World Cup 2022 is undoubtedly the biggest gambling event right now. And this sports competition provides a superb opportunity for marketers to generate new leads and improve brand awareness.
As you may know, GBC-Time has hosted the iGaming Round-Up 2022 conference recently. The event featured several extremely reputable professionals. Vladimir Malakchi, the CCO at Evoplay, was one of them. During his presentation, Vladimir shared fascinating details about creative event-related marketing. He used the World Cup as an example of the massive events coming up in the future and reviewed some effective techniques for a marketing campaign for your gambling company. So, in this article, we will briefly tell you about the key ideas from his speech.
What is the World Cup’s marketing potential?
During the presentation, Vladimir Malachi outlined the following benefits of the World Cup for marketing in iGaming and beyond:
- Extremely high viewership. It is expected that the event will reach about 5 billion sports fans from all over the world, which is more than half of the world’s population.
- A fantastic number of bets in a short period. The previous World Cup in 2018 generated over 150 billion bets, and the current tournament could top that crazy number.
- Global marketing reach. As football teams from all over the globe receive invitations to compete, marketers have a chance to reach out to an incredibly diverse range of potential customers.
Practical advice for marketing during major events
Base your marketing efforts on popular events
If you manage to successfully tie your marketing campaign to the World Cup or any other significant event, you can get amazing results.
Another crucial aspect is that the World Cup and other similar events give you the opportunity to make your players more loyal to your brand. For example, the William Hill company capitalized on this opportunity via Twitter during the 2018 World Cup. The sportsbook created a football-related post with a funny and emotional team hug of the English football team and posted it with a patriotic hashtag.
As a result, William Hill received over 22.4 million trend impressions and 6.52 million Twitter impressions. On top of that, its positive sentiment increased by 24%. And all this became possible thanks to one single hashtag that helped the operator to strengthen its connection with players and bettors in a short period of time.
Update and adapt your product for major events
EA, a company that pays a lot of attention to the sports niche, has adapted its FIFA games to the World Cup for the last 8 years. With the introduction of themed mods to video games in 2014 and 2018, EA received a terrific response and attracted new players. In 2022, the company also used the World Cup to promote its FIFA 2023 title with Killian Mbappe on the cover. This approach allowed EA to reach 10 million users within the first week of release.
Use everyone’s favorite things in your marketing initiatives
We all can agree that most people cannot imagine their life without music. We listen to it at work, at home, on morning runs, etc. Spotify and Peermusic decided to take advantage of this during the current World Cup and implemented an excellent idea. Peermusic has created a playlist that includes inspiring football-related tracks. When Spotify posted it, it drove more traffic to its service. On top of that, Peermusic got its share of compelling marketing.
Key takeaways
The reviewed marketing cases lead us to three significant conclusions that should be considered when you create event-related advertising:
- Get the ball rolling. Use the World Cup and other popular events in your industry to open new horizons for your service or product.
- Make the selected event your game-changer. Capitalize on global marketing campaigns for a popular event to meet or exceed your engagement and brand promotion goals.
- Do not be afraid to change and adapt your entire marketing strategy for a specific event. Whether you are preparing for a sports tournament or Christmas, if you change your marketing model in part, this approach is unlikely to bring you the expected results.
Whether you work in the iGaming industry or outside of it, the World Cup or any other major sporting event is a perfect opportunity to boost the visibility of your brand, gain new clients, and execute a perfect marketing strategy.
