As a small or new forex broker, getting your name out in front of traders and potential customers should be your number one priority. You need to become known in the market, and you want that to happen on your own terms, and not through negative PR from traders who’ve had bad experiences with you in the past.
Since traders, online discussion forums, affiliate marketers, and others have so much power over what kind of information gets out about your business, you need to treat all these people exceptionally well. If you do, your reputation will be in good hands, and you will have a very large source of virtually free advertising. If you don’t, you’re going to have a very difficult time attracting customers, no matter how good your other marketing efforts may be.
Once your reputation is taken care of, it’s time to start working out what message you want to get out in front of traders. Why should a trader choose you instead of other brokers out there? Try to figure out one thing that distinguishes you from all the others – your unique selling proposition (USP).
Remember that your USP doesn’t have to be that you have the lowest commissions or the tightest spreads in the industry. It could be that you offer a superior and more personalized customer support, or individual training and coaching. Or it could be that your bonuses and promotions are much better than what’s available from other forex brokers.
Whatever it is, make sure your potential customers find out about it. And this is where your content marketing efforts become important.
Relevant content for traders
The first thing to think about when creating content for any business website is that the content needs to be relevant to your potential customers – what marketers call your “buyer persona.” This persona is obviously not a real person, but it’s an average representation of your ideal customer.
Before you start working on any kind of content plan, you need to figure out who your buyer persona is. Only when that is clear, can you begin tailoring relevant content to that particular persona. You now need to put yourself in your buyer persona’s shoes, and imagine what this person would be looking for online, and what he or she might be interested in reading.
The more specific you can be, the better it is. Try to come up with a list of long-tail keywords – very specific search phrases – that your persona may be searching for. Although it may be tempting just to target the more general search phrases such as “forex trading” or “forex broker,” these phrases are already way too competitive, and as a new or smaller player, you won’t have a chance at ranking in Google searches for those phrases.
Instead, come up with phrases like “the best trend trading strategy for EUR/USD” or “the best chart type for day traders.” Now, you will see that there are in fact very few other websites out there that compete with you for those search phrases. And if someone is actually looking to find out what the best chart type for day traders is, and you offer a trading platform with that chart type, chances are good that this person is going to sign up with you and become your customer.
Long-tail keywords brings you more targeted website traffic and is less competitive.
The best channels
There are a few channels that we typically recommend to forex brokers (and others in the financial industry) to make sure content is noticed, read, and finally shared with others:
- Social media
- Your blog
- Other blogs (guest posting)
- TradingView
- Quora
Let’s now go over these points one by one:
Social media
First out is social media. This is an obvious one, and it’s just that mandatory thing that you have to do. This includes having a regularly updated Facebook page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn profile for the company.
All of these things can be done both in the name of the company, and personally for some of the high-profile analysts at your company. Use those accounts to share interesting articles in the news, with comments from people at your company added. The social media accounts are also perfect for sharing articles from your blog, which we will cover next.
Your blog
As we mentioned above, the key is relevancy when it comes to the content you create and publish on your own. Content that is highly relevant for your buyer persona will drive traffic to your website. Irrelevant content, however, will do no good for you. Even if it manages to attract some traffic, it will likely be the wrong kind of traffic. This will not bring you any new customers. As we have written about before, maintaining a blog is one of those things you just have to do as a business owner today.
Other blogs
Related to blogging is also so-called guest blogging, or publishing of blog articles on blogs other than your own. Most important here is that the blog you are publishing on is related to your industry in some way – for example a trading blog – and that you get a link back to your own website in return for giving away a free article.
Secondly, you want to make sure that the blog you are posting on is as good as possible. This is often referred to as the website’s “Domain Authority.” The higher the authority, the better it is – and the more that inbound link you’re getting is going to help improve the search engine results for your own website.
TradingView
This one is about as targeted as you can get if you’re looking to get out in front of traders. TradingView is really a combination of a charting platform and a social media site for traders. The website offers some of the best charting capabilities in the world, coupled with the possibility to interact with other traders and share trading ideas with the rest of the community.
And this is exactly how you should use TradingView as a forex broker. Set up an account, come up with trading ideas and do some chart analysis, and then share it on the platform. Once it is published on TradingView, you can then go ahead and share the same idea on social media and maybe even on your own blog. It’s simply a great way of generating a lot of buzz in your target audience for a very reasonable amount of work.
Quora
Lastly, we want to go over how you can use Quora in your marketing. Quora.com has over just a few years grown to become the most popular question-and-answer site on the Internet, and it has massive number of visitors. Because of its huge size, Quora questions – and answers – also tend to rank very high in Google searches, which is the main reason why it’s such a great way to promote a forex broker.
Remember to link back to your site in your Quora answer.
Spend some time every week to look for questions that people follow on Quora, and that are relevant to your business. If you decide to answer a question, make sure you provide a better answer that the one that is currently listed on top. This way, Quora users will upvote your answer until it ranks at the top of the page.
The important part here is to add a link in your answer back to your website. Make sure the link and anchor text you choose fits naturally into the answer, and that the page you link to actually provides value to the reader. If you do, chances are a lot more people will start finding their way to your website simply through Google searches for topics relevant to your industry.
Compliance for forex brokers
We all know that the financial industry today is heavily regulated all over the world. In the United States, we could write many books on this topic alone. Regulation is simply so heavy that most forex brokers who are working in the retail space won’t even bother dealing with it. Instead, they stay out of the US, and don’t accept customers who are US residents.
Although slightly better, the situation in Europe is also becoming increasingly difficult to navigate for forex brokers. With the new ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority) regulations that came into effect in 2018, forex brokers are for example not allowed to offer clients more trading leverage than 1:30. That’s a big change for an industry where the norm used to be 1:400 or more!
When it comes to content, brokers also need to pay very close attention to the kind of claims and promises they are publishing. Phrases like “guaranteed profits” or “how to get rich trading forex” must be avoided at all costs, or regulators will come after you. After all, it’s better to continue to stay in business for the long-term, then to make a few extra dollars from some trader who goes on to lose all his money and now sues you for misleading advertising.
Essentially, your job as a content marketer in the financial sector is to balance on that fine line between what’s acceptable to say from a regulatory standpoint, and what you need to say to attract new traders to your brokerage. To do this successfully, you will need to find marketers who have the necessary expertise in the financial sector. Your average content writer who barely knows trading is not going to be able to balance that line. It’s as simple as that.
Final word
So, there you have it – the basics of what every forex broker needs to know about content marketing. Now it’s up to you to implement them. If you would like help on making these strategies work for your brokerage, and are looking for someone to take care of content planning, creation, and publishing, we’d be happy to work with you!