How To Advertise An Online Gambling Business?
Let's talk about advertising online gambling today. As the co-founder of a thriving digital marketing agency in Malaysia, I can tell you that running a digital marketing agency is challenging. While we have many leads coming from various industries, we also have leads coming from the online gambling industry. The constant algorithm changes, high cost of advertising and respective government rules makes online marketing for gambling a tough nut to crack. If you want to learn how to advertise an online gambling business, this is a great guide for you to follow.
Disclaimer: Online gambling is illegal in some countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. This blog do not encourage online gambling and if you insist of online gambling, do play responsibly.
This is a complicated industry to do advertisement. Firstly, there are many country laws which you need to be aware of. Secondly, it certainly take some level of skills to get the job (advertising online gambling) done right.
“Advertising an online gambling business is not a walk in the park. However, when it is done right, it can prove to be very effective and provide positive ROI results.”
Unknown
The biggest question right now is, "How do you advertise an online gambling business?"
Option 1: Advertising online gambling websites using paid ads
Running Facebook adverting campaigns is a great way to advertise gambling websites
If you are looking for fast results, paid advertisement is always the platform that offers the fastest results.
But it is not that easy to pull off and the reason is simply because there are paid advertising rules (set by the local government) that you need to follow.
For example, I'm living in Malaysia and advertising products or services related to gambling products are prohibited by Google. Take a look below.
It is illegal to advertise an online gambling business using Google Ads in Malaysia. Source.
But, what if you are advertising in other countries such as United States?
The answer is yes! You can easily advertise ads with filters set to this country-specific.
How to advertise an online gambling business using paid advertisements?
Goals. The first step is to define the goal(s) you want to achieve using paid advertisement. It can be the number of conversion, the number of traffic to landing pages or building fans for your online gambling business. The more specific you are, the better the results would be like.
Channels. The second part involves focusing on platforms that you want to use. It can be Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Bing Ads or any other forms of advertising channels. If you are doing it by yourself, you may want to focus on just a handful of channels as it can be very time consuming. If you are working with an agency instead, you are free to go for more channels.
Budget. Now, define the budget you want to spend in the paid advertisements. It can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on your budget. Defining the budget at this stage will help you manage your financials better—and not going over your budget.
Test. Running just one campaign is not going to give you much results. Instead, focus in creating multiple campaigns for split testing. Test each type of wordings, call-to-actions and landing page designs to get stats for better ROI.
Analyze. Last but not least, analyze the results from each campaign you run. Learn from the mistakes (or from the results) and take steps to improve your paid campaigns for better conversions and lower cost per action.
Option 2: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for advertising online gambling websites
“SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.”
Search Engine Land
Implementing SEO strategies is one of the most efficient and cost effective online marketing strategy to advertise online gambling websites.
SEO is NOT cheap and it is NOT easy to accomplished. It requires a lot of planning, constant optimization and above all, skilled SEO professionals to manage your SEO campaigns.
However, the impact of SEO is always triple folds to what you spend running SEO campaigns.
For example, it may cost RM2,000 a month doing SEO campaign and once Google starts picking up your keywords, you will gain higher visibility in the coming 3, 6 and 12 months down the road.
How to advertise gambling websites using SEO?
Goals. The first step is to understand what you want to achieve using SEO. The goals needed to be specific and measurable—to ensure that you know exactly what's working and what's not. This is by far, the most challenging task to do especially if you are planning to do it on your own. You can also hire SEO agencies to do the entire heavy lifting for you.
Planning. The next step is to layout the exact steps you want to take to achieve the goals you had set in #1. This includes listing down a whole list of keywords (including long tail keywords). competitors' websites, onpage and offpage optimization. I recommend using Ahrefs but KWFinder is a good alternative if pricing is a concern for you.
Execution. This phrase is all about working harder and smarter than your competitors. Most gambling websites are doing SEO and you need to outdo them. In other words, if they build 5 links in a week, you need to do twice more or at the very least, match their work. If you are doing yourself, chances are you will be spending at least 15 to 20 hours a week. Therefore, you can either task your staff(s) to perform the task or getting an outsource agency/freelancer to do for you.
Analyze. Lastly, SEO is only effective when you perform bi-weekly or monthly. During the analysis, make sure you jot down what you had done previously and how it is impacting your results. Once you have the stats, focus in implementing them for the coming weeks/months.
Option 3: Forum postings to advertise gambling websites
AskGambler is one of the top forums for gambling related content and advertisement
Posting on forum is often known as old-school marketing. However, forum posting is a powerful online marketing method to promote gambling websites.
There are thousands of gambling related forums—and when you are able to constantly provide quality information through your posting, you are going to get a lot of eyeballs on your every post. This is an excellent way to generate more brand visibility especially in the online gambling industry.
How to advertise gambling websites using forum posting?
Identify. The first step is to identify the top gambling forums or groups your target audience are in. Key in the related terms on Google or Facebook and you will get a list of popular forums/groups that you can target.
Apply. The next step is to apply for the membership (either free or paid) and take extra steps to understand the do's and don't's. Usually, forums and Facebook Groups would have specific rules and regulations set by the administrators.
Usefulness. Once you had been approved to be a member, start posting regularly and make sure every post you publish or share is useful. Yes, you may self promote but I recommend going the 80-20 rule; 80% of the time is about helping others and 20% goes to self promotion. Including your landing page URL would help you generate a lot of clicks and sign ups when you gain an authority figure in the group.
Do you know that you can also use this step to create blog posts which drive a lot of traffic to your website? This is called content marketing!
Advertising online gambling website: Are you ready to advertise an online gambling website?
Advertising an online gambling website requires patience and experience. I certainly hope that the above tips will help you with your online gambling website and if you need any help, you can contact my team right here.
