A social media insight into Cheltenham: The race is on

Cheltenham Social Media Marketing
IMAGE: Blueclaw

The biggest betting event in the calendar year concludes today when 18 horses line up for the Gold Cup; the feature race of the Cheltenham Festival.

It is expected that over £200m is to be gambled on the event, with more money being forecasted to be spent online and on mobile than in stores.

Jon Ivan-Duke of William Hill commented “It’s been a huge year for mobile betting, we’re expecting figures of around 5000 bets per minute in the preceding minutes leading up to the Gold Cup, and that’s just on mobile and desktop.”

Here, we give an insight into how bookmakers have been utilising the power of social media to engage with their followers and promote their offerings to a wider audience.

 

Enhanced odds

Enhanced odds, or price boosts, are used within the industry to encourage punters to open a new account with the bookie and make a deposit. This has become a common offering across the industry and there have been a number of bookmakers pushing out enhanced odds offers to capitalize on the buzz of Cheltenham. Most of these offerings have been for the favourites to win, with bookmakers boosting odds of 11/4 to as much as 10/1. There are limits to the amount you can stake on the types of bets and they are often exclusive to those without an account as this helps the bookmaker target a wider audience and increase its customer acquisition.

Competitions

During such huge events, the opportunities for engagement and acquisitions is huge - this week a number of bookmakers have turned to competitions to help push their brand out in what is a very competitive market. Take Coral for instance, who are offering prizes in the form of free bets to those who enter their competition using their hashtag #CheltenHAM. Competitions offer the companies a good chance to engage with their followers, who would typically be willing to enter for a chance to win a prize and get some recognition.

Vines

When it comes to Vines, Irish bookie Paddy Power certainly know how to create truly compelling, viral content.

Take the above for an example, which was tweeted out by Paddy after favourites Douvan, Un de Sceaux and Faugheen all won their races on the opening day of Cheltenham.

Vines offer companies a great opportunity to engage, educate and entertain their audience whilst effectively promoting their brand.

Hashtags

Nowadays hashtags are used on a number of social media channels including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. They offer companies an opportunity to expand their content reach, amplify their brand and essentially get their content found, whilst also being able to monitor the performance of their tweets.
Take William Hill for instance, who have been using the #CheltenhamReady hashtag throughout the week to help drive engagement with their followers.
Hashtags were once used by brands to simply categorize posts or add a narrative. However they are now used as a mean to drive conversation, harness support, and garner attention to their brands.

With mobile betting now responsible for 30% of operator revenue, more and more bookmakers are turning to social media and pushing out exclusive offers and engaging content with ultimate aim of improving brand exposure, and increasing customer acquisition.

So who’ll be the real winner come the end of the day? No doubt it’ll be the bookies!

about the author: "Driving link building and content strategies on the iGaming team. I am a passionate marketer, I see obstacles as challenges and as such I have a can do will do attitude."
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