Need new clients? Apple and Spotify are ideal channels

Attracting and retaining clients is now one of the biggest challenges for brokers as the FX industry matures and as CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) which is a major factor within an online advertising model grow highers, averaging $1000 per funded client in western countries.

To tackle the issue, some of the smaller retail brokers to whom cost of acquisition and retention is extremely important, have been ever more active in developing their differentiation angle via various means, ranging from promoting the social trading experience to offering deposit bonuses and cash rebates, as well as loyalty programs and interactive marketing campaigns, while automating data intelligence for the sales teams.

On that note, trading platforms such as MetaTrader 4 may pose an issue given that the ubiquitous trading platform acts both as a key facet with which to onboard clients and as a retention problem, becoming one of the main criteria when choosing a broker to open an account with, which also means those brokers risk being easily substituted following a minor incident or an aggressive marketing campaign by a competitor.

This may well appear as though it is a complex lesson in mathematics; a matter in which accountants must balance the cost of leasing trading infrastructure from a third party platform supplier against the cost of buying media and generating leads, then subsequently factoring in the cost of sales staff to call the leads and then add up the profit post-conversion.

The reality is that in today’s retail FX industry, where the end users have become ever more sophisticated and can absolutely tell if a broker is surviving from their deposited capital instead of connecting to a live market, which has exponentially improved the standards in terms of execution of trades within many medium sized retail brokerages, however it has left a conundrum, that being the completely outmoded marketing model which is not compatible with the commission business that brokerages offering genuine market execution now provide.

As the infrastructure of OTC electronic trading firms becomes the increasing subject of regulatory remit as defined by the pan-European MiFID II which uses the coercive powers of the European Commission to ensure all market infrastructure and execution policies are standardized across multiple jurisdictions, brokers find themselves faced with high expectations from extremely analytical traders in the most high quality regions for electronic markets, and difficulty differentiating themselves from other retail brokerages using the same third party platforms.

Most importantly, however, aside from the 1231 near-identical MetaTrader 4 retail entities that currently exist, is that the execution model required nowadays means that brokers should do what brokers are supposed to do – charge a commission for processing trades to their liquidity provider and provide their clients with an aggregated price feed consisting of prime of prime liquidity from Tier 1 banks and non-bank market makers.

As this has become a very compounded issue, and return on investment is under the microscope, it is important now to look toward new media channels.

A quick look at where most lead marketing takes place will show that most of it is a result of companies focusing on CPA instead of nurturing clients, and have become stuck with over-marketed leads that are not really interested in becoming traders, and have small deposits which end up lost after a short time, thus is a self-defeating exercise.

Some of the better firms in the industry, notably companies with high touch approach to their clients, who go and meet important partners, hedge funds and professional traders, understand the future need for sustainability in our industry. They will do well and go far.

Importantly, those which continue to take the digital marketing approach would need to diversify their channels in order to gain a new and more empowered audience.

FinanceFeeds is in the process of launching a new product in which brokerages can apply their branding to videos about retail FX market analyses, important current affairs in the financial markets and podcasts with voice overs and executives from brokerages having their chance to comment.

These branded videos and podcasts will contain important content that traders need to hear daily, and will be distributed via FinanceFeeds entire distribution network which consists of high level, semi-professional and professional traders, MAM users and IBs.

Now here is the unique aspect. Currently, FX trading forums remain the major ones, which are not appealing to new users, especially younger users which are tomorrow’s entire customer base for most brokers.

Our new service will push the videos and podcasts down through Apple Media, Apple TV, Apple Podcasts and onto dedicated channels on Spotify, featuring London based institutional traders who will share proper insights in order to attract the best quality audience to YOUR brand.

These channels are the most used in the world by today’s under 45s and are underserved by our industry.

The aim is for brokers to attract a high quality, middle to high income, young professional class of traders to their brokerages, and this is an ideal set of channels from which to do it, using high quality broadcasting, based in London.

The cost of this per month is less than the CPA cost for two small retail conversions under the existing method.

Please contact us at [email protected] for further details, as we continue to commit to your business success via modern, dynamic and effective methods.