Author: Sebastian Scheplitz
Online sports betting is a highly competitive, multibillion-dollar business. And, like any other online business, it requires a steady influx of traffic and patrons in order to survive.
Especially given the fact that the competition is extremely intense – with thousands upon thousands of online sportsbooks seeking to take a piece of the lucrative pay, how do you market your website so that the people can see it? More importantly, how do you get them to bet on YOUR website? Let’s find out!
It’s no secret that gambling marketers are aware of the fact that the industry is always changing, and always at the forefront of regulation. That’s why sportsbooks are fully concentrated on trying to outdo each other to make their product more appealing and more relevant to players, young, old, and new.
Make sure to also head over to our articles around specific sportsbook marketing campaign ideas for the main sports events in August and September and October to December 2019. We have also hidden some ideas in our article targeting the Latin American iGaming market with events for 2020, which we all know will mostly not happen. But they are great for marketing inspiration on how to target punters in the second half of 2020 and 2021.
Fortunately, there’s more than one way to skin a cat – and there are plenty of ways you can apply creative sportsbook marketing campaign ideas to unlock the most ROI for your investment as follows.
1. Harness the Power of Social Media
Social media is where the real game is played. And, it is definitely THE way to attract the younger generation of punters.
However, a huge amount of social media followers (both young and old) will move over to your site only if you can show that you can provide trustworthy information.
What sportsbook operators and affiliates need to strive for is to become a go-to source of information for sports while giving an extra sprinkle of information about betting.
Learn From the Best
If you need some inspiration to create fun and engaging content for social media, check out these Instagram accounts for sports news like Bleacher Report, Goal Global, and ESPN, or online sportsbooks like Betsson, Betfair and Odds Bible.
You can then analyze the types of content and visuals they are producing and come up with new content ideas that will fit your brand identity.
For instance, you can opt to run a daily quiz on your social media or your website to gauge your audience’s competitive juices. But the quiz doesn’t have to have the exact copy that other brands have already done.
Apart from this, there are so many more ways to leverage your social media assets, and these include:
- betting preview videos
- unique campaigns based on player ratings
- expected goals, and
- in-game statistics such as shots, passes, and tackles.
Re-Share Your Customers’ Experience
There is also an endless stream of prospects from both young people and new players when it comes to drumming up interest and sharing their gaming experiences on social media. This is called user-generated content (UGC), and they showcase brand trust and loyalty like no other types of content can.
Indirect Social Media Marketing Strategies
Another way to harness your social media assets (as well as clout) is to have your sportsbook affiliate websites promote their affiliate brands.
This is easily achieved by providing useful information about the latest offers and promotions and incorporating that approach to the social media platform you wish to target.
You can also include other intuitive facets of data such as heat maps of key players in the field – which you can tie in with your content marketing strategy with ease and simplicity. This is the secret to creating a more engaging social media presence and driven content-focused campaigns.
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to maximize your company’s presence and employ some of the best strategies for online sports betting marketing to its best effect on social media platforms.
That’s why social media campaigns will continue to be one of the most effective ways to promote online sportsbook companies.
2. Put Your Affiliate Marketing Strategy to Work
You’re missing out on a lot of excellent, high-value traffic by not having a good affiliate program implemented. After all, affiliate marketing remains one of the best strategies for online sports betting marketing for companies operating in this sector.
The idea is to have your affiliate partners generate interest by promoting your services in exchange for a sensible fee. Affiliate marketing presents an economical and performance-driven way to reward your affiliates for helping your website achieve a measurable and altogether important business objective.
Strategies include getting your target audience to check your website out or by creating an account and making a deposit or placing a bet. There is no shortage of potential affiliates in the online sports betting industry. You can reach out to companies and individuals who are linked to your business, such as sports tipping services or sports betting information blog.
Give them good deals to include your sportsbook site as their first pick to promote their tips and get them to post regularly. Or have a vlog around their tips and stadium experiences with your branding.
3. Leverage the Impact of Content Marketing
Much in line with the previous entry, your content marketing strategy is just as important as your affiliate marketing strategy – and it all boils down to the quality of your brand storytelling. This is true for any business, and online sports betting is no exception.
Content marketing is a smart marketing approach that emphasizes the use of engaging and relevant content to promote products and/or services that your sportsbook company offers. This is where your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy becomes important – proper SEO will help boost your online visibility and search engine rankings of your site’s content pages.
Unique, engaging content is a fantastic way to promote your sports betting affiliates in order to attract audiences to know more about your brand and get them to make deposits and play at your online sportsbook.
Different Types of Online Sports Betting Content
One example of content you can focus on providing can be strategies to maximize their bankroll on betting on certain sports. You can then add more value to it by providing infographics that will keep users interested and continue reading.
Yet another way you can apply content marketing to your business is to create content pertaining to the latest game releases for industry-leading game publishers that create new, visually stimulating online games that many online sports betting platforms use as part of their online casino offerings. Especially in the current situation where Covid-19 put a stop to most leagues, you want to excite your punters around Virtual Games or esports for example.
Another fantastic way is offering short game reviews for last weekend’s games and previews. These could be short snippets of 250 words highlighting the most important facts like goals, assists and substitutions, plus the main statistics. This will keep your audience engaged and will establish you as a sports betting industry leader. These will be postable on social media as well and will, in turn, bring more potential customers to your page.
Do your research which content works best for your audience, and make sure to get that content in the right medium and platform that will get you the most number of hits.
Sports content and sportsbook localization
Sports content and sportsbook localization are important especially with regard to your content marketing strategy, especially if you’re trying to conquer a particular segment in a particular region – your choice of words and idioms should be tailored to that unique area. For instance, United States-facing content won’t necessarily be successful if you are targeting the United Kingdom, and vice versa.
It really all begins with how you design your digital and information assets. It is imperative that your website is aesthetically pleasing while providing interesting and valuable content tailored to your target audience’s preferences and playing habits.
This includes investing in sports betting translation and localization, such that nothing is lost in translation especially if your clientele is located in a non-English speaking region or if you are targeting such segments of the market (like Spanish-speaking Hispanics in the US or Turkish-speaking people in Germany).
Focusing on this aspect of your sportsbook marketing strategy will help you naturally build trust with your customers that you want to form part of your brand ambassadors.
4. Put Up a Dot-Net Site
It’s no secret that the great majority of traditional media companies won’t touch gambling sites with a 10-foot pole due to its apparent connotations.
However, as is customary for online sportsbooks and casino sites, there is a solution that exists so that you can market to traditional media. That’s by creating a mirror, “free” gambling site using a dot-net as opposed to a dot-com domain.
The underlying idea for this is that the typical consumer doesn’t type “dot-net” when they access, for instance, an online sportsbook. Rather, they will type “dot-com”, which will lead them to the pay-to-play sportsbook site.
Having a dot-net, free play site allows online sportsbook operators to advertise their brand on traditional media channels like TV and magazines without using their dot-com site.
Just make sure that you don’t have any advertisements for the dot-com site on the dot-net site because there will be some advertisers that will baulk at the idea of finding links to it on the dot-net site.
Another way to utilize this strategy is to run advertising to the dot-net site, without making mention of the actual URL.
5. Kick Up Your Email and Mobile Marketing a Notch
Email marketing is still a relevant and important way with which to perform your online sportsbook marketing campaign strategy. Most people still check their email address at least once a day – you’ll likely be amazed at how effective sending them the occasional promotional email is.
Find more statistics at Statista
Sending past and present customers regular updates about your new game releases, tournaments, giveaways, and bonuses will keep you within the grasp of their awareness, even if they aren’t actually opening your emails.
Just take steps not to overdo your email marketing and your messaging, lest you put them off with it.
Additionally, you might want to consider sending out informative newsletters to your target audience about in order to minimize the volume of emails you send out to them.
And by informative, we also mean news on upcoming events like the fact that certain leagues are restarting after the Sars-CoV-2 lockdown. Even without talking about odds, you can incept the idea of betting into your customers.
Another often overlooked yet surprisingly effective strategy is to boost your mobile marketing as well. The vast majority of younger players place bets and play via their smartphones while being mobile. Integrating your online and mobile media assets can greatly improve responses to them, and increase the chances of your target audience playing at your online sportsbook.
Email and mobile marketing are still relevant in 2020, and rightfully so – integrating both to send information about the latest updates can prove to be crucial to your success as an online sportsbook company.
6. Give Out Generous Bonuses
Everybody loves free stuff. That’s why it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the best ways to market your online sportsbook to people is by giving out tempting bonuses. Offer them something they cannot refuse, and you can be sure that it won’t take too long before they fund their account and place a bet.
Offering generous bonuses is an effective means to differentiate your sportsbook and attract pirate customers who might otherwise be disappointed at the offers they are getting from your competition. If you don’t catch their attention by providing them something hard to resist, they won’t find any reason why they should deal with you.
It’s tough enough to succeed as an online sportsbook. To begin with, online sports betting is already illegal in many jurisdictions, which already poses a significant barrier to entry for most new players. To add, competition in this field is intense – but by giving out generous bonuses, as well as marketing towards a niche via leveraging sports betting translation and localization the right way, you’ll get a bigger chance of getting a piece of the pie.
Offering your punters that tailored, targeted experience gives you a big chance of reeling them in to make that first deposit and bet with your company.
However, do keep in mind that this strategy only works if you are operating in a country that allows you to provide bonuses to customers. For example, Sweden’s Minister of Health and Social Affairs Ardalan Shekarabi recently announced a SEK100 (~ €9.6) cap on bonus offers as part of the new coronavirus-led online gambling restrictions. And this new restriction is going to stay from 1st June until the end of 2020.
That’s why it is wise to check the rules and regulations in your respective target iGaming markets first before planning all those irresistible bonus offers for your players.
7. Get Creative With Your Name and Be Transparent
Many of the biggest names in the online sportsbook industry credit their success in choosing a unique and memorable name that puts a face on their brands.
Choosing a name based on keywords and searchable categories in this industry is a death wish – you can’t differentiate your brand from the others by choosing a generic, cookie-cutter name, and neither will you gain credibility.
In addition to using a creative name, you’ll want your target audience to be able to trust you. And being transparent with your company information goes a long way in establishing your credibility as an online sportsbook. This will also assuage fears from first-time players that may not know the first thing about you.
8. Fire Up Your Referral Programs
Referral programs are a surefire way to boost your online sportsbook marketing campaign. It’s an easy way to not only promote loyalty and replay value with your existing clientele but also bring in NRCs and NDCs (aka fresh clients) based on vetted, positive first-hand experience with your platform.
That’s basically because people are increasingly likely to trust recommendations from people that they know, compared to doing the same from an advertisement. The best part? It costs nearly next to nothing on your end.
9. Don’t Forget About Going Offline
Offline marketing still counts – that includes your brochures, flyers, snail mails, and other printed matter which some people have dismissed as old-fashioned tools. But nothing can be further from the truth – statistics show that a physical piece of promotional material still makes a difference in influencing your customers.
This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that only the Internet still matters nowadays. But print still definitely has a use in today’s saturated, Internet-driven market.
Offline methods like print are in many forms a low-cost, long-lasting way to promote your online sportsbook that has the ability to attract clients who cannot be reached through online channels.
Don’t underestimate the power of the printed word – it might just be an invaluable tool in your arsenal of marketing techniques for your next campaign, whether you operate an online sportsbook or a land-based one.
10. Focus on Providing a Great Product
In the end, it doesn’t matter if your marketing campaign is shiny, well-executed, and optimized, and that if you have a bevvy of online sports betting affiliates and partners ready to help you achieve your online sportsbook’s business goals.
If your product – your sportsbook platform itself – is not up to standards of quality, usability, and experience that your competitors are providing, then you will never succeed in the long run.
Focus on providing your iGaming customers with well-developed, supremely functional, and consistent products, as well as with superb customer service. This also means that you need to invest a whole lot of time, effort, and money in improving your operations and processes.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but by committing your online sportsbook to provide the best experience ever, you will earn the crowning glory of every online sportsbook – the stability and the sterling reputation of being a trustworthy, transparent company that is 100% aboveboard with its operations.
BONUS: Take Offline to the Next Level
Generally, land-based betting parlours (or betting parlor if you’re in the US) create websites and provide online bets to clientele within the area. However, you can also opt to create a good online sports betting platform and take bets online as the first step. And then open a land-based office for bettors who don’t have online sportsbook accounts or those who prefer the “best betting parlour” experience.
This way, your land-based betting parlour serves not only the purpose of serving your offline customers but also as pieces of outdoor advertising assets that could drive further business to your website.
Conclusion
So, there you go – these are 10 creative sportsbook marketing strategies that can help take your sportsbook to the next level. We hope you found them useful and immediately helpful to achieving your business goals.
Make your assets work with you and take your marketing strategy to the next level with us. We’ll provide you with a bespoke strategy befitting of your company and its unique characteristics.
Header Image Source: Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash
How did you like Sebastian Scheplitz’s blog post “10 Creative Sportsbook Marketing Campaign Ideas for Maximum ROI”? Let us know in the comments if you have anything to add, have another content idea for iGaming blog posts, or just want to say “hello.” 🙂
Great blog with an abundance of info. Check this out and do something for a change.