Forex Broker Marketing Plan: 11 Strategic Tips for the Win
In the highly competitive realm of forex trading, it’s crucial that forex brokers start thinking more innovatively about how they reach out to prospective clients. Particularly since entirely new generations of young traders are now on the scene, compared with when most brokers in the industry perfected their existing digital marketing strategies.
A well-crafted marketing plan can help forex brokers navigate the complexities of the market, connect with their target audience, and ultimately drive growth. In this article, we’ll explore some forex marketing strategies that brokers can employ. Some new, some tried and tested with a twist. But all to get you inspired about how you can most effectively advertise your trading services to get the absolute maximum bang for your digital marketing buck.
When it comes to attracting clients, it’s essential to embrace creativity and explore alternative advertising methods that capture attention and spark curiosity.
We picked some out-of-the-box forex marketing strategies to try to captivate your target audience and make a lasting impression through the power of creative and unconventional advertising.
Forex trading education
Most forex brokers pay lip service to the idea of trading education. But if you want to offer something that’s useful to real people and has the potential to be shared online, then you have to work hard to offer something different. Education isn’t just a box for your marketing department to tick, it’s not just there for SEO purposes. For your trading education to stand out in an otherwise crowded space, it has to add value.
This doesn’t mean paraphrasing long and boring trading-related articles available on finance reference websites, and it doesn’t mean copying what other brokers have done, either. Start by imagining a new registration with absolutely no prior knowledge of trading. What’s the best, most efficient way to bring this individual up to speed so that they can feel confident enough to try trading out for themselves?
You probably have knowledgeable traders working for you. You also probably have staff who are new to the world of trading, but who’ve had to quickly learn new things to get the job. Talk to these people and find out what they believe are the most important things to convey to newcomers. What helped them when they were starting out? What resources did they find most useful? Often, the team members tasked with training these new members of staff can have very useful insights to share.
Start building a curriculum around what you learn from these people and test it out on your new hires. In this way, you can develop your own in-house culture of trading education that you can keep improving on.
Some examples of forex trading educational materials:
- Trading platform tutorials
- How-to trade videos
- Daily life hacks and hints
- Explanation posts, e.g. “How to use MACD?”
Audiovisual content
The days of static web pages are long gone. If you truly want to make your trading website pop and appeal to a far wider potential demographic, then you need to enter the multimedia age. For this, you must ensure that your content is much more diverse than just pages of text intended for the Google crawlers.
That’s not to say that you should scrap text-based content altogether. Text is still the backbone of the World Wide Web, so it’s important that your website is constantly being updated with fresh content on a variety of trending topics that are likely to be of relevance to your target markets.
However, this content should be enriched with a variety of other types, such as eye-catching infographics designed to explain complex topics of interest in a visually appealing way. An example can be a visualization of different order types.
Webinars are also a must for online brokers, as they contribute to a sense of community, and lend credibility to your business by demonstrating that you’re actively trying to reach out to your traders and educate them. The live element and the ability of your client base to contribute are major selling points of the webinar, which shouldn’t be overlooked.
Add to this an active presence on YouTube, perhaps a weekly podcast where the market nerds within your ranks can discuss the week’s news, or preview some of the pressing economic reports due to be released in the week ahead. This is how you generate a buzz around your brand and keep clients coming back to learn more.
It’s not something that can be faked, which is why it’s important to draw from your own people. Find the salesperson who’s obsessed with crypto and give them an opportunity to have a voice, bring them together with the customer service all-star who has hot takes about what the Federal Reserve chairman is likely to do next. This is how you generate a buzz. It’s also how you make your staff feel seen and valued.
Now, of course, the barriers to entry for this type of content can be much higher than for text-based content. So, for those of you who aren’t quite ready to take the leap, the next section on influencer marketing details a strategy for leveraging the audiovisual content of other content creators to your brand’s advantage. This can be a highly efficient and cost-effective way to benefit from mixed media content, without having to develop your in-house capabilities all at once.
Influencer marketing
In today’s day and age, you can do a lot worse than teaming up with influencers who have a broad reach and who’ve proven themselves to be competent content creators. This is one of the most overlooked methods of marketing in online CFD trading, which has traditionally relied most heavily on Introducing Brokers and affiliates to market the services of online brokers.
But if you want to move with the times, then influencers have a lot to recommend to you. They come with their own captive audiences of followers who are constantly growing, and they do all the hard work of content creation and curation themselves. Finance podcasts and YouTube channels have been a rapidly growing segment in recent years as consumers prefer to get their news and trading-related content via this type of channel rather than traditional financial television.
Forward-thinking online brokers have recently gotten into the habit of sponsoring the channels of these types of content creators and it’s no mystery why. Think about it, the audience of a successful trading-related podcast or YouTube channel is precisely the demographic that online brokers want to be marketing to. So, you have a far greater chance that your marketing dollars are being spent to get your message in front of the right eyeballs when choosing to sponsor this type of content, rather than casting a wide net online and reaching lots of people with no interest in trading.
Furthermore, these types of content creators tend to possess an authenticity that is almost impossible to create from scratch as a marketing exercise. They have loyal followers who regard them as authorities and place trust in their opinions. By striking up a relationship with these types of influencers and content creators, your brand can benefit from their authenticity and can come to be directly associated by their followers as a credible venue on which to access the world’s markets.
Do your research, find content creators whose style and tone is in keeping with your brand and who really seem to know and care about markets. Offer to sponsor their videos and create special offers and bonuses that are specifically tailored to their audiences.
Social media marketing
Last but not least, it’s no secret that many businesses fail to create meaningful engagement on their social media channels. This is especially so for online brokers as they tend to find it hard to craft messages that are not overtly promotional. What works best on social media is the personal touch, and this can be a huge obstacle to financial firms that aren’t otherwise renowned for their personalities.
A useful tip for online brokers is to think of your social media channels as more than just a means of broadcasting your message. Don’t think of it as a funnel. Participate in the broader finance topics trending on the platforms you’re using. There’s no shortage of discussion on the relevant headlines of the day. Even if you don’t have a view, share and repost solid content from other creators that may provide a good discussion of a recent event (e.g. the collapse of SVB bank, or the last FOMC meeting). The value is a digest of everything influencing the markets by sifting through the overabundance of information and narrowing down interesting content for your clients to save their time.
An organic following is hard to fake, and the easiest way to grow one is to actually add value for your followers. The immediacy of this medium demands a softer touch. Don’t use social media to hammer a corporate message home. Use it to share useful things and to participate in conversations, the way it was intended.
And if you do have something to promote, let it be something that you’re giving away for free, such as your new technical analysis course, for example, or some insights about US stocks gleaned from your new stock analysis tool. In this way, you can repurpose content you’ve created for other parts of your online presence, such as your corporate blog, a new ebook, or an interview in the financial press with your CEO, and splash the most catchy parts of it in condensed form on your social media channels.
Used in combination and leveraging your content-creation efforts from one domain to other domains as seen above, your brand will begin to appear more relevant and active and will be much more appealing to a younger contingent of traders.
How to attract clients by getting the fundamentals right?
As competition in the financial services industry intensifies, brokers have to ensure that their respective brands remain front and center for existing customers but also for undecided prospects who are interested in trading. This requires a diversity of approaches, as well as multiple funnels for converting interested parties into real money traders.
In the following article, we’ll cover several basic marketing and advertising strategies used by FX and CFD brokers to convert and retain as many prospects as possible. They won’t make a bad broker any better, but they’ll make a good broker stand out and start generating organic interest as happy traders recommend their services to others.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
One of the easiest ways to improve a broker’s reach is to improve how highly search engines rank the company’s website. Helping your homepage play nicely with search engine crawlers can yield great improvements in incoming traffic when people are searching for keywords that are relevant to your business.
Start by identifying the keywords that potential clients are most likely to use when searching for the services you offer. Include long-tail keywords that are more specific, such as “trade big tech stocks with zero commissions,” and use all these keywords strategically throughout your website. You can use titles, meta descriptions, headers, and main body content as opportunities to insert relevant keywords in a natural way that doesn’t seem forced.
Remember, human readers are always going to be your priority, so, ensure you present content in an attractive and organized way that gently ushers them to your preferred call to action. What entices human readers most is informative and engaging commentary that sets you apart as an expert in the space. This means high-quality news, analysis, and opinion regarding the main markets you offer, as well as educational resources designed to bring newcomers up to speed. Use hyperlinks throughout to provide further context, where appropriate. In this way, your website becomes a network of references, encouraging both human and non-human visitors to move around.
Email marketing
Email marketing has become one of the marketing mainstays for many FX/CFD brokers. This marketing strategy allows you to create personalized messaging for prospects and existing clients based on their activity prior to signing up or their trading habits and preferences after joining. It also allows your business to keep them informed about the latest news, market insights, promotions, and other relevant matters in a relatively frictionless way that can be largely automated.
Digests of the previous week’s main stories and market activity are popular, as are “Week Ahead” emails, detailing all the important events in the coming week that may have an influence on the customer’s preferred markets. When done right it can help create increased customer loyalty and aid in retention, as well as increasing the likelihood of referrals.
The ability to segment is central to email marketing. It’s a powerful tool that should be used creatively to make emails feel as personal as possible. Categorizing your clients by their demographics, reported interests, and trading behavior allows you to start thinking about what kinds of bulk messages you can start generating for each group.
Make your messaging punchy and topical, using your subject lines to encourage a high open rate. But don’t overdo it, there’s a fine line between regular informative emails that clients look forward to receiving and a deluge of salesy unread messages that are a chore to work through and are doomed to remain unread.
PR campaigns
FX brokers are marketing machines that have honed their approach over many years and in all kinds of market climates. As sophisticated and surgical as many of their client segmentation strategies have proven to be, sometimes you just have to spend some money and paint the town with your logo!
PR campaigns and sponsorships play a vital role in promoting the brand image and reputation of FX and CFD brokerages. Sponsoring events and personalities, from football clubs and their star athletes to Formula 1 teams and their drivers, is a tried and tested way to get your logo into public awareness. This generates a positive association with your brand in the minds of potential clients, often before they themselves even know they’re potential clients!
Sponsorships not only boost brand recognition and credibility but also provide you with an opportunity to showcase your products and services to a much wider audience. If you pick the right place to put your name, you can have access to the eyeballs of people who may not be actively searching for trading services at the moment, but who nevertheless belong to a broader demographic that is much more likely to use them.
Trading events and contests
Trading events and contests are regularly used by FX brokers to attract new clients to their services as well as to re-engage existing clients and incentivize them to trade.
Events include webinars, seminars, and conferences, all of which can be hosted both online and in-person. You can tailor these events to the type of clients you’re attempting to cater for. New sign-ups? Perhaps an online introductory webinar with demonstrations of your platform and various services might be a good idea. High net worth individuals? Your best bet could be an in-person seminar with special guests sharing advanced trading strategies or macro trends.
Trading contests are another marketing strategy often utilized by brokers to incentivize increased trading activity as well as attracting new clients to the brand. Trading contests usually work by offering prizes to customers who generate the greatest trading volumes in a given period of time, or who maintain the most profitable trading account over the duration of the competition.
It pays to think outside of the box when it comes to these competitions if you don’t want them to come across as just another cynical exercise to increase volumes. Competitions that show you’re thinking differently can be a way to give a new spin to an old concept, as well as an opportunity to generate some positive publicity. An example of this would be a competition that incentivizes longevity in trading, such as the ability to maintain a positive P&L for a given period of time. Competitions geared around social good are another novel take on the competition concept. In this case, traders can be encouraged to out-trade each other, not for a cash sum or luxury prize, but for the opportunity to donate a pool of capital to the charity, or social program of their choice.
Social trading and money management services
Clients who don’t want to trade their own accounts are another important group that FX brokers have to cater for. This can be because they’re new to trading and haven’t developed the confidence to do it alone, or because they’d just rather just allocate capital to the strategies of others, rather than concern themselves with the ins and outs of managing positions.
Social trading, also known as copy trading, or mirror trading, allows customers to follow the trading strategies of successful traders on the platform by copying their positions proportionally. This not only allows beginners to start playing in the markets sooner than they otherwise would on their own, it also reduces the risk of losses while providing them with the opportunity to learn from seasoned traders by observing their trading strategies in action.
Money management services are also highly popular in the FX and CFD industry. The most popular of which are PAMM (Percentage Allocation Management Module) and MAM (Multi-Account Manager) accounts.
PAMM services allow clients to allocate capital to a skilled money manager and receive profits that are proportional to their percentage allocation of that given manager’s pool of capital. MAM accounts allow professional traders to manage multiple sub-accounts, which is particularly useful for money managers and fund managers who have many clients.
These services are offered by FX brokers in order to attract professional traders and money managers who can bring in clients of their own, leading to increased trading volumes and revenues for the broker, while the money manager generates fees from their client accounts and often rebates from the brokerage.
Loyalty programs and bonuses
Loyalty programs are a useful way to retain existing customers, while also increasing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Well-designed loyalty programs incentivize trading, as well as the referral of new clients to the broker’s services. Such programs can involve discounts on spreads, rebates for volumes traded, access to exclusive trading tools and private coaching, as well as cash bonuses for referring friends.
Trading bonuses have something of a chequered history in online trading, and there are currently restrictions on their use in certain jurisdictions. In general, the offering of online casino-style free cash bonuses for trading is frowned upon and the industry as a whole has steered away from this practice. However, brokers can still be creative in ways they can offer certain enticements to potential customers across their various marketing funnels in order to increase registrations. These offers can include free access to exclusive market research and analysis, spread discounts, rebates, and more.
IB/Affiliate marketing
Last but not least, we come to Introducing Brokers and affiliate marketing networks. These groups receive commissions for referring traders to the broker’s services or a percentage of volumes generated by those traders.
Introducing Brokers are groups or individuals who have their own followers and thus act as middlemen, bringing these groups to brokers in exchange for enticing rewards and timely payouts.
Affiliate marketers operate in much the same way, however, their business tends to be conducted primarily online through the creation of trading-related websites and portals. These portals act as funnels, bringing a steady supply of new signups to brokers in return for a commission fee, usually per FTD (first-time deposit).
Even though it’s one of the oldest forms of marketing used in this industry, they’re still highly effective strategies for FX and CFD brokers. However, what differentiates one broker’s program from another’s is how frictionless it is for an IB or affiliate manager to sign up, track their ongoing referrals, and receive regular, predictable, and timely payments. This is why brokerages tend to have departments specifically geared for dealing with IBs and affiliates.
Whether it be account managers liaising with IBs and providing the personal touch, or the development of affiliate platforms allowing marketers to track their successful referrals in real time, successful IB/affiliate marketing programs require more than just a landing page and application form. Time spent ensuring these services run smoothly and professionally can pay dividends in the long run as historically these initiatives have been the biggest contributors to trading volumes for online brokers.
Summing up: Mastering forex broker marketing plan
The world of forex and CFD brokerage marketing is both dynamic and challenging, requiring a multifaceted approach to stand out from the crowd.
However, by embracing these forex broker marketing strategies and continuously adapting to industry trends, you can position your brokerage business for long-term growth and establish it as a trusted partner in the world of currency trading.