Mobile has been the next big thing for longer then most of us can remember. It is only recently starting to deliver on that promise and in the online trading industry we see a significant increase in the usage and promotion of mobile trading platforms.

Not only is there an opportunity in mobile advertising (prices are great, response is exceptional), there is also the opportunity to generate market share otherwise impossible to do so. Case in point is Trade Interceptor. This app has generated an enormous number of downloads and depending on which app store you look at is the number one app, even before MetaTrader 4. In today’s competitive market such a land-grab would be unthinkable but this company focussed on a good mobile app and might well now become a force to be reckoned with, even in the non-mobile world.

Leaprate recently reported that the mobile version of MT4 has gotten over 500.000 users and they estimate currently about 20% of all trades are done mobile. There is broad industry consensus that mobile volume (including tablet) is going to increase even more over the next years as a percentage of total. lastly, taking a bit of a wider view, Google recently announced it is changing strategy to become more mobile centric.

So what implications will this have for marketing in this space? We see a number of things to keep in mind, all of this pre-supposes you have a good mobile app already.

1. Make your website suitable for all devices. The best way to do that is NOT to make a mobile specific version; as mobiles and tablets evolve and screen sizes increase/change it is perhaps best to work with a Responsive site design that works for every device. Make sure you have HTML backups for flash, for Apple devices.
2. Do mobile advertising. Besides going direct to sites and booking impressions, exchanges are getting better and better at getting impressions at a cheap price, especially for premium financial sites. As mentioned, prices are good at the moment and response rates are great.
3. Do a pay-per-install campaign. In a lot of ways mobile works like online. When looking to rank in the search engines for specific keywords in the online world you want to get as many (quality) links as possible. Mobile app stores take into account how popular an app is when displaying search results for a certain keyword. So, the more downloads you have the higher you will rank (it’s more complicated then that but for the purpose of this article lets keep it there). So besides getting your app in front of more users and the possibility to generate leads in this way, it will also help your app rank for certain keywords. There are a number of networks that do pay-per-install, contact us to find out more.
4. Run marketing campaigns to promote your mobile offering. Both to current customers & leads and in your advertising. Having a reputation for having a good mobile app is maybe all that is needed to get your app popularity going but it will surely also help adoption. Make sure your marketing helps this along by mentioning your mobile app even if it is not the main point of your ad.

There is a significant opportunity now and with the right mobile app and a good marketing budget one of the major brokers can in our opinion generate a large amount of market share.