Q1 is done.
Some of you crushed it.
Some of you watched CPAs climb while conversions flatlined.
Most of you are somewhere in the middle, running the same campaigns you launched in January and hoping the algorithm figures it out.
It won't.
Q2 is one of the most important quarters in prop firm marketing.
And most firms waste it.
Here's why:
Tax refund season is hitting.
Traders who blew up accounts in Q1 are hungry for redemption.
The summer slowdown is 8–10 weeks away, which means your window to scale before things cool off is right now.
Not May.
Not “after we redesign the landing page.”
Now.
This is the quarter where smart firms build the momentum that carries them through the rest of the year. And lazy firms set themselves up for a brutal Q3.
So let’s talk about what you should actually be doing.
Kill Your Q1 Losers. Today.
Pull up every campaign that ran in Q1.
Every ad set. Every creative variant.
If something has been running for 60+ days and hasn’t earned its spot, cut it.
Not pause it. Cut it.
Most prop firms keep underperforming ads alive way too long because someone on the team “feels like it’s close.” Feelings don’t scale. Data does.
Here’s the filter:
Look at your cost per acquisition on a 7-day click attribution window. Not 7dc1dv. Not the number that makes your ROAS look warmest. The number that tells you whether cold traffic is actually converting.
We wrote an entire piece on why this distinction matters. If you haven’t read it, now is the time. Because if you’re making Q2 budget decisions based on inflated attribution, you’re about to scale a ghost.
Anything that passed the filter and actually performed?
Great.
That’s your foundation.
Everything else gets replaced.
The Q1 Campaign Audit Filter
Refresh Your Creative. Q1 Fatigue Is Real.
Here’s something most prop firms don’t think about.
Your audience has been looking at the same ads for three months.
Even if a creative was a winner in January, ad fatigue compounds…Click-through rates decay…Frequency climbs…The algorithm starts showing your ads to less and less relevant pockets of your audience because the engaged ones have already seen it five times…
Q2 is the quarter to rotate hard.
New hooks. New visuals. New angles.
Not new for the sake of new.
New because the market has shifted and your creative needs to reflect that.
What worked in Q1 probably leaned into New Year energy. Fresh starts. “This is your year.”
That messaging is dead by April.
Nobody is thinking about New Year’s resolutions anymore.
They’re thinking about summer, vacations and money they need before June.
Shift the angle:
Financial freedom before summer.
Funded before the market slows.
Get in now before the window closes.
And test more than you’re comfortable with. If you’re not running at least 3–5 new creative concepts per month, you’re not testing. You’re guessing.
We broke down the full creative testing framework in a separate post, but the short version is: test visuals, copy, and offers as separate variables.
Don’t change everything at once and pretend you learned something.
Build Your Mid-Year Promo Calendar Before Summer Hits
The worst time to plan a summer promotion is in the summer.
Right now, in April, you should already know what your May promo looks like, your June promo, and your July strategy for when things slow down.
Most prop firms run promotions reactively. A competitor drops a sale, so they panic and match it. Revenue dips for two weeks, so they throw out a 50% off code and hope it stops the bleeding.
That’s not a strategy. That’s survival mode.
Here’s what a real Q2 promo calendar looks like for a prop firm:
April: Spring push. Fresh creative, refreshed offers. This is your “new season, new trader” window. Test a bundled offer or a challenge upgrade incentive.
May: Memorial Day / pre-summer. This is your urgency window. “Get funded before summer.” Limited-time evaluation pricing or a bonus add-on for purchases before a specific date.
June: Summer kickoff. Lighter spend, but don’t go dark. This is when you lean into email and retargeting. Warm up the traders who browsed in April and May but didn’t buy.
July: Strategic scale-back or targeted push. If your data shows July is historically soft, reduce top-of-funnel spend and focus on bottom-of-funnel conversion. If you’ve been building audience all spring, this is when a well-timed flash sale can pop.
Plan it now. Brief your creative team now. Because if you wait until May to think about May, you’ve already lost two weeks.
Your Q2 Promo Calendar
Audit Your Email Flows. They’re Probably Leaking Money.
Here’s a question most prop firm CEOs can’t answer:
What happens to a trader who buys a challenge and fails?
If the answer is “they get a generic discount email three days later,” you’re leaving an enormous amount of revenue on the table.
Q2 is the perfect time to audit and rebuild your email automations. Not your broadcast blasts. Your triggered flows. The sequences that fire based on what a trader actually does.
At minimum, you should have 5 flows running right now.
1. A welcome sequence for new subscribers that doesn’t just say “thanks for signing up.” It should educate, build trust, and present your first offer within 3–5 emails.
2. A post-purchase sequence that reinforces the buying decision, sets expectations for the challenge, and positions the next purchase before they even start trading.
3. A post-failure sequence. This is the big one. Most firms either ignore failed traders or hit them with a generic “try again” email. The traders who just failed are your most valuable retargeting audience. They’ve already paid once. They already understand your product. They just need the right message at the right time to come back.
4. A win-back sequence for traders who haven’t purchased in 30, 60, 90 days.
5. And a promotional sequence that you can trigger for your calendar promos instead of blasting your entire list with the same message.
If any of these are missing or outdated, Q2 is when you fix them. Because every trader who falls through a gap in your email flows is a trader you already paid to acquire and then lost for free.
5 Email Flows Every Prop Firm Needs
Activate Your Affiliates. Or Build the Program.
And Q2 is the perfect time to either launch a program or breathe life into one that’s been sitting idle.
Here’s the reality:
Most prop firm affiliate programs are a signup link and a commission rate.
No creative assets.
No compliance guidelines.
No onboarding.
No communication.
That’s not a program. That’s a link.
A real affiliate activation for Q2 looks like this:
Reach out to your top 10 affiliates personally.
Give them early access to your spring promo.
Provide them with pre-approved creative they can actually use.
Give them a reason to push your firm this month instead of the three other firms they also promote.
If you don’t have a program yet, Q2 is the time to build one. Not because affiliates are a magic bullet. But because a well-structured affiliate channel can drive 20–40% of revenue for a prop firm at a fraction of the cost of paid acquisition.
Affiliate Activation: Link vs. Program
Update Your Social Proof
When was the last time you updated the numbers on your landing page?
Payout totals. Trader count. Review count. Countries served. Average payout time.
These numbers should be climbing every month. And your marketing should reflect that.
If your landing page still says “$5M paid out” and you crossed $8M two months ago, you’re underselling yourself.
Pull your latest Trustpilot count. Update your payout figure. Add new testimonials.
This sounds small. It’s not.
Social proof is the single most persuasive element on a prop firm landing page.
When a trader is comparing three firms and yours has the freshest, most specific numbers, that tips the scale.
Set Q2 KPIs That Aren’t Just ROAS
ROAS is a useful metric. But it’s not a strategy.
If your only Q2 goal is “maintain 4x ROAS,” you’re optimizing for a number that might be lying to you. Especially if you’re reading it on a 7dc1dv attribution window.
Better Q2 KPIs for a prop firm:
Cost per first-time buyer. Not cost per purchase. Cost per net-new trader. This tells you whether you’re actually growing your audience or just recycling warm traffic.
Repeat purchase rate. What percentage of Q1 buyers came back and purchased again in Q2? If this number is low, your retention system is broken.
Email revenue as a percentage of total. If email is driving less than 15–20% of your total revenue, your flows are underperforming.
Creative win rate. Out of every 10 new creatives you tested, how many outperformed your control? If the answer is 1 or 0, your creative process needs work.
Affiliate-driven revenue. Even if it’s small, track it. Because the firms that build this channel in Q2 will have it compounding by Q4.
Q2 KPIs That Actually Matter
The Firms That Win Q2 Win the Year
That’s not hyperbole.
Q2 is the setup quarter.
It’s where you clean up the mess from Q1, build the systems that scale in Q3, and create the momentum that carries you into the holiday push in Q4.
Don’t be that firm.
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This is Part 1 of our Quarterly Playbook series. Q3 is coming next with the summer survival guide and fall scale-up framework.
At FiFuel, we build the growth systems that prop firms need to scale. Not just ads. The whole engine. If your Q2 plan is “keep doing what we did in Q1,” let’s talk.
