Background
AptPay is a trusted provider of specialist lending solutions, dedicated to helping businesses and individuals secure property. With a team of experienced brokers, AptPay supports clients in accessing funds swiftly when traditional financing options are delayed, ensuring they can secure their investment opportunities without unnecessary stress.
The Challenge
Generating stories that resonate with journalists in the financial press presents a unique challenge due to the industry’s strict emphasis on reliability and accuracy. Financial journalists seek content supported by hard data from trustworthy sources, as their primary goal is to inform and protect readers from potentially misleading or biased information. This is a high-stakes environment where transparency and factual accuracy are paramount, making it difficult for PR campaigns to gain traction without established credibility.
Financial publications are generally cautious of promotional content. To achieve earned coverage, our strategy needed to align closely with these values, leveraging credible data and industry-relevant insights. That caution is why our PR for fintech and finance brands leads with public records rather than company announcements.
How We Did It
Our campaigns centred on stories that were relevant to both industry professionals and the general public, covering topics like commercial property prices, business insolvencies and the failure rate of businesses within the financial services industry.
Before generating campaign ideas, we carried out a thorough review of editorial trends and common story types within our target publications. This analysis allowed us to create customised pitches that aligned closely with each publication’s unique focus and readership.
To enhance the authority of our narratives, we drew on data from trusted sources that journalists frequently rely on, including HM Land Registry’s sold price data and Companies House insolvency records. This data-driven strategy not only increased our stories’ credibility but also heightened their relevance to financial and business publications, crafting compelling angles for each type of media.
The Results
Overall, the campaigns were very successful, landing coverage in big names within the finance industry, such as the Financial Times Advisor and Business Money, and gaining coverage in other local publications such as This is London.
The below results cover a period from April 2024 – September 2024:
449%
ROI over six months
31
New links and mentions
£21,410
Value of media placements
64
Average rating of new media placements
Inside the Engagement
The PR programme ran alongside SEO and content across a multi-year engagement from 2022 to 2025, and the best stories are the problems it solved. When early keyword research showed targets like revolving credit facilities had low sales intent or brand-dominated results, the team recommended pivoting budget into PR-driven link building instead: a more effective route to visibility in a competitive finance niche.
Regulation shaped the work too. AptPay can only speak to business finance and unregulated lending, so when a journalist opportunity brushed against regulated advice, quotes were adjusted and editors briefed so nothing non-compliant was published. And when a planned study of mortgage-finance failure rates hit a data wall at Companies House, the team broadened the angle to financial services generally rather than lose the piece.
The standout placement: FT Adviser (DA 78) covered the study finding almost a third of financial-services companies close within five years, alongside pickups across Mortgage Solutions, The Intermediary, Business Money, Credit Connect and fintech titles, with placement authority frequently in the DA 50s to 70s and up to 91.
