74
Gaming “The audience is there but the ca-
sino industry [in Macau] is not. In the U.S., the level of opportunity is no- where near where it is in Asia, but the U.S. is far more developed.” He argues that as long as there is
no speci c mention of gaming, there is room to manoeuvre. “It’s especially easy if the property includes hotel, food and beverage, and other amenities. You just stress the non-gaming bene ts. Everybody knows there’s a casino, you just don’t say it.”
Leading followers Mr Wieners is the former director of digital marketing at Sands China Ltd. He began his career in hotel operations in 2001 but his marketing experience has been almost exclusively in the dig- ital area. Digital marketing “is a baseline that should be looked
marketing tool
at separately from the traditional mar- keting channels. While it’s vital that these departments do have active, open communication between them, it’s im- portant to distinguish that the digital channels are unique in both the way or- ganisations send and receive, and there- fore respond to and with their custom- ers,” he says. Mr Wieners advocates integrating
Digital betting T
Casinos are missing a chance to engage savvy online consumers in the mainland with digital marketing techniques, expert says
BY MUHAMMAD COHEN
he mainland has the world’s big- gest online community at 485 million strong and expanding,
creating tremendous opportunities for local casinos keen on digital market- ing. “Growth now is ridiculous,” says Macau-based digital marketer Chris Wieners. Mainland
net users’ interest in
tourism presents huge opportunities for Macau’s gaming operators. Two-thirds of outbound tourists use the Internet, and 79 percent of that segment reserve their hotel room online, says Mr Wien- ers, the vice-president of operations for Hogo Digital, a boutique marketing rm
JANUARY 2012
that targets high net worth consumers. Hogo was launched last year in Hong Kong by Faye Ho, a granddaughter of SJM Holdings Ltd. founder Stanley Ho Hung Sun. The company has of ces in Macau, Guangzhou and Shanghai. While advertising for gaming is
banned in the mainland, there are ways to reach consumers online, but gaming operators are missing the connection. “There’s a mismatch between what us- ers want and what most companies are delivering,” Mr Wieners says, speaking to Macau Business following a presen- tation at the recent Asian Casino and Gaming Conference in Singapore.
social networking directly into web- sites, each localised for mainland users. “If you give people a reason to follow you on social networks, they will,” he adds, which means going beyond sim- ply copying the website to a new plat- form. “You need to give them unique content or special offers.” The challenge is for casino opera-
tors to provide users with incentives to join their networks. Tweet-ups, short- notice invitations to special events, are one inducement that is popular in the United States. If casinos can get customers to
join their social networks, they create a communication channel, gaining ac- cess to the surprisingly large volume of information people are prepared to share online. Follower-only pages can also at-
tract and keep certain types of custom- ers,
such as wine connoisseurs. But
creating content and communicating regularly means committing manpower to the job, Mr Wieners says. “I haven’t seen anybody [in Macau]
use Facebook effectively,” Las Vegas- based Gaming Market Advisors chief
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