There is quite a lot of competition among gambling software providers in terms of the distribution of their developments. And no matter how unique a slot is, without proper marketing, it can forever remain unknown to aggregators or online casinos. During the iGaming Round-Up webinar from the GBC Time online magazine, Marina Kalinina, Gamzix CMO, spoke about the trends in advertising of virtual slot machines in 2023 and explained what trends 2024 will set.
The speaker noted that her report is devoted to practical strategies for the next year and gave a list of things that, in her opinion, will be trending in 2024.
From 2023 to 2024: key trends
In this part, Maria Kalinina spoke about the strategies that were popular last year and will remain relevant in 2024.
Free spins and promo codes
It is worth remembering that a company promotes its slots not through media, LinkedIn, or offline events, but via online casinos. And we are not talking about the top gaming positions at the casino, which, of course, work, but it is physically impossible to stay there all the time due to high competition between developers.
The distribution of free spins and promotional codes always attracts players to slots. Understanding the market is also important because if we talk about players from the CIS countries, they are used to x30 wagers, while players from Asia prefer x5-10 wagers. Therefore, you need to study the market before distributing promo codes for free spins.
If a slot provider has integrated free spins with an online casino, it is enough to ask the casino to create promotional codes and distribute them through personal messages, email, and other communication channels. Because players really love such bonuses and will use them, in turn, promoting the slots.
Streamers and influencers
People like to watch something useful and live simultaneously. Streamers are very popular in the gambling world so you should pay attention to this channel. At the same time, Twitch has banned many gambling-related broadcasts, and YouTube continues to ban them daily, so you need to look for other options like the Live Spins platform or B2C media like the Slot Catalog.
Good options are casinos and aggregators that usually have their own streamers. Why is it worth working with streamers? Because a provider may ask them for a personal stream on their own product. This is important because a streamer who works for a casino usually plays a large number of slots, but you can always arrange with them to play any new slot that customers need. It is also possible to agree on the purchase of a bonus game in a slot, which will promote the virtual slot machine among the streamer’s subscribers. And, of course, you can discuss the distribution of promotional codes or free spins for streamers’ viewers. This will also work because people will take these bonuses and go to the casino to play the provider’s slot.
Cryptocurrency and localization
These are not marketing tools but they are working tools that help achieve audience loyalty. Cryptocurrency is becoming more and more popular from year to year due to the security factor. And even despite recent market crashes, crypto is safer than a bank account. Therefore, cryptocurrency is what needs to be supported when developing new slots.
And it is clear that more languages need to be added to the localization of virtual slot machines as this increases the number of regions, from which players can be attracted from.
Tournaments from operators
This is a good B2B strategy when you can show your partners a slot before the official release. Gamzix and other gambling software providers do just that. But here Maria Kalinina stressed that the tournament should be held only before the official launch of the product on the market.
At the same time, the tournament itself must last a sufficient period of time. Because if the event takes place for only one day, it will not work. And it will not work because the casino managers who participate in tournaments do it during working hours. And due to the workload and work tasks, they will have a maximum of an hour to play. If the tournament lasts a week, it will help to promote the slot among the casino managers, which will allow you to gain loyalty from the online casino employees. Because then a manager will know the game and know how everything works in it, which will provide a 100% chance that they will promote this slot.
The reward for the tournament must be a real prize, such as money or some Apple devices. This also works well with casino managers. You can also ask for feedback. It really works, because at a tournament from the operator, when there are conditional 2 thousand registrations, 70% of which are involved in the event, the company receives a lot of useful feedback that helps to improve the game. Thus, a 2-in-1 function is obtained – a provider advertises a slot and finds out how it can be improved.
Advertising through B2B and B2C media
Here, the speaker outlined two parts – press releases & reviews of slots and interviews. When it comes to B2C media, Gamzix uses press releases and reviews for SEO purposes instead of leveraging them to explain what a new slot is. As an example, they showed that if you enter the name of one slot in a search engine, then all the results will be from B2C media, which distributed the release given to them by the provider for free. Of course, sometimes distribution can be paid, but in most cases, press releases are published for free, and then they work for the developer.
In the context of the interview, everything works the same way. The company can give free interviews that are not advertising slots. But a personal brand is already being advertised, which directly affects the recognition of slots. As an example, Maria Kalinina cited a search by the last name and first name of the company’s CEO.
Social casinos and tournaments
According to Gamzix’s CMO, these are also working methods. In real casinos, players are quite often aggressive because they can lose a lot of money on a slot from one provider and will not play it again because they consider it unlucky. In such cases, social casinos and tournaments in them can help. This is explained by the fact that players enjoy the game for free here, there is no risk for them and sometimes there is a chance to win real money. Therefore, thanks to this feature of social casinos, they can be used to advertise slots.
Offline events and merch
For Gamzix, this is also a working option for promoting their products, as well as for advertising the company and brand. At this stage, the specialist shared a working case – the company has a Rich Granny slot, the main character of which is a grandmother with a small dog. Therefore, the company purchased toy dogs for the SiGMA show, and visitors could try to win such a dog through a machine with a manipulator. This advertises the slot because this way players can find out what it is about and what the dog has to do with it.
Marketing on LinkedIn
This is already a tool for promoting your products in the B2B segment. In particular, you can create a campaign for the release of the game. There are certain settings in the LinkedIn manager that allow you to accurately define the audience of your campaign. You have to pay for this, but Maria Kalinina claims that the conversion is very good.
Tracking the global situation
Here we are talking not so much about the instrument as about the trend. So, when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine broke out, many providers added various phrases to their slots to support Ukraine. This is how the world works now because people are becoming more and more interested in what is happening around them, so gambling software developers should follow this trend. And this indirectly also helps in promoting products on the market.
New trends and strategies
The speaker also drew attention to the trends and strategies that she expects to see this year.
Slot providers and affiliates
Affiliates mainly work with casinos and use creatives provided by the gambling platform. This is how business works all over the globe but providers should also come into play.
“We can distribute our logos, our banners, our slot videos, and anything to create banners and ads and advertise through various channels. As an example, for the Gamzix website, we have created the “Affiliates” category so that anyone can visit it and download logos, banners, and whatever they need for free. And so, the slot starts to be driven by affiliates,” said Gamzix’s CMO.
Slots with VR technology
Virtual reality is the technology of the future, and more and more people will be involved in it. Technically, this is very difficult but the gambling software provider can try this option. There are already examples of slots like Gonzo’s Quest from NetEnt in the industry. This direction is not very popular yet, but it will become so since the era of the Metaverse is coming. Therefore, Maria Kalinina is fully convinced that virtual reality will be popular, and we need to work in this direction.
Improved slots and in-game features
This is planned to be done in order to attract more players from the generation of millennials and zoomers. These generations grew up with computer games and game consoles, so they have quite high demands for casino slots. So, for Gamzix, these categories have become the main audience. Players of these generations want the game to be based on skills, not on pressing the start button, and they want to be involved in the gameplay. Therefore, providers can improve slots from a graphical perspective, add more gaming options to make a client feel involved, and add a certain exclusivity to a game. As an example, you can limit the number of participants for a tournament.
Local vs online tournaments
When Maria Kalinina was working in a casino, she noticed that online tournaments were no longer working very well and that local tournaments had more advantages.
First of all, it is more beneficial for the casino itself since the event is much larger. Players are much more likely to win in a local tournament. The provider, on the other hand, has more interest from the casino for better promotion of their slots. Therefore, if a developer wants to choose a tournament for promotion, then it is worth paying attention to the local one.
Stream racing
This method is not very popular but has potential for providers. There are a number of well-known streamer races in the world, such as those from Play Fortuna Casino, but this is not what Gamzix needs as a provider. Therefore, the company itself held such races on two landing pages, where streamers played only on slots from Gamzix. This worked pretty well:
- Most streamers play for free and don’t need to pay;
- When streamers reach the top positions, they play the provider’s games almost all day;
- Streamers attract the audience to the slots;
- All the game’s features are demonstrated;
- Slots are advertised for free on streamers’ social media channels and within their communities. All streamers have strong communities, and if a slot is advertised in them, then this is very good for the provider.
Ads in apps
In this case, there is one type of advertising that is very popular for casinos right now. These are pop-ups where you can announce tournaments or new releases. But the speaker drew attention to another type of advertising. Many applications use a rewarded internal advertising system – if the application is free, then the user must watch an ad, after which some kind of game reward will be issued. Therefore, Maria Kalinina believes that it is possible to advertise through this type of ad. Such advertising can reward a player with free spins in providers’ slots. And this type of advertising could become popular in 2024 because many apps already offer rewarded ads.
Conclusion
Slot marketing has a fairly rich toolkit that each provider can use depending on their capabilities and resources. If current strategies can be defined as more classic, then the 2024 trends will be more innovative. It will be quite interesting to see how affiliate marketing will work with providers and how millennial and zoom products will differ from the market classics in practice.
