COVID EDITION

Expertises: Acquisition Strategy, Crisis Marketing Strategy, Media Planning
Services: Online Advertising, TVCs


еfbet – Crisis Marketing and Launch New Promotion
March 2020

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INTRO

Perhaps there is no need to describe the biggest health, as well as perhaps the biggest economic crisis that hit the world in the early 2020. COVID-19 has proven to be much more difficult to fight compared to many other pandemics in the past. Well, this of course has also affected efbet as a sports betting company and one that at this time was managing over 50 gambling halls in Bulgaria and Romania, sports bars and hotels.

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/ 02

THE CHALLENGE

It was in March, Friday the 13th, when with the first cases of COVID-19 started growing, a state of emergency was introduced in Bulgaria, and so we had to close all gaming halls, sports bars and hotels, first in Bulgaria, and after a few days in Romania as well. So in the following weekend morning, during a meeting of the entire team of 17 people, our marketing department had to think about how to respond to the crisis situation – first of all, for all the clients who were visiting the casinos and secondly for all Bulgarians who were in lockdown, obliged to stay at home unless they have a valid reason going out.


You might think that this is great, everyone will be staying home, browsing online and in front of the TV, but unfortunately the world of sport was suffering, as have many other sectors, so at the end of March we ended up in a world without any sport. Well, almost none.

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/ 03

THE STRATEGY

I’ve always been convinced and followed the same strategy, that we need to pay attention to any new opportunities that might present – I respected the fans of American football (little popular in Bulgaria), rugby, handball, water polo, etc., and I always aimed to reach through our campaigns personally to the fans of every team in our country, no matter how big and famous.


I realized now was the perfect moment to get to know better the Belarusian football championship, the only one still ‘on the football map’ in Europe, which also appeared with historical TV broadcasts not only in Bulgaria but also in many other European countries.

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THE CAMPAIGN

The campaigns we created were diverse, with a very different targeting approach across social networks and CPC campaigns, and were based on the football championship in Belarus, the chess tournament in Russia, table tennis and, of course, eSports, which were increasingly gaining popularity.

The campaigns were literally created day by day, even by hour, taking into account every match played anywhere in the world, while the championships have been cancelled one by one with the situation around COVID-19 getting worse.
We even started promoting a virtual reality, as well as FIFA’20 tournaments where gamers and football stars were participating in games organized by various football federations.

With over 20 creative ideas, in less than a week, we were able to take over the huge part of the increasing online requests (big up for all of my designers for being so creative), which we directed to our casino games, where the slot games or our croupiers entertained the audience during the pandemic. Meanwhile you maybe have seen us on Pornhub :p

Of course, there were also retention campaigns for our clients from our ground casinos, which needed to be quickly adapted to the new online reality.

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THE RESULT

This entire month has been incredibly difficult for all of us, however my team and I have been able to get the most out of the situation and make our website generate its highest revenue so far.

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+48%

NEW REGISTRATIONS COMPARED TO PREVIOUS YEAR

+29%

NEW REGISTRATIONS COMPARED TO PREVIOUS PERIOD

2.9X

MORE DEPOSITS PLACED DURING CAMPAIGN

47%

INCREASE IN BETS PLACED DURING CAMPAIGN

5.8M

TV REACH

9.9M

SOCIAL MEDIA REACH

+21%

profit compared to previous period