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.
Usually when you discuss marketing in context of the economy these days, it's about how to adjust your strategies to increase ROI on a tightened budget. For The 4th Market, however, they're product seems perfectly geared to capitalize on the buzz being generated around the current economic landscape.
The 4th Market is a "stock market lottery game" where players wager £1 and can then win as much as £100,000 if their stock market predictions come true. In a word, players try to predict in what order the 10 stocks on the 4th Market will close at. If they get all 10 right, then they win £100,000.
Well, I recently had the opportunity to interview Richard Knill, Marketing Manager, The 4th Market Ltd. Richard shared with me the ins-and-outs of building a new brand. He discussed promotional strategies, social media, branding, SEM, and customer relations management (CRM). Being a new brand, CRM and SEM have factored in very largely, and the company is already poised to hit the social media sphere hard.
CT Moore: What have been some of the most popular and effective promotions that you've run, and what were their outcomes?
Richard Knill: We are still experimenting with different promotions and signup bonuses, but both our "Deposit £10 and get £10 free" and the "FREE ticket on registration with no deposit necessary" promotions have been very popular and have increased our registration rates and the overall numbers of tickets in play each day.
CT: Where has social media fit into your marketing strategy?
RK: Social media has not yet featured heavily in our marketing strategy, but we are now working hard on this area. We have just launched a Twitter feed which has a growing following and have also developed a Facebook application, which we hope will introduce a new demographic to the game when it launches.
CT: What branding techniques have you employed to increase awareness and recognition?
RK: The 4th Market brand is very important to us and we have received many compliments on our branding and the style of the website in general.
We called the game The 4th Market because we felt that it was a name that represented the game well, would conjure up an image in people minds and would immediately have a curiosity appeal to our target demographic.
The name has proved to be both memorable and fairly unique in the online world, which has helped our SEO and online marketing.
Our stylish black and green website design has also helped the game to stand out from the numerous bright and colorful gaming sites out there, and we have had many compliments from players on the quality design and feel of the game.
We have been focusing heavily on promoting the game as the "first stock market lottery in the world" and more people are now searching for "The 4th Market" and "stock market lottery" than ever before.
CT: Have you applied SEM strategies to increase your site's visibility on key search engines? If so, what were your outcomes?
RK: Yes, we have been running a variety of PPC advertising on all the major search engines which has allowed us to gain visibility against a wide selection of gaming and financial search terms.
The biggest response we have had so far has been from adverts offering people with an interest in the stock market the chance to turn £1 into £100,000 on the stock market in one day – which is of course the dream of any investor!
The other campaign that has been generating a huge amount of traffic has been offering the UK National Lottery Results on a unique landing page, alongside an offer to try The 4th Market game for free.
CT: How much does CRM factor into your retention strategy?
RK: Staying in touch with our members, selective promotional offers and listening to their feedback have all been crucial to the success of The 4th Market so far.
We know that to create a successful online game, we must keep our players satisfied and coming back to play each day, so good CRM is very important.
CT: How often do you measure your traffic conversion from visitors to customers?
RK: We are constantly monitoring this data and experimenting with different promotions and marketing activities to see how they affect this critical number.
CT: How often do you update content on your site?
RK: The site is updated every day with the latest game results and the live stock market data that The 4th Market Daily Game is based upon. We also update a variety of our static pages at regular intervals to test response and to keep our SEO at a high level.
At the time this was written, CT Moore was a new media strategist for Income Access, a provider of affiliate marketing solutions toThe 4th Market.