The wealth management industry struggles as customer acquisition costs are higher than the lifetime value of a customer. The high costs prevent small companies and startups from acquiring B2C clients—both investors and advisors. Lennart Asshoff, founder and CEO of Nucoro, a U.K.-based startup, sees an opportunity for startups to work in the B2B sector through partnerships with banks and other large financial institutions.
In our interview, he outlines how startups can deal with client acquisition and what differences there are in the European and U.S. markets in this regard.
Ways to overcome acquisition problems
These are the top-five best practices Lennart learned from using his B2B product, Nucoro, to fight against high client acquisition costs.
1. Focus on large institutions. In the retail market, there is intense competition for new clients. The amount of investment required is too large, so only big players with big budgets are able to acquire clients. Smaller companies, in turn, are trying to focus on providing B2B services for financial advisors.
2. Invest in publicity. To popularize a new brand with people so they trust you with their money and their savings is super difficult. That’s why startups have to make a lot of publicity efforts, especially marketing, in order to get them on board. Clients should have no doubt that a company is a reliable partner, no matter whether it focuses on institutions or people.
3. Build a digital-first product. Product should be way better in terms of user experience versus the competition. An important aspect of this is being mobile-first. This enables clients to obtain access to your account in a matter of seconds. You can change your risk level on our portfolio, which gives clients a lot more control and reactiveness.
“Let’s say medium to large financial institutions have half a million, a million, or a few million customers,” Asshoff says. “They know that at some point these customers will leave for better digital solutions because people like a digital-first product, not a product that has been around the retail brick-and-mortar stores.”
He adds that his project, Nucoro, aims to help those institutions make the leap into the current generation of digital products.
4. Innovate. Another way to attract customers is innovating and providing a cheaper service, such as done by Robinhood, Acorns and others. These companies reach millions of customers with a very simple proposition: be an extremely easy-to-use and convenient platform and have zero commission stock trading. Making products easier and more affordable requires innovation.