The Forex Marketing Playbook: 6 Strategies for Growth

Forex trading (forex) just might be one of the biggest industries ever to exist. 

The foreign exchange services market is expected to reach $9,724.04 billion in 2027 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6%. It’s also a fairly young market, with 55% of traders under the age of 45. 

It’s no surprise that marketing in the fast-growing world of forex is tough. Given the massive competition among trading platforms, the work that needs to be done in order to gain mindshare, acquire customers, and retain them in the long term is anything but child’s play. 

Let’s start by reviewing the kinds of issues that commonly arise for forex marketers, followed by strategies and tactics to overcome them and pave the way to growth.

What Forex Marketers Are Up Against

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of forex trading platforms out there, and marketers need to work hard to achieve visibility and attract active traders. It’s not just about having a smart product, fair commissions, and a watertight reputation. It’s also about understanding the obstacles that drive down conversions. Here are several challenges that forex marketers face every day.

Driving new traffic

Apart from the stiff market competition, there’s another reason why attracting quality web traffic is such a challenge in forex, and it actually comes down to the customers themselves. 95% of forex traders don’t succeed and 80% quit within the first couple of years. This means that forex brands must be working nonstop at full speed to get their name in lights, build brand awareness, and get traffic flowing to their site, despite a high turnover among target audiences.

Platform hopping

This behavior not only makes it difficult for marketers to build long-term relationships with their clients but also disrupts user loyalty and trust in the industry. To combat this trend, forex marketers must focus on providing consistent value, educational resources, and excellent customer support to foster lasting relationships with traders.

Developing effective conversion funnels

The customer funnel is a critical component of any digital marketing strategy—not just for online trading. According to a study by Salesforce, 79% of marketing leads never actually turn into sales. Building an effective and compelling marketing funnel in forex is all about focusing on the coveted final conversion — the First Time Deposit (FTD) — which is the most common KPI used by forex marketers to evaluate the success of their campaigns.

That said, it’s important to also note that only focusing on FTDs, especially while running brand awareness campaigns, can be misleading. Directly attributing FTDs to paid efforts can cause frustration and a quick abandonment of such campaigns. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of their new audiences, marketers should consider metrics like Cost Per New Visitor (CPNV) and bounce rates. By focusing on these indicators, marketers can evaluate the quality of their audience engagement and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Inventory restrictions on ad networks

Reaching customers is more difficult for forex marketers due to advertising restrictions of many ad networks and social platforms. When Facebook, Twitter, and Google banned crypto ads in 2018, this led to an uproar and pushback in the form of lawsuits brought by industry associations in several countries. These restrictive policies have since softened, but there are still many ad networks that do not allow the delivery of forex campaigns. 

Strict ad requirements

Another challenge for marketers is the strict requirements set by ad networks for forex-focused ads. All ads must include specific disclaimers and clear terms and conditions. Although this is widely acknowledged in the industry of marketing for Forex, it also requires marketers to be extra creative and quick to adapt. How do you capture the attention of your intended audience with a clear call to action without triggering regulatory and ad networks. 

Six Forex Strategies to Drive Traffic and Win Conversions

The global community of forex traders is enormous, numbering close to 10 million. Finding potential customers are like needles in a haystack, but there are ways to successfully navigate the morass. Here are several strategies used by forex marketers to drive traffic, target qualified audiences, and boost conversions.

1. Localize campaigns according to country

The forex community is fairly spread out worldwide, with the highest number of traders located in Asia, similar numbers in North America and Europe, followed by substantial numbers in the Middle East and Africa. A breakdown by country only demonstrates further how diverse and complex the target audience is. 

It pays for forex marketers to focus campaigns on individual countries, in order to achieve maximum relevance for each market situation. This means localizing ad content with creatives aligned to the specific target audience — not just in the language used, but also cultural norms and values. 

Before entering a new market, be sure to ask:

• What is the latest topic of interest to forex customers in this region?

• Do you have sales people who speak the local language? 

• Is your website updated to include both the first and second language of the country you’re targeting? 

• How much do you want to invest in these regions monetarily?

• What's the typical deposit value of this country and how much existing presence do you have?

Being intentional and thorough in your approach to localized campaigns will make all the difference in your outcome.

2. Drive leads with valuable, educational content

Successful forex traders are educated ones. When a trader feels confident, they are more likely to spend on trading platforms. That’s why lead generation campaigns in the forex industry are usually educational in nature, based on market reports and up-to-date financial data that can help traders succeed. Forex marketers must focus on providing target audiences with value-added content that will support smart trading decisions. 

To take your marketing to the next step, be sure to segment your educational campaigns into novice and experienced traders.

• For novice traders: You will want to provide a learning portal or blog articles on how to start trading. 

• For experienced traders: Focus on daily trading market updates, newsletters, and expert breakdowns. 

You should have a variety of content types on your site to use in your marketing efforts. Traders are always on the lookout for information and a platform that not only appears as an industry leader but can also support them in staying up-to-date will be better set up for success.

3. Focus on loyalty

Building brand loyalty is key to retaining customers. Increasingly, forex brands have been seeing more platform hoppers who jump from trade platform to trade platform, chasing the next promo with no brand loyalty. A/B test ads in your key target countries to find out what is most important to traders in this market. This can help you meet needs and secure long-term customers over quicker customer acquisition with short-term highly attractive promotions.

In addition to optimizing your platform for the type of customer you’re looking for, add a referral program to your offerings. This incentivizes traders to bring in their own referrals for a return, encouraging them to stay long-term customers. 

4. Create targeted campaigns for specific audience segments 

There are two key goals that forex marketers are most focused on: traffic acquisition and direct conversions.

Traffic acquisition is all about driving relevant audiences to a website or landing page. An effective way to do this is with ‘lookalike’ and contextual targeting campaigns. Lookalike campaigns aim to target new audiences based on similar behavioral patterns as customers who’ve completed FTD conversions before. This way, it’s possible to tap into broader audiences with a higher chance of converting. Contextual campaigns allow for niche audience targeting with branded ads alongside content that marketers know their ideal customer is interested in. 

Direct conversions mean capitalizing on audiences that are already somewhat engaged. Depending on which stage of the funnel they’re at, these audiences can be retargeted with focused campaigns designed to drive them even further towards conversion and retention:

• Target previous site visitors: People who’ve already visited a site have shown some level of interest, and therefore have the potential to become actionable leads. Target them with ads and content such as whitepaper downloads, newsletter registrations, and other tactics that can draw them into the funnel.

• Target leads to register: Warmer leads who’ve taken certain actions, such as downloading an ebook, can be targeted with campaigns encouraging registration, such as creating a demo account or attending a webinar. Utilizing offline lead generated from forex events, seminars, and workshops as your CRM audiences is also another way to target warm leads. 

• Target registrants who have not yet converted with FTD: Customers who’ve signed up for the platform, but who’ve not yet converted with an FTD can be targeted with campaigns designed to entice them to start spending. This could be in the form of incentive offers or monetary bonuses.

• Target converted customers with loyalty campaigns: Customers who’ve already deposited can be encouraged to spend more with loyalty messaging campaigns, such as exclusive discounts or members-only promotions. Referral programs are another way to incentivise existing customers to spread word of mouth for you and bring in new customers.

5. Optimize accounts

Once campaigns are up and running, we recommend reviewing performance often, at least once a month, and making optimizations based on your goal one change at a time. By changing just one thing at a time, you can ensure you’re able to determine the impact of your optimizations.

You can do this by A/B testing campaigns, relocating budgets between targeted countries as necessary, and adjusting the sequential messaging strategy according to KPI results of the various ads and devices.

6. Report on the full customer journey

Marketers who have their finger on the pulse of the full-cycle customer journey are much better equipped to achieve good conversion and retention rates. The only way to understand and optimize the performance of the customer journey is through continual reporting and analysis of every stage, particularly the dynamics of two key conversions: click-through conversions (CTC) and view-through conversions VTC). CTC is when a user clicks on an ad and converts directly, while VTC is a user who does not click on an ad but converts sometime later. Accurately grasping these two metrics and the behaviors behind them goes a long way to optimizing the customer journey in action.

Open the Playbook Today

The forex industry is massive and complex, and even the toughest marketers can get overwhelmed at times. Faced with incredible competition, global audiences in dozens of countries, painful advertising regulations, and seemingly endless tools to choose from, it’s wise to drill down to the practical, doable tactics, like those in this playbook, that can drive traffic, boost conversions, and bring in the cash.

Launch your forex campaign with AdRoll! Find out how we can help you reach new users and get new sign ups!

Last updated on September 12th, 2023.