Content marketing is fast becoming a vital component in the drive to make your brand stand out in the marketplace according to Richard Duncan, Head of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships, PA Betting Services. But crucially, there are some challenges to address if you want to strike the correct balance.
SportsHandle has reported the cost of acquiring customers has been steadily on the rise since late 2020 while over the same period customer loyalty, as bettors become more educated, is on the decline. This two-fold problem can present an interesting challenge in both emerging and mature markets. Simply put, with increasing competition, how do you make sure your brand stands out from the crowd?
Whether you’re focused on acquisition or retention right now, according to Google, content is one of the top three factors that influence search engine rankings. This means the quality and relevance of your platform’s content can directly impact its visibility in search results and ultimately your ability to attract traffic and engage users. It’s easy to see why many operators and affiliates are turning to content marketing as a viable method of driving customer growth and reducing churn. However, it’s not without pitfalls.
Having great content is one thing but what else do you need?
A recent study by Stackla showed 79% of people felt their purchasing decisions were directly influenced by the authority and expertise of the author. Adding to this, HubSpot found companies posting four or more times a week received almost 3.5x more traffic while Nielsen Norman Group said only 20% of content on a page is read.
In summary: you need quality content and authority in the expertise of the poster. It needs to be easy to scan, highlighting the most important information, and you need the ability to scale and post regularly. If you really want to drive conversion, you may want to go the extra mile and also consider personalization (a 30% increase according to Epsilon) and interactivity (a two-fold increase according to Demand Metric).
While content marketing isn’t new (it’s been around since the late 90s), most if not all of us will interact with it in some way daily, be it through social media or your favorite sports blog. A lack of understanding or expertise can often result in effort and resources being spent in the wrong areas leading to poor results.
Duncan explained: “We made the move five years ago from pure sports reporting towards what is today a dedicated editorial team of sports betting writers, supported by a core of specialist data analysis and graphic design staff. Over that time, we have perfected the art of combining these skills to create bespoke content and visuals that are optimized for search and deliver results daily for brands such as bwin, Ladbrokes, and Coral.”
Compared to generalized content marketing, bespoke betting editorial has its own nuances and differs in that it is rich with tipping, insight, and opinion as the golden threads running throughout each piece in order to educate, inform and activate the reader.
But, as with all content marketing, a betting article by a named author with credible social media presence can be used to effectively improve visibility in SERPs, increase dwell time and conversion. This often has the associated benefit of the reader viewing themselves as better-informed and more likely to be confident when placing their bet. In some cases, resulting in higher stakes wagering in addition to greater conversion.
Why give your audience a reason to leave? – they might not come back
With lines ever more blurred between media and betting, great content has never been more important, and the industry is starting to see a shift by brands aiming to retain audiences in their ecosystem. We only need to look back to last September when Shay Segev, DAZN Group CEO, announced in his keynote speech at SBC Barcelona that DAZN’s move into betting was part of a broader strategy to retain customers in the DAZN product suite.
And with other household names such as FOX, theScore, Barstool Sports, and LiveScore making similar moves, it can be challenging to find knowledgeable talent to compete.
Duncan added: “We find that creating high-quality, engaging content is critical for attracting and retaining users as well as improving key metrics such as search engine visibility and driving conversion. The best way we have found to deliver this for our customers is through the combination of named authors with high credibility, authority and domain expertise to give readers and search engines the validation and experience they need.
“Our expertise in content writing and strong ties to global sports media affords us vast reach into global talent pools. We are uniquely placed to help customers scale, delivering localized and personalized content for sports betting fans in the highly competitive emerging and maturing markets of Latin America, the US, and Canada but also in mature markets such as the UK/I and Australia.
“Our network enables us to offer native content written in local languages and vernacular at scale and that performs better than translation services while at a price point that is highly competitive.”
