What Does Online Casino Advertising Entail?

Marketing a cyber casino can be an arduous process. It must jump through a myriad of legal hoops first to get the desired customers through its virtual doors.

To simplify my discussion of the advertising process online casinos use, I’m going to group the promotional process into three different categories: personal selling, advertising and using sales promotional tools. Hopefully at the end of this article you’ll understand the fiber that binds the advertising process of any casino operation.

A term commonly used to denote a particular combination of promotional methods is known as a promotional mix. A promotional mix describes a set of personal and special communication techniques a business uses to get its promotional campaign on track. It is determined by many factors. One important factor is the nature of the geographical market it wants to reach.

Various Advertising Methods Used

A widely dispersed market generally requires mass coverage through advertising. Another important factor is the size of the promotional budget. Smaller online casinos may not select certain forms of promotion because the costs are just too high. Television advertising, for example is more expensive than radio advertising.

”The number of gambling commercials on British TV has rocketed from 234,000 a year to nearly 1.4 million annually since the deregulation of the sector six years ago, according to new research.”

How does an internet gambling site’s marketing plan look like? Unfortunately, no mathematical formula can answer this question. How much must it spend on promotion? There are four aspects that can be taken into account:

1. Allocating a sales percentage.
2. Deciding how much can be saved.
3. Spending as much as the competition does.
4. Determining how much it will cost to get the job done.

1. Allocating A Sales Percentage

The simplest method of determining a budget for the promotion is to earmark promotional dollars based on the percentage of sales. The online casino can evaluate its past experience to establish a promotion-to-sales ratio. For example; if 10 percent of sales (net from player signups, less tax etc.) has been spend on promotion, the casino should budget 10 percent of projected sales for promotion. This might differ from operator to operator and cannot be used as a yardstick. What a firm does with its advertising dollars is known as the Advertising Age.

2. Deciding How Much Can Be Saved

Another method to spend the promotional budget is to spend whatever is left over when all the activities have been funded. In other words, once the staff have been paid, tax, rent etc. Truth be told this is not a very effective approach to spending since it ignores promotional goals.

3. Spending As Much As The Competition Does

Sometimes, a cyber casino’s budget is based on the analysis of its main competitor’s budget. It goes without saying that the igaming industry is fiercely competitive and success could be measured in terms of how much a company is prepared to spend. So, how does this method work? The idea is to duplicate the promotional efforts of the competition.

If you have a look at the televised advertising of William Hill, Bet365 and Sky Bet in the UK, they’re pretty similar. Most of them take place in the early hours of the morning since they specifically target a certain clientèle-males over the age 40. Their ads are normally run by scantily clad women promising them a slice of heaven if they signup. Although this approach results in the copying of competitors’ successes, it can also copy their mistakes.

4. Determining How Much It Will Cost To Get The Job Done

This method requires a comprehensive analysis of the market and the casino’s goals. If relatively accurate measures are used, the total amount that needs to be spend can be determined. The best way for an operator is to incorporate all four approaches. In other words, it must make a comparison of the four estimated amounts and set the promotional budget accordingly.

What Is The Cyber Casino’s Advertising Objective?

As its primary goal, advertising seeks to entice players to sign up by informing, persuading and reminding them of the firm’s superior product or service. If the operator wants its advertising campaign to be successful it must avoid creating false expectations. At times excessive advertising can be a waste of money. If one has a look at the UK market, you’ll note that televised advertising is either geographical or by customer type. The newest alternative media is Web advertising. In recent years internet casinos have flocked to the Internet. Many experts have described it as the ”next great mass medium”.

How Does A Cyber Casino Obtain Its Advertising Objective?

Cyber casinos rely heavily on the marketing expertise of the firms they hire to do the job. This could be done through advertsing agencies and advertising media. They provide the following services:

• Evaluate and recommend the advertising media with the greatest pulling power.
• Evaluate the effectiveness with different advertising appeals.
• Conduct market-sampling studies to evaluate the sales potential of a specific geographic area: ”I’m not sure what constitutes a problem level but given the number of betting shops round my (not affluent) area, all of which presumably are making enough to stay open, there must be an awful lot of betting going on. And that’s as well as what’s done online and through phone apps.” GilbertTheAlien
• Furnish mailing lists.

Since the advertising agencies can be very expensive, the egaming operator must make sure that the return from those services will be greater than the fees paid. In the below table I’m going to list the Advantages and Disadvantages Of Traditional Media Advertising online casinos use.

The Internet provided an entirely new way for egaming operators to advertise. With color graphics, two-information exchanges, streaming video and 24 hour availability, online advertising is challenging traditional media for promotional dollars. What makes Web advertising so feasible?

• It allows online casinos to reach a large number of global players.
• It’s cheap.
• Has a greater impact than many alternative forms of advertising.

What Are The Basic Methods Of Web Advertising?

Banners ads and pop-ups

They appear across a web page as moving rectangular strips. Pop-ups on the other hand burst open, but don’t have any movement. Unfortunately, most players nowadays often greet banner ads with little excitement. Many perceive them as billboards on the side of the highway. Research indicates that click-through rates on banner ads have dropped by more than 30%.

Email

This is a very cost-effective way in which to pinpoint players and the response rate is higher than banner ads. However, as more and more online casinos use this method, player inboxes can become cluttered and might contain viruses. There’s a fine line to effective email marketing and spamming.

Sponsorship and linkages

If a portal casino has the desired traffic, the igaming operator will pay the owner a flat fee rate or hybrid deal for advertsing space on the site. However, Internet advertising is already facing an obstacle-ad blocking software prevents a casino’s ads from being displayed. This is one of the main reasons why webmasters are doing away with banners.

Trade show exhibits

The first thing that comes to mind is affiliate conferences and it also ties in with affiliate marketing. Think of the London Affiliate Conference (LAC), Barcelona Affiliate Conference (BAC), just to name but a few. Cyber casinos use affiliates to market their casinos by paying them a commission based on player losses. The casinos’ booths at these conferences are ways of getting affiliates to market their product.

Conclusion

The role that promotion plays in the marketing process is a complex process. This is why operators must understand their limitations and by just ‘showing up’ is not going to cut it any more. Every communication process involves a source, a message and a receiver.