In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Rebecca Liggero, The Sun’s head of marketing Emma Loveday discusses brand advocacy and what iGaming affiliates can do to engage these advocates.
Is brand advocacy important to an industry like iGaming?
For Emma Loveday, the answer is a resounding yes.
“Traditionally, gaming marketing in all different industries have very much concentrated on either product or author-related marketing. And actually, as the market is getting noisier and noisier, less of our voices are actually being heard and everyone is kind of blending into a mix together,” Loveday told CalvinAyre.com.
However, The Sun marketing head stressed that the kind of brand advocacy that iGaming needs goes beyond the usual word-of-mouth marketing or refer-a-friend programs.
“It’s really about harnessing this tens of thousands of customers that we have on our sides every single day, engaging with our product,” Loveday said. “A lot of industries would kill to have that kind of customer data and knowledge, and using it in a way to provide our customers with content and nuggets of information about our brands so that they can then go and be our voices in social media.”
Loveday said brands must engage affiliates in other ways aside from sending out weekly newsletters. For instance, The Sun has been inviting affiliates over the past years to several half-day workshops, in which they talk about the products and how they can get these affiliates involved in building the brand.
“As we’ve also had a bit of rebranding of bingo, we can start to see that moving forward, and then the affiliates are contacting us and asking us if they can talk about our brand in a certain way and obviously we’re very happy about that,” Loveday said. “I think there’s definitely a more kind of two-way relationship that needs to be built up with affiliates as your brand advocate.”
