The Value of Partnership at the Most Opportune Time

The Value of Partnership at the Most Opportune Time
November 10, 2020

BDSwiss is offering market participants two distinct partnership programs, at the most opportune time.

BDSwiss offers two distinct methods of partnership to both individuals and businesses. Partnership can involve becoming an affiliate – someone who refers clients to BDSwiss via online campaigns and channels, or, becoming an introducing broker (IB) – a company that introduces new clients to BDSwiss with a view of supporting the client themselves.

 

The BDSwiss IB partnership program is a means for partners to earn competitive remuneration while partnering with one of the most trusted brands in the FX industry. We currently service IBs from various regions by empowering them to support their clients including state-of-the-art trading tools and effective educational content.

 

Meanwhile, BDSwiss’ Affiliate program enables anyone with a strong online presence in the financial services field to benefit from our competitive remuneration plans by introducing our products and services to their audience. Affiliates can take advantage of professional marketing materials and tracking tools to help them monetise their marketing activity.

 

To date, we have worked with over 17,000 of affiliates and IBs, providing the necessary support for them to engage with their target audience.

 

 

What’s the difference between an IB and an Affiliate?

The main difference between IBs and affiliates is the nature and scope of their operations.  Affiliates tend to target and refer audiences largely via online activity, while IBs will often hold offline events and maintain a network which involves in person communication, as well as sometimes even operate on a whitelabel brokerage level. 

 

 

Who can become an IB?

Every broker will have slightly different criteria that determine who they will accept as IBs. For BDSwiss, this is no different. Our IB program specifies precise conditions that we expect these individuals or companies to meet, in order to be welcomed into the BDSwiss family as an IB.

 

Moreover, regulators specify IB criteria and then the brokers are obligated to align their operations and partners agreements accordingly.  

 

 

The BDSwiss advantage

Partnering with BDSwiss provides IB with multiple advantages and benefits:

  •       Industry-leading commission rates 
  •       Remuneration on sub-IB earnings
  •       Customised IB links and expert support
  •       Dedicated IB portal with advanced performance tracking and reporting tools
  •       Customised promotional banners available directly through a centralised online hub
  •       Specialised IB events including coordination and sponsorship initiatives

 

 

Latin American and Asian IBs

For partners operating in Latin American and Asia, BDSwiss provides a full Partners Support Kit including localised marketing materials, 24/5 dedicated support, local events and seminars, and innovative products and promotions to increase conversion and client engagement.

 

 

High growth areas

Territories that are currently very attractive for new IB partners and affiliates are Asia and Latin America. Whereas US and European markets have become highly saturated over the past decade – Asian and Latin American operators are experiencing a trading boom.

 

Relatively slower to develop countries with less capitalised financial markets has left Latin America and Asia trailing other territories, but this gap is rapidly closing as new FX companies break new ground in developing countries.

 

Potential affiliates and IBs can take advantage of these regions by applying to become an IB or an affiliate. If their application is successful, individuals and businesses can monetise the surge in trading activity worldwide.

 

Demographic catalyst

Latin America is gradually increasing the size of its middle class, which, when combined with stronger regulation, is encouraging greater numbers of people to try trading for the first time.

 

Meanwhile, with a population of almost 650 million people, Southeast Asia is possibly the world’s largest retail trading market given the surging levels of population growth, combined with greater disposable incomes in all parts of society. Asia is proving its long-held promise of being a sleeping giant in a region that is one of the last to offer online services. The rapid economic expansion of different nations in Southeast Asia has brought about an increasing interest in online investments and trading Forex and CFD products.

 

Linguistic allure

Much like Asia, Latin America also has a superb demographic background. The continent’s population is estimated to be 630 million and if non-Spanish speakers are excluded, that still leaves over 400 million potential clients. Latin America has historically been let down by low levels of internet connectivity – as an example, in Mexico, only 45% of the population has internet access. However, the rate of internet adoption is growing exponentially year-on-year which makes Latin America one of the most opportune regions for marketing FX/CFD services in the world.

 

 

On the issue of regulation

Market regulation is a key issue. It is quite common to see unregulated FX brokers setting up operations in Southeast Asia, or other regions with lower regulatory standards, to avoid costly capital adequacy requirements but still take on clients.

 

The result has been an overly competitive market with dozens of brokers using questionable sales practises to win new business. 

 

For IBs, it is therefore essential to operate under the wing of a broker that is fully regulated in non-EU jurisdictions while offering multilingual 24-hour support to all clients.

 

 

COVID-19 impact

This year’s COVID pandemic has been a hammer blow to the world economy, reducing incomes, spending and economic activity in every country. However, coronavirus has also served to boost market volatility and trading volumes in the financial markets.

 

Short-term traders crave volatility which has meant an explosion in the number of people trying trading for the first time, and trading volumes amongst existing traders. For IBs and affiliates, COVID-19 has been an opportunity in disguise: an opportunity to introduce FX trading to new audiences and encourage higher trading activity by marketing engaging market research content.

 

In the medium-long term, we are likely to see a greater focus on online productivity tools such as Zoom – yet another opportunity for IBs and affiliates to launch collaborative online initiatives to educate traders. At BDSwiss, we intend to harness online productivity tools to build rapport and to work more closely with our clients, IBs and affiliates. We encourage our partners to do the same!

 

Higher trading activity leads to higher remuneration for IBs, while higher volatility continues to be interpreted by novice traders as an avenue to higher returns and always spurs more volume – it is essential for IBs to educate their clients that volatility is a double-edged sword, even though most clients continue to see volatility as a vehicle to riches.

 

 

Final Word

Despite being undeveloped for generations, Latin America and Asia are two regions that are rapidly catching up to their Western counterparts. Greater internet connectivity, higher disposable incomes and a greater sense of entrepreneurship are all factors contributing to the growth of trading in Latin America and Asia.

 

For IBs and affiliates, these two regions offer the most spare capacity and most long-term potential compared to any other region globally.

 

However, several challenges must be overcome. Firstly, partners should understand that working with Latin American and Asian clients can be difficult because of cultural or economic factors – which is why partnering with an appropriate broker that has an already established market presence and a true understanding of the local culture as well as the market, is key.

 

Check out BDSwiss’ IB and Affiliate programs to see how they can help you to become an IB or an affiliate.

August 2020 Affiliate Competition: Winners Announced

August 2020 Affiliate Competition: Winners Announced
September 21, 2020

BDSwiss’ Grand Affiliate Competition with a $20,000 total prize pool is officially over and we are very pleased to announce that we have our three winners. All prizes will be paid out as direct credit to our winning partners’ accounts and can be fully withdrawn at any time. 

 

THE RULES

The competition was held from August 1st to September 15th and gave all BDSwiss Affiliate partners the opportunity to claim added cash prizes on top of their existing commissions by securing the highest average total trading volume and climbing to one of the top 3 places on our Leaderboard. All BDSwiss Affiliates were automatically entered into the competition but had to secure at least 50 new FTDs while the competition was running in order to qualify for a prize. 

 

WINNERS & PRIZES

Our highest-ranking affiliate has managed to climb to the top of our leaderboard by achieving an astonishing total trading volume of $6.2 million and will be claiming our first prize of $11,000 as a direct deposit to their account. The second prize of $5,000 will be claimed by the Affiliate who managed to reach a total trading volume of $2.8million on our leaderboard, while our third winner reached a $2.6 million in client trading volume and will be receiving a $3,000 cash reward!  

 

MORE COMPETITIONS COMING UP 

We would like to thank all our affiliate partners for taking part in our latest competition. We’ve seen astonishing volumes and we hope that our partners have enjoyed healthy revenue streams. We have been receiving some very encouraging feedback on our competitions and promotions so we plan to continue offering added motivation and rewards to BDSwiss IBs and Affiliates. Stay tuned for more exciting competitions ahead!

 

Not a partner yet? Join our Partner Program today  

 

New Payment Methods, Expansion Plans & Optimised Conversion Rates

New Payment Methods, Expansion Plans & Optimised Conversion Rates
August 28, 2019

As the BDSwiss brand continues to grow and expand, we focus on giving clients more by making sure that they enjoy absolute flexibility when it comes to their online transactions. To achieve this we continuously invest in new innovations and partnerships with top-tier payment providers that enable us to provide our traders with greater ease of access and a smoother experience when it comes to their trading transactions. 

 

With our latest venture to South East Asia, we have recently introduced a number of new payment methods to help accommodate the needs of our new audience. These include online banking via Safecharge and other payment methods such as Paytrust, RPN Pay, Zotapay, Fasapay and Payment Asia for clients coming from China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. 

 

In a continuously evolving forex and CFD trading arena, BDSwiss seeks to maintain its competitive advantage by offering its clients variety, transparency and security when it comes to payment methods. Deposits, transfers and withdrawals with BDSwiss are quick, intuitive, secure and free, giving the client the flexibility to complete their transaction via a number of local and international payment methods. BDSwiss charges 0 fees on deposits and they are absolutely no withdrawal fees for transactions exceeding 100 EUR.

 

Working with a number of reputable electronic payment systems has enabled us to substantially increase our inflow of clients who enjoy the possibilities offered by electronic funds. While offering a broad range of deposit methods helps us optimise our conversion rates by ensuring that clients have a smooth experience and are able to quickly and easily fund their accounts; giving clients a fast and pain-free experience when it comes to withdrawals also helps us cement our market reputation and expand client loyalty and lifetime value. Clients with a positive experience are more likely to keep trading in the long run and refer BDSwiss to their acquaintances. For BDSwiss Partners, this translates to longer referral lifetime value, a more solid business network and of course more lucrative returns.

 

Looking to the future, BDSwiss commits to continuously invest in new technologies and partnerships with top tier payment gateway providers which will in turn help solidify our presence in new and emerging markets. 

Forex Project Funding Program for BDSwiss Partners

Forex Project Funding Program for BDSwiss Partners
August 13, 2019

Investing in long-term, mutually beneficial and highly lucrative business relationships, BDSwiss’ partnership program looks to offer its partners more.  At BDSwiss, we focus on working closely with our partners, building two-way collaborations that help our partners grow and expand, which is why we have created the BDSwiss Forex Project Funding program. 

 

What Type of Projects do we Fund?

BDSwiss’ forex project funding program was created to assist new and existing forex Affiliates and Introducing Brokers optimise their performance by funding or sponsoring any promising forex project ideas including trading seminars, workshops, online webinars and any other forex-related project with potential. BDSwiss’ forex project funding initiative gives all partners, no matter their financial status equal opportunities to organise innovative forex projects. This means that we are also ready to support young entrepreneurs and small start-up affiliate businesses that may lack the capital but have the creative drive to host fresh and engaging forex events that will help promote BDSwiss’ award-winning trading conditions and platforms to new audiences. 

 

We Give our Partners More

BDSwiss forex project funding program goes beyond providing financial support to our partners; our partner and marketing teams are ready to support our IBs and Affiliates with planning, promoting and organising their event. Our aim is to go above the traditional broker offering and provide our partners with added benefits that help them take their business to the next level, such as personal support, dedicated call centres, competitive and transparent remuneration options and timely and secure pay-outs.

 

Have a Great FX Project Idea? 

We can fund your next forex project! Share with us your idea, from a forex seminar to a trading gathering or online webinar, we are ready to sponsor any promising project. Just pitch your idea to our Partners’ team by filling in the Forex Project funding application form.

 

How to Monetize your Instagram Account Traffic

How to Monetize your Instagram Account Traffic
May 31, 2019

With more than 1 billion monthly users, Instagram is getting ready for global domination, threatening to dethrone even its millennial predecessor, Facebook. Instagram is undeniably an immensely powerful channel when it comes to marketing and affiliation. In fact, we’ve seen a wave of self-made influencers who then become very powerful affiliates and even brand ambassadors stemming the social media behemoth! There is no doubt that Instagram holds an immense monetisation potential and it is an extremely powerful platform that continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.  

 

Given the sheer size of the global audience, there’s a niche market out there for all kinds of forex affiliate marketers from the educational websites, to the signal provider or lifestyle trader. Regardless of the kind of content you create, Instagram can help you reach a new, tech-savvy demographic that you can leverage to increase your conversions and returns. But how can you gain an Instagram following in the first place?

 

1. Establish your Niche with a Perfect Bio

Before anything, you first need to make sure your Instagram bio is attractive. It needs to be able to tell your audience who you are, what you do and what is it that you want them to do, including a clear call-to-action.

 

2. Engage your Audience with Interesting Content

Instagram is all about content, and not just any content. It’s about sharing high-quality interesting content. Having a sizeable fanbase does, mathematically, increase your chances of appearing in the feeds of more users. But what’s the point of that if people don’t engage with you or your content? The trick to increasing engagement is to create content that solves certain content needs for your audience. When it comes to a forex related profile, you could choose to provide your audience with actionable market information, real-time trading, your personal strategy or EA, trading tips, your set ups, your views on what’s currently happening in the markets or even just some inspirational posts on what CFD trading means to you and how it reflects on your lifestyle.

 

3. Post regularly

Posting regularly is one of the ingredients of Instagram success, it’s a platform that requires you to be very active. Ideally, you should be posting at least once a day. If you can post more than that, 2-3 times a day, you will get better reach and engagement, enabling you to grow your account. There are a number of tools you can use to automate your posting or distribute your content to a number of social media platforms at peak traffic hours to optimise engagement.

 

4. Leverage the Right Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to improve the discoverability and reach of your content. Instagram allows you to use a maximum of 30 hashtags; but you should always remember to use your hashtags wisely. Try using ones that are relevant to your posts and will help you reach out to bigger audiences, but feel free to get creative and witty with your hashtags, as well. You may also use a hashtag manager to keep them organised. You can use it to store all your hashtags separately or in groups, which is really handy if have more than one account to manage.

 

5. Utilise Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories can be used in various ways. It’s a brilliant feature that should be utilised regularly as it increases engagement and makes your account look more credible and approachable. More importantly, when your account surpasses 10,000 followers, Instagram allows you to start adding hyperlinks within your stories!

 

You can now also take advantage of Instagram’s recent update which includes the ability to display story highlights on your profile. You may consider creating a few highlights to promote and encourage your audience to follow you on other social networks or even visit your website if you have one.

 

6. Improve your Content Quality

One of the most important things you need to do to monetize Instagram is to improve your content quality. Standing out in an ocean of content creators will give you the edge you need to truly drive and convert traffic.   Always use high-quality images and never repeat your pitches. Additionally, you should strongly consider leveraging video content in the form of Stories or even on IGTV to stand out.

 

7. Build Relationship with Other Content Creators

An important element of growing your reach and influence is cultivating relationships with other content creators from your niche. You could always get in touch with them and ask them for a shoutout on one of their posts. Or you can actively engage with them and their followers on their posts. Better yet, you can collaborate with them to create content together.

 

8. Engage with Your Followers and Targeted Audience

Ultimately, being an Instagram success also comes down to how you engage with your followers. If you show that you are an actual human behind that profile picture and actively reply to your audience’s comments and direct messages regularly they will be more likely to engage with your content and convert down the line. This also applies to engaging with your followers content. Leaving a few likes, comments and following back your audience will help build positive healthy relationships encouraging engagement and trust.

 

Sources:

Hootsuite, Omnicore, Sked Social & Shane Barker as of May 31st 2019, 4:00 PM GMT.

 

Can you Make an Income from Forex Without Trading?

Can you Make an Income from Forex Without Trading?
April 25, 2019

What is Forex trading?

Forex or foreign exchange trading refers to the buying and selling of world currencies with CFDs with the intention of making a profit. CFDs essentially enable traders to speculate on the price movement of underlying financial assets which can include currency pairs like the EUR/USD or other types of assets including indices, shares, cryptocurrencies and commodities.

 

In order to be able to trade CFDs, a trader needs to have an understanding of the underlying financial assets and broader market, as well as be aware of the risks involved. In fact, around 80% of CFD traders lose money, which means that only 2 out of 10 have the knowledge and expertise necessary to profit from Forex trading. That being said, there are other ways to profit from the forex industry without having to be a broker or a market guru.

 

What is a Forex Affiliate Program?

Most leading Forex brokers will offer forex affiliate programs for individuals with a strong online presence and a market-savvy audience. These forex affiliate programs will essentially reward you for introducing your traffic to their products and services, opening up the door to a possible second income stream.

 

How Does it Work?

Forex affiliation works just like any other type of affiliation. You essentially refer your audience to a certain broker and then benefit from a commission on your referrals’ deposits or trading activity. If you have ever read a forex affiliate review, you probably know by now that there are 2 types of payouts: RevShare – lifetime commission for each lot traded by a client you referred and forex CPA.

 

There’s often the misconception that you need to have a website in order to become a forex affiliate affiliate or that the only way to generate forex traffic is by chatting on forums with other traders. Even though these methods undeniably work for some forex affiliates, there is a great number of ways to make money from forex affiliate programs.

 

How can I Find Forex Traffic?

The truth of the matter is that without a decent following, you’ll struggle to refer anyone to the Forex broker. Not only does this mean you won’t be a particularly attractive partner for brokers, you also won’t be able to make much money as a Forex affiliate. The first thing you need to do is build a solid online following which also comes down to the quality of the content you produce. You need to post content regularly enough to keep people engaged with your site and/or with your social media profiles, not to mention to boost your rankings in search engines like Google.

 

Think carefully about the topics people interested in forex trading would want to hear about and focus on the problems they want resolved. Pay close attention to your SEO to encourage inbound traffic to your site or blog, and plug your articles extensively through social media channels.

 

What Channels do I Use?

As a forex affiliate marketer understanding your audience and what they are looking for can help you better determine the channels through which to approach your traffic. There is a vast number of different traffic sources you can tap into.

 

What you should remember as an affiliate marketer is that dominating a single platform is not enough anymore. Your leads on Facebook are not on YouTube, and those on YouTube are different to those reading the content on your website. As such, the key to your success is to repurpose your content across multiple platforms relevant to your forex audience.

 

Looking to become a Forex Affiliate?

Explore the opportunities of partnering with a leading broker by visiting BDSwiss’ forex Partners’ Portal . Alternatively, you may choose to complete our Affiliate Registration form directly. One of our Business Developers will contact you at a time of your convenience to strategise and create your own customised remuneration plan.

 

*Sources: LeadForensics Apr 25 12:30 PM GMT

How to Use Social Data to Launch a Successful Forex Affiliate Campaign

How to Use Social Data to Launch a Successful Forex Affiliate Campaign
April 11, 2019

Any forex affiliate marketer who uses social media campaigns will know that social networks have a great deal of issues when it comes to forex marketing. To begin with, determining social media ROI in forex affiliate marketing is next to impossible. There’s also the myriads of obvious — but not so obvious, social media pitfalls that you need to avoid.

 

Yet the money spent on social media advertising is on the rise, especially when it comes to online products like forex trading. So it’s pretty fair to say that social media seems to be working well for forex affiliate marketers, and even though there are definitely major migrations to new social media channels, audiences are increasingly active on social media.

 

So the question we should really be asking here is: How can you use social media to your advantage as a forex affiliate marketer?

 

Choosing the Right Channel

There are tons of social networks available to target trading related traffic, but as a Forex partner you definitely need to consider which are the best ones to run your ads or publish your content on. The social media platforms that you choose to use need to have a pre-existing audience interested in online forex and CFD trading. Channels like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are used by a healthy number of people interested in forex, finance and overall investing. Instagram and Telegram are also increasing in popularity, especially when it comes to forex affiliates who work as signal providers. Once you find your key channels, it is crucial to set up your account and profiles correctly, as social media channels can be a source of both organic and paid traffic.

 

Choosing the Right Offer

A huge part of your success lies in your ability to avoid wasting time on campaigns that will not generate valuable leads.This means that you need to promote your offering in a unique and engaging manner. It’s also always useful to check what’s trending in the social media world at the moment. It’s also wise to keep an eye on the competition. What are other forex affiliates doing at the moment to attract potential clients on behalf of their broker? Are they offering trading alerts, educational courses or unique tools that alert traders to market opportunities?

 

Choosing the Right Audience

Targeting your audience is also a crucial part of your campaign-setting process, so you will need to take into consideration what would be the key demographics, interests,  age, etc. of your potential forex traffic. This will enable you to tailor ads around a specific user base. Looking at the competition will also help you target the right audience segments.

 

Using Social Data to Determine Copy Strategy and LP Content

It’s a common saying that there’s no way to have an online marketing campaign without a brand-new landing page. Most forex affiliate marketers would agree, but few would hang the success of a whole marketing campaign on a single landing page. There’s probably going to be a whole host of content, optimized websites, and paid ads.

 

Creating Campaign Materials and Assets

Social data can help forex affiliate marketers make all the choices that matter to the creation and performance of marketing materials and assets. With something as simple as an Instagram post, social data can determine the theme, the setting, the filter, the time of day when the content is released, and probably the piece of content that gets released before that post, and the one after.

 

Fine Tuning and Split Testing

Even if you’re new to forex affiliate marketing, you’re probably aware that you have to test your ads to see how well they are performing and more importantly, how they can be improved. At the very least, you need to see the weak points of your ad campaign and get ideas what to do about them. When you go back to analyze your campaigns, it’s precisely social data that’s going to give you the feedback you need to pack more punch into your social ads!

 

Conclusion

Social data can do a lot to ensure a successful launch of a marketing campaign. However, it’s only useful if the marketer knows how and where to look for data, which data is useful, and how to analyze it. At the end of the day, you can use social media for your affiliate campaign as much or as little as you want to, but the truth is that it’s impossible to disregard social networks completely.

 

Sources:  Mobidea, linkfluence, nopcommerce April 10, 2019, 16:30 GMT.

Why are Multi-Channel Campaigns So Effective?

Why are Multi-Channel Campaigns So Effective?
March 13, 2019

Forex and CFD audiences are becoming increasingly complex and like every consumer, they use a multitude of different channels.  The days when a single message through a single channel sufficed to reach your entire follower-base or audience are long gone. Nowadays, audiences move sequentially between computer, smartphone, tablet and TV – or use them simultaneously, according to context and in order to be more efficient. As forex affiliate marketers communicate with their audiences, it is imperative that they understand this fundamental aspect of the user experience – and tailor their marketing strategies accordingly.

 

Simply put, Multi-Channel marketing refers to the practice of communicating with audiences across multiple channels to maximize the possibility of engagement. What that means is that a forex affiliate marketer would cohesively leverage mediums to reach the end-user like:

 

  • SMS
  • Email
  • In-App Message
  • Push Notification
  • Web Push Notification
  • Web Messages

 

Creating a solid online presence requires running your campaigns across multiple channels. When done right, multi-channel interactions can amplify your online reach. According to statistics provided by marketing hub Optimove, the average adult is connected to the internet via 4.5 devices, and with the advancement of the IoT, that number is only poised to grow. As a forex affiliate marketer, reaching your audience exclusively through one channel or one device means that you’re losing a lot of potential touchpoints and valuable leads.

 

Why is multi-channel strategizing important for forex affiliate marketing?

Multi-channel campaign management enables forex affiliate marketers to promote their partner brokers across websites, mobile, social, email and call centers. According to another marketing research conducted by Optimove overall, multi-channel campaigns receive a 14% response rate. Meanwhile, single-channel campaigns received a response rate of 10.2%. These results spell a 37% increase in response when using a multi-channel campaign compared to a single-channel campaign.

 

Multi-channel campaigns are critical in today’s super-connected world. Different people are more receptive to communications via different channels, different types of messages work better over different channels, and repeating a message via different channels is much more effective than repeating it via a single channel.

 

What are the benefits for you as an affiliate marketer?

Let’s start with the obvious, multi-channel campaigns enable you to reach more people, more effectively, through a number of channels; which also translates to improved conversion rates and ROI.  Multi-channel campaigns also enable you to create an intelligent engagement strategy, using data to understand usage patterns on a daily basis. What is more, multi-channel campaigns will make your forex affiliate website or chanel appear more serious, established and in simple terms, more legitimate. Say that you promote a broker via free educational webinars. Subjecting your target audience to multiple impressions can reinforce the need for your webinars, and increase “back of the” mind awareness of your name and educational offering.

 

Last but not least, multi-channel campaigns have been found to improve customer’s lifetime value. According to Google, multi-channel users will have a 30 percent higher lifetime value compared to single channel users.  


How to build a successful multi-channel campaign

The key here is consistency. Try to keep your design, tone and message consistent across different channels. This will help your followers identify your name or website more easily. By managing campaigns across multiple channels you’re creating a presence for your website or channel in your clients life. If you treat each channel separately you will fail to deliver consistency. Instead try to run campaigns that present a sequence of messages, like telling your audience a story, across multiple channels.

 

 

Sources: Optimove blog 8/3/2019 12:30 PM GMT, LeadForensics 8/3/2019 12:30 PM GMT

How Dedicated Support-Centers Can Maximise Your Earnings as a Forex Partner

How Dedicated Support-Centers Can Maximise Your Earnings as a Forex Partner
February 12, 2019

Partnering with a broker that maintains highly organised and efficient support centers can have an immense impact on your monthly earnings and overall success as a forex partner. A successfully managed support center guarantees high conversion rates, an optimal customer experience and a longer customer lifetime value, all of  which lead to greater trading volumes. Successful brokers understand that a support center’s main purpose is to gain and retain clients so that they don’t defect to the competition; to do this a support center needs the know-how, organisational structure, training sessions, as well as the proper performance tracking and rewards that will keep the teams motivated. That being said, maintaining productive support centers that keep conversion and retention rates at record highs is no easy task. There are a number of key aspects and characteristics that you as an affiliate marketer or IB should be looking for when trying to assess a broker’s support center.

 

Sales, Retention and Support
The most successful forex / CFD brokers are those that employ   client-centric support teams covering clients’ lifecycle, with sales and retention staff. As BDSwiss Head of Conversion Angelos Christofi notes “It’s critical to strategically run the conversion services function, with overall responsibility for quality and revenue. From the moment a new lead comes in, you need to have a strategy to smoothly onboard it, providing 5 stars support and the best customer experience. Having this in mind, we built our teams accordingly, based on the channels driving the traffic and with appropriate funnels based on each client lifecycle, to drive incremental business and improved ROI.”

 

Experience Matters

The forex industry is highly competitive, making the initial inbound call by a prospect possibly the only chance the broker has at winning the client. Due to the specialized nature of the forex industry, experienced support staff is a key ingredient to a successful support center. The retail forex industry has a steep learning curve and similar to any niche business sector, the forex industry has its own vernacular. Hiring experienced professionals that have a thorough understanding of CFD trading, forex trading platforms and how key market events can affect price direction is therefore crucial to a support center’s overall success, as they indeed add value for the customers. Especially for new traders, who require greater guidance, an experienced account manager is super important.


Training, Training, Training
In such a highly competitive arena such as the forex industry, complacency is not an option! A broker needs to not only hire the right talents for the job but also spend time, money and resources to introduce them to the company’s internal processes and procedures, update them on all running campaigns and promotions, ensure that they understand the dos and don’ts with regards to regulation, as well as educate them on the company’s conversion and retention objectives, best practices and strategies for building client rapport. What is more, a successful broker needs to build a culture of continuous learning and ensure that its sales agents, account managers, support staff, retention officers and anyone maintaining direct contact with clients and therefore contributing to acquisition and retention, have the right guidance, support and specialised training so that they constantly improve their performance.


Multilingual Equals Multicultural

The global appeal of the forex industry has created the need for multilingual and multicultural support centers that can truly cater to a varied and culturally diverse client-base. Forex brokers therefore need to ensure that their acquisition, support and retention teams not only cover a multitude of languages on a 24 hour basis but also that their agents come from varied background and have the right cultural sensitivity to truly understand the client’s perspective and accommodate his or her needs.


Tracking and Rewarding Performance
Applying accurate support center metrics that measure the performance of a broker’s agents is also a key component to optimising conversions. Proper tracking allows for efficient monitoring of conversions, upselling, support and retention efforts, while it also enables a broker to properly reward and encourage agents to meet business goals. What is more, incentives help keep support center teams motivated can create an environment of healthy competition that increases productivity.
 

How BDSwiss’ Optimised Support centers Reflect On Partner Revenue:

BDSwiss multilingual support centers cover more than 20 languages and operate on a 24 hour basis to ensure that our partners’ referrals receive timely and efficient support. Maintaining a strong organisational structure, we further ensure that our global support centers from Berlin to Kuala Lumpur have the knowledge and expertise necessary to best cater for the needs of our ever growing client base. Having a deep understanding of our CFD products also enables our agents to give traders thorough information and ensure that clients have a clear understanding of the benefits and risks involved in trading forex and CFDs. Our support centers can provide added services that educate the client such as one-on-one sessions, platform walkthroughs, strategy assessment and assist with any issue at hand.

As Angelos notes, “At the end of the day everything from our company’s revenue to its market reputation, boils down to customer satisfaction and long term loyalty. We therefore optimise our support centers by mentoring, monitoring, training and motivating our teams, in order to ensure that our partner’s referrals get the best possible trading experience. At BDSwiss we make sure our support centers are 100% aligned to our partners goals, we give their referrals the best possible service which translates to longer lifetime value, higher trading volumes and greater returns.”

Affiliate Marketing Through Social Media – Tips from Top Affiliates

Affiliate Marketing Through Social Media – Tips from Top Affiliates
January 14, 2019

Using social media for affiliate marketing can be very effective in expanding your reach as a marketer. However, it’s important to make sure your social media posts are not created for the sole purpose of spreading your affiliate or website link. Posts without value are posts that will eventually cause your audience to lose interest, rendering your efforts of using social media for affiliate marketing useless. Intrusive advertising methods and spamming are some of the worst practices when it comes to affiliate marketing and social media.

1. The 80-20 Rule
Rogers Michael Stevens, the author of Affiliate Marketer Training blog notes that when using social media, it is important to make sure you provide actual value to your followers. An easy method to ensure that you are not spamming your audience in your social media is using Stevens’ 80-20 rule: “On my social media platforms I like to have 80% of my posts as entertainment or education purposes only and only 20% of my posts have anything to do with promotions.”

You can’t just put up hundreds of posts every day that are essentially advertisements. It gets old fast and most people view it just as bad as spam. It’s ok to throw in some relevant ads once in a while, but the majority of your posts and updates on social media should not contain affiliate links or links to sales pages on your website. This is especially true for new affiliate marketers who have only recently established a following, they need to ensure that they build trust first and monetize later. That being said, it is also important to make sure you are also addressing the right audience with your promotions or product. Even if your promotional posts are restricted to 20% of your posted content, your audience can still lose interest, if your advertised products or services have nothing to do with what your audience is looking for.

 

2. Focus on high quality products

If you’re promoting lower quality products and services, regardless of your post quality, the look of your link, or the visual or video use, you’re most likely not going to have much success. It is important to remember that just like the digital space; online audiences are ever evolving and have become very sensitive to product quality as well as ponzi schemes, scams and false claims. When it comes to forex affiliate marketing therefore, it is important that you choose to partner with a transparent, regulated broker with long standing market reputation.

What is more, you will have an easier time praising the merits of a broker with a solid market presence and you will be more motivated to back a trading service that you really believe in. Ultimately, if you manage to impress your audiences with a quality broker, they’re more like to do the word of mouth marketing for you, sending other interested parties your way. While focusing on as many brokers as you can, regardless of quality, may seem like the way to get more from social media for affiliate marketing, you are doing yourself a disservice in the long run, as your audiences will soon come to distrust your recommendations.

 

3. Stay Active

It is simple, the more active you are on social media, the more exposure you will get and the more followers you will acquire over time. Also be sure to stay active in the comment sections. If someone replies to a tweet or an image on Facebook, be sure to respond. This helps build a rapport with your followers and establish a loyal community that trusts and follows you. This will not only help you increase your earnings but it will also allow you to get inside the minds of your target audience.  

 

4. Deliver Excellent Quality Content

CEO of MobileMonkey, Larry Kim underlines that when it comes to affiliate marketing and social media, context is Queen and content is King. Producing quality content, be it for entertainment, educational or promotional purposes is key to your success in social media. Instead of constantly promoting products and services, start by creating and sharing great content that your audience will enjoy.  

 

5. Using ads

When it comes to forex affiliate marketing and social media, the truth of the matter is that the use of paid ads is essential to your success.  Selectively promoting your top content on social media and building your remarketing audience by tagging site visitors with a cookie is one of the simplest and most widely used strategies when it comes to affiliate marketing. Applying behavioral and demographic filters on your audience and remarketing lists for search ads can also help you decrease your cost per click. Facebook’s “Relevancy Score” also influences your cost per click and it is a crucial metric. You can increase your quality score for Twitter and Facebook by increasing your post engagement rates. A high quality score is great because you’ll get a higher ad impression share for the same budget at a lower cost per engagement.  

 

6. Use Helpful Applications

Growth editor at Buffer, Alfred Lua, suggests experimenting with different multi-platform applications such as Hootsuite and Buffer to save time and money, if you are new to affiliate marketing. Both offer advice as to when the best time is to post, or let you decide for yourself. Most of the biggest social networks are covered by both, although as they are freemium, which means that you’ll need to decide what core features you need in order to better promote your site or channel on social media. For a small-scale affiliate with a few stories per week and two or three social channels, the free versions of Buffer and Hootsuite are probably sufficient.

 

Sources: wordstream, socialmediaweek, onlineaffiliateworld, affiliatemarketertraining as of 8:30 GMT, Jan 10, 2019