Author: Sebastian Scheplitz
You might have the next Starburst on your slot development roadmap – or perhaps a game to rival the popularity of MONOPOLY™ Live. Great.
But, before you start that conga line around the office, hugging the incorrigibly grumpy Darren from HR, and fixing your party hat at a jaunty angle, there are two words you need to consider carefully: Product Marketing.
But, wait. Isn’t marketing simply marketing? Why are there even more marketing variants than Evo’s Blackjack range?
We’ll take a quick look at how product marketing differs from iGaming content marketing strategies and bring slot developers the five hottest tips for iGaming product marketing known to humankind.
Are you ready? Good. We thought you might say that.
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What Is Product Marketing?
The differences between content marketing and product marketing for casino software developers kind of look like a Venn diagram that has been put through the wash. This is to say, there’s a lot of overlap.
Marketing professionals agree that the main difference between content marketing and product marketing is that product marketing aims to convert while content marketing is used to inform.
Product marketing can also inform and content marketing can also be implemented to convert; hence the Venn diagram now being pulled from the washing machine.
At Translation Royale and our sister agency WeGotGame, we view product marketing as a part of your iGaming content marketing strategies.
To get the most out of your marketing budget and to dominate the iGaming product marketing playoffs, follow these five simple tips for product marketing perfection.
Let’s get down to business.
1. Define Your Buyer Persona
Characterizing your iGaming marketing persona is the first to laser-calibrating your product marketing with the main reason why product marketing is important – and works. A buyer persona is a character that represents your typical target audience.
This is who you’re marketing to, personified.
To flesh out your product-specific buyer persona, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who’s your ideal customer?
- Where do they live?
- What kind of industry do they work in?
- What general marketing demographic do they fall into?
These are the foundations of your buyer persona and function as a starting point for painting a buyer persona that your team can both visualize and relate to.
For online casino software marketing, you might want to further strengthen and define your buyer persona by asking industry-specific questions, such as:
- Who’s your ideal player?
- What games do they play?
- Is there a specific game type they aim for? Such as live dealer games, table games, or slots?
- How much do they wager?
- What are their deposit levels?
- What game volatility do they prefer?
- Are they a winning player?
Some companies go to the lengths of creating fictional characters for buyer personas that detail the kinds of TV shows their buyer persona watches and even their eating habits.
2. Determine the Product Positioning
After creating a buyer persona so lifelike that you believe to have created the next generation of AI, it’s time to move on to product positioning.
A term banded about so much that it has varying definitions in online casino marketing, positioning is an essential component of product marketing for casino software developers.
For slot developers, product positioning means taking the data from your earlier research (buyer persona research included) and transforming this information into content with which to sell your product.
So, let’s say that your buyer/player persona indicates that they generally play low stakes, minimum bet value. With this in mind, positioning your product means highlighting the fact this slot has a minimum bet value of €0.10 and is, therefore, suitable for low-limit players.
Conversely, if your player persona for this product shows that your target audience exclusively plays progressives, here’s your opportunity to shout about it. Not literally, of course.
Online casinos have access to data that most companies positioning products would die for. Rarely is such financial data readily available, and this can provide you with the data required to perfectly position your product.
3. Figure out an SEO Strategy for Your Product
I know what you’re thinking.
There they go banging on about SEO again. Sure, SEO is either a dream marketing topic or something listed just below ‘eat fresh Saharan sand’ on someone’s bucket list.
Whatever your standpoint on the most influential marketing factor of the last, like, 5,000 years, SEO is essential to product marketing. Here’s why.
Often thought of going head-to-head, product marketing and SEO marketing aren’t as different as you may have initially thought. In fact, SEO is right there to ensure your product gets marketed as it should and your audience is directed towards your product by a concrete SEO strategy.
Here, keyword research is what will mainly inform your iGaming content marketing strategies. There’s no difference with product marketing. Luckily, SEO just goes easier and there are a number of tools available that make SEO look like a walk in the proverbial park.
Clearscope and SurferSEO are two keyword research tools that have been highly influential in the marketing dance for the last couple of years. Coming with keywords pre-loaded, these SEO tools make it a breeze for optimizing content.
Just don’t forget about your Domain Authority.
4. Launch Your Product
Clearly. Also named ‘production release’, this is the next – and some might say – the most crucial part of iGaming content marketing strategies when it comes to the core of product marketing.
After you’ve taken a stroll down the SEO path, wondered at the product positioning flowerbed, and enjoyed the player persona breeze, it’s now time to launch your product. But how?
Depending on your product and the audience, it could look something like this:
- Complete a soft launch – no different from a Lebanese restaurant opening up in Gzira, a soft launch is required before you go fully public with your product. This usually involves working with an existing customer, most probably a casino, from where to soft launch your product.
- Create a communication plan – this includes sales sheets, a summary of tasks, deliverables, and a link to the product on your website.
- Train. Everybody – yep, even the guy who you always forget the name of and drinks too quickly at work functions. From sales to CRM, everyone in your company needs to know everything there is to know about your product.
- Get sales onside – it’s crucial your sales team sees the potential of your product. At this stage, it’s the best time to think about quotas and commissions.
- Launch with extreme precision – as with a hardware launch, this should be done with as much fanfare as possible. Now is not the time to save on your marketing budget by cutting back on party streamers.
The final point needs to be hammered home slightly. With the press release an already nail-biting moment, this needs to be executed with professionalism and a touch of glamour.
5. Get Your Product Featured on Top Affiliate Sites
Natch. Here, SEO gets a hike as it will most probably get further SEO gold stars by the domain publishing the content. This not only gets your product in front of the right audience, but it also informs about your product, making exposure to your audience on this channel invaluable.
While you may only have an MVP, it’s worth releasing a beta version to the big cheeses in the affiliate world so you can gain exposure before your competitors.
With gaming variants being released daily, it’s only a matter of time before two or more game developers release a ‘world-changing, one-of-a-kind, exclusive game,’ only to discover that another team on the other side of Sliema has created a game with the same, or incredibly similar, mechanics or theme.
For the purposes of both intellectual property and engagement with your product, it’s best to release your software as swiftly as possible due to the fierce competition coming from the iGaming tech sector.
iGaming Product Marketing: Your Takeaway
Hopefully, the question of ‘What is product marketing?’ has already been answered, but perhaps why product marketing is important remains unanswered.
The importance of product marketing is that – due to it sharing many qualities with content marketing – it can make the difference between your next software release being a Steve Jobs-inspired product launch (with content strategy in place) and the next E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
As the product-content marketing Venn diagram dries on the washing line, now’s the time to think about how to best market your product.
Header Image Source: Sarinya9940 on freepik
How did you like Sebastian Scheplitz’s blog post “5 Winning Product Marketing Tips for Casino Software Developers”? 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.” 🙂
