The trick most often missed in the online gambling industry, is the smart use of social media management. With social media boasting the ability to attract more customers, interact with an audience and optimize customer service – you would think this would be the first thing on the to-do list for any casino – but it just doesn’t seem to be the case.
A look at any online casino followed by a short trip around their social media accounts nicely emphasizes my point . Where you would expect high engagement, huge likes and regular, high-quality content you’ll find, well, the exact opposite.
Across the board, casinos’ social media accounts are full to the brim with poorly managed content, sales-pitch-based offers and inconsistent posting. In fact, it’s a struggle to find a single casino, affiliate or bookie that manages to push the boundaries and attract more customers through social media (bar the highly controversial PaddyPower, that is).
I’m a firm believer that all casinos can use social media to attract more customers providing they take the time to experiment and put the correct team with the correct budget in place. Here’s how to do it:
1. Build a brand by posting consistently
Perhaps the most important task any casino can do to build brand awareness and, ultimately, attract more customers, is to create social media accounts and to consistently post on them .
This should be the first step for any modern business that wants to target more customers. Unfortunately, the majority of the gambling industry doesn’t seem to have received the memo.
High-quality brand oriented content should be posted daily across various social media channels to ensure the maximum number of potential customers see the content. That means Facebook, Instagram and Twitter should all be consistently updated with original content for each one.
There needs to be value for the audience in everything posted, whether the posting provides entertainment, information or just about anything other possible factor that draws interest. This is the karma philosophy in marketing form.
Be good to the consumers and they’ll be good to you.
2. Encourage sharability and tagging
One of the most effective ways social media can be used to increase the number of customers flocking to a casino is with organic sharing and tagging.
By creating entertaining, shocking or informative content that adds value to the audience, the sharability and ‘tagability’ of content go through the roof.
There are plenty of ways to do this in the gambling industry: from humorous images and video to incredible offers that hook the audience, grab attention and then are shared with friends. The sky’s the limit and by using social media analytics to keep an eye on the engagement from different forms of content, companies will be able to tell what is doing well and what should be improved or scrapped.
Time to get creative and come up with the next best viral video of 2019.
3. Run social-specific offers
People love to feel included, special and part of a unique group. With social media-specific offers, they can have just that.
Giving social media-specific offers is almost like getting rewarded for following the casino on social accounts. It doesn’t have to be anything groundbreaking, maybe a few free spins here and there, a scratchcard every month or a unique bonus for several followers on occasion.
The point is not the scale of the reward, but the guarantee or the chance to win that’s great in gambling industry posts. However, it is important to check the terms and conditions of specific social media sites to ensure that no infringements are made – there’s nothing worse than incorrectly advertising gambling.
Give, give, give. That’s the idea of the business model behind social media and if you’re not giving more than you’re taking, your audience will know about it, feel used and you’ll see engagement start to drop. It’s the karma effect in full swing once again.
4. Use gambling affiliate sites and social profiles to promote
One of the unique areas of the online gambling industry is the presence that gambling affiliate sites have in both the sheer number of sites and the power that they wield.
Gambling affiliate sites are often seen as independent, meaning they have an almost unwarranted level of trust over casinos from the customer’s viewpoint. This is good news for affiliates, but bad news for casinos, that is, if you don’t utilize their position.
Affiliates only make money if casinos do, so it’s best for affiliates and casinos to be involved with each other so that a unified front is presented and everyone is making money. By using sites and social profiles like OnlineCasinoGems, casinos can post new sign-up offers via a trustworthy ‘independent’ party.
Casinos get new customers, affiliates earn a commission and new players gain great offers – everyone is a winner.
5. Offer customer service through numerous social channels
The biggest criticism throughout the whole of the gambling industry are related to customer service, the lack thereof for the majority of online casinos.
Customer service should be about making it as easy as possible for disgruntled, confused or curious customers to be helped, informed and pointed back into the right direction with the sense of having been heard and understood. So what is the easiest way for customers to get in touch with issues? Via social media.
Countless companies are using social media accounts as their source for customer service with a focus on Facebook Chat and Twitter DM to find solutions to problems customers experience when using or considering using a certain site. This form is no longer cutting-edge either, with more consumers than ever assuming it should be possible to contact customer service via social media with a response in as little as 4 hours.
It’s not just something to consider, but a necessity if businesses are serious about looking after their customers.
To read more on topics like this, check out the gadgets & technology category.