SBC News World Cup 2014 Feature - Dan Fitch - 'Gaining Reader Trust Through Content'

World Cup 2014 Feature – Dan Fitch – ‘Gaining Reader Trust Through Content’

danfitchThe battle for the World Cup in Brazil promises to be intense, with no clear favourite having yet emerged as we ready ourselves for the tournament this summer.

There promises to be a similarly tight battle for World Cup supremacy off the pitch, as the planet’s biggest iGaming companies jostle for position in the search rankings.

Over the past few years content marketing has increasingly become a tool used by online bookmakers to win such battles. Just about every major betting company have launched their own blog or news site, adding publishing to their growing list of services.

By producing their own content, iGaming companies can both reinforce their brand values and rank highly for key search phrases. It’s then up to the quality of the content to convert readers into new customers, or persuade existing users to place a bet.

Type the phrase ‘World Cup betting’ into Google and amongst the links to the usual suspects you will find Betfair’s content site betting.betfair right there on the front page. Betfair were one of the pioneers in this field and years of hard work from their in-house editorial team are paying off.

I was one of the original writers when betting.betfair launched back in 2007 and still write a weekly tipping column for the site. You may therefore think my opinion biased, but for what it’s worth I’ve always considered that Betfair have got their strategy spot on in terms of content – employing betting experts and journalists to give tips on their biggest markets.

A lot of other bookmakers prefer to stay away from offering advice and instead look towards pulling in big numbers through news stories and football transfer gossip. The problem with this approach is that though the company’s brand values and reputation can be reinforced and enhanced, the chances of picking up new customers is not much better than if you placed an affiliate ad on any website with decent traffic.

A persuasive argument from an expert that the reader trusts, can be a key tool in conversion. In the case of an event like the World Cup – which involves lots of teams and players that are unfamiliar to the average punter – such expert advice comes into it’s own.

The big brands will have already done the main work in getting themselves ranked for the major World Cup-related search phrases and will want to direct users straight to their betting platform rather than their content site, eliminating the middleman in the sign-up process.

Where content sites can be really useful for iGaming firms are in targeting niche markets and the games that you can’t prepare for. No one knows which teams will be facing each other come the knockout stages yet, but Google will rank fresh, relevant content.

In 2012 I was the launch-editor of Unibet’s bet.unibet blog, which made it’s debut just a couple of months before the European Championships. There was little time to lay down any groundwork but nevertheless we hit upon a successful strategy.

We recruited 16 expert writers representing each country, who battled it out in our match previews, giving predictions against each other. By making sure that these experts had sizeable social media followings, we guaranteed an audience for our match previews at a time when the site was only just starting to rank.

The other major content strand that we used for each match were our ’10 Vital Statistics’ – ten stats chosen by our writers, each accompanied by a link to a relevant bet. About a third of the way through the tournament, this content suddenly started to rank Google for key phrases related to statistics and betting. We were pulling in big numbers for every match and giving our readers very useful betting advice.

Statistics have gradually become a more important part of football journalism and such information is perfectly suited to aiding betting decisions. I’d expect statistics to form a key part of any content strategy from smart iGamers this summer.

Dan Fitch is the Director of Content at 90 Digital, the former Content Manager at Unibet and a columnist for Betfair.

________________________________

90digital2014    linkedinbutton

 

 

bettingonfootballlogo

Check Also

SBC News Dorothy Creaven - Element Wave - Brazil 2014 focusing & valuing player engagement

Dorothy Creaven – Element Wave – Brazil 2014 focusing & valuing player engagement

The FIFA World Cup is the largest international sporting event on the planet and smartphone-owning …

SBC News Paddy Power offers personalised prices on mobile & tablet

Paddy Power offers personalised prices on mobile & tablet

Paddy Power aim to bring football bettors the best prices this coming World Cup with …

SBC News Maxymiser Soundbite – iGaming Sector - Getting Ready for Brazil 2014

Maxymiser Soundbite – iGaming Sector – Getting Ready for Brazil 2014

With the football World Cup in Rio offering a fantastic potential revenue boost, Tim Axon, …