Does growth hacking apply to gambling and casinos? Can gambling and casinos industry actually implement growth methodology and an active experimentation framework? 

Growth hacking is a relatively new focus in the marketing field, which focuses on company growth. The goal of its extremely effective methodology is to quickly test ideas that can improve the customer experience before investing a lot of resources, copy and expand ideas that can work, and modify or abandon those that don’t work. 

First, we start with metrics to measure growth of our gambling and casinos corporation. The key metrics should always be the ones that best deliver growth to your gambling company, like the amount of money bet per customer, time spent by gamblers in each game or profits of the casino bar.

Once we know which metrics are the most important ones, it is time to set goals. Goals should be SMART, and these are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely.  Achieving an increase in the time players spend on games by 10% in the next two months will be a good starting revenue goal. We have to think of goals as a desired increment, or  a decrement, of your key metrics

Any KPI that brings us growth could be measured as growth metrics.

When we already know what brings us growth, which KPIs to focus on and also, what are the SMART goals associated with them, it is time to design or ideate growth drivers. Growth drivers are hypothetical ways to achieve our goals, and we will be validating or rejecting them through small campaigns, called experiments.

How do I attract more clients and how do I retain the ones I already have?

We could perhaps offer bonuses for the use of player membership cards that include gambling bonuses, free drinks and meals. These cards would also track customer gambling habits, much like a retail discount card. Would the players be willing to include something like that?

With a small-scale experiment like this we could see if membership cards help the casino to focus its marketing on particular segments of the population,

So we could also test if they allow us to send more information to existing customers or if these memberships could be useful to attract new customers from the competition and retain existing ones.

In the same way, depending on the area, the profile of the player who goes to the casino could be tested, and which one will bring us more benefits, based for example on age or monetary capacity, checking between one marketing decision and another to decide when to play with the local population. Or attract foreigners and big players to the casinos.

The potential winnings that players can make are the main draw of a game room. An emotionally winning marketing tactic happens when a casino displays photographs and often quotes of its big winners. Would it then compensate to put advertisements in the media giving the signal that luck can be had by anyone who sets foot in that casino? How far should the means we use be to be as effective as possible?

A winner of several thousand euros, which sometimes occurs on machines with a progressive payout, can be the best publicity that a casino can get. How can we benefit from the players who win?

All these and more questions are what we have to answer to find the right marketing strategy, answering them from small tests that allow us to have a global vision of the most important thing: What can make us GROW.

Finally, learnings. Learnings are essential to document in order to know what worked in the past and what to avoid repeating. You should have a regular feedback cycle and track your learnings consistently.

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