Most casino owners know that their casinos are an integral part of what sets them apart from other brands in the marketplace. However, it’s not always obvious to your audience. Marketing is a very important instrument for all businesses. Throughout the years, I have seen many companies and locations that were stuck with middle-of-the-pack competitors and never saw any growth and eventually closing their doors – that’s why I teamed up with this website and offered gambling industry tailored marketing advice.
One of the most common questions we get asked is how to attract and keep new customers. In this post, you’ll find tried-and-true casino marketing strategies that are sure to help boost your business both now and in the long run. Plus, most of these ideas are easy and inexpensive.
Top 3 marketing strategies that are certain to increase your casino’s audience:
1. Boost discoverability.
Being discovered is important for casinos because the competition is so tough. Discoverability refers to how easy – or hard – it is for an audience to find your site
Your casino needs to be easy to find. Potential guests are in search of casinos online, and might overlook yours if they can’t find it. search engines. The more your casino comes up and the higher it is ranked in the search results, the more discoverable you are. To get a sense of what’s currently happening, we recommend choosing marketing and SEO tools like Moz and SEMrush.
Discoverability is crucial for all businesses, but in the era of social media and smartphones, it’s even more important for organizations with physical locations. Casino owners should consider investing in content creation tools to ensure their small business gets its message out there.
- We recommend creating separate landing pages for each of your most important amenities. This allows you to present different versions of that page for different ads, as well as test which one helps to improve conversions the most. When marketing the various amenities of your hotel, remember to include keyword phrases that are relevant to each one, high-quality photos with appropriate captions, and engaging headlines.
- If you’re advertising on Google, make sure to follow their policies. This includes targeting approved countries and never trying to advertise to minors. Ensure that you know the local regulations you need to abide by. Once you are fully familiar with them, make sure you test your ads with keywords relevant to the offerings.
- Create a profile to post in social media channels that will be of interest to your audience. Share community-related content such as gaming, the casino you work for, local news, or other relevant topics.
- Your content should be optimized for keywords related to the great amenities you offer, where your venue is located, what you do better than anyone else and any events. Your content should not just focus on your casino. Towards the end of 2018, you need to start focusing on the things that make you unique in order to be found by people when they search for those things.
- Put beacons near your location to increase customer traffic if they’re in the area. Being close to other casinos is not always a good thing. But, fortunately, this app can help you work around that by allowing you to customize the minimum bet. This and other location-based marketing strategies allow you to target customers in the real world, instead of just online.
- Pour in effort to create partnerships with merchants in the area so they can help boost your signal and extend the reach of your business. Invite food vendors, creatives and entertainers to your casino or hold an event there together.
2. Pursue events and group business.
There are so many amenities in a casino! And you can’t forget about the games. You can have a lavish hotel, cutting edge technology, flexible event spaces and restaurants. There is a lot to offer at your casino! Make sure your casino marketing aligns with your overall branding and vision. If you can’t picture what it will look like, there’s no point in planning it out.
Casinos are often great for many types of events, including weddings, conferences, business retreats and lunch meetings. It’s essential that your marketing includes specific wording and targeting for events and group business. This will attract those sorts of opportunities.
Cvent’s Competitive Ads™ for hotels and other destinations might be a great asset to your marketing approach as you try to attract more group business. Competitive Market Ads is a major benefit for casinos because it provides them to earn group business that they may have not have been exposed to. Search Ads™ work to give your brand an added edge by ranking up higher. Additionally, you have the opportunity to reach event planners when they’re ready to purchase and have the highest intent level.
3. Find the “jobs to be done.”
For a long time, marketers have focused only on demographics to guide their decision. Casino tuned their focus exclusively towards the demographic aspects of it’s clients- such as age, income, and education levels.
This focus is quite helpful, as there are some differences based on demographics. According to Anderson Digital, “While Boomers and Gen Xers tend to spend 80% of their casino money on gaming, and 20% on food & entertainment”, Millennials will be more likely to spend 30% on gaming and 70% on food, entertainment, and non-gaming services.” Here at Half Shell Games, we enjoy catering to the needs of Millennials & Gen Z. Here’s some things we’ve done that work well: increasing entertainment options like food and floor games, as well as online components to floor games; and an increased focus on mobile marketing.
Demographics help with understanding your audience members, but they are not everything. For example: Picture a group of women standing outside your casino. Let’s say you know their demographic information – they’re all aged in their late 20s or early 30s, have college degrees and high-paying jobs. But do you know why they’re there?
These women might have time to kill before their next meeting. They might also be in town for a family reunion. The dress code for such an occasion could be shapeless dresses, gold jewelry and big hair. All you need to know is their demographics, the information needed to target them. You don’t have to guess at what they want or where they are in their journey.
In order to succeed in business, you need some idea of what your audience is looking for. This requires understanding the story they want to hear–their preferences and biases. Then, give them just what they want!