The competitor analysis report is based on Mint Company, which is one of the largest budget tracking and planning companies and the main competitor of Personal Capital. Mint is an online based service provider company that helps the customers by creating personalised finance applications. The main purpose of the application is to offer services regarding management of personal finances, organising payment of bills, and budgeting. One of the unique strategies of the company is to notify the customers regarding the connected bank account information, as well as details of credit cards and retirement accounts. The company was introduced in 2007, and by the end of 2010, the company managed to acquire over 10 million users or subscribers of the application (Bitrián, Buil and Catalán 2021). Mint also developed personalised and secured programs in the application that are beneficial in terms of protecting the financial details of the customers from getting leaked in the market. Mint specifically aims to unify the financial factors such as bills, credit cards, bank accounts, investments and many more factors so that customers can manage their personal financial information without including any complex process. Competitive advantage has been conducted in this assignment with the help of the RACE model.
Mint is offering management of financial services through internet facilities, and the company is registered under software and tech services industries. Delivering high quality and protected financial services is the main motto of the company, which has helped them to position their brand in the market. According to the latest reports, the current deals that they have made are worth 170 million U.S. dollars (mint.intuit.com. 2022). Therefore, it can be considered that the company has a significant brand value in the financial market. The company runs their operations with 40 employees, which indicates that the company has the opportunity to focus on improving productivity by increasing the labour force (mint.intuit.com. 2022). Currently, the company is acquired and merged and does not have single ownership.
Creating brand awareness is the fundamental factor for achieving desired success in the market. Developing and positioning a capstone bank or a financial consultancy is easier in the market, as the customers are already aware of the business concept. Managing and organising personal financial data are regular necessities of the customers; therefore, the capstone banks do not need to create separate promotional strategies to reach the desired number of customers. However, digital financial services are a new business concept in the market, which started with Mint in 2007 (Al Ahbabi and Nobanee 2019). Mint created an undifferentiated customer targeting strategy in the market and focused on delivering their services to as much as possible customers with financial management demands in the market. The initial goal of the company was to attract the attention of young professionals (Heinonen, Campbell and Ferguson, 2019). Initially, the company launched a blog channel in order to provide financial pieces of advice to young professionals who are in need of advice regarding the management of personalised financial prospects. This helped the company to develop brand recognition among the customers regarding their product and services offerings. Mint focused on important yet regular matters like financial issues of college students and delivered financial solutions through blogging channels. Several blogs of the company were largely accepted by the customer based, and soon in 2013, the company achieved a milestone of having 10 million users of their services (Fombelle et al. 2020).
The brand was marketed as both content and sales marketing; therefore, it was a challenge for the company to develop strategies that could satisfy customers having different interests. Mint achieved more than 20,000 email subscribers as employed financial strategists and financial content creators under a tight budget (Bernarto et al. 2020). It helped the company to develop quality service content, which simplified financial complex procedures for the customers in need. Within the first quarters of 2015, Mint witnessed website visit growths and reported that approximately 8 million visits increased for the company per year (Ouassini 2018). The company engaged with the customers through quality financial content from the very beginning and committed to providing them with appropriate financial suggestions. Therefore, it helped the company to acquire a large number of customers within a short period of time and develop a high level of brand awareness among the customers.
This part of the model suggests the activities taken up by the company in order to interact with the customers. Appropriate activities benefit the company in terms of increasing customer satisfaction as well as commitment. Several years after the launch of the company, Mint started getting complaints from the customers regarding misplace of financial transactions and information shown by the application. It threatens the company in terms of a decline in the revenue rate. As a result, the company had to take immediate measures or actions in order to mitigate the crisis situation (Ganev 2018). The company focused on changing the design of the website and application, where the company incorporated innovative facilities. Mint managed to bring concepts of behavioural economics and data science together. The integrated power of these two factors helped the company to provide real-world transaction data to the customers and revealed the issues behind the over drafting of the financial as well as transaction data of the customers. It has largely helped the company to rebuild the trust and transparency among the customers and increased their satisfaction.
In order to improve the facilities of the website as well as the application, the company focused on changing the overall application engineering procedure. Artificial Intelligence technology was incorporated by the designers, which helped the company to reduce their manual effort behind recording the transaction histories of the customers (Prihartono and Asandimitra 2018). In addition, Mint has managed to open up several revenue streams that increased the profitability of the company. Life insurance, credit cards, investment products, personal loans and several other financial categories in which the company promote products. The resources of the platform increased up to these many categories because the company changed its leadership team and structure in order to restructure the regulations and commit to more sources (Wu and Chien 2019). The company adapted to the freemium business model in order to attract more customers. This model suggests that the customers can utilise the free of cost services provided by the company as much as they want. However, in order to get additional features, the customers need to pay additional charges. This was also beneficial in terms of maintaining profit as well as engaging customers with the application and website facilities on a regular basis.
This section of the model suggests strategies that are beneficial for transforming the users into buyers. Some of the activities and strategies of the company will be stated, which is important in terms of changing the customer buying perceptions and increasing the profitability of the company. In terms of changing customers’ perceptions and convincing them to purchase the services provided by the company, Mint utilises the growth marketing strategy. The company has also recorded that they receive 100,000 new subscribers of their application every six months (Skare and Porada-Rocho? 2019). The employees are given specific targets to acquire new customers on a frequent basis and educate the audiences regarding the purpose of the applications and financial programs offered by the company. Mint successfully developed a framework regarding and used a Reverse engineering growth marketing strategy. In this type of marketing strategy, the company focuses on developing a plan that starts from the destination to the route back in the initial phases of the company. For example, the company developed key objectives and designed the position of the company in the market. Once the objectives were set, they developed a plan that was beneficial in terms of achieving the objectives in a shorter time span. This process is also known as the Quant-based marketing strategy, which consists of three main steps. The first step is to develop the key goals, following creating an appropriate time frame for the activities to be taken and finally setting up the spreadsheet. Mint has an objective of achieving more than or close to 1 million users (Burden-Strevens 2022). Although, due to the unpredictable market situations, the company is unable to find out the demands of the customers regarding the new business concept of online financial services. Therefore, setting up a timeframe for the goals was a difficult challenge for the company. However, the growth marketing strategy helped them to reach the target by 2013, which is seven years after the company was launched in the market. The company had a tight budget, due to which they focused on content marketing at first, and through the contents, they educated the customers regarding the benefits of financial management through online services (Ho 2018). Apart from the growth strategy, Mint can also focus on the communication facilities so that they can receive valuable feedback from the customers regarding the services. It is also important to research the internal resources so that they can provide accurate information to the customers regarding their services facilities. As a result, it will help in increasing the interest of the customers and turn them into valuable customers from users.
Transparency between the company and their customers is the main factor that develops customer loyalty towards the company. In order to engage and retain the customers, Mint utilises the Automated Customer lifecycle notifications to engage with the customers on a frequent basis. As a technology-based company, Mint also incorporates new features on its programs on a regular basis (Puron-Cid, Reddick and Ganapati 2019). Therefore, it becomes important for the company to inform the customers regarding the new features through automated notifications. The company also suggests that customers use various types of features in order to improve their experience with the company. For example, Mint developed some of the new features after launching the company in the market, such as monitoring progress against financial objectives developed by the customers, budgeting daily financial factors, alerts on irregular transactions, and monitoring the overall transaction history. Budgets and alerts are the main two factors on which Mint concentrates (Althnian 2021). The push messages and emails regarding new posts or features are also provided by the company to the customers. The main purpose of the company is to provide every detailed information to the customers so that they are always updated regarding the facilities of the customers. One of the important features of the company is to develop pre-created budgets for the individual customers so that they can understand the importance of the financial facilities and purchase the services from the company.
Conclusion
It can be summarised that Mint has focused on creating valuable brand awareness among the customers in order to increase brand value in the market. The company has followed the growth marketing strategy that has increased the number of customers for the company in a short period of time. Content marketing played a huge role for the company in terms of engaging with the customers and convincing them to purchase the services of the company. It can be observed that the company developed various innovative features in the application created by them in order to retain the existing customers as well as acquire new customers. In addition, the automated notification technology helps them to provide real-time data regarding the financial prospects to the customers. This is also beneficial for increasing customer engagement with the company. Mint manages to acquire a huge number of customers within a limited period of time; therefore, other businesses like Personal Capital can face difficulties in terms of acquiring new customers from the market.
Mint has been considered as one of the largest growing digital financial Application companies that has been able to acquire a large market share in this specific industry. The appropriate marketing strategy at the initial stages of the company is a valuable lesson for the companies like Personal Capital. The company’s value and net sales can be a huge threat to the new entrants in the market. The increased brand awareness has helped the company to position itself as one of the leading companies in the market.
References
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Althnian, A., 2021. Design of a Rule-based Personal Finance Management System based on Financial Well-being. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 12(1).
Bernarto, I., Berlianto, M.P., Palupi, Y.F.C., Meilani, M., Masman, R.R. and Suryawan, I.N., 2020. The influence of brand awareness, brand image, and brand trust on brand loyalty. Jurnal Manajemen.
Bitrián, P., Buil, I. and Catalán, S., 2021. Making finance fun: the gamification of personal financial management apps. International Journal of Bank Marketing.
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Heinonen, K., Campbell, C. and Ferguson, S.L., 2019. Strategies for creating value through individual and collective customer experiences. Business Horizons, 62(1), pp.95-104.
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mint.intuit.com. 2022. Managing money, made simple. [online] Available at: <https://mint.intuit.com/> [Accessed 26 March 2022].
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Prihartono, M.R.D. and Asandimitra, N., 2018. Analysis factors influencing financial management behaviour. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(8), pp.308-326.
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