Seven tips to make your forex broker marketing strategy work to the fullest.
Emerging Forex brokers have to solve a whole range of challenges that every young business comes up against. These issues relate not only to the technical support and equipment of the trading platform but also to its promotion in the oversaturated market. We discussed how a promising marketing strategy for modern brokerage companies can look with Yvonne Hambridge, Senior Marketing Manager at FXOpen. FXOpen is a global Forex and CFD broker, which has been operating in the market for more than 15 years and utilizes Soft-FX software solutions.
Consider your positioning in the market.
The volume of the Forex market is currently estimated at 6.6 trillion dollars. Around 9.5 million people around the world trade online. This means that roughly one in every seven hundred of all the people who live on our planet can become your client. This is a tempting customer base, but the problem is that the total number of Forex brokers, both large and small, totals in the hundreds. You need to be prepared to cut through the information noise that other Forex marketing campaigns create, and it's important to understand exactly what makes your company stand out from the rest, and exactly how you will tell potential clients about yourself.
The Forex industry at the moment is fairly heavily saturated with various brokers, and for the most part they offer the same thing; most brokers offer tight spreads, a lot provide ECN execution. In terms of the chosen FX business model and its features, this will make it harder to differentiate your offering. So brand awareness is key. It will be necessary to make your target audience understand what trading with your particular FX broker can offer, in addition to the basic brand hygiene factors of tight spreads, round-the-clock support, and a variety of trading instruments (although these features are important to mention). The strategy of building brand awareness depends on the specifics of each particular Forex business and its target audience. Some classic industry examples are sports sponsorships and partnerships, or building a wide affiliate network.
FXOpen Senior Marketing Manager.
The best basic strategy to implement in a Forex broker marketing plan is to decide how you want to talk about your FX business, what makes you different, and to whom you want to convey your message to in the first place.
Optimize your digital advertising model.
In the case of online trading, a successful marketing strategy almost always includes some form of paid advertising. However, one should remember to manage advertising budgets wisely and regularly measure the effectiveness of paid promo campaigns, matching them with the business plan.
Paid search is a great tool to drive highly targeted traffic to your website. But in order to make this channel effective, you shouldn't forget about traffic and user segmentation to ensure you're really targeting the right section of your intended audience. Be sure to test paid search campaigns, every step of the way, and make refinements as needed. A good approach to take in Forex advertising is to not look at paid search in isolation. Ensure a multi-channel approach that will consider any related social media accounts, email marketing, web content and everything else that helps to reinforce your brand message.
FXOpen Senior Marketing Manager.
Use a blended approach to Forex advertising to position yourself at your customers’ touchpoints.
Remember that content is a cost-effective instrument.
In a marketer's toolkit, content is probably the most versatile and one of the most effective resources, as long as it is properly communicated to the target audience. Your marketing team can create a single piece that can be efficiently used for a website main page, for a blog post, for an email campaign, and for various other uses. And if there's one thing we can be sure of in an ever-changing and digitalizing environment, it's that the role of content is only going to strengthen, so you have to make every piece of content that is created work as hard as possible across multiple channels. Also, quality content is a good way to build a network of influencers, as engaging posts and articles always create points of discussion. Unlike forced, bonus-driven user behavior, refined and personalized content makes everything work naturally.
At this point, it is useful to mention ensuring consistent messaging in the content that’s produced. This helps sustain your differentiation from other brokers and to ensure that each piece published is aligned with the overall marketing strategy. A brand book/brand guidelines may become an ultimate help in achieving consistent messaging, as content assets are often created by several people or even departments, and a brand book ensures everybody is on the same page with what’s being created, from digital assets to blog posts.
FXOpen Senior Marketing Manager.
Content is the king, but only when consistent messaging is ensured.
Invest in your traders' education.
Regardless of the category of traders your company is targeted at, any Forex advertising model involves some form of client education. The field of foreign exchange is not the easiest to master, and every trading platform is based on solutions that require onboarding. Even if you're confident that 90% of your clients have extensive experience, activities such as educational webinars and helpful media content will provide you with the rewarding image of a customer-conscious company.
Every FXOpen client has access to a vast knowledge base and media content that covers all levels of Forex trading, from introductory explanations to advanced concepts like algorithmic trading. This way we make sure that every trader has not only access to the wide range of instruments and analytical tools provided by FXOpen, but also the ability to use them correctly. We represent the kind of Forex business that is committed to our client’s success and their comfort while using our platform, which is why educational content is an important marketing tool. We implement it everywhere from blog articles to email newsletters.
FXOpen Senior Marketing Manager.
The better your client understands what they are doing, the more likely they are to remain your client.
Balance out your email marketing.
It’s predominantly cheaper for a company to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one if we are talking about marketing costs. So it is important to utilize regular mailings to ensure that you are at the forefront of your customers’ minds. Email marketing will help build trust and long-term relationships with existing customers and, if handled carefully, can help attract new ones as well. If a company’s CRM service allows it, you can automate and customize emails and newsletters for different categories of customers.
You have to make sure that what you’re sending is not perceived as spammy. The content of your emails should be relevant to your customer base, but even useful and educational pieces of content can seem intrusive if you send them out too often. Determine the content and layout for different categories of emails, determine what frequency is appropriate for different customer segmentation, and gradually implement your email marketing strategy, tracking performance at each stage and making incremental changes along the way.
FXOpen Senior Marketing Manager.
Make sure your email marketing promo tools work in a way that you retain clients, not vice versa.
Explore social media platforms to find the right fit.
In this day and age, you don’t want to be excluding social media in its entirety, even if you are not looking to actively acquire clients through this Internet channel. The mere fact of having a social media profile instills trust in users, and it is a great way to communicate with your clients.
Even if a company doesn’t rely much on the social media account in terms of promotion, it’s generally a good idea to analyze the user activity to see what they say about you that they would not take the time to email to your customer support team. Also, identifying the social platform where most of your users are located can provide you with quite a few useful insights into new ways to interact with your target audience.
FXOpen Senior Marketing Manager.
You don't have to run an entire SMM department, but social media can be a great intelligence channel for your Forex broker marketing plan.
Find the right activity to engage your users.
Contests, as well as bonus and reward systems, not only help to attract new clients but, above all, allow existing users of the trading platform to look at the functionality or philosophy of the broker from a new perspective. PAMM accounts are also a great way to attract a new category of investors, who are passionate about the foreign exchange market but do not have time or opportunity to engage in trading directly. It is possible to find a suitable activity to match the resources or technological capabilities of almost any FX business.
The positives of having as many extra activities on your platform as possible are that your users get to experience products and offerings from a new perspective, so your relationship with the customer base does not get stale. You can also bring in your content resources to create some PR on the back of that and obtain publicity by providing newsworthy content for the media.
FXOpen Senior Marketing Manager.
Promo activities of any suitable kind will help bring both customer and press relations to the next level.
Final thoughts: personalizing your marketing strategy.
From all of the above, it tends to conclude that the more targeted you can become in your Forex marketing campaigns, the better. Once you've decided on your audience and the specific message you want to deliver, get to work and target exactly the right group for your Forex marketing strategy — MT5 users, algo traders, 2 investors, etc. It’s always best to make decisions based on data, so the more ideas, theories, and marketing products you can put in your A/B promo testing, the better.