The finance space is all about reputation. Traders and investors need to trust that their funds are safe and negative reviews and forum threads result in lost business. And having no reputation at all can be just as bad. Positioning your forex broker as trusted takes time and effort, as well as a clear strategy. The subject of reputation management is contentious among brokers and banks, so here’s our 2024 guide.
#1 Find Yourself on Review Sites
Over 99.9% of customers read online reviews before they shop and 49% trust these reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends. And that’s just for clothes and restaurants. When it comes to money, users are definitely checking reviews. That’s why it’s critical your brand regularly monitor popular forex review sites, such as Forex Peace Army. Traders who feel wronged by a forex broker will often leave scathing reviews, and if you want to maintain your reputation, it’s your job to respond to them. Or at least be aware of them. Monitoring review sites gives you an idea of how your brand is perceived, and what you can do to either change this or (if the reviews are good) keep your good reputation.
For your brokerage to be seen as credible, authenticity is key. How can you convey this to your audience? It goes without saying that you should encourage your traders to place real reviews and testimonials rather than writing them yourself. Lots of review sites monitor IP addresses. So, if they see that all your gleaming reviews have come from the same source, you’ll be called out or even blocked. We know of several brokers that this happened to, but we’re not naming names!
Most consumers today are savvy. If they see thousands of five star reviews, they’ll likely doubt your credibility. You won’t find many established businesses without a poor review or two. Encourage real and honest trader reviews and embrace constructive criticism.
How should I respond to reviews?
Responding to online reviews requires tact, politeness and a good awareness of compliance. Any reply should be considered, professional, compliant, including to GDPR. Never reveal client details, accounts or even profits publicly. Instead, acknowledge the complaint and suggest a private chat, email or telephone call to resolve it. When leaving a response to a poor review, take great care to address every issue mentioned and detail how you are going to remedy it. Forum readers will understand that you have responded privately and doing so avoids a “dumpster fire” pile on situation which can quickly blow up.
#2 Good Content Buries Bad Content
Layers of good content can cover up bad content. That means that well ranked, SEO friendly articles, social media and PR will move above poor reviews and threads. So, the first pages of Google will be favourable to your company with snippets, links and positive PR. While 90% of businesses use content marketing, 55% are now focused on creating more content and posting more frequently. Plus, 53% intend to improve content quality.
Despite the clear advantages of incorporating top quality content into marketing strategies, there are plenty of brokers that still don’t use content at all. These brokers typically have no online reputation to speak of, which could be a major drawback today. A sound content strategy can turn this around. Clients and potential clients look at reputation, relevance, security and if your brokerage’s personality and product offerings match theirs. So, how can you leverage great content to bury bad content?
- Get your site to the top of the search results by using both short and long-tail keywords.
- Place positive PRs that highlight your awards, events, features or new products. Speak to our team for expert PR services.
- Push out high-quality, fresh content on your blog. This will help your SEO ranking as well as let potential clients know your brand and values.
- Take a multi-channel approach by posting PR content to other channels. This could be via guest blogging or your own social media. Create a buzz to increase brand awareness.
- Take part in discussions on social media, reply to forum threads, work with micro influencers and retweet other higher-ranking accounts. All these actions will see your own content channels elevate.
Be Prepared To Pay For Good PR
There are times when paying for PR will get you better ROI. Free or cheap PR often means you’re appearing on low traffic sites. Not a waste of time but not necessarily helpful in burying bad content. Allocate a decent budget towards FX sites where you can publish PR content.
Top Tip: Find keywords with the biggest potential to drive traffic. Google refreshes rankings frequently and if your brand is always producing fresh, engaging content with popular keywords and phrases, your brokerage should fare well. Utilising Contentworks’ expert writing team means you don’t need to allocate valuable time and effort to creating content.
#3 Be Active on Social Media
The total number of social media users is expected to reach a whopping 5.17 billion people in 2024, with the number of growing by about 3 million each year. Facebook maintains its global leadership, with 3+ billion MAUs. YouTube comes in a close second with nearly 2.5 billion MAUs. In addition, 90% of those aged 18-29 are on social media are using Instagram and following a business page. But TikTok is expected to see the highest user growth among all social platforms worldwide, starting in 2024. No wonder then that 90% of social media ad spend is projected to surpass $300 billion by 2024, with 90% marketers saying that community-building will be “crucial for success.” Being active on social media is a must for improving and maintaining your forex reputation.
What does being active on social media mean?
It doesn’t just mean posting and tweeting now and again. This is purely proactive. You also need to engage with your audience, chat with other pages, influencers and FX media sites. And you need to do it promptly. 76% of users value the speed with which brands respond to them on social media, with 70% expecting a response within 24 hours.
Deleting comments is a bad idea and ultimately looks like you have something to hide. This is especially true for complaints. Complainants often screenshot their comments and can shame you for deleting it later. Adding credibility on social media can be done by:
- Answering promptly and politely on all channels.
- Sharing positive customer reviews, testimonials and feedback.
- Going live with question-and-answer sessions.
- Going live with AMAs with your company bosses or key stakeholders.
- Sharing updates on how you improved situations for customers who were unhappy.
- Update on new policies for the protection and wellbeing of clients.
Top Tip: Avoid a PR disaster on your socials. Always make sure the right people are managing your accounts. Never pay for fake followers or likes and comments. It’s so easy to tell which brokers are doing this when almost every comment is something like ”great pic!“ or ”amazing trading service!“ And make sure whoever has access to your socials, fully understands all forex compliance rules. Learn more about tackling social media as a financial services brand.
#4 Use Tools to Monitor Your Reputation
You can find tools that remove guesswork when determining your brokerage’s reputation. Reputation monitoring software can do things like track down reviews of your brokerage across different review sites and social media platforms, increase search traffic, gain insights into customer feedback trends, notify you of high-impact events and emerging risks, and more.
Here are just a few of our favourite reputation management tools out there:
- Google Alerts – Google Alerts will send you an email when it discovers new results that match the search terms you’ve set. It’s 100% free but doesn’t offer the same capabilities as the paid ones. It also won’t dig into forums or social media for you.
- Birdeye– An all-in-one platform for multi-location businesses. Use Birdeye to find your reviews across the web and get connected with leads and customers via various channels They also offer survey, ticketing and insights tools to get to know customers.
- Social Mentions – Although it has both free paid plans, the free version offers sufficient features for small- and medium-sized businesses. Check for brand names and keywords across your social media channels and get reports directly on your dashboard.
- Prowly – Manage internal and external communications, with all public relations activities in one place. Find media contacts, send personalised emails to journalists, track mentions, create and send press releases, and generate reports.
- Talkwalker – Track metrics like influencers, top themes, demographics and sentiments from a single dashboard. Use the research tools to monitor your brand across numerous platforms or filter mentions by platform.
Contentworks Agency is the leading content and communications agency for the finance space. We work closely with brokers to improve their online reputation, craft trustworthy, compliant content and manage their social media presence. Book a free Zoom call with our team to see how we can help your broker.
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