While high calibre trader acquisition is difficult, the pandemic did boost signups and trading volumes. This is largely thanks to global lockdowns and individuals at home searching for new ways to generate an income.
Following a relatively sluggish 2019, the FX industry was thrown into the spotlight with many brokers reporting impressive year-on-year figures.
So how can brokers maintain the momentum? Leading financial services marketing agency, Contentworks has compiled 10 hacks to increase trader acquisition in Q4.
The Stats
Before we get into the trader acquisition hacks, let’s look at the current landscape. Our team has been in regular contact with brokers throughout the pandemic. Here’s what we found:
- Spike in ‘online forex trading’ search term
Firstly, there was a spike in people searching for online forex trading and a market rally spawning a host of day traders.
- The average daily FX trading volumes rocketed
The average daily FX trading volumes rocketed 18% year-on-year in March to a record $2.2 trillion, as panic over the coronavirus sent currency prices moving wildly.
5 of the 50 largest all-time daily spot volumes came in March, with monthly record volumes in euro/dollar, dollar/yen, sterling/dollar and the US dollar against the Swiss franc and CAD.
- During March 2020, PrimeXM reported an average daily volume (ADV) of $48.22 billion, which represented a jump of 6% month-on-month from $45.68 billion reported back in February. The company revealed that 20% of the overall traded volume was on XAU/USD.
- DeGiro reported a 265% increase in new accounts opened in the first six months of 2020 compared to 2019. And eToro said they had a 100% increase in new users in the first half of the year. The number of investments made had also quadrupled.
- IG Group said it had seen ‘exceptional trade volumes and client onboarding’ in the months since the pandemic struck. Over 1 million trades were placed on its platform each day in March, compared with 336,000 a year earlier. The boom saw IG grow revenue by 36% to £649.2m in the financial year ended 31 May. Pre-tax profit leapt by 52% to £295.9m.
How to Maintain Acquisition Success Going into Q4
While many industries buckled under the pressure of covid-19, the financial sector has largely flourished. But, that doesn’t mean FX marketers can get comfortable.
The surge in traders means everyone must up their game if they wish to get noticed. Also, with trading volumes likely to drop when normality is restored, it’s important to establish your brand as a go-to for avid traders.
So, here are the 10 hacks to keep you focused as we head towards Q4:
#1 Focus on Trending Instruments
As a marketer looking to boost acquisition, it’s essential to jump on trends to showcase your brand as being relevant. So, look at which instruments are trending and form promotional campaigns around them.
For instance, Gold has been in the spotlight during the pandemic reaching record levels of $2,045 per ounce against the US Dollar, as of 6 August.
Or you could focus on Bitcoin which has rallied heavily during Covid-19 as investors look for alternatives to the traditional safe havens of FX markets and stock.
Moreover, stocks from companies like Disney and Tesla are on trend, interesting and tradable, so why not make your campaigns relatable with unique messaging and imagery?
#2 Pull Back on Expo Spend
To cut a long story short, many of the top expos are not taking place this year. Be sure to refocus any expo spend on webinars and online events. You can still have a strong industry presence without being seen at physical events.
Webinars like the Big Forex Breakfast are great for brokers to attend to discuss key issues with industry peers. They also keep you up to speed on the latest tech and regulation developments.
Brokers can also hold customer facing webinars. These can cover a variety of topics including:
- Onboarding and getting started
- Live event trading like the NFP
- Q&A sessions
- Platform tours and trading tool guidance
Segregate webinars for newbies and experienced traders and don’t forget to promote your live webinars and upload them to another channel such as YouTube.
#3 Ramp Up Your Twitter Presence
Twitter reported a sharp rise in daily user numbers thanks to lockdowns around the globe. The number of monetizable daily users on the platform increased by 34% to 186 million in the second quarter compared to a year earlier – the fastest growth since Twitter first started using the metric in 2016.
Twitter’s popularity is largely due to its fast, trending nature. So as a broker looking to increase trader acquisition, it’s important to up your Twitter activity to draw in traders following finance hashtags.
Of course, this means you need to get active on the platform and understand which finance hashtags to use. It’s additionally crucial to focus on topics that are on trend like #Brexit #USElections and of course, #coronavirus.
Subjects like 5G are also popular (controversial) topics of conversation, so you could centre content around this.
We recommend a minimum of 3 tweets per day if you’re looking for trader acquisition.
#4 Adjust Your Education Centre
Not everyone is financially literate. In fact:
- 67% of Brits don’t feel equipped to make the best financial decisions for themselves with 68% admitting they’re not financially observant.
- 72% of consumers said they don’t invest in stocks, shares or investment funds, with nearly one-fifth stating they don’t know how.
- US adult financial literacy is just 57%.
Improving financial literacy boosts acquisition. So, if you already have an education centre, you’re on the right track.
But, does your education centre reflect everything that’s happened so far this year? Blogs detailing currency fluctuations, oil moves, gold success and Bitcoin predictions will get more hits.
This is especially true if you’re optimising your content to match trending search terms. Your education centre should also answer popular questions from traders. For example:
- How do you calculate your lot size/position sizing?
- What tools can help eliminate risk?
- How much money do I need to open a trading account?
- How do I get started on this platform?
The easier you make the acquisition process, the more likely you are to boost your numbers. European broker Capex, for example, offers a trading academy. This is broken down into SEO-optimised sections, each of which include a range of interesting lessons.
Your education centre can work hard for your brand if you fine-tune your SEO keyword strategy for optimum exposure. Create separate pages for each topic which you can then link to from various social posts.
Repurpose popular content into gifs, short videos, Slideshares and infographics.
You might also want to create your very own trading e-book for Q4, considering the pandemic. This will be great for brand promotion and help to boost acquisition.
The biggest takeaway for brokers is highlighted by JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD AmeriTrade. “Our education usage is up three times year over year,” he said.
“Reading articles on our website, looking at the videos. Anything having to do with education has gone way up.”
Tip- Work On That App - Covid-19 led to a massive surge for the fintech industry with people turning to online Payments and mobile finance apps.
In Italy, one of the first countries to order residents to stay home in a bid to prevent the virus from spreading, e-commerce transactions have soared 81% since the end of February.
#5 Source New Sites for Promotions, Articles and Listings
When it comes to acquisition, exceptional PR is the way forward. But, there’s no point crafting excellent content if it’s going to the wrong places.
While magazines and newspapers aren’t being ruled out completely, it’s important to embrace digital and place content in front of savvy online traders. Here are some PR acquisition rules:
- SEO still matters even if the article isn’t on your site. Use great keywords with backlinks to your own landing pages.
- Include clear CTAs (call to actions) with minimal clicks.
- Include images in your PRs to improve readability.
- Publishing a PR is only 5% of the work. You still need to circulate the PR, share to social, monitor results and even email it to clients.
#6 Offer Online Training
Trading numbers have been up as many people look for new ways to pass the time during lockdown situations. As well as a strong education centre, brokers should create an online training programme. Here’s how:
- Create a schedule of interesting topics based around FAQs and start to promote one-on-one or small group training to incentivise deposits.
- Consider that there may be advanced traders and beginners using your platform. So, break your training content down accordingly and make navigation simple.
- Incentivise attendance with free eBooks or VIP access.
- Promote your courses in advance with dedicated landing pages and social posts.
- Publish the videos on your YouTube channel to promote future events.
#7 Adjust AdWords Campaigns
Like many forms of marketing; creating and maintaining AdWords campaigns isn’t something you can do once and move on. It’s a continuous process that requires careful monitoring and attention in areas such as:
- Keyword research and analysing keyword data. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool to help you out.
- Checking your click-through rate (CTR). It shows how often people click your ad after seeing it. As a rule of thumb, a CTR under 1% on the Search Network indicates that your ads aren't targeted to a relevant audience.
- Eliminating keywords that are no longer performing for your brand
- Creating and prioritising landing pages to accompany your ads
Top tips for writing successful AdWords text:
To boost acquisition and get people onto your platform, your text ads should be relevant, attractive and empowering. Focus on:
- The current climate and people working from home.
- Do you have special trading offers for new acquisitions?
- Inspiring traders to act by including calls to action or how to make that first deposit.
- Creating relevant landing pages that match your AdWords text to lower the bounce rate.
#8 Improve Your Response Times
40% of consumers expect brands to respond within the first hour of reaching out on social media, while 79% expect a response in the first 24 hours.
In other words, most customers expect a same-day response from brands on social media. Add to this, the urgency of the financial markets, newbie panic and corona stress and you need to be answering fast.
Right now, social media channels are buzzing with confusion, questions and consumers needing assistance. Make sure you have your best people on the job to answer them swiftly.
- Utilise social media chatbots to field frequently asked questions
- Either hire someone to manage social media chats or assign the task to your support team
- Watch your compliance though. The same rules apply on social media, so all proactive and reactive posts need to be compliance savvy.
#9 Build Trust
Creating a strong brand means you must gain the trust of your consumers. With a wealth of industry scams as well as fake news, people are sceptical about what they can trust when it comes to finance.
So, add authenticity by putting a face to your brand. You can do this by hosting live Q&A sessions with team members or by doing a weekly CEO feature.
Another option is to focus on corporate social responsibility initiatives or employee advocacy like Tickmill.
Why not also share podcasts and interviews on your social channels?
All this shows that your brand is reputable, trustworthy and still active despite lockdowns.
#10 Embrace Educational Videos
Video is set to dominate 80% of all internet traffic by 2021, and it’s a fantastic forex education tool. Viewers retain 95% of a message they watch on a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
Video also performs well on social media with 82% of Twitter users watching video on this channel. 400 million users also watch Instagram Stories which regularly feature video content.
So, if you’re looking to improve acquisition, creating educational video content is a great way to inspire signups. The type of videos you can make, include:
- Weekly market analysis or daily overviews
- Currency comparisons
- Hot instruments
- Industry gossip
- AMAs (ask me anything)
- How to trade the news
- How to use platform tools
- FAQs (just ask your support team what they are!)
All videos need a strong call to action to trade such as ‘Trade The News’ or ‘Sign Up Free’.
Educational Video Tips:
- Be concise. Introduce your brand and topic at the start of the video.
- Explain what the audience is going to learn or how the video you’ve created will benefit them. Consumers have choices and limited time. You need to be relevant.
- Keep sentences short and crisp. Avoid compound sentences where possible.
- Write for the audience and platform. A Live Instagram video is likely to be more casual and upbeat than a technical explainer video for YouTube, for instance.
- Answer direct questions. This will help you to rank on Google snippets in response to voice search questions.
As a leading content marketing agency for the finance sector, Contentworks specialises in producing tailored content including articles, web copy, technical analysis, eBooks, videos and content for social media.
Contentworks Agency monitors ESMA, FCA, CySEC and ASIC to ensure compliance friendly content.
Visit www.contentworks.agency to learn more.
