Las Vegas may be widely regarded as the epicentre of global gambling by the layman, but to experts, the United Kingdom is gambling’s true epicentre. This country leads the way when it comes to gambling revenues, raking in £15 billion from the sector each year.
What makes the UK’s gambling industry most impressive though is its development of the online sector, which accounts for more than a third of annual revenues. No other country in the world has managed to maximise the power of internet gambling quite as well as the UK.
For the industry as a collective that is great news, but for ambitious online gambling entrepreneurs it is quite the opposite. There are hundreds, if not thousands of online casinos operating in the UK, making customer acquisition incredibly heated and difficult.
So, how do successful online casinos manage to attract new players in such a saturated market? Read on to find out.
Modern marketing
Online casinos are now using a wide range of marketing techniques to reach their customers and ensure they continue to use their site over competitors.
For decades television, radio and billboards have provided the best means of marketing for a range of industries. However, in recent years marketing has evolved in conjunction with the development of our online society.
Traditional marketing campaigns have been trumped by newer, more complex and interactive campaigns. One industry that has been at the forefront of this movement is online gambling.
In order to attract new customers and directly appeal to their target demographic, online casinos have needed to invest in digital more and as a result have begun to implement blog post style adverts. The internet is now awash with hundreds of thousands of blog posts that promise readers poker strategies and professional blackjack advice to name but a few. One site that delivers quality, expert advice is 888 Casino (established 1997), their blog posts are each written by casino experts such as John Grochowski, who offers his incredible gambling advice and slots tips to help you increase your chances.
In addition to this specific form of modern marketing, online casinos are also exploring affiliate links with gambling aggregator sites. For a price, aggregators can be persuaded to rate one online casino over another, something which can be vital in this highly competitive market.
Nailing variety
The huge range of games and player experiences available mean that online casinos are more popular than ever before.
99% of online casinos on the internet can guarantee their customers at least a small selection of good quality casino games, ranging from table classics like poker to the newest generation of slot machines.
Whilst the quality of games on offer is obviously important to the consumer, it appears that it is not as important as quantity and variety. The average mobile phone user now spends less than five seconds making up their mind whether to download an app.
Such is the range of offerings, consumers will often choose to download an app based on something fairly trivial like appearance or variety of choice. Online casinos are therefore in an arms race with one another to provide the largest selection of games to their players.
A site with 1,000 slot games to choose from will therefore always be more successful than a competitor with less than half that figure. This need for variety doesn’t stop at slots though, it’s also a vital component of every table game.
That’s the main reason that you now see so many alternatives to Texas Hold ‘Em when you log onto an online poker site. Consumers are no longer happy with just that old classic, they want and in fact demand, new and exciting alternatives.
Replication
Replicating the real-life gambling experience is the holy grail for online casino companies.
When Amazon first started out as a business the main challenge facing the company was how to replicate the experience of physical shopping for their customers. Lacking in virtual reality technology, the company decided that the best way to mimic the real shopping experience was to make their site into a ‘personal shopper’.
Using complex algorithms that monitored their customers purchasing patterns, Amazon was able to provide a bespoke service that showed users the items they liked and would therefore be more likely to buy.
Whilst proving incredibly effective, Amazon’s decision to purchase several bricks and mortar retail chains in recent years shows that the venture to replicate physical shopping was not entirely successful.
Online casinos face a similar conundrum when it comes to rivalling the experience offered by their land-based competitors. At the time of writing, there is no viable way to fully replicate the experience on offer at super casinos by online providers.
The best alternative for the moment is live streaming casinos, beaming live action from real tables and real croupiers onto the laptops and mobile screens of players all across the country.
Presently live casinos do a good job of replicating the real-life gambling experience, but they are likely to be nothing more than a stop gap until more realistic technology like virtual reality becomes more readily available.
Trust
How do you know you can trust the casino in your nearest town or city? You don’t really, but you do know that the casino is subject to local laws and that you can always return to complain if you are unhappy.
When it comes to online casinos there is not the same clarity and certainty when it comes to trust. Lose your money in a dodgy game and you can’t immediately remonstrate with the croupier or another dealer.
No, when it comes to online casinos there is an air of uncertainty that comes with a technologically autonomous experience. Therefore, online casinos have to dedicate considerable time and money into building a trustworthy reputation.
Customers must have clear, obvious and straight forward routes to make complaints and resolve any issues they encounter whilst gambling. Speed of resolution and the human touch of communication are so vital to frustrated customers in these situations.
If an online casino doesn’t prioritise building trust in this way, they run the risk of losing players to another site that will.
Summary
Online casinos face far more competition than their land-based counterparts, who can often set up stall in a town or city and run a gambling monopoly over the locals. Attention to detail is therefore key to any ambitious online company looking to become an established industry player.
