PPC tips for the Grand National and Gold Cup

February 17, 2010
by Neil Fairweather

As much as I’d like to sit here and write down my thoughts on who is going to come through at the Grand National and Gold Cup on my company blog, unfortunately I have to leave that to the experts. I’m actually here to give you tips on how to use Pay Per Click (PPC) to generate First Time Depositors (FTDs) from two of horse racing’s big opportunities for gaming companies.

Many gaming companies approach the Grand National with caution online as there are many first time or irregular gamblers involved. Whilst this is an opportunity to generate FTDs, be tentative as the lifetime value of these accounts is low, and the cost of acquisition can be over inflated due to increased competition.

Conversely, the Cheltenham Gold Cup is the pinnacle for REAL race goers and the long-term value of landing these FTDs is significantly higher than the Grand National, however, the volume is lower. For this reason you need to approach the two events differently:

PPC for the Grand National

As the Grand National generates FTDs with a lower lifetime value it is worth looking at previous data on the lifetime value of these accounts and adjusting your Cost Per Funded Account (CPFA) accordingly. However, for branding reasons it is still worth having a presence on the search engines for the events major terms.

If you have a highly visible brand and a huge amount of above-the-line activity then you need to use a conservative bidding strategy. We would recommend bidding to appear in the top 8 positions for key generic terms such as “grand national” and “aintree festival” and long tail terms such as race names, jockey names and trainer names. However, don’t push these bids to appear in the lucrative top 3 positions. If your brand is strong then you should still generate the volume you’re looking for but at an even cheaper cost. If you have a solid email marketing or CRM strategy around these accounts for other sporting events then you can also increase the long-term value of them.

If you’re a smaller brand with a smaller budget then focus on bidding on the cheaper longer-tail terms such as race names and jockey names etc. The generic terms will probably be too expensive and won’t generate the necessary returns. For the Grand National we also recommend using a CTA in your creative for a “Free Bet” as most punters will be setting up an account for the first time. However, be sure to monitor the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your terms to ensure your offer is standing up against the competition.

PPC for the Gold Cup

As mentioned the Cheltenham Gold Cup is a whole different kettle of fish as the experienced gamblers come out and spend big money. As such you need to adapt your bidding strategy and perhaps increase you CPFA target to reflect this. We recommend starting to bid on the generic terms for the event around 2-3 weeks before, however, ensure this is a controlled budget as a lot of these people can be in the research phase and less likely to convert. In the lead-up to the event start to focus on the longer-tail terms as punters move out of the research phase and further on within the buying cycle where they are more likely to deposit and place bets with a more targeted keyword. With the longer-tail terms make sure you negative match on the race names as a lot of Cheltenham’s race names are very similar.

For your Cheltenham long-tail and generic terms ensure you’re monitoring them on tools such as Google Insights and Trends to identify when the majority of searches are happening on race days, and your analytics packages to see when the majority of bets are being placed. Then increase your bids accordingly to capture this audience. We suspect from experience that this will be mid-morning on race days.

If you have the technology make sure you also track how many punters who already had an account with you used PPC to place a bet on the Gold Cup, just so you can attribute spend more effectively.

We also recommend adjusting the CTA in your creative for Cheltenham compared to the Grand National to reflect the change in audience. As the audience is likely to already have gaming accounts set-up, try offering specials in the creative as more educated gamblers are less likely to be tempted by a free bet and more likely to bite on some good odds.

We also recommend using a separate micro-site for Cheltenham and running A/B or MVT conversion testing on this page because you will be generating a high volume of clicks and you need to ensure you are converting as many of these lucrative punters as possible.

Conclusions

- Take a different approach for the Grand National and Gold Cup due to differentials in the audiences gambling experience
- Adjust your CPFA for the Grand National based on historical data because of reduced lifetime value of accounts from this event and use a “Free Bet” creative
- For Cheltenham increase your CPFA
- Also ensure you’re monitoring peak online betting and search times for Cheltenham and use specials in your creative as oppose to free bets

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