Fintech Analysis: Revolut Vs Monzo

The two main players in the industry which are both challenger banks are Revolut established in 2013, and Monzo Bank established in 2015, both competing directly with the longer established banks.

They’re both direct competitors and at the top of the industry, however, who has the better digital marketing strategy??We have analysed the digital marketing strategy of these two players in the UK, France, Italy, and Spain. Gaining a deeper understanding of the audience they are targeting, countries, performance, keywords targeted, and their main marketing investments. The knowledge gained from this analysis is important for other #Fintech companies in the industry, to help them understand what they should be focusing on and the best practices.

In order to achieve this analysis we used #SEMRush and #Spyfu tools.

What countries are they targeting and where is their traffic coming from?

We’ve been looking at the overall traffic over the past 6 months, and the top countries using the platforms. Starting with?Revolut, we can see that?traffic distribution is even across the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, with a smaller focus on Spain and Italy. The majority of their traffic is direct, followed by SEO which brought in 2.8 million users to the website in January 2022 alone.

In comparison, we saw that?the majority of Monzos traffic is from the UK, which indicates that they are focusing mainly on the UK, whereas Revolut is focusing on the UK and other areas in Europe. Similarly, the majority on Monzos traffic is direct followed by organic search, in which 432K users visited the website in January 2022.?At a glance this could look like Revolut is the more popular company as it’s performing better organically, however, let’s look into the actual reasons why they are dominating the internet.

The main focus for Revolut is also the UK. However, in comparison to Monzo,?Revolut has focused on having keywords spread over a couple of countries. This shows that they are branching out into different markets and have integrated this as part of their digital marketing strategy. We would expect the number of keywords indexed for the other European countries to grow as they improve their?#SEO Strategy, therefore?resulting in higher traffic, targeting a wider range of prospective consumers and companies.

Monzo are spread thinly over the other countries as it’s not their main focus, but what are the advantages and disadvantages of this? It all depends on their resources, they do have a smaller forecasted marketing budget, so they might want to focus all their efforts on the UK before expanding into other international markets. However as SEO is a long-term strategy,?the initial findings could show that they have started to target other markets, but they are only just starting to see results. As we dive further into this analysis, it will help us gain a better insight into this.

Paid Search vs SEO

Monzo is predominantly focusing their efforts on SEO in the UK, they do have paid campaigns they are working on, however, this isn’t the main part of their digital marketing strategy. As you can see, the paid search estimated spend is 16k per month in the UK, in comparison to almost zero in other countries. This is more evidence that they are focusing all their efforts on the UK before expanding into other international markets.

In comparison,?Revolut also has a strong SEO presence in the UK but is also heavily investing in paid search within the UK?(between 150k to 200k per market per month), as part of a wider marketing strategy. Their focus for both SEO and?paid?search?is more varied as they are concentrating their attention on upcoming markets such as France, Italy, and Spain.?Revolut is focusing on several marketing within Europe, increasing the audience reach for their brand, allowing them to grow across several countries.

Paid Search

Revolut invest a large part of its budget in buying competitors’ keywords such as “Monzo”, “HSBC business”, and “Lloyds commercial business”. This is known as?brand bidding?and there are many reasons why Revolut has taken this approach:

• High-quality traffic?– If you offer the same services as a competitor, you know that brand bidding will result in high-quality traffic. As this traffic will consist of users looking for a service or product provided by a competitor, we can assume that it will have high intent and is likely to result in a conversion.
• Brand exposure?– Users that are searching for a competitor within your industry, are also looking for the services or products that you provide. This can help directly target a competitor’s audience, and increase brand awareness for your company.
• Inexpensive clicks?– Generally, brand keywords aren’t expensive and so can generate relatively inexpensive clicks.

On the other hand,?Monzo is taking the opposite approach.?They seem to buy a lot of their?own brand keywords?which is unusual, as well as informational queries such as “what is a monzo card” and “monzo transfer limit”, landing this traffic to the homepage.?This is not a great strategy to acquire new users?in our opinion, as the budget is being wasted on visitors that are already specifically looking for Monzo. In comparison, if they targeted keywords that were just related to their product, they would be introducing new visitors to the website who might have not previously heard about them. Or they could take a similar approach to Revolut and bid on competitor branded keywords.

Revolut has a larger marketing budget than Monzo for paid search and is increasing their budget month after month, which suggests it’s going successfully for them. In January 2022 alone, they spent around 200K in SEM just for the UK, whilst Monzo only spent 20K.

On top of that,?Revolut is using different landing pages, business-related queries all land on?https://www.revolut.com/business/business-account, while other queries land directly on the App Store download page. It’s important to have different landing pages that are relevant to your ads, as it plays a large part in how Google Ads calculates your Quality Score. It’s also vital for a great user experience, Revolut do a great job of using relevant landing pages and making them easily usable and organised, with a clear call-to-action.?This is an area that Monzo could improve on.

Currently, the biggest focus for Revolut seems to be their ‘business account’. In order to acquire more business customers, Revolut is focusing on buying direct competitors’ keywords and covering the top 3 positions in Google Ads for that type of query, to following an example of the most bought keywords and correspondent rankings in the last 12 months.

Integrated Search – Paid Vs Organic Comparison

When comparing organic keyword rankings, Revolut and Monzo are similar in terms of size. Revolut is at around 300k with the help of the brand searches they’re targeting, whilst Monzo with fewer brand searches, is at a similar level thanks to their strong rankings for high volume unbranded keywords.

However, Revolut is much bigger in regards to paid search as they invest a lot more on this channel in comparison to Monzo. This allows Revolut to target a larger audience and gain more traffic, converting into customers.

Branded Traffic

Revolut has a higher average monthly brand search for all countries in comparison to Monzo,?it shows that they are becoming popular and a talked-about Fintech company throughout Europe. There are several ways that Revolut may have increased its brand awareness such as TV and social media campaigns, paid search, digital display ads and press releases. Brand awareness is important as it drives consumers’ decisions when differentiating between competing companies, and in many circumstances, it can be the deciding factor.

As we look deeper into the analysis, we can see that their main brand keywords are similar, but the search volume is significantly higher for Revolut. Further confirming our analysis that Revolut has higher brand awareness, as branded terms are a result of brand recognition.

Unbranded Traffic

A crucial part of any?content marketing SEO strategy?is unbranded traffic, this traffic comes from general search queries that are often research-based. It’s an amazing opportunity for new customers to find your brand, this can open a huge new audience and allows you to target those who may have never heard of you before, providing the services they are searching for. These can be highly competitive as it’s likely your competitors are also targeting the same keywords with high search volumes.

Monzo has been outperforming Revolut in regards to unbranded keywords for SEO. They have been implementing an acquisition strategy to its blog, targeting relevant topics based on search volume for users searching for queries related to the finance world (i.e.?https://monzo.com/blog/2019/04/17/shoud-i-get-a-credit-card?or?https://monzo.com/blog/2018/09/07/open-a-uk-bank-account). Targeting queries such as ‘should I get a credit card’ or ‘how to open a uk brand account’ allows a new audience to discover their services.?Blogs are an important part of content marketing?and can significantly increase the amount of traffic and prospective customers a website receives. Revolut also has a blog on their website, however, their articles aren’t answering the questions that their prospective audience is asking in the search engines. Therefore, even though they are probably generating traffic through them, it’s not as targeted as Monzo’s strategy.

Also, Monzo is ranking better than Revolut for high volume generic keyword.

In contrast,?Revolut is not ranking well for unbranded high-volume keywords. They are acquiring a high proportion of their traffic through information searches landing on the help section of the website, however, some of those queries don’t seem extremely relevant so won’t be as beneficial. When looking at unbranded traffic and overall SEO strategy, Monzo seems to be performing well as they’re ranking high in the search engines for relevant, competitive keywords.

Revolut – Outside of the UK

As we previously reported, Monzo is predominantly a UK business with roughly 90% of its traffic coming from the UK. On the contrary, Revolut is pushing harder with its expansion internationally, let’s see how that looks in more detail for Revolut.

Spain

Revolut has completely localised its website?which is beneficial for SEO traffic. They are using a strategy that targets generic keywords through landing pages (e.g. ‘buy crypto’ Invertir en cryptomoneda) with this landing page?https://www.revolut.com/es-ES/pasar-de-efectivo-a-criptomoneda-al-instante?and ‘international transfer’ (transferencia internacional) with?https://revolut.com/es-ES/money-transfers).

The investment in SEM for Spain is very small with only around €2,000.00 per month being spent, which does not give us enough data to analyse in further detail. However as they start seeing results in the Spanish market, they will likely increase their investment.

In comparison, they increased their spending on SEM in the last two months, reaching almost 200k USD per month, and again targeting local competitors’ keywords (e.g. Venmo, Zelle, Transferwise). On top of that, they have also targeted well-known crypto trading platforms such as Coinbase and have dedicated landing pages for this campaign (e.g.?https://www.revolut.com/go-from-cash-to-crypto-instantly).?They have not only been expanding their services internationally, but also the services they offer. Revolut’s cryptocurrency service allows users to buy, sell, and send digital currencies at the touch of a button, with no hidden fees. Monzo also allows cryptocurrency exchanges, however it isn’t something they actively market and only have a small section about this on the help section of the website (e.g.?https://monzo.com/help/payments-getting-started/monzo-crypto-friendly).

Italy

Similar situation to Spain, with around 70% of the traffic branded. The fully localised website helps in acquiring SEO traffic, especially through the Help/FAQ and blog section. Whereas the spending in SEM is almost zero. This shows that even though they are expanding internationally,?they have a bigger focus on SEO, and SEM could be an area that they have only started investing in.

Summary

Overall, there are a lot of pros and cons to both Revolut’s and Monzo’s digital marketing strategies.?Revolut is expanding internationally, they have a large focus on the UK and other European countries. This is a huge move as?establishing your business internationally?not only attracts new customers, but it also?improves your company’s reputation and gain greater credibility. It’s also allowing them to stay ahead of the competition. If Monzo wants to compete with Revolut, it will have to start focusing more on international expansion. However, as discovered in this analysis, they have started taking small steps towards this.

Revolut and Monzo are both predominantly focusing on SEO with?Revolut having more brand awareness online, however,?Monzo is outperforming Revolut in regards to unbranded keywords. Revolut could improve its SEO by taking a similar tactic to Monzo, targeting relevant topics based on search volume for queries relating to the finance world, and queries such as ‘should I get a credit card’ to allow a new audience to discover its services. Monzo has a much more targeted approach to its SEO strategy, therefore it’s not surprising that they are ranking better for high volume generic keywords.

On the other hand,?Revolut is outperforming Monzo in their paid ad campaigns.?Monzo should incorporate some of its strategies?such as buying?competitors’ keywords and creating targeted landing pages for the campaigns. This would only use a small amount of their budget, however, would make a huge impact on the success of their paid media campaigns.

What can FinTech companies learn from this analysis?

We’ve analysed the digital marketing strategies for two of the biggest Fintech companies, and have shown that there are improvements that they can continue to make to improve their strategies for both SEO and paid media. These improvements don’t necessarily mean having to increase their current marketing budget.

From the findings we have discovered, we would recommend Fintech companies improve their digital marketing strategies in the following ways:

• Improve brand exposure?– You can improve your brand exposure through brand bidding. This will allow you to target users that are searching for a competitor within your industry, who are looking for the services or products that you provide. It also allows you to help directly target a competitor’s audience.
• Brand Bidding?– Following on from the previous point, brand bidding will also result in high-quality traffic and inexpensive clicks. It’s a great way to utilise both large and small budgets.
• Focus on unbranded keywords?– This opens a new audience that might have never heard about you before, you’re offering them a solution to the query that they are searching for. In general, you should look for keywords that have low competitiveness but high search volume, improving the SEO for your website before targeting the most competitive keywords.
• Create unique landing pages for paid media campaigns?– Creating targeted landing pages not only improves your Quality Score on Google Ads, but also plays a huge part in user experience. Having a landing page that is easily usable, organised, and has a clear call-to-action can be the difference between a potential customer clicking straight off your website, and a customer converting.
• Internal content marketing through blogs?– There are many SEO benefits for blogs, but it also improves credibility within the industry and can be a deciding factor for consumers and brands.

These are a few of the ways in which FinTech companies can improve their digital marketing strategies based on the findings from our Revolut vs Monzo analysis.

About WeDevTeam (Nexa)

WeDevTeam (Nexa) is an independent full-service digital agency specialising in international growth. We work as a strategic partner with +90 companies and upcoming start-ups who need our partnership to give them a boost, and we’ve been expanding into the Fintech industry.

We have the competitive edge over other agencies due to our growing international team, making us the perfect partner not just for your?digital marketing strategy, but for international growth. We are active with projects in more than 7+ countries and our?digital marketing consulting?and?international automation?services?can take your business to the next level.

If you’re a business in the Fintech industry,?contact us?to find out how we can improve your marketing strategies and grow your business further.