Guest Editorial: How to get broker advertising out quickly in volatile times

With many brokers relatively unaffected by the major move in CHF, the scramble is on to acquire as many clients as possible. Keyword bids on Google Adwords are running extremely high and many industry media are selling out of advertising inventory quickly. So how to ramp up acquisition quickly in such times?

In many ways it comes down to having a plan ready to go. Getting a budget approved, having the relevant advertising material with trust related messages and having a mediaplan ready to go are all things that can be done in advance and I would recommend you look into. However, there are often not enough hours in a day and as such many brokers need to get some options now quickly. So here are a couple of ideas for getting in market quickly:

–       Search Marketing: while very competitive, this is a flexible tool that allows you to add new campaigns and keywords quickly while retaining control of results. Besides normal keyword search campaigns, I would recommend you look into the (contextual) display advertising options available in Google and other search engines to ramp up spend.

–       Real Time Bidding: similar to search marketing, RTB is very flexible and allows you to quickly ramp up or down spend according to your needs. Advertising options include targeting specific sites, retargeting your site visitors, targeting specific segments of users through data and contextual advertising.

–       Email Marketing: a somewhat underutilized channel by brokers, email list from publishers are often available for renting by brokers in order for them to send out a dedicated email message. This means you can quickly get in front of a large segment of the trading audience in a highly impactful manner, at low cost.

–       Display Advertising: while some of the highly targeted industry sites sell out of inventory to sell, there are larger sites that garner a relevant audience you can employ. These sites include publishers that practically never sell out of advertising inventory, so there is a possibility to get some additional traction.

–       Mobile Marketing: mobile advertising space doesn’t nearly get the same kind of demand from advertisers that desktop targeted advertising gets, and opportunities exist to get in front of a highly targeted audience on their mobile handset. This can be bought via RTB, networks or direct from publishers.

These channels would allow you to get advertising live quickly and start to get some additional leads and clients. It is obviously also key to employ public relations and social media in addition to advertising in order to ensure your target audience is assured of your stability and your clients are not unhappy, but that’s a separate subject.

This article was written by Bart Burggraaf, partner at MediaGroup London, a specialized marketing agency for the online trading industry and part of MediaGroup Worldwide.