Konstantin Rabin

Just a decade ago starting up an FX company was an enormous investment. A company needed to lock over $100,000 in the capital adequacy requirements, invest heavily into purchasing MT4 licensing or spending even more into developing their own trading software, developing its online presence and setting up the operations.

The things today are completely different. With a great number of various white-label programs available, setting up a regulated (under an umbrella) brokerage became just a piece of cake. For as little as $20,000 of investment it is possible to get a distribution of MT4, responsive website, a powerful back-office software, a useful CRM and many more. This certainly makes the competition in the retail FX sector more severe. In this article we are going to take a look at how you can differentiate your brokerage from the other players, and, ultimately win a larger slice of the market.

Trading Software

If your brokerage exists for more than 5 years, the chances that MetaTrader 4 is the platform you offer are extremely high. Perhaps it is even better to say that MT4 is the only platform your brokerage has got to offer. There is nothing wrong with letting your clients trade via this software, yet the amount of MT4 brokers is enormous and having this software certainly does not contribute to the differentiation.

Definitely you are not planning to move from MT4, but still want to stand out from the competition. Then how is it possible to get the best from the both worlds? There are quite a few brokers that customize their MT4 trading terminal with the help of various custom-made or third party plugins. A good example here would be Admiral Markets MT4 Supreme Edition, a platform that offers 10 times more value for the end-user than a regular MT4 does. This trading software comes with an enhanced 1-click trading terminal that allows setting up SL and TP prior to placing an order. Next to this, it is possible to adjust the pending orders by simply dragging your mouse. A client can also get notified about various technical events within the platform, at the email or even via an SMS. Hence, customizing your MT4 platform can greatly put you on top of thousand other MT4 brokers.

Gamification

It is quite easy to onboard experienced traders if your broker offers market-leading conditions. A pity is that only a few brokers offer those and most probably you are not one of those. Well, then getting newcomers in FX trading might be your goal, right? Not so fast. Getting a beginner to trade is quite a challenging task. While lots of other sectors use gamification to facilitate the adoption of their products better, FX sector seems to lag behind. Is it a problem? No, it is an opportunity.

In order to get beginners to trade you should offer a demo account trading or a no deposit bonus. Not! What you should do is to focus on rewarding every single step a trader makes to progress. Say your brokerage offers a free no deposit bonus of $30 (just like another dozen of brokers). Instead of just offering the funds for the people to gamble with, you may try offering $5 for opening an account, another $5 for watching an educational video about the FX market, $10 more for completing a certain quiz and granting more free funds for social media sharing.

There are a few reasons why this is useful. First of all, your client would feel that this no deposit bonus is earned, hence he would treat it more seriously. Secondly you will get people that are more prepared to trading. Lastly, you will only focus on the people that are getting engaged with trading.

Superior Education

Last but not least, quite a few brokers nowadays tend to offer third-party education, and its quality seems to be very low. I would suggest it is better to offer no education than to have poor quality materials. However, guiding your clients and helping them to achieve their first steps in the world’s largest market can certainly put your brokerage ahead of others.