This article was written by Sari Holtz who is the Partner Manager at DailyForex.com where she specializes in building creative campaigns for retail Forex brokers. More about the author at the end of the article.
It doesn't matter whether you're on a shoestring budget or whether you have carte blanche to spend freely on marketing, it's important to make every penny count. When embarking on a marketing campaign for a retail forex broker, you shouldn't just be concerned with bringing the leads or traffic; you need to be sure to bring the right leads, and the right traffic. Failure to do so can flood your sales team with junk leads and will take their focus away from the quality traffic that they should be processing.
So, how can you know which marketing campaigns will crash and which will make a splash?
Change your impression about impressions
When it comes to building a media campaign, so many media buyers are concerned about impressions. How many pageviews does a website get? How many impressions will an ad get? And while there is a certain merit to asking these questions, I've found that it's more important to look at the quality of the traffic, not the quantity. 500 clicks from a quality site has the ability to yield a much higher conversion rate and trader value than 5 million clicks from a low quality site. Though all brokers in the retail forex industry do want to show that they've got the biggest numbers, the most important number to consider is that of deposits, not the pure number of leads in the database.
Sari Holtz
If you really want to build a successful marketing campaign, learn how to ask questions that are more relevant to your brokerage and your specific goals, rather than looking for the empirical number of impressions which is only part of the larger picture.
Mind your reputation
It's no secret that dissatisfied traders tend to complain loudly while satisfied traders are often content to remain quiet (and busy with their trades). It's also no secret that some brokers tend to play dirty, bashing their competitors with harmful reviews or spamming negative comments onto broker review sites, Facebook pages and industry blogs. There may be no way to combat all of this damage, but there is a way to maintain your reputation in a positive way, even if it means allocating funds from your marketing budget.
The best way to do this is to pay for broker reviews on reputable websites (and there are many of these). These will not only get across the positive messages that you wish to share, but will help with your SEO efforts so that when traders look for your brand they'll find the good stuff, not the trash talk.
Test (then retest) before you rest
When it comes to marketing in the retail forex world, what is good for the goose isn't necessarily good for the gander. In other words, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all landing page, bonus or call to action. Nevertheless, this shouldn't prevent you from trying your best creatives with each new publisher. Just keep in mind that if they don't work, it doesn't mean that the campaign was a bust. More likely, it means that you need to tweak the creatives or adjust the offerings to meet that publisher's specific audience.
I've found that it's more important to look at the quality of the traffic, not the quantity
Put simply, a short-term campaign isn't likely to provide you with the ability to optimize a campaign to the fullest extent. And that's ok, because all good things in life are worth working on (just think about your relationships, education, children) – and the best results aren't usually the first results.
It's also important to remember that in the retail forex industry the conversion cycle can be a long one. A lead may not convert for a few weeks to a few months after it is created. This does not reflect on the marketing team, but on the entire mechanism of the business, from the sales team to the retention team (and of course to each individual trader). Writing off a campaign without giving the sales cycle enough time to work properly can be extremely short-sighted and have very deleterious results.
As is the case with Forex Trading itself, there is no 'holy grail' when it comes to marketing in the retail forex arena. If there was one, everyone would be implementing the exact same strategy and having success with every campaign. Having patience, open-mindedness and a long term vision will enable you to optimize campaigns better even when they seem weak at first. It could be that some of the underdogs end up being the best sources of traffic when you take the time to optimize them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sari Holtz is the Partner Manager at DailyForex.com where she specializes in building creative campaigns for retail forex brokers. With 10 years of experience in the world of online marketing she appreciates that there is no 'holy grail' to chase, but rather many different approaches that can work for each broker and a world of opportunities available to anyone willing to think outside the box.
