How many customers does Starling Bank have?

Will Monzo do anyTV/Radio advertising. Heard Starling advertising on Capital recently surely that do wonders to their growth.

They currently have around 350,000 customers I believe (according to Anne in a recent interview) :smiley:

From the adverts that both Monzo and Starling have done, I’ve not seen any stats showing how well they work.

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I agree in aspects they dont need radio/advertising however, targeting young people to manage money responsibly radio advertising on the likes of Capital would be excellent
To get that message across on the Globals (owner of Capital Fm and Heart) platforms people notice.

Do younger people listen to the radio? Thought it was all Spotify and sound cloud

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Capital FM brand is the biggest in the UK with millions and millions of listeners

From what I’ve seen so far (and I may be wrong), but Monzo up until recently, have spent very little on marketing full stop (the odd train station take over or something), but it’s generally been word of mouth (and it’s been very successful).

With their new plans to grow their account holders, I’m sure you’ll see other ways of marketing, outside of the tube posters they have now etc.

You’ve got to spend money to make money as they say, but I’m not sure if the spend would be justified in Monzo’s case (but I’m not a marketing expert).

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In the car I just put on the radio saves me pairing my phone, even though I pay for streaming.

Also in workplaces instead of arguing about music the radio goes on and that’s it.

What would be quite interesting is a comparison of how many customers each has who is #fullMonzo / #fullStarling

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FullMonzo and FullStarling would be interesting , but not the type of figures I guess would be readily offered from either company ? , the number of user figures are slightly irrelevant I would suggest - I have both Starling and Monzo, neither is my main bank account although I do all my personal spending through Monzo.

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Radio play and sync placements. Getting regular BBC Radio 1 airplay combined with having a song in an EA/FIFA football videogame and a couple of movies were the most money I ever made in the music business.

Radio play is massively political though, especially the higher paying stations like BBC stations. Won’t get on the A-list without the right plugger.

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I thought the money was in the tours rather than radio plays :man_shrugging:

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I did 3 or 4 world tours over the space of a decade. Once you take away management cut, agent cut, the actual costs of touring, then split everything between bandmembers (or pay your hired musicians)… eh. You either have to be an artist on the level of the ones l8n mentioned, or be willing to tour like 9 months out of every 12. In the past, package tours like Warped could mitigate a lot of this for acts by having a ton of big brand sponsors, but even they couldn’t sustain in this climate.

Touring is a lot of fun but there’s really not much money in it for the vast majority of acts, even those of us who were signed to majors and had some promo push!

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I feel that Monzo don’t need to stoop down to the cheesy advert level. Sure they have a few on the underground because London is a trendy place and it could do well but the majority of people blank out when the radio adverts go on.

Not to mention that the main target audience is young people and young people don’t really listen to the radio (saving the argument of if they should as it supports artists better is a different topic)

The colour of the card is an incredible marketing tool in itself. People see it, ask about it, learn about it, look into it, then the Monzo website does the rest of the convincing from there.

Doing well on the AppStore is also a great way of advertising.

One thing I would suggest is maybe some Monzo staff going around universities when there is fairs and things going on and maybe talking about financial health and could even throw in some recruitment and career advertising in there while they are at it.

Apart from that though, Monzo are doing great and adverts don’t really do business growth that much good. You are better off with word of mouth and building a product that people actually want to use.

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I’m completely with the last poster.

This is purely a banding about of opinion - but I think some advertising and more presence in the regions could be useful for long term growth. London is massively important of course, but in places like Manchester - Monzo seems to be much less prevalent. There are huge student hubs like Fallowfield and Rusholme where thousands of students commute through to the big unis along the Oxford Road bus corridoor (the busiest in Europe). The cheap Magic Buses are often packed with young people on their way to uni/work. Some on bus/in bus eyecatching ads to promote brand awareness and reinforce word of mouth talk could be useful?

How about student reps at unis throughout the country, or presence at Freshers’ Fairs etc.? Monzo has built a fantastic product for simple financial management with a brilliant community. Even hooking up with places lots of young people use like gyms/clubs/shops around universities for soft benefits like priority entry when using Monzo - small discounts etc. might be an avenue to consider.

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This is a great idea :+1:

Looks like starling are on a 55k new users a month

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Starling Bank has lots of positive reviews on Trustpilot. A lot of folk goes there and checks stats. This works as kind of an advert too. I have checked Monzo on TP and there is like 13 reviews? I know you can’t push positive stuff everywhere but spreading positive feedback sometimes works better than any advert, especially in era of internet. :thinking:

Monzo have 376 reviews on Trust Pilot currently, compared to 1,617 for Starling.

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Wow @simonb helluva story.

Which band where you in? Colour me curious

Yep, you are right. I saw monzo.co.uk instead of com. Silly me. But still, there is a lot of 1’s in comments tho :frowning: