Best Ways to Promote Online Casinos in 2022 — part 1

What do online casinos need to succeed? It’s a puzzle with many pieces, but most of them are nearly identical: players. But bringing in enough players to get a project started — and keep it going — is as daunting as it is necessary. This article dives into the biggest trends in online casino and sportsbook marketing.

Affiliate marketing

For the development of online gambling platforms, a constant influx of new players is required. Partners who specialize in creating content that generates mass audiences need a channel to monetize that traffic. Affiliate partnerships, with the right approach, can be an ideal option.

Affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based marketing in which affiliate partners receive a commission for directing their traffic to businesses. Because businesses only pay for successful conversions, they can better evaluate their marketing budgets. They can also compare the performance of different partners.

This form of marketing is common in a number of industries, and it’s especially prevalent in online gambling. The iGaming affiliate space is huge, with events and conferences that draw thousands of attendees in an average year.

Affiliate marketing for online casinos takes one of two forms.

In the first case, affiliates join the network. The online casino signs an agreement with the network, after which banners and casino ads appear on the affiliates’ online resources. Affiliates and networks find each other on aggregator sites, a kind of online marketplace for affiliate agreements.

In the second form, online casino brands have their own proprietary networks. Affiliates who join their networks direct their traffic exclusively to the same resource. This is a less common option, normally taken only by well-established brands.

Who are affiliates?

Bloggers

Experienced gamblers who want to share their recommendations, tips, reviews and opinions about the world of online gambling often start their own blog. Just like bloggers in any other field, they hope to gather enough traffic to generate advertising revenue. Over time, they may develop a loyal audience as their readers begin to trust their opinions and recommendations.

Streamers

Streamers are popular Internet celebrities who broadcast their online casino games, such as slots. Viewers tune in to see the streamer’s emotional reaction when they hit the jackpot, and to hear their opinions about the game they are playing. They provide feedback during the game, often comparing games and doing reviews. Although they are easiest to find on YouTube, they often publish material on their own website as well.

Casino portals and review sites

Online casino portals that act as gateways to the world of online gambling are a common choice for an affiliate partner. Players visit casino portals looking for news, reviews and information about different types of bonuses. Portals also sometimes have a forum for complaints and can mediate disputes between players and casinos.

Players value casino portals for their versatility, making them very highly valuable affiliate partners.

Influencers

Affiliates do not have to be associated solely with gambling. Online casino players may have different interests, so partnering with influencers and content creators in other areas can effectively reach new groups of potential players. Various influencers, such as musicians, professional fighters, car enthusiasts and others whose audiences may overlap with those of online casinos, can be effective partners if the partnership is managed effectively.

But be careful not to cooperate with multiple affiliates of the same type — if their audiences overlap they might steal traffic from each other and complicate your efforts instead of augmenting them.

Affiliate compensation models

There are several common arrangements for how online casinos and sportsbooks compensate their affiliate partners.

Revshare

With the revenue sharing model (RevShare), affiliates receive a percentage of each player’s losses directed from the affiliate’s resource to the online casino or sports book platforms. This is the most common reward model in the affiliate marketing world because it encourages affiliates to generate relevant traffic containing long-term, loyal players. The more players lose, the more affiliates win, so they have every incentive to send quality links to casinos.

Casinos prefer RevShare because they only pay for effective conversions instead of blindly spending money on marketing, crossing their fingers and hoping that at least a few high rollers see their ads. The RevShare model also allows casinos to clearly see which affiliates are performing well and which aren’t.

The percentage of income that affiliates receive usually ranges from 20% to 45%. More established affiliates are at a higher level, while new affiliates who have yet to prove themselves start at a lower level and try to work their way up.

CPA

The Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) model is less common than the RevShare model. With the CPA model, affiliates receive a flat fee for each visitor they attract to the casino who performs a certain action — usually signing up or making a first deposit. Typically, CPA is only used for very well-established affiliates with a history of generating quality traffic. Affiliate programs that offer CPA compensation options usually do so on a case-by-case basis.

Hybrid

Some affiliate programs arrange a hybrid model of compensation where affiliates receive both a flat fee for players who perform a certain action and a percentage of the lifetime revenue generated by the player.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the (sometimes endless) process of calibrating your website to improve its ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) on search engines like Google and Bing. SEO is an essential part of a marketing strategy in a world where common wisdom dictates that if you’re not on the first page of Google’s SERPs, you might as well not exist at all.

Search engine optimization is a creative and technical process that usually requires a highly skilled professional. Generic keywords with high search volume will inevitably come with high competition. Instead, identify your exact target audience, research them, and look for less competitive keywords that match their exact tastes.

The best keywords (and this is especially true for new casino brands) are long, detailed, specific queries. These keywords, consisting almost of sentences and having less volume, will allow you to face less competition and attract the attention of your target audience.

There are a few tools you can use to find the best keywords for your platform.

Doorway resources are web pages created for the sole purpose of ranking for a keyword and accumulating traffic that the webmaster can then redirect. Search engines view doorway resources as a form of search engine manipulation — similar to dishonest techniques such as keyword stuffing — and actively try to shut them down. However, doorways are not reliable sources of long-term traffic (you never know when Google will take them down from indexing), but they are a good indicator of which keywords are valuable.

High bids on Google Adwords can also be another indication of keyword value.

External links from other sites to yours give a great boost to your site’s authority. Link building is the process of acquiring these backlinks. The more backlinks you have, the higher your ranking in the SERPs. Some strategies for getting backlinks include publishing guest posts on other online resources and including a link when you participate in online forums. Link building can be time-consuming and expensive, but it’s an essential part of SEO.

For as long as search engines have designed algorithms to help searchers find what they’re looking for, some webmasters have tried to game the system by over-optimizing for certain parameters or requirements. One early strategy was stuffing pages with keywords, creating unreadable content that nevertheless found its way to the top of the first page of search results by virtue of keyword density. Another tactic was to include large numbers of the target keyword in the footer of the page, with the text color matching that of the footer to disguise the underhanded strategy.

However, when such a strategy emerges, the next search algorithm update is not far off. Webmasters who abuse the algorithm are likely to be penalized by the next update, so in the long run it is better to stick to simply creating quality content that meets the search engines’ intentions.

Traditional advertising

Television and radio commercials are still widely used to promote the gambling business. However, these types of advertising are often severely restricted. For example, regulated markets often prohibit television advertising from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., if not prohibit it altogether. In markets where television and radio advertisements are still allowed, they are often banned so that they do not attract minors or give a false impression of gambling, for example, by presenting it as a reliable source of income or even a guaranteed means of getting rich.

Always make sure to adhere to the regulations governing gambling advertising in your markets of operation.

Social Media Marketing

It’s hard to overestimate the power and reach of social media marketing. Advertising on channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Telegram is sure to reach a staggering number of users. The detailed targeting offered by social media platforms allows advertisers to target potential customers with precision. Age, gender and location are just the beginning of the criteria advertisers can choose from.

When a social network user opens a page, there is a fierce bidding war between advertisers vying for the user’s attention. Advertisers set bid limits higher or lower depending on the effectiveness of the ad.

There are several guidelines for proper advertising on social media channels. First, you must follow the rules of the platform for gambling advertising, which often involves registering with the platform and showing proof of license. Social media advertising is also subject to the rules of the marketplace in which the ad will be displayed, so advertisers should keep this in mind.

The text should be short and clear — users scroll endlessly through the page. So they won’t puzzle over a paragraph of text. Your ad needs to grab their attention the millisecond their eyes glance over it, so you need to pique their interest with both text and visuals. Usually users respond best to visual images of other people, and the shot should be as close as possible.

Digital advertising

PPC

Pay Per Click (PPC) ads appear on the search engine results page above the organic search results. Keyword research for PPC ads follows the same principles as that of organic search — choosing less-used keywords that are in line with your target audience — with the added dimension of bidding on the chosen term. One mistake that many start-ups make is neglecting to bid on their own brand as a keyword. If your competitor outbids you on your own brand name as a keyword, their site will pop up first when players search for you.

Display ads

Display ads are text and graphic ads that appear on various Web resources. When users click on them, they are taken to a landing page — in this case often a page on which they can register at an online casino. Display ads can be banners at the top of the page, interstitial ads that are superimposed on the page the user is accessing, and other forms.

Reviews

There’s nothing like word of mouth. People inherently trust those who have been through the same experience. That’s why one of the best strategies to attract players is to provide a quality gaming experience with fast, efficient customer service and technical support. Slow withdrawals, technical problems while playing, and ineffective customer support are all reasons why players leave not-so-pleasant reviews on the player forum or casino portal.

On the other hand, players are also eager to talk about their favorite gambling platform. Before registering at a new casino, players will definitely look at the reviews, and if they read only good news, this may be the impetus to make their first deposit.

The power of players to influence each others’ opinions through reviews leads to a tried-and-true principle that applies to every industry: the best marketing strategy is a superior product, and no amount of marketing can compensate for.

How can Slotegrator help?

This is just an overview of the strategies that new online casinos should use for player acquisition. For a deep dive into the world of brand-building, with further exploration into keyword research, social media advertising, affiliate marketing, paid search, and more, serf our web-site.