Bingo Marketing Plan

Situation Where are we now?

How are we performing?

What are our competitive advantages?

How effective is our marketing at the moment?

Are we focussed on the correct niche?

Are we using the best communication channels?

What uncontrollable events can impact the business?

We need to identify:

who are our best players?

From a revenue perspective?

From a community perspective?

what drives them to sign up to a bingo site?

what motivates them to stay and play?

Objectives Where do we want to be? S.M.A.R.T

Grow the player base to XX,XXX within 12 months (currently XX,XXX)

Therefore, we need to be acquiring c.XX players per day (currently acquiring c.XX)

Increase daily active players to XXX from XXX (currently we have XXX) within 12 months

Increase daily cash wagering from c.£XXXk to c.£XXXk within 12 months

Roll-out regular communications strategy with our player-base within 2 months

Save Customer Services and Chat Moderator resources by creating knowledge base for FAQs and common problems

Double size of current Facebook community while also increasing interactivity

Identify where we can add value to our product to will allow us to differentiate our brand againt competitors

Create *Customer Service Bible* defining roles, responsibilities and processes and including SLAs

Strategy How are we going to get there?

What is our Online Value Proposition? Everything we do must bear this in mind!

e.g. Our bingo site aims to host the friendliest community online; a place where bingo players can meet to chat, play and have fun.

Acquisition-based strategy

We need to think about:

which target market should we be focussing on?

how we want our potential cutomers to perceive us in the market?

if will we segment our marketing to tackle smaller niches, rather than compete with those with larget budgets?

How can we:

acquire the XX players per day needed to grow the databse to XX,XXX in 12 months?

Invest in *traditional* traffic-driving channels such as:

Affiliates

SEO

Facebook advertising

Online & offline partnerships

Consumer-focussed online PR

Improve the conversion rate of existing traffic, using:

on-site conversion optimisation

reflex email campaigns

welcome SMS

welcome call

Identify whether an online community (i.e. Facebook) can drive new traffic as well as filling a retention role

Retention-based strategy

How can we:

increase daily active players to XXX (with help from retention marketing)?

Segment database to send tailored emails to each player

Use community features such as Facebook to ensure that there is always something happening on the site to entice players back

Continue with our monthly promotions

Increase overall pool of *active* players, as strategised above

increase daily cash wagering from c.£XXXk to c.£XXXk in 12 months?

Increase overall pool of *active* players, as strategised above

Increase cash wagered per player by:

Tailoring promotions to suit the games they play

roll-out a regular player communications strategy?

Identify which methods of communication our players use

SMS?

Email?

Facebook?

Twitter?

Blogs?

Telephone?

...then create a monthly communication strategy incorporating multiple touch points, with incentives for staying in contact with the brand, i.e. Facebook member-only competitions

double the size of the facebook community?

incentivise users to join the group

also create a *page*, rather than just a group

fully integrate Facebook features into everything we do

include Facebook within our content strategy

cross promote from other areas

Segment database to send tailored emails to each player

Use community features such as Facebook to ensure that there is always something happening on the site to entice players back

Continue with our monthly promotions

Increase overall pool of *active* players, as strategised above

Product-development strategy

How can we:

create a knowledge base for FAQs and common problems?

identify which problems occur most frequently

identify the key actions performed on the site

create a wiki style subdomain where anyone can add content; monitored by staff and CMs

create text, image and video content aimed at solving problems and walking players through key actions

ensure that CMs are prepped to send players to these pages

Think about: Content purpose, Content topics and types, Content tone, Content channels and distribution, Content maintenance

add value to our product to further differentiate us from the competition?

identify what can and cannot be changed, i.e. software limitations

research other industries to see what is working, i.e. Zappos for customer service, Apple for product innovation and design etc.

Be able to answer this statement concisely: "We are the only (what?) that does (this-how?) for (who?) in (where?), who (want to..?)

create a comprehensive customer service plan

identify areas where we can proactively eliminate problems

research common problems and pre-empt how to solve them

ensure players have clear channels to communicate with us

create an ever-present area on-site where players can complete a survey in exchange for bonus bucks

encourage staff to spend time getting to know the players WE HAVE TO KNOW OUR PLAYERS...!

Important considerations:

do these strategies have to happen in any particular order?

how much site/database/flash-client integration will be needed?

which tools/resources are needed to follow these strategies?

Tactics How are we going to get there (in detail)?

Acquisition

Acquire XX players per day

Traffic-driving

Affiliates

Redesign Affiliate website

Create content-rich pack for affiliates, including:

Graphics/Banners

Video content

*Winners* stories and promotional copy

Site history

Info on our Chat Moderators and USPs

Log-in details

Affiliate conference schedule

Our contact details

Review current setup

Review our commission structure. Are we competitive?

Review our terms. Do they turn off affiliates?

Review payment terms. Do we pay as promptly as we can?

Communicate regularly with affiliates through:

Consumer-facing blog, highlighting offers and latest winners

Affiliate blog

Twitter account

Newsletters

Affiliate forums such as GPWA and A4U

N.B. AFFILIATE MARKETING IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. Just remember to: Be honest with your affiliates, Be upfront and direct when you need to communicate with them, Work hard to convert their traffic, and WIN THEIR TRUST!

SEO

Complete initial analysis to discover:

which keywords we should be targetting

how competitive these keywords are

Fully optimise on-page elements of site, ensuring

all HTML markup is best-practice

we identify our strongest pages

do any of our pages already rank? why?

which pages do people link to? why?

our data architecture is relatively flat

we link to our internal pages optimally

we have enough unique content on our pages

BUILD LINKS! Tactics include:

Online PR

Let's get into the mindset that we have to create newsworthy events on our site every few days. This can be winners stories, new games, Chat Moderator news etc.

Link from our other web properties throughout Europe

Ensure these links are *intelligently-placed*, i.e. in content, correct anchor text, not site-wide links, deep-linking

Affiliate outreach

Can we *rent* links from affiliates for higher commission?

Can we link back to them from our affiliate site?

Directory submissions

More useful for long tail keywords and to 'mask' valuable link purchases

Buy links. Mwah Ha Ha Ha...!

Facebook advertising

test this medium

I have my doubts about this as a direct response advertising medium for gambling companies, but worth a test budget

Online & offline partnerships

Consumer-focussed online PR

Dual-benefit (alongside SEO)

Use to pitch into bloggers and potential new affiliates

Misc

Strategic Domain Purchases

Use our Snapnames and NameJet accounts to keep an eye out for dropping exact match domains. We have shown that they can be found here!

Build a blog on these sites for linking purposes

Can also be used to link to affiliates

Conversion inprovement

on-page conversion optimisation

reflex email campaigns

welcome SMS

welcome call

Retention

increase daily active players to XXX (with help from retention marketing)?

Segment database to send tailored emails to each player

Use community features such as Facebook to ensure that there is always something happening on the site to entice players back

Continue with our monthly promotions

Increase overall pool of *active* players, as strategised above

increase daily cash wagering from c.£XXXk to c.£XXXk in 12 months?

Increase overall pool of *active* players, as strategised above

Increase cash wagered per player by:

Tailoring promotions to suit the games they play

Product Development

Budgets/Resources Do we have the *3 Ms* for each task?

Manpower?

Money?

Minutes (time)?

Actions / Execution Who is going to do what and when?

Who is going to do what?

When are they going to do it?

What is the resource allocation for the action?

How is performance going to be recorded?

Control How can we control, measure and develop the process?

For acquisition and retention, metrics to measure include:

Registrations