What is your brokerage saying to customers? – Editorial

What is your brokerage saying to customers?

You walk into a room. There are a hundred eyes on you. You blink, clear your throat and stand there whilst they look you over.

What first impression does your brokerage give off? Does your brand as a whole speak loudly of your value propositions? What impression or taste is left in the minds of those whom interact with your firm? These are questions that will challenge most in the business and take us right back to branding 101.

Internet is big. The majority of the pre-acquisition business happens digitally and central to your website.

Branding and how you portray your brand message via your website is of utmost importance. However; this concept seems almost lost on the FX industry as brokers often stick to a similar template style of presenting their brand to the world.

What matters to customers? What do your target audience care about? Let’s consider the facts:

1 – You deal in financial services
2 – You hold client monies
3 – Trust & integrity are a big deal

Let’s consider this the basis for branding as a whole. Next, one would look at peddling your value propositions. Either you are cheaper than the rest, in a niche serving a particular customer demographic or have some unique value proposition that others don’t.

In reality, the vast majority of brokers out there are simply selling exactly the same as the other. Similar pricing, great customer service, and great execution…

What do you do then?

This is where things get a little tricky and best to go back to the basics. When you first brainstorm your brand, one of the fist questions you would ask yourself is; “who are my target audience?” This cannot be simply answered with – everyone. This is where you are best to actually dig deep and find out whom your ideal customer will be.

Are they new to trading or are they experienced? Going deeper, are your potential customer’s middle class, astute investors or those looking to buy into the dream? Let’s go deeper, which regions will be your main demographic, which age groups, men or women?

Go deeper than that and you’ll start to develop a niche. Another fantastic exercise which will assist with finding your ideal customer is to simply make one up. Where does s/he work? What do they do for a living, do they have kids? What do they aspire too? DO they have patience to learn? Do they know what investing is?

Make it up as you go and by profiling can quickly help you determine whom your target audience are and help target your branding to your specific profiling.

Once you know your audience and potentially have a niche that you can target to begin with, start brainstorming your value propositions, what sets you apart and your basic message and first impression you want to give.

Think about what do they want to see, feel and expect from your brokerage. What could get them over the line? This is also a good time remember the old saying “don’t fire all your arrows at the same time”.

Sales and branding is a game of attraction. Shoot an arrow, wait for the response, fire another if needed and so forth. Keeping your message simple whilst making sure your brand sweats it through all its pores is the magic formula.

What worked 5 years ago and seems obvious as the right thing to do may just be the thing that is holding you back.

Everyone is offering cheap spreads, great customer service, excellent execution and the lot. Want to stand out? Be different, keep it simple and try find your niche. Finding the one or two small things that make you different from the rest can often be the turning point for your business.