Hi guys and welcome to the Three Questions Podcast with me, Leanne Johnston. I am joined today by two digital marketing gurus, um, Martin Calvert and Sharon McFarlane. Hi guys, thanks for coming along. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Hi Leanne, very well, thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. For those of you who have never met these two lovely individuals, they are top of my list on uh digital marketing experts. So can you just quickly introduce yourselves and tell us where you are from and what you do, and then we will kick off with our three questions. Ladies first.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. I'm Shana McFarlane. Um, my company is Crystal Content, so we are a digital marketing marketing agency based in Glasgow, and we specialise in NI gaming. We've been around for about 10 years now, and just now we're working quite a lot with operators and affiliates and helping them for more innovative marketing campaigns. Thank you. Hi Martin.
SPEAKER_00I'm Martin Calvert, I'm marketing director at ICS Digital. Uh, we're also a marketing agency that's specialized in gaming as well as some other tough industries, and we mostly focus on international content, international campaigns, SEO, things of this nature.
SPEAKER_01So, really, I just wanted to call you two guys together and have a quick pulse check of what's happening in the digital space right now. Now, I know you cover everything from content marketing to SEO and everything in between, but let's just talk a little bit about, you know, we've all had to pivot and not panic over the last three months. But where are we headed now and what does the digital scene look like ahead of us? Um, maybe we can kick off with Sharon from your perspective.
SPEAKER_02Well, what we did see in the last couple of months was a lot of transitions to different niches within iGaming. So traditionally, we have a lot of casino operators and casino affiliates who decided to then expand into eSports and that sort of stuff, especially as sports betting took a little bit of a dip. Um, but as that's coming back, what we're now beginning to see is more sports betting affiliates begin to launch again, is there's sort of light coming out of that tunnel, especially in certain areas of the country and areas of the world as we're all sort of easing at different times. Um, we're seeing much more focus on quality content, so you know, content that's long form, content that's getting updated regularly. And what I've also seen, which has been really, really good, especially over the last couple of months, is more people are taking sort of time to do better housekeeping when it comes to their content in SEO because they're thinking, you know, while I have a little bit extra time, let's get everything in order, let's get everything in place, which means we've just got such a much better products moving forward.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And Martin, from your perspective, yeah, some similar trends.
SPEAKER_00I think sometimes having that bit of space to think is good for people, and you know, perhaps a bit more on the stressful side, people are being encouraged to think about what's working and what is not working.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, so I think that's caused some re-evaluations, particularly in some bigger companies, when you know there's lots of things going on all at once and you don't necessarily have the full picture. Now people have had the chance to think what is working, how can I join the dots? Um, and I think that's been particularly important for again some of these larger companies who might have had some teams on furlough, things like this. They're trying to see, you know, when they bring people back, what should they be doing? Because most people want to bring their team members back, they want to you know get back in at full steam, at full speed. So I think we've been seeing some of that. Um, I think we've also been seeing some people who had money in the bank before this all started, they have invested their money in pushing ahead, getting a bit of an advantage. A lot of what we do is SEO, and it can be quite hard sometimes to get a big leap up. Um, but this has been quite a good time for it when some competitors have been pausing and limiting their activity. Other people really have jumped forward, and the goal for them now is to maintain and cling on. Um, so we've seen some of that. We've also seen some people who you know took the view that no money in means limited money out, so um, they've been a bit more sober and you know, waiting for things to start to trickle back in support, and that's definitely happening now, happening now. So we might see more business as usual, let's expect.
SPEAKER_01Because that's the other thing that I wanted to sort of ask you guys. There's a lot of, you know, when we spoke back in, I think it was in March when we did the purpose down panic haul together, we were all thinking, okay, there's two schools of thought. There's the kind of those that are gonna button down the hatches and those that are gonna, you know, leap ahead and spend. And now in the hindsight, we can see who's kind of one out in that race. But business as usual, I mean, that's you know, that's quite a big um component well point that we're all discussing right now. Is it gonna be business as usual? Because quite a lot has changed. So, what are your thoughts on what the new normal is going to be for digital marketers? And how do you think, you know, the way that we strategize, the way that we spend, the way that we engage with our audience, how do you think that needs to change?
SPEAKER_02I think well, what we've experienced certainly over the last couple of months is that brands are being much more careful in how they're marketing themselves over called you know, with the COVID and gambling link that couldn't be made. So I think we're finding that people are being a little bit more cautious overall in terms of their marketing strategies. I do think that it'll come back where people will be a little bit more bolder as things you know tend to settle down. Um, I think there may be a bit of a change in attitude as well. So, as kind of Martin was saying, um, a lot of people had staff on furlough, and you know, there's been changes in their dynamics. I think people maybe are appreciating the element of outsourcing certain things to experts that you know they can help, and you don't really need to have everybody in your office at that one time, they don't need to be there, but there could be this added benefit of saying, you know, this is an agency, they're not based in the office, but they know what they're doing, and they'll sort of they'll be able to help us, who guess.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Martin, I mean from your perspective, you know, you run quite a large agency, so has that you know, have has business been quite good? Has has it been quite busy during this period?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh it's been extremely busy. We've had to you know reshuffle certain things for sure. You know, there'll be more of a focal on casino and poker and things like this. There's definitely enough sport stuff going on in the background from people that are, you know, they know it's not gonna be forever. And now look, we we do have games back, we do have sport back. So if you look at when sport was cancelled to present, what was it, 12 weeks, 16 weeks, something like that? So, you know, you can't or shouldn't really fundamentally shift your business based on 16 weeks if you can avoid it. Obviously, you need to be very empathetic to the people that are much more close to the wire. But um it's been extremely busy for sure, and I think we've also been um trying to be proactive, more proactive than usual, in making suggestions, finding efficient ways to accomplish what people need to accomplish. And I think uh Sharon's right, I think sometimes one of the benefits of agency work is um if your client said you can challenge that agency to come up with a solution, you won't come up with it, that's fine, but you can get them working for you, get them thinking on your behalf. That's where you can get more value. You know, you don't need to do it all yourself. Um, pass on some of the risk, to be honest. I think that's kind of where um some people have been seeing value. Um, in terms of the the new normal, I think there's always gonna be some quite conservative people, conservative with a small C, who think, well, everything's gonna go back to how it was, and there's just gonna be a blip. And then people love sport, they love betting, they love playing casino, it's just gonna be the exact same. So let's see. Just as some people are saying, you know, no need for vaccination, no need for distancing, you know, it'll all be fine. And they're they're they're putting their head in the sand a little bit. Um, I do think things will come back strong, but I think we'll also still have to adapt and find new and better ways of doing things.
SPEAKER_01And I think adapt as well, you know, they it's it's adapt, but it's also innovate. Um, because what we're seeing on the affiliate side as well, just to kind of throw the the net a little bit wider on our our our chat today. I mean, affiliates are very, very agile. You know, there's a there's a school of thought that has always been hounding the affiliate channel that affiliate marketing is going to come to an end one day. I can't see how it ever will because affiliates are probably one of the most um agile digital marketers that I have ever got to work with in my 20 years of of online marketing. So, you know, I'm quite excited to see how because of this change, because of this innovation, because of the fact that we're thinking about our businesses, about our customers in a very different way. I'm quite interested to see how affiliates are going to be adjusting their strategies, their you know, acquisition channels, and where they're going to be investing. Because I know in my community there's a lot of people that are very, very focused on content marketing now, whereas previously there might have been still you know heavily investing in PayPal Click or in other paid media channels. So, you know, I just I kind of just want to talk about it because it does touch on what both of you do from an SEO perspective and also from a content marketing perspective. What do you think is going to be very important now for brands, for affiliates? Um, what are they gonna need to focus on in terms of their content marketing strategies to really make sure that their efforts are paying off and converting customers? Because writing content authentically in order to get SEO ranking is one thing, but making sure that that content actually delivers sales and revenue is another. So, what can you two share from your expertise in that perspective?
SPEAKER_02I think we've been spending quite a lot of time um focusing on adapting content not just for search on Google but for voice search to make sure we're accommodating all of those channels, and I think that's something that maybe we'd found that I feel like I said you left behind a little bit. So I think incorporating lots of FAQs and valuable content to ask actually answer the question that the user's act and asking, sorry, is really really important. Um we've also been sort of incorporating quite a lot of creative elements within there as well, just to make sure that what we're doing is creating content that can be digested in different ways. So whether that's as well as having an operator review that's not just content, we have a video there explaining that as well. Yeah, just to make sure that we're sort of in capturing the user at all points. Um, I think there's also going to be a big focus on user-generated content, so to make sure that when you're creating these pieces, that there's always somewhere for the user to be able to engage and to kind of get back to you and lead their opinion and leave their thoughts. I think as long as that makes your brand more trustworthy and sort of gives you a better overall product.
SPEAKER_01Cool, that's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd say there's like three developments over the past month or so that's that's caused um you know more interest in that quality factor and you know ways of demonstrating engagement, which user-generation content is. So the first would be there was a Google update about seven weeks ago, a broad core update, which is mostly focused around quality of content. Um but because it's it's a broad core update, which means it's it's part of the overall ranking methodology, it's not just one specific thing, it's more this term quality, which is hard to fix because if you're seen as a low quality site, then it's just it's um it's not any one easy thing you can fix. It's a bit like if somebody turns you down because you're ugly, you may have some opportunities to still impress them. If Martin, I'm turning you down because you're ugly, um, you've got no charisma, you've got no sense of humor, and everything else, then that's very hard for me to come back from. Yeah. It's it's basically saying your site as a whole compares poorly to other people. And that update is affecting people right now. There's still volatility in the search engines or the SERPs, what we call search engine result pages. So some people will bounce back, but others will have to take a more fundamental assessment, and some of that will be down to quality of content. Um, second thing is you know, there's lots of murmurings about regulation as usual, yeah. Important it is for affiliates to be on the hook or perhaps even licensed and things like this. So it may not happen, but I think the affiliates that will be best prepared to weather any future storm are the ones that are doing the right things now in their content, in their tone, and how they're treating their own audiences, that kind of thing. And then the final thing would be um looking to the future. Google's released um information around what is called, or what they're calling, core web vitals. And there's quite a lot of material about this on the Google blog and website, um, talking about certain things that they will now expect from websites going forward, um, going forward from 2021, in fact, because they think it's so fundamental, it'll take this long for people to get to grips with it. So that includes user experience, as Sharon said, it includes the user journey, answering questions in an efficient way, being fast, um, all this type of stuff to make life easy for um for visitors. And the good news is there's lots of material out there now that Google is offering up to say, look, this is what you have to do. It's 2021, but you need to do it.
SPEAKER_01Um what are some of the places that our listeners can maybe go and check some of that stuff out if they're not as experienced in SEO?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. It's it's really helpful at present because I think we're moving beyond your fighting with Google to having a bit more of a you know a partnership approach. So, literally, if you were to search for Google core C O R E Web Vitals, you should find stuff on Google's um blog, which goes into quite significant detail about this and what you need to do and how what kind of preparations you can make for 2021. But it's also really good advice for right now. If you want to get ahead of the competition, it's no bad thing to focus on quality, as Sharon says. Make things easy for people by looking at channels. So if your visitors may be disposed to using voice as a channel, accommodate it. You know, that's where we can do to try and do things better and do things more responsibly as well.
SPEAKER_01Now, I know you do a lot of um, well, you do most of my videos. So, um, in terms of video and voice search and other types of channels of content, I mean, how are you finding that is impacting affiliates? Because I know that you also work with a lot of affiliates.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we're finding quite a lot of affiliates are now beginning to invest more on video creative, they're understanding that it's improving dwell time on those pages, it's also giving the user a better understanding of some of the content that's on there. So we're finding a lot of affiliates aren't just focusing on traditional content, which I would normally describe as a review on a on an operator or on a slot. They do want to educate more on withdrawal times, payment methods, and all that sort of stuff. But if you're writing you know a long piece of content on that, it's more difficult to get the user to engage when you can actually have something more visual that they can look at.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So we're finding great results in terms of dwell times and improved traffic by incorporating that kind of caterpill within that content.
SPEAKER_01So just to round up on our last question, what is your one tip that you are going to give brands or operators right now who might be listening to this to take forward in the months to come as we come out of lockdown and isolation and you know, looking at what our new normal is.
SPEAKER_02Oh my big tip would just be to answer the question. So find a question that the user is asking and make sure that you're answering that within your content.
SPEAKER_01Love it. My short sweet point.
SPEAKER_00I think that's an excellent kind of way to way to kind of you know assess what you're doing, you know, if it's doing the right thing for uh the user. I think if I can't pick that tip, I'd pick look properly at what Google is is asking. Um, you know, take it with a pinch of salt, they're never going to give you the entire ABCs of what to do to be number one in in Google. But there's enough material out there now that it's it's plenty to work with and it's all plausible to work with. So I'd say rather than you engage in the guesswork or speculation or people say on forums and affiliate conferences, even go to the source and evaluate it. And if it sounds sensible, adopt it. And there's lots of material from Google right now.
SPEAKER_01From my perspective, in terms of affiliate marketing, it's gonna be listen to your audience. So really get to grips with what your audience needs and want, and then fill that gap. Um, it really doesn't have to be more difficult than that. So thanks very much for joining me on this call. Thanks very much for sharing your insight. Um, we've absolutely loved having you here with us today, and I look forward to seeing you at conferences again soon.
SPEAKER_00Always a pleasure.
SPEAKER_01Thanks.