How can marketing help with the great UK growth debate?

It’s that time of the year when 2020 budget planning is happening in boardrooms across the gaming industry and in the UK, despite a slowdown of growth, there’s still lots to play for in a £6.4bn regulated market – especially with Euro 2020 just eight months away.

The Stars Group, Flutter (soon to be as one) and William Hill will all be aiming to build on soft H1 numbers, while the GVC UK brands will be under pressure to maintain the growth story achieved in 2018/2019. One thing all senior management teams will have in common is the ongoing debate on which strategic direction will deliver the double-digit growth required to be market leading.

With marketing spend representing roughly a quarter of most digital brand’s revenue, what are the key strategic points which can help these UK brands get back to growth in a highly competitive sector?

Be distinctive or don’t bother

You don’t always need to be different but you do need to be distinctive. Distinctive brands construct a consistent, clear and memorable brand image, which allows consumers to easily recall your emotional and rational brand proposition. However, many big brands in the UK gaming market are getting lost in the battle for distinctiveness, namely Betfair and William Hill.

An example of low distinctiveness can be seen where advertising recall regularly comes out bottom of the pile between 17-20% (compared to bet365 of 50%). This proportion means that of those shown a William Hill ad, less than one out of five people remembered seeing the advert and connected it to being William Hill. This low distinctiveness will undoubtedly have a direct impact on marketing ROI, whether that’s offline or digital media.

Invest in excess share of voice

Marketing professor John Philip Jones in the Harvard Business Review discovered a direct correlation between market share growth and share of voice (proportion of advertising in the sector). The broad findings of the research were that to grow market share, brands who aren’t number one in the market need an “excess share of voice” (ESOV) with efficient marketing spend to assist growth.

This can be seen in other verticals outside gaming. In 2013, Lidl held a 3% share of market in the UK and 5% share of voice on advertising. As a focused strategy to get greater awareness and address a negative brand perception issue of low-quality food, over the next three years Lidl increased their share of voice massively to 20% which resulted in the German brand subsequently doubling their market share to 6% by 2018.

Modernise your marketing effectiveness measurement

For many years (and still in some businesses), marketing effectiveness in the gaming industry was calculated by total spend divided by new customers, then compared to average new player value. This basic model is now being acknowledged as totally inefficient, as it doesn’t truly measure the effectiveness from your marketing channels.

To have a true measurement of the effectiveness of marketing spend you need to implement a top down solution like econometric (marketing mix modelling) and bottom up digital attribution software like Nielsen Visual IQ, Neustar or Google 360. This will allow the business to gain an effective view of how the marketing funnel is working from brand awareness down to brand usage.

Get the best revenue yield from your bonus spend

Despite the ongoing debate between marketing and trading on the benefits of promotions and bonus spend above the line, there is no doubt that customer research suggests a strong proposition on sports like football, racing and tennis is key for bettors when choosing a primary wallet.

The key for effective promotional bonus spend is to ensure that while measuring the incremental uplift in turnover and revenue, that you are clear on the strategic objectives of your bonus spend in terms of brand and market positioning. Your brand purpose, pillars and proposition should be tightly aligned to the promotional/bonus spend offering which then becomes your hero message across all media channels.

Make customer research a business priority

Such is the risk management nature of betting/gaming – that sometimes we don’t heed the voice of our customers in the same way as other verticals. Many management teams will put negative customer sentiment down to statements like “they’re not the type of customers we want”. However, to state the obvious, happy customers yield more revenue which leads to growth and delivers results for shareholders.

With the dynamic and agile nature of the sports betting industry this research can’t just be a quarterly gauge of net promoter score, it needs to be part of the weekly fibre of the business ensuring that every big sporting event is being delivered with a flawless customer experience – flawless as scored by the voice of the customer.

Alexis Zamboglou is a senior marketing leader with more than 12 years’ experience in the gaming industry. For more information on his consulting services contact alexis@thezconsultancy.co.uk