7 steps to make your casino advertising work in 2024

What’s in this article?

• You’ll learn how to make paid advertising profitable for your online casino in 2023 (for both unregulated and regulated markets)
• We will share seven principles marketers follow to create gambling ads that make money and attract new loyal customers.
• Plus, you’ll learn how to significantly increase your online casino’s profits without spending money on marketing.

Make sure you’re in the right position to run Google ads or other paid ads

We strongly believe that you can lose all your money if you make one or two wrong steps in the casino marketing plan at the beginning.

So the real question is, “can you afford to run online gambling advertising”?

How so?

Here’s a map of the major Tier 1 markets.

Payment capacity in these markets is very high, as is competition. In these markets, one click can cost $30 to $40.

You may not have enough money to run gambling ads yet!

Imagine making five hundred clicks only to find that your website doesn’t load properly or that your customer journey isn’t good enough for people to become first-time depositors.

That’s fifteen to twenty thousand dollars you’re wasting on paid gambling advertising.

Can you afford to go another round?

If your answer is “yes” and you have a substantial budget, pay-per-click may be a good choice for your startup.

You’ll spend some money on your digital marketing to optimize all your systems. At the same time, you’ll buy data, improve the quality of your campaigns, and eventually succeed.

Are you sure about your customer journey?

You’re paying for people to come to your site! If they decide to leave before they have completed registration or made a first deposit, you have a problem!

There are many reasons why people leave the site, and it can take time to get it right.

• You might find that your design isn’t good enough.
• People don’t want to deposit because they don’t like the payment methods you currently offer (people won’t spend money with you if they aren’t familiar with the methods you offer them).
• The technology you are using may not support a seamless customer journey, which is so important for your region (whitelabel platforms usually struggle to go that extra step and provide a good user experience).

Take a look at this example here. It doesn’t matter what I do, but they keep saying that “the username is already taken” and won’t let me register. They pay money to run this ad right now.

If you aren’t so sure about all this or just want to save your money to test the whole Customer Journey, then you need to start with an affiliate marketing strategy first.

Do you need an online gambling license to run paid advertising?

This is an important point because both Google and Facebook only allow online casinos from regulated markets. And you must have a local license for each market you want to target.

So if you’re targeting unregulated markets, you can’t run ads on Google or Facebook. Period.

Read more about Facebook terms over here. And if you want to check Google terms then click this link instead.

If you don’t have millions of dollars to invest and comply with every jurisdiction to get a local license, you might wonder how other companies run paid advertising that only have a Curacao license (or other international license).

Digital marketing teams use black hat marketing tactics to get their ads approved by platforms

In this case, neither Google nor Facebook know that they allow online casino ads. When platforms check ads, they see the image, text and page that has nothing to do with online gambling.

Your real ads are only shown when the ads are live. The same people will get to your regular online casino website instead of being redirected to a dummy page.

Then governments realized that they were losing a lot of money!

Today, the European Union, the United States of America and the United Kingdom are the most regulated areas.

Getting a license in every country doesn’t solve all the problems either. The maintenance is high, the guidelines are hard to follow, and you can lose the license if the regulator thinks you broke the rules.

For example, in the UK you aren’t allowed to use lines like “€25 Risk-Free offer” or CTAs like “Join Now” or “Play Now”.

In Germany, the Gambling Commission sets the total amount you’re allowed to lose per month at online casinos.

Currently it’s €1,000 per player per month and applies across all gambling platforms.

After that, you have to block access to your online casino for that player.

Imagine how difficult it’s to make money with such regulatory policies (which can change at any time and not in favor of online casino operators).

Curacao’s international online gambling license is still by far the most popular gambling license in the world. We describe in this post how you can get a gambling license for Curacao.

Online media platforms like Google and Facebook are constantly testing different rules and practices to comply with international law and local regulations. At the same time, they try to provide the best experience for their users.

Things may change in the future, and the way platforms approve ads is always a topic for discussion.

Casino advertising examples

Download over thirty best online casino ads by clicking the link below.

Consider other marketing strategies before spending thousands of dollars on pay-per-click ads

You can spend thousands of dollars on gambling ads per day. But you’ll simply burn all your money if your campaigns aren’t profitable.

So here is a strategy that many casino businesses use to become successful.

They attract affiliates first.

Good iGaming affiliates have very targeted traffic and high conversion rates. So if you can’t convert that traffic, you need to pay attention to your Customer Journey!

Before you spend your money, make sure you have a well-tuned system that converts all your visitors!

Measure every step and choose the right partners!

Have you seen my video on “Why you shouldn’t start a whitelabel business in 2023”?

If not, do it now! It can save you a lot of money! In this video I explain why you should avoid the whitelabel model in online gambling.

• Whitelabel platforms are very limited. You can’t design your own and you can’t change your customer journey.
• You can’t add a payment system provider other than the one they already have. I know they brag about having hundreds of payment system providers already integrated, but that doesn’t mean they have the best one for your market. They usually don’t.
• Whitelabel platforms usually don’t offer professional tracking. If your numbers are wrong at any point in the customer journey, you can have a serious problem. For example, you may have a lot of signups, but no initial depositors. It can be impossible to find out the reason, which means you keep losing money.

Your 60-day casino marketing war plan should focus on this one thing

Paid advertising is the fastest way to get money in your coffers. But it’s also the fastest way to burn your entire marketing budget.

Therefore, your goal should be to be profitable from day one.

Is that possible?

Definitely not.

Imagine a fighting general who has to make his move to win the battle. It’s impossible to organize your army so that you know where to strike if you don’t have an overview of the battlefield.

You need to send scouts to different locations to test the waters and gather information. Only when you have up-to-date information from the battlefield, you can organize your main forces for the attack.

Just like with the general, you’ll have to buy data to find out what angles, texts, and keywords work before you start spending real money.

Therefore, the first sixty days are all about burning money and buying data

Within sixty days, you’ll have a very good idea:

• What are the most popular keywords in terms of number of impressions?
• What keywords you’re getting clicks for.
• You’ll be able to optimize your ad copy to pick out the ones that resonate best with your target audience.
• You’ll test your landing page and change it if necessary.
• You’ll find out if your offer resonates with your target audience.

To run profitable paid ads, you need to focus on your offer

Are you different or like everyone else?

If you offer what hundreds of other casinos offer, then you’re most likely to break-event in. To become profitable upfront, you need to test different offers and stand out from the competition.

One of the best campaigns during the 2022 FIFA World Cup from BetUK.com

1966 was a big year for England. The English national soccer team defeated West Germany 4-2 in the final to win the tournament. Surely the casino marketing team knew this and built a marketing campaign specifically around this big deal for England.

Three rules to increase your chances of success with paid ads

• Don’t spread yourself too thin – paid ad marketing strategies can be expensive. They also require a lot of time and effort to make them work. It’s much better to focus all your energy on one channel than to try five different channels.
• Don’t try to be successful everywhere! I hear too often from entrepreneurs that they want to be successful everywhere! That’s impossible and only shows their experience. The lack of it. Want to know why? We’ll explain it to you in this post about “How to successfully start an online casino in Asia“.
• Focus on one region and stick with it until it works before moving on to another.

Imagine spending $1000 on your marketing campaign and paying an average of $40 per click. It’s much smarter to invest everything in a single medium and get statistically significant data.

You’re wasting your money trying to get five clicks from Google, another five from Facebook, etc.

There are millions of people using every channel. There’s no reason to get bogged down. Focus on one and make it work for you!

Large countries like Brazil or India are religiously and ethnically diverse. There are different dialects, values, slangs, and names for things. This can play a big role in how you position your online casino.

Why are paid ads necessary for your online casino?

Casinos use paid advertising to attract completely different customers.

Many of your customers that come from affiliates are professional gamblers.

They follow positive reviews and know everything about online casinos.

This makes them more picky and less loyal.

The lifetime value of these customers may not be very high. They make the first deposit, make a few bets and disappear.

This is exactly what happens when affiliates recommend ten different casinos to the same target audience.

Paid casino ads allow you to tap into a whole new audience that is hungry for a great experience. And not as demanding.

Here are four main reasons why you should use paid casino advertising

• Paid advertising can bring a high value customer. One that will stay with you for months.
• You have full control over your own money printing factory. Instead of relying on a dozen of your partners, you can control your marketing budget and revenue.
• You do not have to pay revenue share deals or CPAs. One of our clients just signed a VIP client who deposited almost a million dollars. They have a revenue share deal with an affiliate, which means they will be giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• It’s much better to stand on two legs than to rely on a single customer acquisition source.

Want to know how the big boys beat everyone in customer acquisition every time?

Instead of being profitable every time they run paid ads, they focus on the backend.

Here’s how it works:

Imagine that you can pay a maximum of $120 for a customer who deposits for the first time.

To stay profitable on the front end you have to run campaigns that get you customers for less than $100. Right?

Well, that is not always the case.

In most cases, you can even break even if you do a good job on the retention part.

Pay once for your customers and then build relationships so they will come and make a second deposit

This is how loyal players are acquired.

A good customer retention system will bring you between ten and twenty-five percent of your revenue.

If your GGR is currently ten million dollars, you can easily earn another two million with a customer loyalty system.

And it’s free.

Mistakes that will cost your online casino millions of dollars

Do not assume that the people who land on your website will deposit. Your technology, user experience, payment systems and offer must lead them seamlessly to one destination.

Your target audience can choose between tens of different online casinos with the same casino games. Make sure that the user journey is appealing and that your website looks reputable.

According to Insider Intelligence, the attention span of Generation Z customers is only 1.3 seconds. Provide them with interesting content and games that interest them right from the start!

Do not do too much. Diversification in your casino marketing strategy may just look clever. Not when you are starting out! It’s actually smarter to do more with just one channel instead of focusing on multiple channels like Google Ads, Bing, Facebook, Display Ads, etc.

Conclusion

• Make sure you can afford to run gambling ads. Make sure you have enough money to pay for early mistakes. You can choose other marketing strategies until you are sure that your machine works.
• Measure every step to improve your customer journey! In many cases, this is the only way to find and fix bugs (in most cases, this just means choosing the right partners).
• Create a 60-day marketing plan and focus on buying and analyzing data before you make a move.
• Know your competition and highlight your business with strong and interesting offers.
• Implement a customer retention system and focus on building long-term relationships with your customers.