Everyone hopes they have an ace hidden up their sleeve when it comes to digital marketing.
It might be the next viral video campaign, the next social media post to attract millions of likes, or it could just be a robust method of organically driving traffic. Different industries also react to different campaigns; some are not content-centric and rely purely on traffic, whilst others demand a level of engagement with the destination site. Digital marketing is a genre that must be all things to all industries, which can sometimes confuse.
This is evident in the strategies employed by online poker companies in particular. They have to employ a rather different digital marketing strategy to others, with goals other than simple traffic in mind. Within their core strategies are certain aims that may apply to you or your current client. With that in mind, here are three-of-a-kind lessons digital marketers can learn from the online poker world.
Traffic Isn’t Everything
There’s a misconception in digital marketing that traffic is everything. The same goes for social media; companies often advertise their services to increase your followers on a social media platform, but you end up with thousands of bots and fake accounts following you. The same goes for poker accounts where the traffic isn’t of value; they’re no better than bots.
Some companies, such as Buzzfeed, rely on traffic to increase their advert revenue. Therefore, they develop clickbait articles like ‘you’ll never guess what xxx celebrity looks like now’, using a picture of someone else. You click on it and realize it is rubbish, but you’re already in and have been used. Poker companies don’t want that; you have to engage, sign up for an account and enjoy their feature for their campaign to be successful. They also have far less traffic than a big clickbait site, but the visitors they do want should be more engaged and interested.
Stand Out
If you’re reading this article, you may have found it by searching poker or digital marketing, and as a result, you’ll find most of your targeted adverts on YouTube for the next few days will reflect that search. If you searched poker, you’ll already know the market is cramped, and standing out from the crowd is difficult. Most poker-themed sites use popular poker keywords in their titles to help drive traffic, which makes standing out incredibly difficult.
That’s where a strong offering comes into play; simply picking from a list of basic poker terms, such as ‘all-in poker’ and incorporating it into a URL is not enough. Bold design, strong content and positive reviews all help, and some of that is outside the remit of many digital marketing campaigns. The key is to find something different enough to stand out but not so different the campaign strays from the site’s core purpose.
Content is the Ace Up Your Sleeve
Ten years ago, content creation wasn’t a widely known job. Today, there are more than 50m people across the world who consider themselves to be content creators. They write the articles and create the infographics you read daily, and many will be doing so to strengthen the brand they represent. The art of good search engine optimization (SEO) is to have engaging content that people want to read without it feeling as if it is simply a marketing ploy. Poker sites must do this well; if you search for something like online poker rules, you’ll find thousands of entries, many of which will be looking to promote a specific site. The good content creators, the ones the poker industry needs to attract, will craft articles that you want to read that offer relevant information that feels useful to the reader and build those links and drive additional traffic.
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