Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author, CT Moore, and interview subject, and in no way reflect those of Gaming Industry Media.
Marketing a top-tier brand requires a fully comprehensive strategy. After all, to maintain a market perception of being a top-tier brand, you have to maintain a presence across all top-tier marketing channels.
For Victor Chandler (VC), leveraging a variety of marketing channels is something that’s been very carefully thought out and implemented. Recently, I interviewed Julian Dellipiani, their Affiliate Marketing Manager, and we discussed how VC is using everything from promotions and social media, to search engine marketing (SEO & PPC) to customer relations management (CRM).
For VC, engaging each of these individual channels has been done in a particularly strategic way – that is, with the VC brand in mind. In a word, each channel has been leveraged in a way that complements not only VC’s marketing objectives, but their over-arching branding goals as well.
CT Moore: What have been some of the most popular and effective promotions that you've run, and what were their outcomes?
Julian Dellipiani: A ÂŁ25,000 prize give away for new sports book customers. Each new account that opened and placed a bet of ÂŁ25 or more within 30 minutes [had the opportunity to] enter the correct score competition. Unfortunately nobody predicted the correct scores that weekend but it did generate over 200k worth of revenue and many hundreds of new accounts and deposits.
CT: Where has social media fit into your marketing strategy?
JD: Social media is one of those “do you, don’t you” areas because there are so many other online priorities. However social media does have its place in viral marketing, referring friends and of course link building. It is the latter we that currently occupies our social media time and has been integrated into our SEM strategy in a big way.
CT: What branding techniques have you employed to increase awareness and recognition?
JD: Previously, VC has only worked in the affiliate and CPM banner world. But in the last few years, our online marketing has moved into other areas, including CPM2CPA networks, CPM2CPA emails, new affiliate networks in local territories, the hiring of media agencies to drive more effective SEO, PPC and banner advertising across 7 European countries.
We are currently in the process of rebranding from VCbet (and VC Poker and VC Casino) to just "Victor Chandler" across all our products. As you may be aware, Victor himself has become quite an entity in the gaming world. We wanted to bring him forward as the face of this company, and [are taking] advantage of this fact by evolving our branding using Victor Chandler himself – including his picture on most of our advertising.
CT: Have you applied SEM strategies to increase your site's visibility on key search engines? If so, what were your outcomes?
JD: SEM is a key component of any online business, and at VC we are taking great strides towards higher levels of on-site conversion, as well as indexing our site into all directories of Google.
To that end Victor Chandler has just launched a new casino product in the UK and we will be releasing new sportbook products and skill games. We have designed these sites [to be optimized for] acquisition, conversion, retention and for SEM success. All of us here have high hopes.
CT: How much does CRM factor into your retention strategy?
JD: VC has just bought new retention and CRM systems because there is no point in recruiting a new betting account if the business can’t keep them. We appear to be in the group as other gaming companies which have moved their focus away from acquisition to retention, however VC is taking both sides of the coin very seriously.
At the time this was written, CT Moore was a new media strategist for Income Access, a provider of affiliate marketing solutions to Victor Chandler.