HOW ONLINE CASINOS ATTRACT CUSTOMERS

Owning an online casino can be very profitable. An example of this is Betway, who in 2019 increased their Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) by 41% to a stunning 19,137,446,183.70 Indian Rupee. (€215.2m)

Numbers such as these are extraordinary in the online casino industry, but Betway is far from alone in making a lot of money on gambling.

A consequence of these profits is that other investors become increasingly interested in creating their own online casino, resulting in heavier competition.

In the last couple of years, more gambling companies have either been bought by competition or went bankrupt than ever before. A clear indicator of much harder competition.

To survive the fierce competition, online casinos must retain the customers already playing with them better and acquire new customers faster than ever before.

This situation makes more and more people wonder how online casinos attract customers, and which techniques they use to survive.

In this article, we will cover this topic. Through our experience working in companies such as LeoVegas, we have seen it, been a part of it and knows exactly how online casinos attract customers.

The truth might be less exciting and morally grey than what you might expect, but if you are interested in learning ways to create attention around your own brand, or are simply curious about this topic, we promise that you are in for an eye-opener.

It might be that you are already working in the online casino industry, or you might not be connected to the industry either as an employee or a player, and are simply here out of curiosity.

We don’t want to leave any of you out and that is why we start this article about how online casinos attract customers by explaining the process of how people become online customers.

If you are a professional marketer, you will recognize that the road to becoming an online casino customer is very similar to the customer funnel you find online. It all starts with awareness.

The nature of online gambling is very competitive. Not only between online casinos but through gameplay as well. If you are betting on sports, the goal is to beat the sportsbook. If you play live games, the goal is to beat the dealer and when play slots, you want to beat the house edge.

To create awareness around the industry and online casinos, they target marketing channels already entertaining through competitions. This is why you often find online casino logos around sports teams, events and leagues.

When a person is in this step, that person has typically no solid plans of gambling, however, they can tell you that they know about the industry and they can name a few big brands from the industry.

The next and natural step from being aware of the industries existence is becoming curious or interested in it.

When a person is in step 2 of becoming an online casino customer, they typically start paying more attention to advertisers on the subject, which allows online customers to showcase their product better.

It is common that a person showing interest in online casino, start searching for informational queries on Google, Youtube and other information channels. A typical questions people have is whether casino games are safe or not.

After a person has gone from being aware to showing interest, the next step towards becoming a customer goes through consideration. A person will only reach this step if said person like the answers they find during step 2.

An example of this is if they are wondering whether or not casino games are safe, and they find what appears to be proof of them being a scam, it’s not likely that he or she will consider becoming a customer.

Natural behaviour during step 3 is still research. However, the queries change from informational queries around the basics to competitive queries. An example of this is the ‘best online casino in India’, hoping to find ratings of online casinos they are eligible to play at.

When a person enters step 4 towards becoming an online casino customer, they know at least a few brands, and they typically know approximately how they compare to one another.

If they have done a good job in step 3 they also know what the strengths and the weakness of the different online casinos are.

However, they are not completely decided on which online casino to play with. Typical research queries people use in this step is ‘Brand + Review’ because they want to learn more about that shortlist of online casinos they are interested in. A good example of this is a google search for ‘10cric Review’.

Step 4 through 6 is typically connected because they are taken within a short matter of time. When a person decides to do research for step 4, they are more often than not less than one hour away from being an online casino customer.

In step 5 the person is trying to process the information they found in reviews and comparison articles before they make a choice. They may visit the online casino looking for free games to play, or for potential bonuses waiting when the welcome bonus is used up.

Step 6 is also the last step towards someone becoming an online casino customer. They have now gone all the way from being aware of the existence of online casinos to know what it is about, how to play and they are ready to both sign-up and deposit money with one online casino.

They normally do this through google, directly by typing the URL, through an affiliate or through an advertiser. The interesting part with how they sign up is that they will normally represent a different kind of value to the online casino, depending on which channel they sign up through.

We will discuss this topic later in the article, so stay put.

Now that you know just how competitive the online casino industry is and the funnel a person goes through to become a customer, it’s time for a closer look at how online casinos attract customers through marketing.

In addition to understanding why we spent time learning about how people become online casino customers, you will learn several methods online casinos use to attract customers through their marketing efforts.

We will start off by learning how online casinos create awareness of their product, and which channels they use to make sure people actually see them.

Most people have an awareness of the online casino industry. Most of us can name a few brands and we know what that it includes playing games for money. The reason why we have this awareness is that the industry as a group is one of the best at creating awareness.

Recognized as one of the best within the industry, you have a company named Paddypower. Unfortunately, this online casino is not available in India, but there is, fortunately, no law against watching their brilliant commercials online.

Before we move on, we recommend you spend 1 minute watching this commercial with a reference to Jose Mourinho’s “The Special One” comment he made while managing Chelsea.

As you may have noticed, the commercial is not overloaded with welcome bonuses, odds, games or such, so what is the value of this commercial for Paddypower? Well, if you know the backstory with Jose Mourinho, you probably had a laugh, and that is where it became valuable to Paddypower.

You know have an experience laughing or smiling in connection to their brand. A die-hard football fan is also likely to remember this commercial and even discuss it with friends.

Another great example of how online casinos create awareness around their brand is sponsorships.

Betway has for a long time sponsored West Ham, a club normally positioned in the middle of the table of Premier League.

The most obvious group of people getting a positive experience with Betway for this sponsorship is the 700,000 registered West Ham supporters from around the world.

In addition to this, West Hams games are broadcasted in over 100 countries around the world, seeing their logo in a moment they might already consider betting.

A summary

Online casinos create awareness around their brand through connecting positive emotions and their brands. They do this through either creating or participating in activities where people normally feel joy, excitement, happiness, thrill and other positive emotions. Here are some examples:

• Sponsorships
• TV Commercials
• Advertisers

When a person is starting to show interest in an online casino, they are also in need of a different kind of information.

In step one we learned that a logo connected to something positive creates awareness, however, that kind of marketing isn’t as effective when a person wants to learn more about a product or a service.

In the video below, we have chosen a commercial from LeoVegas as an example. In this commercial, you see an example of an online casino connecting their logo to the product they are trying to sell you.

The casting includes their own lion together with famous slot machine characters. This connects their brand to slot machine and casino gameplay in a fun way.

A person that is becoming increasingly interested in online casino gameplay will most likely get their suspicions of online casino being a fun activity, confirmed by this commercial.

When a person moves over to the consideration phase of the funnel, you will most likely start recognizing the types of commercials and advertisers. That is because this is the best timing to introduce welcome bonuses, tournaments and other promotional bonuses.

These bonuses are normally shown to you via ads online, TV commercials and on pages similar to AllGambling.

When a person considers becoming an online casino customer, that person will be affected by reviews, ratings and welcome bonuses. This is why many online casinos wish to purchase high placements in rating lists.

Here at AllGambling, we earn the same no matter which online casino people sign up with, which gives us the freedom of reviewing and rating gambling sites objectively.

We also have the freedom to include examples of online casinos based on quality.

In the image below, we have taken a screenshot of our front page to show you a few examples of how online casinos handle the consideration phase of a potential customer.

In India, people tend to favour live casino games. It’s not possible to play these games with free spins, which is why you often see online casinos competition to have the best deposit bonus, and very few online casinos adding free spins.

Another way of handling the consideration phase that the online casinos utilize is connecting their brands to games.

In India, the game Teen Patti is very popular. That is why many online casinos compete having the best selection of Teen Patti tables.

If they do well, they win the right to be mentioned in lists such as the best rated Teen Patti casinos here at AllGambling.

A summary

When people are in the consideration phase of becoming a customer, articles about safety, reviews, ratings, and welcome bonuses becomes important because the customer is trying to narrow down the potential online casinos. Being consistently left out of the top 10 positions during this process will more often than not disqualify that online casino from consideration.

If a person gets the answer they want to see during step 4, they will often move over to the step named ‘Intention’. As we may have understood already, commercials only mentioning brand name doesn’t do much good during this phase.

Although online casinos pay for positive reviews and ratings, this is a step where they somewhat lose control over the process. Although TV commercials with more specific product information and welcome bonus information will help, most of the information a potential customer wants comes from pages such as AllGambling.

Reviews and ratings are important in the previous step because the potential customer is narrowing down the choices. When they have an intent, they typically search for specific brand names + reviews or rating to dig deeper into that brand.

In other words, the online casinos are relying heavily on third-party websites in this phase.

A summary

When a customer has an intention to become a customer, we leave the stages or phases where online casinos are in control. Instead, the process becomes self-driven based on personal preferences and all the information gathered from awareness to intent. Online casinos rely heavily on third-party websites such as AllGambling to help them attract potential customers.