As we approach the end of the year, it's time to reflect on our businesses and the marketplace around us. This week I look back at what tactics have been working well in the affiliate and digital marketing space and see how these trends may move forward to impact our industry and the casino marketing space.
Being More Transparent
Affiliate marketing is a symbiotic partnership between two companies to assist customers in gaining insight and information during their purchasing journey. For this relationship to work there must be a common goal and measured outcomes.
Increasingly, brands are being more transparent with partners to help improve customer experiences and enhance their user journeys and entertainment and game play on site.
In 2022, there has been a sharper focus on creating healthier partnerships in the industry and stamping out rogue practices that negatively impact the majority of players and brands when regulation and advertising guidelines are not adhered to. We are seeing a greater focus on advertising in the press supporting responsible gambling; even radio ads are now limited in terms of what their scripts can say.
To start on the right foot, it’s critical that both sides of the fence are 100% transparent. From the data and campaigns and messaging being used to stimulate a conversion to the GDPR and compliance security measures in place.
Being transparent about what can be delivered is imperative for a healthy partnership. When everything is in black and white, it makes the deliverables more likely to come to fruition. Clarity has been at the forefront of affiliate and brand relationships, with agreements laid out before campaigns go live, eliminating unnecessary conflict.
Adding Brand Ambassadors/Influencers to the Mix
Influencer marketing has taken prevalence this year with many programs testing out content curators across multiple social platforms from YouTube and Twitch to Tik-Tok - gone are the days where paid ads were the way to win a customers attention. Now we want authentic content and first mover advantages to promote brand affinity and bring customers to our door. Affiliate programs are trying to keep up with this and elicit influencers, brand-to-brand partnerships and even on-the-ground agents representing brand ambassadors in far reaching countries.
Considering alternative traffic and content creation mechanics to drive customer acquisition and brand reach, it allows you to make use of social credibility and new media platforms that previously remain untested. Also, you can learn very quickly how your customers are taking up your offer.
While most programs are still thinking about who with and how they can work on a performance model, others are already leading the way. It’s important to have strategic KPIs in place to understand what value metrics your partners should achieve - we call these marketing outcomes that for all intents and purposes need to be clearly defined before stepping into new channels.
Research is also being conducted to get the most exposure for these kinds of program partnerships. That’s why often there are specific hashtags required or placements. Often specific placements will have a heftier fee attached. My prediction is that we will begin to see a lot more successful content collaborations in 2023 driving innovation forward in this space.
Better Testing and Tracking on Campaigns
Monitoring the success of both digital and affiliate marketing campaigns has taken precedent in 2022. But, there is always room for improvement! Although A/B testing in itself isn’t a new or revolutionary concept - the effectiveness of our data and tracking platforms in use for running successful affiliate programs has advanced significantly this past year. I see a lot of innovation in tech in this industry due to increased demand for better analytics to target and test spends. There is nowhere to hide, and leading your program forward using data via your shared partnerships is the best course of action for a successful 2023.
Affiliates are a goldmine of information - affiliate managers need to remember this and ask more questions to gain perspective of what is working and what’s not in the wider marketplace.
Ensuring there are different tracking links for each part of the affiliate exposure, or unique parameter ID’s for campaigns to monitor every element of the marketing efforts and to improve performance. The links can also be customized to country or geographical location, so you can get a better idea as to how successful campaigns are in the desired demographics, or if the messaging is hitting the nail on the head in one place but not another to be optimized, in real time, and with the flick of a switch to comply to customer demand.
Social Media Listening and Brand Sentiment Stories
The evolution of social media listening tools has helped affiliates and brands in all spaces gain a better understanding of what people think of them as a business and how they engage with their brand offering too. Brand affinity is becoming increasingly important to the player when considering their promotion options to play online.
These social media listening tools can establish your brand positioning, how much your PR and marketing efforts are attributing to an increase in conversation surrounding your offer, and perhaps most importantly the emotion behind that conversation, whether it’s positive, negative or neutral.
This allows affiliates and marketers to act on this sentiment and move forward creating better results and platform offerings. These tools can be expensive but have proven to be a good investment for companies placing a large focus on PR and keen to understand their performance.
Both digital marketing and affiliate marketing have evolved to detail and deliver invaluable insights on how consumers behave. As such, we all need to keep our finger on the pulse when it comes to employing the right acquisition marketing tactics to build brand reach and engage new customers in a variety of different ways online.
