According to SuperData.com, there are an estimated 175 million people playing social casino games worldwide.  The global igaming & betting market accounted for USD 45.8 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach USD 94.4 billion globally by 2024, growing at a CAGR of around 10.9% between 2018 and 2024.

The switch to social networks and mobile apps for gambling has vastly expanded the ability to access information and opportunities to gather data – providing a wealth of information for stakeholders, game owners, investors, developers, regulators, marketers and advertisers.

It also means that the number of digital platforms your audiences live on, has become a lot more fragmented and is likely to change a lot more over time.

For iGaming operators, the role of social is unquestionably important. So how do you ensure that, as an iGaming marketing stakeholder, you stay on top of your game, demonstrate ROI and achieve your KPI’s ?

Don’t Just Spray and Pray

Performance Marketing reigns supreme within iGaming, an on-going quest to optimise results across a myriad of KPI’s that are critical to success. The prioritisation of these metrics (Gross Gaming Revenue, Net Gaming Revenue, First Time Deposits, Cost Per Acquisition, Average Revenue Per User, Customer Lifetime Value ) mean that, understandably, most brands tend to allocate between 80-90% of their digital budgets to paid media activity , increasingly through programmatic to ensure they are reaching the maximum possible audience across all the right channels while just 10-20% goes into producing the creative and analysing social data.

Remove the guesswork. Replace with Insight, Know-How, Know When.

For established igaming global operators, this type of activity yields good results. But what if they could be a lot better? Are the results as good as their key competitors? Do they suffer from a lot of churn or struggle to build a community?

Or what if you’re launching a brand in a new region within a tight time frame? Will throwing money at paid media be enough? How do you know where your audience is, or more importantly,  who your audience is?

Going back to paid media activity, the relatively little amount spent on creative can be counter-productive, because well executed contextual creative actually accounts for 70% of the impact and effectiveness of advertising.  For many, many years dynamic creative and creative optimisation took a back seat to media optimisation, and its interesting to see that now its becoming a lot more of a key focus , given that performance marketers have optimised their paid media execution as far as they can. 

So how can you be sure  that you are getting the best bang for buck for your paid media?  

Even putting aside the complexities of programmatic (issues with spend/ reach  transparency, viewability and accountability- more of that in another blog post) and just focusing on, say,  Facebook Ads, are you really generating the best return on your spend?  I asked one of our social brand activation specialists, Miki Elson , for a quick sanity check when preparing campaigns and this was what was normally top of mind on his checklist :

• Use wider/larger audience pools at the top of the funnel, then allow engagement content to supply more detailed data for remarketing and conversions
• Use focused targeting for your boosted posts- demographics, psychographics and interests
• Use other FB Pages, YouTube channels to access pre segmented audiences
• Test the same content across segments of your total audience 
• Test different content across segments of your total audience
• Make sure you have a strategy for top of funnel , mid funnel and social growth hacks to drive frequency of game play

Producing contextual , on-brand, dynamic creative content at scale and speed is required, not only to prevent ad fatigue with programmatic or omni-channel paid media , but to build communities,  engage the right audience on key social platforms at the right time  and to nudge them through conversions, repeat business and to remain loyal advocates. This can be a huge challenge for in-house igaming creative teams to manage in a timely manner as well as ensuring that the creative be produced is not only ‘on-brand’ but remains fresh and relevant to the outcome desired. This is where technology can also help alleviate the challenges of dynamic creative optimisation.

But before creative is being considered by far the most important aspect of any social brand activation is knowing who your audience is. Social intelligence and advanced analytics are providing rich player insight, demographic and behavioural trends for design, and monetisation opportunities for game designers/developers.

What are the personality traits of your audience?

People who prefer online gambling appear to have distinct personality profiles even when compared to people who prefer lottery and casino gambling. These findings suggest that people are drawn to the anonymity of online gambling for reasons of control, rather than introversion.

Certain personality types will not look for a reason and logic behind casino games but will rather seek excitement, thrills  and entertainment. Thus, for example,  they would do perfectly well playing video slots, where they can truly challenge their luck. Another great game for them is the live dealer casino’s Wheel of Fortune or Lightning Roulette where they can truly experience the thrill of playing.

The delivery of predictive analytics and real-time analytics are irresistible to anyone who has a vested interest in this market. Social intelligence is not only useful for audience persona research but also for competitive and comparative insights. With recent high profile mergers and acquisitions, investors can also actively research when to buy or sell a company or product.

But often audience segmentation, community management, journey mapping, engagement and creative falls by the way-side, at an operators peril. It is here that they can actually standing to benefit considerably more, especially through social media. More often than not, this critical part of the process is overlooked because of the misconception that

1. It takes too long to build a community
2. It will take forever to extract all of the data
3. The team lacks the ability to turn the information into actionable insight

Only by taking a person-centered approach and utilising a comprehensive audience personality assessment can igaming operators  uncover the important combinations of personality traits that are related to the diverse , multi-faceted phenomenon that is gambling.

An Unfair Advantage. A Better Way.

An integrated approach is required, starting with defining valuable audiences , then mapping the relevant creative and ensuring that it connects with relevant audiences across the right platforms and the reported in a meaningful way . Savvy integrated digital marketers can then continue to create segmentation campaigns to engage new players and create new revenue streams.

We propose an integrated audience selection, dynamic creative and paid media approach to social brand activation at scale and speed, to maximise customer acquisition on platforms

1. We identify and create valuable audiences

Using our new Audience AI platform you can psychometrically profile your followers, influencers and those discussing your brand in a deeper more meaningful way than ever before.  Using IBM Watson AI , our  Audience Analyser psychometrically analyses millions of posts to create personalities maps around 50 core traits based around OCEAN (Big 5) and Myers Briggs Models. The result is to provide an incredibly accurate and detailed profiles of your audience’s personalities while simultaneously matching it against the tone of your brands content.

This insight enables igaming operators to better understand the fundamental personality traits that drive your audience, enabling you to tailor messaging that resonates and engages more effectively.

2. We then navigate these audiences through awareness, acquisition, retention and referral with the right messaging and creative

With our Content Optimiser we capture your content and create a profile for your brand using the same AI driven psychometric analysis. This provides unique insight into your brand’s perceived personality, matching it up against your target audience. The results provides hugely powerful insights into how your creative content chimes with audiences. This is all provided alongside automatically tailored creative recommendations on how to adjust content for visibly better results!

3. Our paid media activation strategy then ensures you are getting the return on your marketing and advertising spend.

Reporting. From Static To Real-Time Intelligence.

Real time insights, performance dashboards, recommendations through advanced AI and machine learning along with on-demand reporting then ensure stakeholders are able to track KPI’s and adapt their approach each step of the way to achieve the desired outcome

The Value Add to igaming operators from this approach is enormous

 It’s the combination of Talent, Timing and Technology that sets us apart from our competitors . Through an on-going process of iterative testing and experimentation we have developed a framework for social brand activation at scale and speed that will yield a better return on marketing and advertising spend .

We’ve demonstrated , typically over a 6- 12 month time frame, an in increase in engagement across social platforms of between 10X- 20X, along with an increase in FTD’s by over 100% along with a reduction in the CPA of over 75%.

If you’re looking to reactivate your social and paid media management and realise a tangible difference in the outcome in a short time frame, get in contact and arrange a no obligation assessment or even take up a very compelling commercial model we are offering . What have you go to lose?!