Why Monzo's LinkedIn content strategy is so on the money 💸

Hello and cock-a-doodle-do! 🐔 

I just had to start with that!

Welcome to this month’s edition of the Mother Clucker! — your monthly dose of brave B2B marketing insights, content strategy tips, and where I document the very wild ride of building Bravebird.

What’s up with Monzo?

If you know me, you’ll know I spent the last year or two before going full-time on Bravebird as Senior Demand Generation Manager at Metrikus, the API for workplace data. So I was trained to keep a keen eye on the goings on in the workplace world.

And something struck me every time I opened my god-damn LinkedIn feed.

Monzo’s tongue-in-cheek, office humour content – seemingly out of the ordinary for a straight-laced consumer banking app.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you will have seen these posts, I mean, they’re everywhere!

This focus on office-related content is something almost exclusive to its LinkedIn channel; and while the same warm-witted, peppy tone of voice is all over its Instagram and TikTok accounts, it’s only on LinkedIn where office content itself is the theme of the day. The week. The month. The hour. 

In fact, at the time of writing this post,71% of their LinkedIn posts from April to July (trust me, I counted!) – are humourous takes on the work or office setting; either referencing the office directly, or definitively poking fun at it in some way. That’s a big shift for a brand traditionally rooted in consumer banking.

From consumer bank (‘Monzo me!’), to business bank of choice?

While it might seem obvious that the office is a good starting point to resonate with working professionals, 71% of office content surely seems excessive? Particularly when 91% of UK workers have a positive sentiment of the opposite ie. working from home.

Well, with a closer inspection of Monzo’s GTM and product roadmap, as well as their growing share of the consumer finance market, it’s clear that there’s lots more going on under the hood, particularly in their desire to reach a more mature, enterprise market. 

You see, Monzo earns its revenue based on interfacing, taking 0.2% from every debit card transaction. So you can imagine the earning potential from positioning themselves as the go-to business bank, where companies typically have higher monthly expenses and each team member might have their own Monzo card…

It’s the over 400,000 business customers that have helped Monzo hit profitability for the first time last year, making it the 7th largest bank in the UK, after all.

So here’s where the office comes into play

Ok so the enterprise angle starts to make sense. But why office content?

The answer may well lie in their likely target account list, representing a particular slice of working professionals — companies with RTO mandates (Return to Office).

Institutions like Goldman Sachs and Amazon are pushing for full-time office returns, while others like Google and Microsoft are opting for hybrid models.

From an account-based marketing perspective, my hunch is it’s companies like these that Monzo is targeting — consultancy firms, tech companies, and others who have mandated full-time office presence for employees.

Monzo knows that workers may not love these mandates – they’re channeling this shared frustration as a community-building strategy.

And if their content feels like it’s written exclusively for a millennial and Gen-Z audience, that’s because it is.

These are the generations that are finally reaching middle management, and management level.

They’re finally the decision makers for new vendors.

They are finally the ones in charge of the company expenses card or signing off and approving expenses.

They’re now the recommender – the internal champion tasked with promoting the right business tools to senior leadership.

This generation psychographically cares about community, they love to feel part of a movement and Monzo is starting to build a fringe cult following around these workday emotions. 

We’re all in on the joke. We all love to hate the office. And when it comes time to pick the next company expenses card or bank account, Monzo will be top of mind for these key buyer personas.  

A strategic play for the enterprise market

So Monzo’s office humour isn’t just viral content — it’s a calculated move to capture the enterprise market. The bank is positioning itself as a relatable, forward-thinking option for businesses, particularly in sectors where office presence still matters.

This strategy aligns with their broader goals. Monzo has been making big moves into the US market, raising $397M earlier this year to fuel their product roadmap. As their COO Sujata Bhatia said last year, the “time is now” for Monzo, as it’s “the next big frontier.”

With the US market projected to see significant growth in enterprise companies by 2026, Monzo is positioning itself to capture this opportunity.

In 2022-2023, while 1.5 million people joined Monzo for personal accounts, 100,000 joined to access a business bank account, and their app has earned a 4.96/5 rating.

They’ve made strategic steps to appeal to big businesses, like buying carbon offset removals and leveraging their social proof and sustainability appeal to attract enterprise clients.

Their making efforts to appear both sensible to ESG-minded CFOs and purse string holders, and super relatable to the recommenders. ✅

Monzo’s viral content strategy: what we can learn

Monzo’s success with this approach offers some seriously valuable lessons for B2B founders looking to crack a tricky enterprise market or pivot from a B2C model. Here they are:

• Know Your Audience: Monzo’s office humour is perfectly tailored to the frustrations of their target audience — millennials and Gen-Z professionals who are now key decision-makers within larger enterprise organisations. Don’t forget to market to the everyday champions.

• Use the Right Channels: For Monzo, LinkedIn is the perfect platform for this kind of content, reaching professionals where they’re most active during the work day. So really take a hard look where your target audience is spending their time, and double down on these channels.

• Speak Their Language: Monzo’s tone of voice is distinct, friendly, and relatable, making their brand approachable and memorable. They even updated their tone of voice guide to speak directly to this audience, embedding it in all their activations. So always be speaking just like your customer does on the regular – that’s how you truly connect with them.

• Play the Long Game: This isn’t just about short-term gains. Monzo is renewing their long-term brand affinity by creating valuable, relatable content that really hits different with their audience. Short-term lead generation is important, but you can only capture demand if you’ve first created it, and this brand building exercise is a long game.

• ABM is a Multi-Channel Approach: Account-based marketing (ABM) isn’t just a sales software or tactic — it’s an integrated process between marketing and sales that permeates every channel, piece of content, and process. Monzo shows how a social media strategy aligned with an account-based approach can really drive revenue and sales – they just hit 10 million customers in the UK. Always be thinking about how you’re connecting the dots between your social strategy and your sales processes.

• Don’t sleep on including psychographics in your ABM strategy: If Monzo had ignored the power of community feelings around the office when targeting their enterprise audience, they wouldn’t be enjoying nearly half the kind of virality they have had over recent months. I talked about the importance of including psychographics when building your target account list on my recent post here.

Case study wrap up

Obviously I don’t work at Monzo, so I can’t say for sure. But it seems to me that Monzo’s shift to office humour isn’t just a trend (although Monzo is super self-aware in its role within the millennial and Gen Z zeitgeist).

It’s a strategic move to connect with a growing audience of professionals and decision-makers at companies that have the purchasing power to help 10x Monzo’s growth.

By understanding their audience, using the right channels, and speaking their language, they’re positioning themselves as the business bank of choice.

And that, my friend, is true demand generation in action. It’s brave, it’s different, and it’s paying off.

Bravebird updates 🐔

One of the biggest reasons I went full-time on my own was the potential to be more of a digital nomad. I’ve always felt like there’s so much more of the world to see, and the freedom to occasionally leave London and work remotely from anywhere was a huge draw!

Over the past month or two, I’ve had the chance to work from Paris during the Olympics (caught the Athletics finals!), Florence (enjoyed some amazing pizza in 38-degree weather) and at a beautiful English vineyard by Box Hill.

A few things I’m proud of in the last month or two:

🐦 I interviewed some real estate clients of my own Proptech client for their new case studies campaign. After combing through the interviews, writing up, and then designing the case studies in Figma, they’ve been integrated into a bottom-of-funnel campaign for user acquisition. In total I’ve created 5 long form case studies for this client and had an absolute blast doing it!

🐦 I set up a new retargeting campaign for a client on Meta. This campaign went live just two weeks ago, and has already racked up over 13,100 clicks to the company sign up page at just £0.01 per result, with more than 487,000 impressions. I used a series of Trustpilot reviews as the basis of this campaign to build further authority with the consumer and trigger a final action.

But the reason this worked so well was because of 3-4 initial months of running other full funnel campaigns, working hard to target exactly the right persona with relevant creatives and copy and updating the company homepage with a really aligned messaging to their demographic. In total I ran dozens of creative variations.

In short, it’s one of my most budget-effective retargeting campaigns to-date. But like all good demand generation campaigns, it took time and patience. (Interested in levelling up your ads strategy? Get in touch).

🐦 I had a lovely prep sesh for an upcoming demand generation podcast where I’ll be a featured guest – can’t wait to share all the deets with you when it’s live.

🐦 I went live with my brand new website in July and in the first two weeks had some solid inbounds!

🐦 I had some headshots taken by a good friend of mine. Modelling might not be in my future, but you can be the judge – a few of the pics are live on Bravebird.

🐦 I went live with my first edition of the Mother Clucker! (You’re reading it right now!) How did I do? This newsletter comes out on the last Friday of every month, where I’ll always being doing one deep dive into a company’s B2B positioning and a roundup from Bravebird.

I’m always open to feedback though, so just reply to this email! Would you read this weekly, over monthly? Like the length? What topics or companies would you like me to cover/breakdown? I’m open to all suggestions!