When digital payments can feel like a commoditized utility, how do you build a brand that’s seen not just as a processor, but as a strategic partner?
Agility requires more than just speed; it demands the ability to innovate within complex regulatory frameworks while simultaneously building and maintaining unwavering customer trust.
Today, we’re going to talk about the unique challenge of building a resonant brand in the highly competitive and technical world of FinTech. We’ll explore how to translate complex capabilities into a compelling narrative that builds trust and drives growth.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Alexandra Westfal, Chief Marketing Officer at COLIBRIX ONE.
About Alexandra Westfal
Alexandra Westfal is an accomplished business development professional with a strong background in the commercial real estate sector in the past and valuable marketing experience in the payments industry these days. She has successfully built client relationships, driven growth initiatives, and delivered measurable results across competitive and highly regulated markets.
A self-starter with exceptional customer service, communication, and organizational skills, Aleksandra thrives in dynamic environments where adaptability and problem-solving are key. Her understanding of payments competitive market adds further depth to her profile, equipping her with insights into digital transactions, financial technologies, and client needs in fast-evolving ecosystems.
She brings strong numeracy skills and a structured approach to analysis, enabling her to deliver insights and strategies that support both clients and internal teams. Her enthusiasm for continuous learning and capability development extends not only to her own professional growth but also to empowering team members to achieve their potential.
Alexandra Westfal on LinkedIn: https://lv.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-westfal-kitina
———- Resources ———-
COLIBRIX ONE: https://www.colibrix.one/
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Transcript
Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, your host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you: When digital payments can feel like a commoditized utility, how do you build a brand that’s seen not just as a processor, but as a strategic partner? Agility requires more than just speed. It demands the ability to innovate with complex regulatory frameworks while simultaneously building and maintaining unwavering customer trust. Today, we’re going to talk about the unique challenge of building a resonant brand in the highly competitive and technical world of fintech. We’re going to explore how to translate complex capabilities into a compelling narrative that builds trust and drives growth.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Alexandra Westfal, Chief Marketing Officer at Colibrix One. Alexandra, welcome to the show.
Alexandra Westfal: Hello Greg, and everyone. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this topic with you. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Colibrix One?
Alexandra Westfal: So, I actually came into this role from a completely different industry. it was almost five years ago, four to five, and I stepped into a lean startup of 45 people. Now we’re more than 200.
Greg Kihlström: Wow.
Alexandra Westfal: And yeah, my first challenge was a massive upgrade uh to match our big, ambitious plans.
Greg Kihlström: Well, yeah, we’re going to talk about a few topics today, but I want to start with what I touched on in the intro, and just that that idea of differentiation and and driving a brand strategy that really um sets a company apart. And you know, as you mentioned, you know, Colibrix One recently underwent a significant rebrand in a, admittedly, crowded space, uh you know, in the fintech space. So, what was the core strategic driver behind this change, and what narrative are you aiming to establish in the market?
Alexandra Westfal: Well, I believe we outgrew our previous identity, almost simultaneously with the growth of our ambitions. And our rebranding was something we had planned from the very beginning. Like, as I told before, my first challenge was to step out from the previous name into Colibrix, and now last year we made up a Colibrix One, which is a name of the holding with the few companies made up for the products, for the separate products before. So, from the beginning, we executed that we need something more fresh and more giant, I would say. And actually, it reflects our shift from being perceived as a payment provider or electronic money institution to becoming a unified intelligence layer for modern business, like a comprehensive platform that brings everything together. That’s why we are Colibrix One. And in terms of narrative, our strategic driver was clarity. One platform, like one experience, one source of truth.
Greg Kihlström: Yeah, and definitely, you know, from being seen as more of a commodity to being seen as that, to your point, a more comprehensive platform and and something that enables more comprehensive capabilities certainly takes a lot of a lot of strategic thought. And, you know, so as a as a CMO in fintech, you also have to balance the message of you’re an innovative company and doing a lot of cutting-edge things, but you also have that found- or your customers have that foundational need for trust and for security because of, you know, the payments and and the fintech capabilities. How do you strategically embed both of these concepts into a brand’s core identity?
Alexandra Westfal: Well, everything we do, like the licensing we communicate, the compliance tools we build, the PCI certification we live with, that’s not the offensive messaging, that’s the foundation that gives us permission to claim that we’re safe and stable. And we move at the speed of our client’s business with the safeguards of, let’s call it, vault, which may sound a bit old-fashioned. But it’s about convincing that our innovation isn’t about taking risks with the client’s money, it’s about removing the risks inherent in legacy systems. And we don’t say like trust us because we are innovative. We say we are innovative because you can trust us. That’s an inversion that matters enormously.
Greg Kihlström: I like that. Let’s talk a little bit about the the go-to-market plan then. You know, so having the brand strategy in place and, you know, beyond the maybe the standard digital marketing playbook, what channels or activation strategies have proven most effective for engaging those, you know, senior decision-makers at e-commerce and fintech companies?
Alexandra Westfal: Have you heard about ABM?
Greg Kihlström: Account-based marketing.
Alexandra Westfal: Yeah. Actually, we started our business with it. Traditional marketing thinks in audiences, in big audiences, and ABM thinks in accounts. So, this ABM or market-of-one means you treat a single enterprise account, say, a large iGaming operator or high-volume e-commerce platform, as if they are their own individual market segment. You research them, you understand their pain, you speak their language, you show up with solutions before they even notice you. And our products of course they are for everyone, that’s true, but there’s- there should be a match in common vision and ambitions. And each of our clients is special and we honor them accordingly. Also, what works is proximity, like industry conferences, for example, Money20/20, iGB L!VE. they aren’t just brand moments, they’re intelligent operations. Networking becomes easier, warmer with each conference. I mean, relationships is that matter, outside business, inside the business, I mean, everywhere. And everything starts with a with a person. So, you start if you like a person, I mean, you are really sure, and I mean, you’re interested to work with him.
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And speaking of relationships, the the partnerships component is is also very important here in in building some of those those customer relationships as well. From a marketing perspective, you know, how do you move beyond, you know, every software company, every technology company has partnerships and some of them, you know, some of their programs more effective than others, how do you create, you know, just going beyond the the basics and creating a genuinely integrated campaign that um provides real value to your partners as well as your end customers?
Alexandra Westfal: the partnerships and integrations that work for us are the ones um where the value is embedded in the product. And when a partner’s platform, for example, connects to our acquiring infrastructure or virtual cards issuance, and uh their client sees better approval rates or faster payout cycle, that is the real partnership. I mean, the campaign um doesn’t create the story, I mean, it does, but for a short time. But the product, I think, that is what truly matters. And our job in marketing is just to make sure that story gets told loudly, consistently, and um it will, as I also mentioned before, match the precise person who we are interested in.
Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, like that. So let’s talk a little bit about measurement then. And so, you know, you’re in the B2B space and generally speaking, traditional top-of-the-line metrics can be, you know, everybody needs lots of lots of leads at the top of funnel, but sometimes that can be misleading um as far as, you know, getting all the way through the funnel. So, what are the key performance indicators that you try to focus on to measure things like brand health, trust, influence on the sales cycle, things like that?
Alexandra Westfal: Mm. Yeah, uh KPI metrics are so tempting. It’s uh it’s the most common thing I hear from the other marketers uh in the industry. But uh the metrics I actually care about are much more practical. And first, maybe I would like to mention is inbound quality. Are the leads coming to us already understanding what we do, for example? Uh, if a prospect arrives and uh I still have to explain our like core products and value proposition, um so the brand probably isn’t working hard enough upstream. second, sales cycle length. So, this one is maybe underrated. If our brand is doing um its job, uh if a decision-maker has already seen our content, heard our name at the event, for example, uh read some- something useful we published, the sales conversation starts warmer and moves faster. And it’s a very nice hook, uh, and it’s easy to find some common topics. So, when the sales cycle shorten without the product change, that’s uh that means that brand is working. And third thing, it’s that um the second conversation rate. Like how often does the initial meeting lead to a deeper technical discussion, for example? That tells me we are attracting serious buyers, not just like curious ones.
Greg Kihlström: Right, right. And so from the from the customer end, you know, certainly in in B2C as well, but in B2B, you know, customer expectations around speed and transparency are constantly rising. I think some of this comes from B2B is looking more like B2C in in some ways over over the over the last few years. How do you create feedback loops to measure how what you’re promising as a brand aligns with actual customer experience, and how does that data that you get inform your marketing strategy?
Alexandra Westfal: Mm. Uh, yeah, customers’ expectations in payments uh becoming extremely high from year to year. And honestly, they should be like that. People expect things to be fast, transparent, or to simply work in our unpredictable world. Uh, when they don’t, uh, I mean, the- when payments uh don’t work, the trust disappears disappears really quickly. And overpromising is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility in fintech industry. So, the most reliable data we have is the feedback we receive from our customers and partners on daily basis. Uh, it took us some time uh to get this right, and actually, I would say that building a consistent internal communication loop with our sales team and key account managers has been a game-changer. And it’s what allows us to stay synchronized with the clients, what uh they are actually experiencing, not just what we assume they are.
Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And so looking looking ahead then, what do you see as certainly there’s there’s a lot of potential challenges, but you know, what do you see as as one of the biggest challenges for a company in B2B fintech, you know, thing anything from regulatory to tech- technological disruption, something else entirely? You know, what are you what are you seeing on your horizon and how are you preparing for it?
Alexandra Westfal: Mm. the unexpected is always the biggest challenge. When something appears, so, you haven’t been prepared to. But recently, I read a lot about it’s called signal versus noise, that the fintech space and, I mean, in general, our world is becoming so crowded with messaging that decision-makers, for example, uh have developed um incredibly sophisticated filters. And, for example, imagine every morning, like, head of payments of large e-commerce company opens LinkedIn. And he sees like 50 posts from payment companies.
Alexandra Westfal: They all say roughly the same thing, like, global payments, fast, secure, trusted, etc.
Alexandra Westfal: And after seeing this, uh, for two years straight, he just stops reading. His brain has learned to skip it automatically. So, that’s the noise. And uh, the signal is uh just one post that makes him stop scrolling, for example, and think, “Okay, uh, wait, that’s actually my problem. And I can see that there is an opportunity to to get it done.” So, I think that’s the the thing where um lies in, like, reducing cognitive load. So, this is one of our challenges, I would say.
Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Well, Alexandra, thanks so much for joining today. got a couple of last questions as we wrap up here. The first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
Alexandra Westfal: Oh, well, ambitions, ambitions. We’re talking about how Colibrix One became the name that high-growth brands um in regulated verticals default to, not because we spend the most on advertising, but uh because let’s say a few of our most respected um uh clients and partners in the space recommended us publicly and repeatedly. Uh in B2B payments, uh reputation travels faster than any campaign, I think. I’m- I’m building for that moment.
Greg Kihlström: Yeah, love it. And last question for you: what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Alexandra Westfal: Oh, wow, um… I would say that my personal recommendation to stop uh to stop trying to stay agile by consuming more information. Everyone is, in this industry, is drowning. And uh, what I do instead is uh protecting my thinking time. So, so, I’m still staying, you know, hungry and foolish and open to the world, but to the moments outside the job. Like breathing in, breathing out. Yeah, I mean, it can be simple and hard at the same time. But uh, if you can be disciplined, this is the best what keeps you focused and agile.
