Riding the Exhaust

In fintech, noise often masquerades as momentum. Every week, another competitor floods the feed with bold claims, new frameworks, "category design" playbooks, and event launches. They're not wrong to be loud because volume has its place in building awareness and establishing presence. But here's the quiet truth that most challenger brands learn the hard way: the market only has room for one loud teacher at a time.

If you're a challenger brand trying to establish yourself in a crowded fintech landscape, chasing the same megaphone as your better-funded competitors will drain your energy and your budget long before it builds your reputation. You'll find yourself shouting into an echo chamber where the biggest voices always win, not because they have the best ideas but because they have the resources to sustain the volume. This is a losing game for most companies, and recognizing it early can save you from wasting years on a strategy that was never going to work.

The smarter play requires a fundamental mindset shift. Instead of competing for the same attention your loud competitors are claiming, let them spend the money and time educating the market while you position yourself to benefit from their investment. I call this riding the exhaust. You step back, observe what they're putting into the market, and then step in with clarity when the noise becomes confusion. And noise almost always becomes confusion, because companies optimizing for volume are rarely optimizing for precision.

Your job isn't to out-shout the competition. It's to make sense of what they've already made visible. This sounds counterintuitive because we've been trained to believe that market leadership requires market presence, and market presence requires being louder than everyone else. But presence and noise are not the same thing. You can be present by being clear when everyone else is confusing. You can be present by being helpful when everyone else is promotional. You can be present by being specific when everyone else is speaking in abstractions designed to sound impressive rather than communicate effectively.

I advised a fintech earlier this year that was struggling with exactly this dynamic. They had a loud competitor that dominated LinkedIn with daily think pieces, weekly webinars, and a constant stream of announcements. This competitor had raised significant funding and was using it to establish themselves as the thought leader in their category. Every time my client considered posting something, they felt overshadowed before they even started. How could they compete with someone producing that much content, generating that much engagement, occupying that much space?

The problem with their competitor's approach only became apparent when we stopped looking at the volume metrics and started listening to what the market was actually saying. The competitor's message had become so broad, so focused on establishing category leadership rather than solving specific problems, that potential buyers couldn't tell what they actually did. The thought leadership was impressive but vague. The frameworks were elaborate but impractical. The webinars generated registrations but not conversions. All that noise had created awareness without creating understanding, which meant there was a gap my client could fill.

Instead of competing for airtime, they shifted their entire strategy. They stopped trying to be loud and started trying to be useful. They began producing short, grounded content that answered the questions the market was suddenly asking because of their competitor's noise. Each post began with some version of: "You've probably been hearing a lot about [trend]. Here's what it actually means for your bank." They weren't creating the conversation. They were clarifying a conversation someone else had started but hadn't finished.

This approach works because thought leadership at scale creates side effects that smaller players can leverage. When a well-funded competitor spends millions educating the market about a problem or a category, they raise awareness for everyone in that space, not just themselves. They teach potential customers new vocabulary, new frameworks, new ways of thinking about their challenges. But they also generate confusion because marketing at scale requires simplification, and simplification creates gaps between the message and the reality.

Those gaps are where challenger brands can win. When prospects hear a compelling pitch about AI-powered whatever but don't understand how it applies to their specific situation, they go looking for clarity. When they read a thought leadership piece full of impressive concepts but can't figure out what to do Monday morning, they search for practical guidance. When they attend a webinar that promises transformation but delivers abstraction, they look for someone who can translate the vision into action. If you're the one providing that clarity, those prospects come to you with their questions and their attention already primed.

Within six months of shifting to this strategy, my client's inbound demo requests doubled. The remarkable part was that almost all of these requests came from prospects who had been warmed up by someone else's awareness campaign. The competitor had spent the money to make the market aware of the category. My client spent a fraction of that budget positioning themselves as the trustworthy guide within that category. The loud competitor built the stage. The smart competitor used it.

If you want to try this approach with your team, start by running what I call a Market Exhaust Map. This is a structured way to identify where your competitors' noise is creating opportunities for your clarity.

First, list your top three or four loud competitors. You know who they are because you see them constantly in your feeds, at your industry events, in the newsletters your prospects read. Track what themes or buzzwords they're pushing right now. What categories are they trying to own? What problems are they claiming to solve? What language are they teaching the market to use?

Next, identify the confusion points. Look at what's unclear, exaggerated, or overhyped in their messages. Read the comments on their posts. Talk to prospects who've engaged with their content. Ask yourself: what questions would my ideal customer be left asking after consuming this competitor's material? Where does their thought leadership create more questions than answers? Where does their scale require simplifications that don't hold up under scrutiny?

Once you've identified those confusion points, create clarity content. Draft short, authoritative pieces that explain, simplify, or reframe the topics your competitors are making noisy from your specific lens and your practical experience. Don't attack or criticize. Simply provide the grounded perspective that the market is looking for but not finding from the loud players.

Finally, be first to the follow-up. When your competitor launches a major campaign or publishes a big piece of thought leadership, release your clarity piece within days. You don't need to own the headline. You just need to own the interpretation. Let them create the awareness while you capture the intent.

Loud competitors build the stage, and smart brands figure out how to use it. When others make the market noisy, the opportunity isn't to add more noise. It's to become the voice that people turn to when the buzz fades and the real questions start. That voice doesn't need to be the loudest. It needs to be the clearest. And in a market drowning in noise, clarity is the scarcest and most valuable resource you can offer.

If your team is tired of shouting into the same echo chamber, it might be time to map your market's exhaust and find the opportunities hiding in your competitors' noise. I'm happy to walk through how we approach this with clients if you'd like to set up some time to chat.

Allison

www.brandthnk.co