Let's Get Lucky: Casinos in the Digital Space

Casinos must learn to adapt messages and integrate online and offline mediums to target Chinese consumers. Here's how.

Casinos don’t have it easy when it comes to advertising and marketing campaigns in China. For those who aren’t aware, the mention of any gaming-related messaging in Mainland China is strictly prohibited, which means mentioning games of chance, jackpots, gambling, or specific casino products and services will result in your site being blocked or blacklisted by the authorities.

Casinos have to rely on their integrated resort-offerings, events, and hospitality promotions to build brand awareness to customers prior to their arrival. In this highly competitive landscape, many casinos are turning to digital marketing to relay their brands and campaign messaging to the masses.

Some digital disciplines to look at as it impacts casinos are web design, digital marketing, and social media marketing.

In terms of web design, casinos have started to realise that the web experience and user interface for their key customers (namely Chinese gamblers) should be completely unique to that of their western counterparts. The level of detail and information required for Chinese consumers, particularly when choosing a casino, needs to be detailed out far beyond a description of the bar and a few room photos.

Chinese consumers are infatuated with the idea that luck and luck-related icons or feng shui setups will affect their gambling outcomes. A casino marketer should not take these beliefs lightly; the entire web experience should match that of the casino, including use of luck and Fengshui related imagery, designs, and descriptions including photos of any special luck-related features of the resort. It’s also key that while not blatantly mentioning gaming related promotions on the Chinese website, casino marketers use intelligent descriptors to ensure website visitors understand the level of excitement and sizes of promotions that are being offered on the gaming floor.

The promotion of lucky draw programs and promotion of exciting non-gaming activities on your home page are a good place to start. Chinese User Interface design is also completely different from Western site. The trend in the West is simplicity, structured navigation, and clean sites. Chinese sites in contrast are heavily weighted to the home page – more than 80 percent text-based and significant iconography.

Outside the Great Firewall of China, the mention of casino promotions becomes far less taboo. However, marketing casinos and games of chance on many search engines is prohibited by their terms of service.

While marketers face individual portals and third-party sites that are often susceptible to self-censoring, the actual promotion of gaming campaigns and casino promotions is totally acceptable on your own property website. The easiest way around this particular area is to individually host and serve your China/non-China websites and manage very unique content on separate IP addresses. Utilise other language websites (including Traditional Chinese for Hong Kong and Taiwan) to promote your product offerings targeted to your marketers; from live feeds of your slot and table jackpots to “Find A Game” maps that allow customers to search for their favourite slot machines (which are often moving as a result of gaming floor optimisation).

A key area of promotion (and what often nets the highest profit producing customers) is the loyalty and reward programs offered by all casinos. Aside from the CRM 101 activities such as serious database segmentation (is the player a slots or table customer, and which specific games interest them?), loyalty programs are quickly moving online into the social and mobile space.

Social channels work as the perfect medium for casinos to engage their current customers. They also create an environment for those customers to become loyal affiliates. Gaming is social in nature and social networking sites provide a communal and engaging platform to communicate with members.

The opportunity exists to drive customers to promote a particular brand to their own social networks, earning loyalty points in return for a new database of people to communicate with. There are also ways in which marketers can use these newly found customers to participate in socially competitive activities, rewarding “winners” with match play vouchers or points in return for a loyalty card signup.

Mobile is taking a very active role in the promotion of loyalty and rewards. Members of many loyalty clubs can now use apps to view their loyalty points, special unique offers, and VIP invites. In an effort to target the Chinese gambler, some casinos are offering apps that showcase trends and winnings across specific games, most notably baccarat, alerting players to specific trends in play that are seen as good luck.

The future is full of opportunity for those casino marketers who look to take advantage. There exist opportunities for traditional brick-and-mortar casinos to merge or develop their own online casinos, with offers for their most loyal customers who wish to bring their gambling experience home. Online casinos are already hugely successful, but we have yet to see the traditional casinos in Asia adapt this idea for their customers.

Casinos must also learn to adapt messages and integrate online/offline mediums. Only then will they be able to reap the benefits of increased loyalty and larger customer databases while decreasing costs and reliability on more traditional mediums such as direct mail. There will be much change in this industry over the next several years as the Asian casino landscape grows and becomes even more competitive.

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Whitepapers

US Mobile Streaming Behavior
Whitepaper | Mobile

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

5y

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

Streaming has become a staple of US media-viewing habits. Streaming video, however, still comes with a variety of pesky frustrations that viewers are ...

View resource
Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups
Whitepaper | Analyzing Customer Data

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups

5y

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics f...

Data is the lifeblood of so many companies today. You need more of it, all of which at higher quality, and all the meanwhile being compliant with data...

View resource
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people
Whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its peopl...

2y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. It provides expert insight on how companies can ret...

View resource
Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy
Report | Digital Transformation

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy

1m

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Exp...

Customers decide fast, influenced by only 2.5 touchpoints – globally! Make sure your brand shines in those critical moments. Read More...

View resource