It All Adds Up: How iGaming and Financial Trading Brands can Optimise their Digital Marketing Strategies for Facebook

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In early August, Facebook announced that it would be launching a new feature called ‘Watch’: an on-demand video hub that allows users to watch TV programmes without leaving the website. It marks a significant leap forward for the medium, which is already the most popular social media platform in the world. As Forbes reported in June 2017, almost a quarter of the world’s population (2 billion) use the medium on a monthly basis.

While Facebook becomes increasingly competitive in terms of video content, it remains popular for brands and raked in $8.62 billion revenue from paid ads (a 53% increase on the previous year) in 2016.

Here we look at how iGaming and financial trading brands can use Facebook’s sizeable audience to acquire new customers and better engage their existing ones. We also discuss why it’s important for brands’ overall digital marketing strategies and how affiliates can tap into Facebook’s success.Why Facebook? According to Social Media Examiner, 40% of consumers like company Facebook pages to publicly display their brand affiliation to friends. This is a crucial statistic for the over 65 million business pages that currently exist, highlighting the importance of creating genuine connections to increase the likelihood of purchase.

It’s worth remembering that gambling ads on Facebook are vetted on a case-by-case basis. Brands should carefully consider the potential impact of these rules on their campaign prior to launch.Organic Marketing The Facebook platform is suitable for written and visual marketing content, both of which are effective in building brands. ‘Facebook Live’ is a relatively new feature that allows users to broadcast videos as events happen. iGaming brands can use Facebook Live to stream sports and casino events, or company conferences, while forex and binary brokers could use the feature to stream central bank announcements.Paid AdsFacebook ads allow brands to select a specific segment of their target audience they’d like to reach and for how long they want their ad to be shown. This means that smaller pages can still appeal to a broad group of users.

Although it can prove less cost-effective than organic marketing, paid advertising is handy for small to mid-tier brands who are just starting out and waiting for their organic results to build. It allows them to not only expand the reach of their brand, but also to acquire and retain depositing customers.Video The introduction of Watch shouldn’t surprise anybody considering that, according to Mediakix, over 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook every day. Video content also achieves better engagement and exposure, and according to Responsive Inbound Marketing, social media video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined.

Many iGaming brands use video as a regular part of their social strategy, which is to be expected as marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t – as reported by WordStream. Betfair, for example, have accumulated over 620,000 page likes by using video previews for upcoming sporting events as part of their strategy.

Financial trading brands also effectively use video. iForex has gained over 230,000 page likes by summarising the forex industry’s daily news headlines, with each post just over two minutes long. Both of these examples demonstrate that focusing on topical conversations, rather than explicitly discussing your products and services, is key to building followership.

It’s also important to remember that, as reported by Digiday, 85% of videos are watched without sound. Brands should briefly summarise what’s going on in their videos with a couple of short sentences or bullet points, so users understand what they’re watching.Facebook for Affiliates Facebook is also important for affiliates, and many already have effective strategies. Oddschecker, for example, has achieved nearly 100,000 likes through producing a range of written content, such as match previews, and videos that range from previews to bloopers.

Given their reach on the social network, affiliates can also prove valuable partners for iGaming and financial trading brands through influencing. Methods include promoting smaller brands’ odds and giving them shout-outs on the platform. Influencing benefits fledgling brands seeking exposure in search or app store rankings.Looking Ahead… Facebook’s Watch, a significant development that will likely encourage users to spend more time on the platform, strongly emphasises the importance of video in this day and age. In a marketing sense, this will only increase as Facebook becomes even more influential and brands are forced to adapt their strategies further.

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