Broker marketing during high volatility (Brexit!)
FX industry marketing expert Bart Burggraaf takes a look at how brokerages can market themselves during the period that follows the UK’s referendum on EU membership
Bart Burggraaf is Managing Partner at MediaGroup Worldwide, a niche marketing agency for the financial services industry. He has substantial experience across major institutions in the FX industry with regard to operating commercial marketing enterprises.
Most Brokers saw a great increase in volumes before, during and especially after the Brexit vote. Besides increased trading activity, acquisition was also greatly helped. See for instance Plus500, which generated 1600 new customers just last Friday. Now, there is always increased trading activity and improved acquisition during times of high volatility regardless of brokers’ actions, but they could do even better by leveraging (pun intended) such moments to get the most out of them.
Let’s start with marketing to clients and work our way back to acquisition. Brokers have a database of clients that could well be unaware of major movements in the market, especially when they are not as high profile as Brexit. Salespeople could call them, marketing could send emails and what not. The message could be a helpful one; did you see the move in the Cable? It’s down XX%. You can trade these instruments with us and if it continues going down, benefit from the move. Clients that have a trade on already could well make changes and trade more, based on helpful input.
When it comes to leads, messaging and calls from sales people should similarly focus on the opportunity in the market while pointing out the ease of opening an account. These are the times to get people that are clearly interested in trading to open an account. Email everyone and get sales people to call the most promising leads in your database first (including the old ones). No-brainer.
As for getting in new leads and clients, the main thing here is to be there where traders are. To increase your presence on Google Adwords, Niche Industry sites, Programmatic Advertising and if you have the budget, Print and TV.
Volatility means increased conversion rates and better clients. If anything, these should be the times where you loosen the purse strings and spend some additional money on advertising. It definitely helps to create topically relevant creative, but it is not an absolute necessity to do so, as people can put 2 and 2 together.
The key is to create a marketing plan and get sign off on budgets for times of high volatility. Before you need it, ideally, but now is a good time too.
