How Bitpanda Grew from 100k to over 1 Million Users

Bitpanda had a great product, perfect timing and almost no competition in DACH.

A head start, sure. Plenty of startups waste one.

I was Head of Marketing from January 2018 to December 2019. My job was to turn that head start into users. In those two years Bitpanda went from around 100,000 users to over 1 million, passing the mark in July 2019. In March 2021, it became Austria's first fintech unicorn.

And we did it with the biggest ad platforms closed. I joined one month after the 2017 peak. That same January, Facebook banned crypto ads. Google followed from June, Twitter restricted them too. Over 2018, Bitcoin fell about 84%.

The general version of the job is in What Makes a Great Crypto CMO. This is the Bitpanda version.

01Know what you're amplifying

Most marketing case studies give marketing all the credit. I won't.

Three things gave Bitpanda its head start:

• A product that made buying crypto simple for normal people.
• Timing. Crypto was entering the mainstream, and people were looking for a way in.
• Almost no serious competition in Europe, especially in German-speaking markets.

That shaped the marketing. Demand was already coming. Our job was to make Bitpanda the obvious, trusted choice for everyone who arrived... and to make sure they stayed.

02Build a brand people trust

In 2018, crypto was new to most people. Plenty of bankers called it a bubble.

We didn't argue. We picked a side.

Bitpanda was the new kid on the block. The rebel alternative to the bank your parents used. But a rebel you could trust with your money: European, clear about fees, easy to use.

That mix is hard. Too rebellious and you look like a casino. Too safe and you look like a bank. Getting it right was most of the brand work.

03Build a community around the brand

The rebel idea gave people something to join. So we built the community around it.

In 2018, crypto conversations happened in two places: Bitcointalk and Reddit. That's where we were. Answering questions and taking the criticism. Plus organic social on every platform that wouldn't sell us ads.

Slow. Didn't scale like paid. But it built trust with exactly the people who told their friends which app to use.

04Teach people before you sell to them

Most people didn't buy Bitcoin because they didn't understand it.

So we leaned into education. In December 2019 we launched Bitpanda Academy: free beginner lessons in English and German, from the history of money to wallets and keys. At the time, very few crypto companies offered anything like it.

Education does two jobs at once. It builds trust with beginners. And it gives search engines something worth ranking.

05Fix the funnel

Getting people to the app was half the job. Getting them to a first purchase was the other half.

So we kept optimising the funnel, from signup to verification to the first buy. Every improvement there made every other channel more valuable, because more of the people we brought in actually converted.

06Earn the attention you can't buy

With paid social closed, we had to make things people wanted to talk about.

On 1 April 2019, we announced tulips as a new asset class on Bitpanda. Tokenised tulip bulbs, kept in "cold storage". The next day we posted an update: sadly, the bulbs had all died.

A joke, obviously. Aimed at everyone who kept calling crypto tulip mania. It made the critics part of our marketing.

In August 2019, we went further. We projected Bitcoin onto buildings in London, Paris and Zurich, including the Bank of England. 33 locations over four days, with lines like "Do you trust your bank?" and "Bitcoin is the future of money".

Today you see Bitcoin logos on buildings all the time. In 2019, nobody was doing it.

07Own search, paid and organic

When someone decided to buy their first Bitcoin, they googled it.

We wanted to be there every time. So we invested heavily in both paid and organic search.

Paid search, obviously, ran for as long as we were allowed. Once Google's ban kicked in, SEO became even more important. Organic rankings were the one search channel nobody could switch off.

Brand, community and PR created interest. Search was where we caught it.

Along the way I built the marketing team from zero to 17 people.

What fintech CMOs can take from it

• Know what's driving your growth. Then build everything around it.
• Build trust first. In finance, people buy the brand before the product.
• Teach before you sell. Education earns trust and search traffic at the same time.
• Fix the funnel before you buy more traffic.
• When a channel closes, make something people want to share.

Right product. Right time.

And a brand people trusted enough to give it a try.

Frequently asked questions

How did Bitpanda grow its user base?

Between January 2018 and December 2019, Bitpanda grew from around 100,000 to over 1 million users. It had a head start: a good product, the right timing as crypto went mainstream, and little real competition in Europe, especially in DACH. Marketing, led by Head of Marketing Imo Babics, turned that into users with a trusted brand positioned as the rebel alternative to traditional finance, a community on Bitcointalk, Reddit and organic social, education through Bitpanda Academy, funnel optimisation, PR stunts such as a tulip April Fools campaign and Bitcoin projections in London, Paris and Zurich, and paid and organic search, at a time when crypto ads were banned on Facebook and Google.

Who led marketing at Bitpanda?

Imo Babics was Head of Marketing at Bitpanda from January 2018 to December 2019. He built the marketing team from zero to 17 people while the platform grew from around 100,000 to over 1 million users. Bitpanda later became Austria's first fintech unicorn in March 2021.

How do you grow a fintech when paid social is restricted?

Start by understanding what is actually driving growth, such as product or timing, and build around it. Build a trusted brand, educate beginners, optimise the funnel from signup to first purchase, create campaigns that earn media and social sharing instead of buying reach, invest in search to capture existing demand, and build community where your users already talk.