenge is staying on top of changing perceptions towards student loan borrower repayments and their finances.”
Marketing around a hot topic calls for multiple layers of nuance, and Chipper educates key stakeholders about the evolving condition between student debt and the wide array of student borrower experiences.
“While the 40 million American student loan borrowers with debt have a common problem to tackle, their sentiments around making payments, the realities of how they can achieve repayment and their levels of trust in financial technology vary greatly,” Mayar said.
“Finding language/market fit and executing on it is what powers us to help as many borrowers as possible.”
The language used in marketing can create a lasting social impact. Equipped with this awareness, both organizations and job seekers can look to companies like Chipper to understand the importance of shaping language/market fit with urgency and tact.
Chipper is a fintech platform that enables borrowers to discover and enroll in eligible repayment and forgiveness programs and seamlessly chip away debt faster.
What does “Language/Market Fit” mean to your team, and how do you identify the right type of language to appeal to potential customers?
Test. Test. Test. Going a step beyond product/market fit and brand positioning, testing in- messaging in-app and across marketing channels enables our team to make data-backed decisions around how we market to our various audiences and iterate on our solutions.
Starting with an organized and hypothesized roadmap — and being able to report back on the success of each project — tells us how we can best attract, engage and convert each audience at every stage of the customer journey.
What are the biggest challenges associated with finding language/market fit?
We are providing D2C student loan repayment solutions during a global pandemic. Our biggest challenge is staying on top of changing perceptions towards student loan borrower repayments and their finances.
The key is balancing what we know with what we can predict — and what we learn from research, data and testing on an ongoing basis.
Newton wasn’t lying when he said that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. However, when it comes to language/market fit it’s not quite as straight-forward.”
Why is it so important to get language/market fit right early in the product development process?
Newton wasn’t lying when he said that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. However, when it comes to language/market fit it’s not quite as straight-forward.
We are able to build meaningful solutions for student loan borrowers by establishing and rallying around defined goals and processes that foster productivity. Identifying key learnings about our customer’s wants and how they want to engage with us has also been vital.
Testing language/market fit early on reveals which audiences are most predictive of our success for each of our product features and services. Testing enables our team to establish and execute on product roadmaps that solve for gaps, trends and untapped opportunities.
While the 40 million American student loan borrowers with debt have a common problem to tackle, their experiences vary greatly. As a comprehensive solution for borrowers, finding language/market fit and executing on it is what powers us to help as many borrowers as possible.
