What if there was no online marketing? – Guest Editorial
Expozive CEO and FX industry marketing, branding and public relations specialist Nicc Lewis delves deep into Google and Facebook’s stance on FX advertising, and looks at how to conduct good quality marketing and gain wide coverage to a good audience going forward
Nicc Lewis is a renowned senior level marketing specialist within the electronic trading and FX industry. After several years as CMO at Leverate, Nicc became CEO of Expozive, which provides a comprehensive range of fully managed services for companies in the online trading and e-commerce sector, and manages how companies can conduct their public relations, branding and enhance engagement in their product ranges, along with an end-to-end enterprise solution for preparing companies for expo and conference participation.
A couple of weeks ago Facebook announced it was banning all advertising on Cryptocurrencies. A few days later Google followed suit after heavy pressure from Canada and USA to ban ICO advertising. Google went a step further, banning all activities for Cryptocurrencies and placing major restrictions on Forex Trading and Spread betting. Affiliates will be the hardest hit by both Google for Forex and by both for Facebook.
Regardless of industry, currently it is common practice for both Affiliates and B2C companies to use Facebook to attract mass traffic at a reasonable cost and backing this with retargeting and keyword campaigns on Google. What will happen if Google and Facebook ban all financial trading advertising?
Firstly, organic traffic will still be allowed. Building a strong SEO strategy will be essential for Brokers and Affiliates.
It is a long term strategy that takes a minimum of 6 to 8 months to start seeing good results. The good news is that organic traffic converts better and has higher user value. However the costs are based on man hours, especially on creating good quality content and keeping a growing a network of natural links.
Although Google has a massive inventory, they do not have exclusive real estate. Many media agencies will be able to get banner space for brands. The key is to work on a performance base. Optimization for media buying is usually around 3 to 4 months.
The initial period is unlikely to be on a performance base, meaning upfront investments. The investments are high running to tens of thousands of dollars/euros/pounds. Once optimized the traffic generated should be of a good quality and costs based on performance. Another key factor will be using tracking to operate retargeting through the media networks.
Another useful source of traffic can be via Native Advertising (“People who liked… also liked…”). Although some networks have stopped Financial Trading activity, there are still some big networks with good traffic and inventory. This could be used as a replacement in part for Facebook – generated mass cheap traffic to your real estate so that it can be followed with retargeting on CPC or CPA basis.
Should FX brokers be worried about further restrictions from Facebook and Google? I believe it would be prudent to plan for the worst and start building for the possibility. Even if doomsday does not come, brokers will benefit from a stream of new traffic. In this case it is a no lose situation.
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