If you are under the impression that a business with global outreach needs a giant marketing budget, think again! The advent of the internet, which gave rise to the entire online trading industry, also gave rise to a variety of platforms and methods in which you as a broker can reach your clients at home and on a budget. While you can still see some results with large and expensive billboards or mainstream newspaper ads, these primarily contribute to branding and are not an efficient or effective method of expanding clientele and revenue.
Step One
Step one of reaching your target audience is defining it: who am I trying to reach? In the Forex industry, the lion share are men between the ages of 18-40 who are not risk-averse, often with alpha-male personalities and a predilection for easy solutions. They do not belong to one socioeconomic group, meaning you can find lower, middle, and upper-class traders. However, they do tend to enjoy similar pastimes, and it is in these places where you want to reach them.
Step Two
Step two is to think of other places in which the same target audience can also be found. The idea behind this is to “piggyback” on the success of other companies’ marketing efforts. In recent years, online casinos were popular venues for ad placement because they cater to the same clientele. Nevertheless, the Forex industry’s effort to distance itself from the gambling world and shake the stereotype have caused many media buyers and affiliate marketers to search for other venues such as extreme sport blogs, financial websites, and more.
Step Three
Step three is to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the different marketing channels at your disposal: PPC, Social Media Marketing, SEO, Media campaigns, Affiliate Marketing, Content marketing, Email marketing and more. In the Forex business, variety and flexibility are the key. You don’t always need to use all of the channels, and you don’t need to use them all equally, but it is vitally important to know the tools that you have and how to use them optimally.
Step Four
Step four is to determine which marketing channel will be used to reach which segment of your audience. You need to remember that every channel is essentially a unique tool that achieves a specific goal, and trying to hammer in a nail with a blowtorch is inefficient at best. Therefore, using the right tool to reach the right audience is critically important. For instance: social media will be more efficient with 18-22 year-old clients than it would be with those closer to 40, who do not really live social media like their younger counterparts. At the same time, the latter would probably be more receptive to ads than younger clients because they are less knowledgeable on how to screen and ignore them.
Step Five
Step five is to be extremely selective in targeting your audience. In Forex marketing, the law of large numbers does not always work in your favor, which is why filtering your lists for email marketing efforts and narrowing your target audience for media, PPC and Social Media campaigns can make the difference between success and failure. For example: if you pay an email auto-responder service by volume of sent emails, there is no point in sending materials to someone who has not opened a single email from you, as they are not likely to open the next email either, let alone make a deposit and trade with you.
Step Six
Step six is to be dynamic and evolve. What works for you now may not work in a year’s time, and you must avoid a rigid approach in order to be able to comply with regulation, industry trends, and your own marketing department’s budget and resources.
At the end of the day, these six steps are general concepts that have proven themselves time and again with various providers. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that no two brokerages are similar, and that you must take your financial, technical and human resources into consideration when determining how to successfully apply each step.
