INSIGHT
Figure 2: Brand mention volume per month across all channels except Twitter
100k
Mention Volume
80k
60k
40k
20k
0k
Dec 2013
888
Jan 2014
Bet365
Feb 2014
Mar 2014
Betfair
Betfred
Apr 2014
May 2014
BetVictor
Even though the title sponsorship for the
Premier League might not yet be available
to a betting company, if we’re to believe
the words of CEO Richard Scudamore,
it’s still a very bright move compared to
being a shirt sponsor of a team in the
same league, as the latter won’t yield
anywhere near the same volume of online
mentions. This is because when we refer to
a team in writing, we don’t refer to them,
for example, as “Dafabet Aston Villa” but
simply as “Aston Villa”. Hence league
title sponsorships have proved to be more
effective in upping the amount of earned
online buzz your brand receives.
Have you noticed any major changes in the
way operators use social media since you
started tracking their activity last year?
If I look at it from the perspective that I’ve
been in the iGaming space for just over a
decade now and involved in social media
since the early days of both Facebook
and Twitter, I have seen a major shift in
how operators approach social media. At
the risk of over generalising, social media
“back then” was seen more as yet another
set of channels for your products and
promotions. Today, I think a section of
the industry’s operators have now started
to embrace social media more holistically
across the organisation. They realise
that the online landscape looks different
from yesterday, with the customer’s voice
notably amplified, hence this section of
operators now asking themselves how they
need to adapt and change throughout the
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iGB Affiliate Issue 51 JUNE/JULY 2015
Betway
Jun 2014
Jul 2014
Boylesports
Aug 2014
Bwin
Sep 2014
Coral
Oct 2014
Ladbrokes
Nov 2014
Dec 2014
Paddy Power
Jan 2015
Sky Bet
Feb 2015
Totesport
Mar 2015
Apr 2015
Unibet
William Hill
place, but for most operators I think it risks
becoming more of a distraction than a
powerful marketing tool.
organisation. Such questions are likely
to include: What’s the role of customer
service today? Do we need to proactively
look for problem mentions outside our
inbound channels? If so, should customer
service be treated as a profit centre rather
than cost centre? Does our six-month
marketing plan and budget make sense in
the advent of real-time marketing? Are we
agile enough to respond to opportunities
quickly enough?
Focusing just on the last year and what
changed during this period, we always see
companies experimenting with the latest
channels such as Snapchat, which is all
well and good if you have the basics in
You’ve stated that the combined voice of
customers, affiliates and partners talking
about a brand can be 25x the reach of
the brand’s own social media channels.
Which types of strategy or campaign
have proved effective in delivering this
reach for brands operating on more
limited budgets?
That figure does vary a lot across the
brands, but we’ve seen many incidences
of brands having a much larger combined
reach from their audience talking about
Figure 3: Most popular topics and keywords related to Sky Bet
Championship (March 2014)
announced on Friday
Blackpool
Barclays Premier League
Southampton
second-half
Birmingham
Hull
Burnley
Leicester
Derby County
Everton
FA Cup Forest Football
Stadium
City fourt