Forex marketing; looking good… what’s next?

Back in 2015, we published an article on iGB affiliate magazine on how to become a broker. In this article we briefly went over forex marketing questions that would puzzle a brokerage in the early stages such as “Should I spend in marketing?”, or “How much and when should I start spending?” as well as “is my spending enough?”, “should I spend more?” or even “should I stop spending completely?”

This section of the article generated a number of questions, we eventually received back as feedback, therefore we thought of elaborating more on the marketing part of a forex brokerage.

Although very specific and targeted, forex marketing evidently revolves around 2 essential parts:

1. Branding

2. Direct Response Marketing

 

Branding

When people hear the word branding, the hair on their back rise and I am almost certain I hear a faint growling noise accompanying their glossy eyes. Of course the thought crossed my mind too but I can assure you that they are not lycanthropes; it’s just that this concept and what comes with it are often misunderstood as soon as the costs associated with it are revealed.

What most of us don’t realize is how most marketing definitions and/or approaches often relate to one another although to make things simpler, branding mostly relates to identity, consistency and to serve as a brand reminder.

Solid branding requires a lot more work than people realize. The biggest mistakes forex brokers do when their long journey to acquire market share begins, is the lack of a solid industry research, correct product identification and competitive analysis that will help them define who they are. Colors and logos, imagery and brand books come next and are promoted in a consistent manner. Finally promotions, online and offline advertising, traditional and non-traditional marketing along with direct response marketing will complement a constant reminder of the brand alongside other brands. And what do you know? We just summarized branding in a nutshell.

 

Direct Response Marketing

So looking good now are we…? We’ve spent quite some time to reach this point, quite a lot of money to find our identity and project it, now we need to look into acquiring more clients, income and evidently market share. This is where Direct Response Marketing comes into play. To give this a proper definition, we’re looking into direct responses to the marketer’s campaigns and promotions using various channels. These channels include social media, newsletters, ppc campaigns, cpl campaigns, media buying and more. Through a consistent promotional way, standing true defenders of the mission, colors and imagery as those were derived from the branding analysis, the spend now turns to targeted promotional campaigns that drive traffic to the website, buyers to the product offering, partners to the overall venture.

 

The fake promises of forex marketing

What’s unfortunate in the above processes is how many people and companies will derail you with promises of cost effective and cheap ways to get great results. The fact is that a forex brokerage does not compete with the entire industry. Based on how they came to be and what they’re looking to become, the correct product will be identified alongside the direct competitors. How can someone actually go deeply through this process, then materialize a complete brand book and guidelines and finally implement all these through fresh concepts and ideas that will result in sales and income, with cheap and inexpensive ways?

It’s time to stop treating our brokerages like grocery stores or dvd rentals and assume position because the journey is long, tiring, expensive and so competitive that we will reach the end before we even consider to begin. The truth is that how we decide to proceed in the early stages, while the budgets are viable tools to push us to the next step, will determine our success or failure.

 

So before we look into the inexpensive, cheap and cost effective ways, we must accept that in the end we will get what we pay for.