If you’ve ever dabbled in the arts of creating content for gambling operators or casino groups, you may have needed to do some content research to get the lay of the land and understand what’s being rolled out and made available in the gambling market. I’ve been watching from the side-lines for a while now and I’ve done a fair amount of content research. I keep hoping to see more content created with real value, however the harsh truth is, that what’s out there is largely underwhelming. Many gambling operators are still opting for the substandard, mediocre generic content that they were rolling out years ago, as opposed to creating innovative content that actually carries authority and credibility. Let’s take a moment and think about this… The gambling industry is quite a challenging market to work in, due to the substantial amount of negative publicity that it receives. One would think that to detract from the negative perspective that is commonly associated with it, more effort would be put into creating authentic credible creative work instead.
Gambling Advertising:
As it stands, content creation in the gambling industry will need to change extensively, if gambling operators want to attain any kind of competitive advantage. With the Gambling Commission in the UK having relaxed their regulations somewhat and advertising being heavily invested in, only time will tell if operators have been spending their money wisely enough and have differentiated their positioning, in the minds of their targeted audience.
FUTURE GAMBLING CONTENT CREATION:
I’d like to think that with our recent Big Content publications for our casino client Smart Live Gaming, we’ve raised the stakes somewhat and demonstrated how content can and should be created in a rather controversial industry.
UK BETTING BEHAVIOUR:
We started out by creating the supersized Graphic Paper which looked at the UK’s Betting Behaviour. In essence, what we did was report on the UK’s participation and engagement in different betting and gaming activities. The Gambling Commissions Research Report as compiled by NatCen Social Research –formed the base of the graphic paper. We created a selection of graphics taking the whitepaper and transforming it into content which can be easily read and has maximum appeal – the X factor so to speak. Furthermore we had the backing of academic Professor Ellis Cashmore, who was willing to impart some of his pearls of wisdom on the topic, providing insights into what the gambling and betting sphere looks like at present and how it’s likely to evolve in the next few years. (Some of the major take-away’s are featured in the image below). This was definitely an example of industry level content with information that could greatly assist gambling operators and affiliates in their marketing and business strategy.
MAJOR TAKE-AWAY\’S FROM UK’S BETTING BEHAVIOUR:
As a notorious subject, news reports on gambling are a dime a dozen. With this big content paper, we tried to create a backdrop to all that’s so commonly reported on, providing consumers with the bare facts. It literally discusses the level of participation in betting and gambling activities by both males and females in different age groups.
Take Two: Futuristic Content Creation
Our second attempt at switching things up and generating some ‘larger than life’ content was with Smart Live Gaming’s UK Gambling Performance Comparison. It’s amazing what a little assistance from your client can do, and this piece just goes to show how working as a unit, can make all the difference. Smart Live Gaming, were kind enough to assist us with the creation of this content by furnishing us with their CRM data. This enabled us to create another insightful paper, which looked at how gamblers performed in terms of the amount of money they were spending and how much they were making back (spend to win ratio). Sort of like the Premier League for Gambling, we were able to siphon out the top performing cities north to south and east to west – putting a fun yet competitive spin on things. I would have to class this as another industry level piece, which operators and affiliates in the industry could pick up a few tips from. The key take-away’s from this paper, looking specifically at our clients data were that despite the fact that there was approximately more than six times the amount of men gambling at Smart Live Gaming than women, the better performing sex of them all, yes women, were more successful and reeled in the bigger wins. Furthermore, we were able to identify the top 12 cities with the highest spend and compared them to the top 12 cities with the largest amount of players, which enabled us to create the performance league table. You might be wondering why we opted to write content in this tone or at a more or less industry level? The long and short of it is; how else can you really go about building any authority in an already somewhat warped industry, if not by reporting on the facts. There’s nothing wrong with short entertaining feature articles, but every now and again, you need to put your feelers out and dare to be different. Many people working in the marketing side of the gambling sector, I’m sure are uncertain as to how they can go about setting themselves apart from their competitors. I’d like to think that they could take a leaf out of our book. Or they could just do what everyone else is doing, dwell in mediocrity and create repetitive generic content with very little value or credibility. Either way, the papers that we’ve been able to create have truly felt like the dawn of revolutionary content and I look forward to being part of a process where bigger and better things are created. Feel free to check-in and stay tuned to Smart Live Gaming’s Blog for some more futuristic gambling content.
