Most people don’t know this, but I spent five years of my career working on one of the biggest gambling brands in the country - and they were one of my best performing clients.

I truly believe that if you can market a gambling brand, then you can market anything.

This is what I learned.

1. Give journalists something worth talking about

Most people believe that journalists don’t want to talk about a gambling brand but they absolutely will. You just need to give them something worth talking about, and something worth linking to.

One of the best strategies I used was ‘reactive odds’, e.g. odds of the next Prime Minister, odds of Kim Kardashian getting engaged, etc. You can land 20+ PR placements and links doing this every month - I did. It’s all about speed. If you have the opportunity to jump on a trend or a piece of news, you need to react within hours.

2. Be relevant

Relevancy is everything, and far too many people get this wrong when it comes to marketing a gambling company. They believe everything needs to be gambling related, but it doesn’t.

Instead, look at the people who place bets - what they read, share and engage with. Create PR, social and blog content around this rather than boxing yourself into one idea.

3. Push boundaries and be different

Whilst the sign off process may be long and difficult, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be creative. Gambling brands want to be different. With humongous amounts of competition out there, be the one to push boundaries and show them new ideas.

In 2017, Paddy Power took the opportunity to take a cheeky swing at Costa who had scored badly in health inspections after a BBC investigation found traces of faecal bacteria in iced drinks in Starbucks, Costa and Café Nero.

4. Build authority and a community

Build authority by building author pages of expert advice and tips. By doing this you will show Google and users that you have authority on the subject.

You can then take this one step further by using social media to build up an audience for them - TikTok, YouTube and Twitter are perfect for this. Building an online community is a great marketing strategy for building brand loyalty and driving traffic to your website.

Gamblers aren’t typically loyal (they will just go with the best odds or deals) but building an online community can help with this.

The Game Day is an excellent example of using YouTube for this.

5. Create the right story

Sports publications and journalists are rarely going to cover gambling stories or link to your site because they’re too busy covering live games. Instead, create stories that celebrity, entertainment, lifestyle and travel journalists would talk about.

6. Know where your customers are reading

You have to know where your customers are reading. They aren’t reading The Gambling Times, I promise you. They’re reading LADbible or The Sun and scrolling through TikTok. If you know your audience and where they’re spending their time, then you know where you should spend your money.

7. Be on the ball with live games

The faster you can get a comment, odds or piece of data, the better. Speed will help you in this market. In fact, speed and relevancy are superpowers. More often than not, fans are on social media whilst live games are happening, and being reactive on social media has the potential to go viral.

8. Focus on mobile designs

Focus on mobile designs for content marketing assets - know your users and what mobile platforms they’re using.

“Globally, 68.1% of all website visits in 2020 came from mobile devices—an increase from 63.3% in 2019. Desktops drove 28.9% of visits, while 3.1% of visitors came from tablets. However, desktop devices remain very important, as they drove 53.3% of total time on site in the U.S. and 46.4% of total time on site globally.” - Perficient

9. Affiliate sites

Affiliate sites can look awful. A really well designed affiliate website can win just by looking good and trustworthy. Don’t forget trust signals.

10. Be controversial

Everyone likes a naughty brand doing naughty things - be one of them.

Working on gambling brands isn’t the most fun market, but if you get it right and have a passion for sports and entertainment then you will feel the reward.

Find out how to market your gambling brand - get in touch.