Starling Ads EVERYWHERE

Not sure about anyone else but I’ve been bombarded by ads on Facebook YouTube etc in regards to the Starling current account. I’m worried that if Monzo isn’t careful/doesn’t get itself out there soon enough then Starling will dominate the market
What’s your opinions on this? Do you think this might threaten the size of the market that Monzo can dominate?
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I’m not worried in the slightest. Word of mouth and recommendations are worth far more in my opinion.

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Ads are typically targeted as we know, cookies, age, browsing. You’ve been researching fintech, they want you :wink:

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I think Monzo should be more worried about other FinTechs gaining significant first mover advantage in the EU and Asia.

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I think advertisements should definitely be part of Monzo’s marketing mix… word of mouth is great but Revolut/Starling/N26 are each acquiring thousands of new customers each day. Believe Revolut and N26 has 3 million and 2 million customers respectively.

Despite Monzo’s tube ads and referral schemes - their user growth has sort of plateaued around 95-100k customers a month. So the question is, what would it take to drive a next phase of growth? Entry to new countries/markets? More advertising and brand awareness? New products?

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I too have had a million ad’s form them…

Both Revolut and N26 are available in many more countries – would be more reasonable to compare their percentage market shares.

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I honestly have no concerns over monzo’s growth :wink:

This is a very healthy and consistent looking graph :sunglasses:

https://publicstats.itxdev.uk/d/000000001/monzo-current-acc?refresh=5m&orgId=1

Long term I think some advertising is sensible but word of mouth is a solid method. I can see personally in my “monzo bubble” that I’ve ‘recruited’ half a dozen people who between then have recruited half a dozen more, the web continues to grow :grin:

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Revolut and N26 are everywhere.

Monzo just UK, so population divided by active accounts is
66,739,364/1231701

That aprox 1 in every 54 people, just in the UK imagine if this was replicated in other countries by word of mouth too.

I think monzo have smashed the brand and trust factors, so are hopefully on right track.

I guess I am a bit pie in the sky as I’m a Monzo fan.

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Monzo would have the highest UK market share no doubt but point is other challenger banks are rapidly trying to achieve scale in other markets. I wonder if Monzo would be at a disadvantage if they focus too much on the UK market in the short term, thus make it increasingly hard to gain market share in other markets (particularly once Revolut, N26 and other players firmly establish their international presence).

We know the end game is to globalise - to get from 1 million users to 7 million + users you probably need to start adding new markets.

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Monzo could use its ‘fan base’ to do all its advertising. In theory they’d only have to spend the time and resources developing a few ads for which customers would then post on their own Facebook wall or office notice board etc which would enable a huge amount of publicity for dirt cheap if all ad development was done in house.

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Sure. I think it can backfire, though: N26 is rapidly expanding into new countries. Their foray into the UK so far, however, has been bad. Building a good product matters more than rapid expansion, and leaning on word-of-mouth over advertising helps to gauge quality.

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I think word of mouth is way better than advertising. When it comes with a personal recommendation people are way more likely to actually decide to switch, rather than just downloading the app out of curiosity and maybe ordering a card.

Would be interesting to see (though I know we won’t) sign-ups vs active account ratios.

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How many times have people passed comment on your monzo card? Never had a bank card be a talking point before.

When was last time someone said, “NatWest me that tenner you owe”, whereas people have said to me “Monzo me that tenner”, it was a conversation on here a while back, the word “Monzo” is almost being used as a verb in itself.

You couldn’t buy this amount of trending if you tried. It’s all gone so well so far!

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I’d say a high % of sign ups in UK are fintech fans, wanting the transparent card, or to simply see the app, can’t imagine many full account switching!

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I find their ad campaign baffling. If they had launched it as beta, that would be one thing.

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True. Though I’ve read that N26 currently holds customer deposits of €1 billion +, which works out to be c.€500 per customer so they are getting decent usage overall.

Wonder how much deposits Monzo holds now; in the last financial report I believe it was around £150 per customer.

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Hopefully the online reviews will also speak for themselves. Monzo has been voted ‘Which?’ best bank for 2019 so hopefully sliding this into my sales pitch I give my friends and colleagues will help further sway them into making the switch.

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Starling adverts come up on a game I play that annoys me so if anything it’s cheapening the brand to me.

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Quickly does some arithmetic.

Monzo are therefore acquiring between 3064 to 3571 (thousands) per day according to your numbers.

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