Author: Sebastian Scheplitz
We know what you’re thinking.
“Developing content personas? For my iGaming brand? Why? We already know who we’re writing for.”
“Sure. We’ll just go ahead and create a guideline that no one will likely give a damn about.”
If you’re involved in content marketing, we know you’re probably already stretched for time as you read this. You’re probably already familiar with a whole bunch of creative guidelines as it is.
You can’t possibly include yet another process to follow.
You’re already dealing with enough, and we get it. You want to make your process as streamlined and as efficient as possible. Creating another guideline for your creative staff to follow will NOT exactly rustle anyone’s jimmies, so to speak.
But hear us out.
See, personas aren’t just those “bells and whistles” that become en vogue for a few months, then quietly abandoned as soon as the processes have been so painstakingly built.
In fact, creating iGaming content marketing personas should be a prerequisite of your iGaming brand’s marketing strategy. Here’s why.
The case for iGaming content marketing personas
Documenting your content marketing personas, even in their rudimentary forms, will not only help you solidify your creative ideas but also serve as the sole version of truth for practically anyone creating content for your brand.
That fact shouldn’t be lost for the content marketing departments of iGaming brands, considering that EU iGaming revenue is set to achieve astronomical revenues of €29.3 billion by 2022.
That’s a massive pie to go around and get a good chunk of it.
And content marketing plays a central role in the success of every iGaming brand, online casino, or sportsbook.
See, remote iGaming operators have seen their target audience grow and diversify over the years, even experiencing massive growth in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic that shuttered online casinos and sports betting parlors all over the world.
That’s why it’s no longer advisable for iGaming brands to keep using cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all marketing approaches.
Creating tailored content for specific target audiences is fast becoming a key component of content briefs to provide a more appropriate milieu and an analytical context than creating content on the fly.
Applying content marketing personas is part and parcel of an effective content marketing strategy for SEO.
So, if you are part of the crowd who wants to prioritize understanding your target audience, sit tight. We’re going to help you answer your questions about how to create content marketing personas for iGaming companies.
These personas will help you develop a cohesive, unified, and above all, effective content marketing strategy for online casinos.
What is an iGaming content marketing persona?
Let’s start with the basics.
A marketing persona is a profile of an individual who represents one of your target segments. They contain a set of information that outlines your audience’s behaviors, pain points, characteristics, general interests, and activities.
And the number of personas will generally range from several to dozens of different personalities – depending on the number of markets your iGaming brand operates in.
99% of the time, however, you’ll be writing for an individual persona when creating content.
The premise of a marketing persona is to place a face on a generic market segment, so you should leave no stone unturned in providing as many details as you can.
Think of everyone who comes into your online casino, sportsbook, or website. Think of different demographics, different socialization.
Visualize them. Give them a name. Think of the things that make them want to play at your site. Think of things you can do to make their gaming experience better. What do they do for a living? What is their basic demographic information? What are their interests and their family situation?
Once you’ve finished developing your persona, you should gain a clear picture of who you’re writing for – a clear picture of someone you know – like a friend.
The Essentials of Building an iGaming Content Marketing Persona
Developing target personas is a delicate and customized process that will help your team instantly get your marketing challenges and opportunities right on track.
But before you get there, you need to consider more than a few things.
- Who is your ideal customer?
- Who are they?
- Where do they live?
- What industry do they work in?
- What demographic do they belong to?
These are the building blocks of your target personas.
- What are your ideal customers’ needs in relation to your brand’s buying cycle?
- What are the challenges they face about their job?
- Do they bet or play for fun? What are their favorite casino games or sports teams?
- Why do they gamble?
- What do they like best about your iGaming site’s interface?
- What features will they find useful so that they can return?
Next, it’s important to piece together critical details as to how they want to receive their content, how they consume it, and how you deliver it.
For instance:
- How does your ideal user prefer to access their information?
- What content formats do they prefer? Social media, long-form blog posts, or visual content?
- Where, when, and how do they access their content? Via mobile devices, through a tablet, or through a laptop or PC?
- Where do they get information about your site’s promotions, offers, or new slots and games on offer? What time do they access their communication channels of choice?
- How often do they want to hear from you, and how much information do they want to know?
- How often do they get exposed to relevant content within their day?
- How often do they use social media? Which social media platforms do they use?
- What factors might influence the way they consume content?
- Which channels do they trust to provide the content they consume? Do they follow any influencers? Industry voices? Online communities, friends, and colleagues?
- What are the best ways to get your content in front of your ideal customer?
- Are there any situations that may trigger patterns in the way they consume content?
These are the preliminary questions to ask when you develop your iGaming content marketing personas.
All of these questions can be answered by asking YOUR players and YOUR target audience for more precise answers. Asking these questions is as simple as sending them surveys or questionnaires, engaging them in person, or poring through your site’s analytics reports.
The answers you derive from these questions will help you drill down on the most relevant content ideas, strategies, and communication channels.
This will eventually get your ideal customers to take whatever action you want them to achieve; be it playing at your online casino, betting on your sportsbook, or consuming your content.
One easy, although stereotypical, example of an iGaming content marketing persona could be:
- David
- Age 28, male, single
- Construction Worker
- Lives in Manchester
- Die-hard ManU fan
- Spends his free time with his lads, playing five-a-side or watching “On The Tools” videos
- Uses Instagram and Snapchat, but hates TikTok
- Religiously bets against City
- Rarely plays any online casino games, maybe an occasional tenner on a jackpot slot like Mega Moolah for the life-changing big win
Yet another similar example of a sports betting persona could be the following:
- George
- Age 45, male, married with 2 children who have left the roost
- Doctor
- Lives in Southeast London
- Loves Millwall F.C.
- Hates West Ham United F.C. with a passion
- Likes sports talk radio, conservative politics, and talking about the “good old days” of football
- Not into social media that much, but reads all available statistics online and remembers the line-up of every EPL team since 1990.
- Still talks about the last time the Lions played the Hammers at The Den on 15 November 1992. (We know, George, Millwall won the game 2–1…)
- Loves to play fun slots during his downtime at the hospital
See how much easier creating relevant content is when you have an idea of who you’re writing for? There are so many ways you can take this idea and make it work for your content marketing strategy.
Especially when you start creating personas for your online casino, video slot, bingo or even forex verticals.
And don’t forget about all the other demographics. Women bet on sports too. And different countries like different games. (Read more in our free ebook “Why Germans Bet on Football and the English Love the Horses”)
Just think about all your segments, marketing channels, potential customers, target countries, and so on – you will have a great time coming up with your marketing personas, we promise.
And we also promise that your iGaming content marketing efforts will benefit immensely from the information you’ve put together.
It’s easy to lose track of the goal and get so immersed in compiling every type of data point you could. But if you don’t have a specific way to turn a particular data point into tangible and practical customer insight, you don’t need it in your persona.
To borrow a term from the WWE head honcho Vince McMahon, “It’s all just mental masturbation” at this point.
The Seven Major Types of Sports Betting Personalities
You’ll be surprised when it comes to how many potential online casino and sports betting customer personas there can be. There’s a kaleidoscope of different personalities, each with their particular quirks and idiosyncrasies.
Your task is to decide if you want to appeal to each one of them. You will also have to check if you have the resources to do so. Whether you only want to appeal to one of them or all, you need to define your audience first and then get them playing.
In fact, in a study performed by boutique U.S. gambling research firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, there are seven major types of sports betting customers that every sportsbook and online casino should consider, including the best ways to appeal to them.
They will give you a good baseline of what sports betting personas you should consider. Here they are:
1. The Sharps
These are your profit-driven, medium to high stakes bettors who look at themselves as the “smart money” pros who win more than they lose.
Regardless of whether that is the truth, they bring a whole lot of value to the online sportsbooks (or casinos, for that matter) by bringing in moneyed High Rollers and keeping Would-Be Pros under their wings.
2. The High Rollers
These are the bettors who bring in the most bread, betting the highest stakes in the room from low to medium frequency. They are the thrill-seeking bettors, who get a rush from the act of betting and tend to frequent poker and table games.
Sportsbooks love them because of the massive sums they play with. However, they are the hardest to attract.
3. The Would-Be Pros
These are the profit-driven bettors who are all about spinning money out of nowhere but don’t have the bankroll nor the persistence of the Sharps.
They will play in casinos at the edge-based or skill-based games, seldom playing chance-based ones, and tend to be profitable for sportsbooks but require constant promos, offers, and freebies. They tend to be the noisiest when it comes to complaining, too.
4. The Action Chasers
These are your medium-frequency, medium-stakes punters who gamble in a variety of forms, with a predilection towards action games (e.g., craps).
They are profitable for sportsbooks and bring a whole lot of opportunities to cross-sell other iGaming products, but are at a higher risk of problem gambling.
5. The Superfans
These are your casual bettors who punt at a low to medium frequency, generally backing their favorite teams as fans. Profitable for sportsbooks, but with not a lot of cross-selling opportunities.
6. Status Seekers
Low- to medium-stakes bettors at medium to high frequency; driven by public recognition, such as winning a bracket contest or touting wins on social media; generally profitable to sportsbooks, with low cross-sell potential.
7. The Casual Dabblers
These are your low-frequency, low-stakes punters who are just in it for the novelty or because they were dragged into it by their mates. While they aren’t likely to gamble, the casual dabblers do pose cross-selling opportunities and still remain profitable for sportsbooks.
The study also found that bettors may display multiple sports betting personas characteristics and are hence likely to switch from persona to persona.
While the personas paint a picture of the target audience, they aren’t permanently set in stone. This study was meant to serve as a starting point to show how an American online gambling consumer looks like.
These distinct betting personas are steadily increasing in number, each of which has its particular needs and wants regarding a superior iGaming experience.
Overall it’s a great start and very comparable to players in other countries and continents. Because as much as demographics and socioeconomics play a role, human psychology is still mostly the same.
And that’s precisely why identifying buyer personas for online casinos and sportsbooks are of absolute importance – they set the stage on which you should tailor your content to impact your bottom line.
What kind of other sports betting personas will emerge in the coming years as the industry continues to grow? That, my friends, is the million-euro question.
One thing we can say for sure is that the iGaming operators who offer the most logical answer are the ones who are in a privileged position.
And that, my friends, is why you should take your marketing personas seriously. It means the difference between sinking or swimming in an already saturated market.
Conclusion
iGaming content marketing is most effective when you understand your audience’s needs and wants – and create content specifically for them.
A purposefully-built consumer persona will help you determine their motivations, interests, communication styles and keep them at the center of your content marketing process, regardless of what iGaming segments and verticals you operate in.
Header Image Source: Photo by Keenan Constance on Unsplash
How did you like Sebastian Scheplitz’s blog post “A Complete Guide to Creating Content Marketing Personas for iGaming Brands”? 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.” 🙂
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