CalvinAyre.com is on the road again, this time in Lisbon to cover the Lisbon Affiliate Conference (LiAC), a new location for iGB’s annual autumn iGaming affiliate event. Without a doubt, the affiliate programs, affiliates and suppliers who made the trip are absolutely delighted with the warmer temperature and sunshine, making for exceptional networking opportunities both inside and outside expo hall hours.
As always, this iGB Affiliate event features a lively expo floor with affiliate programs showcasing their latest and greatest, featuring their top affiliate managers on hand to meet existing and potential affiliates face-to-face.
This year’s Platinum Sponsor, 1XBet, are the group responsible for the vape room and a spacious, bright booth right at the entrance with a wheel spinning contest, manned by a spunky MC, with the potential of winning all sorts of juicy prizes.
“This is our money wheel, you might know our money wheel from the website and on the website you can win a lot of money, here you can win a lot of prizes, we already gave away a PlayStation VR and we have some fit bands, we have some ear pods, and if you leave us your business card, you can win a brand new iPhone XS!”, 1XBet’s MC told CalvinAyre.com.
The 1XBet prize draws were conducted today at 3pm and 5pm and will be conducted at the same time on the Friday of LiAC. The prize winners must be present at the time of the draw, so spin the wheel, drop off your business card and be there or be square!
At the back of the expo area, two open-air “conference rooms” are set up for all delegates to enjoy, one room with a focus on SEO and the other with a focus on marketing strategies.
Tiz Gambacorta of 8020 Research is a die-hard digital marketing expert with years of experience under his belt. Today, Gambacorta participated in a panel focused on Influencer Marketing and he shared with CalvinAyre.com the importance of integrating Influencer Marketing into an overall marketing strategy.
“Its essential. Its only important if [iGaming companies] want to stay in business, right? In the sense that now marketing is going to the next level”, he said.
“So far this industry which has become increasingly competitive, has been mostly about who’s got the best website, the best theme, the best offers. Well, all of that now has become commonplace and its all become about which brand can relate and connect to that prospect – that player – on a better level and a deeper level”, Gambacorta explained.
“So how does that happen. Naturally online companies and specifically in this space, don’t have a very strong personality branding aspect. Even the biggest companies are a company brand, not a personality brand. But the market is going towards the personality side things, so how do we bridge that gap? Well that’s where influencer marketing comes into play”, he added.
Over at the SEO sessions, 18-year SEO specialist Julia Logan, aka “Irish Wonder”, delivered a presentation on Negative SEO, the motivations behind it, how to identify it and how iGaming webmasters can recover from being “negative SEO’d”.
“First of all, keep track of everything happening and document everything”, Logan told CalvinAyre.com in an exclusive interview.
“Be very aware of your link profile. What links are you getting that you were not supposed to get, what links are you losing that were maybe your strongest best quality links, something like this happening. Make sure you don’t have underlying security issues because sites getting hacked is not helping them in any regard Not in terms of negative SEO and not in terms of their regular activities”, she said.
“Make sure your site is so perfect it would take people a lot of effort to negative SEO it. Make sure your on-site SEO is perfect make sure you don’t have any technical issues make sure you don’t have any security issues and make sure you have a really high quality, strong link profile that’s really difficult to overthrow”, she added.
The sign of a high-quality conference is when exhibitors return year after year and LeoVegas is one of the affiliate programs that falls under this category. Since its launch five years ago, the mobile-first platform has had a presence at iGB events and prides themselves on their robust affiliate team.
“LeoVegas has been around for a while as a brand and I think that the fact that distinguishes us from everybody else is the fact that we are an amazing customer retention management team and we have so many functions around affiliation in general around the brand that makes us able to get the best possible value out of the users”, LeoVegas’s Head of Affiliates Giacomo Bettoni told CalvinAyre.com.
“That’s why the affiliates love us. That’s why they keep on promoting us even though we have been five years growing and growing strong”, he said.
In addition to sharing some of their future plans such as launching a mobile affiliate platform app, expansion into new markets such as Spain and strengthening their presence in markets such as Germany, Bettoni said his team are pleasantly surprised by the turnout at LiAC.
“I think is amazing, I love Lisbon!”, Bettoni shared.
“Its my first time in Portugal, my first time in Lisbon and I just love it. I think its one of the best cities I’ve been to in probably the last five years and the event looks amazing and I’m really impressed. We of course didn’t know, we were a bit uncertain, we have very good vibes coming from our affiliates so I think it has been confirmed, its amazing show”, he said.
