Marketing consultants said casinos are making a mistake by not marketing slot machines and even specific titles, arguing that’s where the games generate their biggest return.
They also cited the importance of quicker service on the slot floor to keep customers happy and coming to the casino.
That’s the message from Wednesday’s opening panel discussion of the Casino Marketing & Technology Conference at Caesar’s Palace.
Mary Loftness, owner of Profitable Customers, suggested casinos need to work with their vendors to provide a marketing package for games.
“How many have launched a new game with a promotion,” asked Loftness. “If you haven’t, it’s critical to engage players into the new game to introduce a product. Sometimes, they can’t even find them.”
Buddy Frank, principal consultant with Slot Strategies, said some in the industry see vendors as competitors when they shouldn’t. Frank said casinos rarely show slot machines in television advertising, which he called a mistake.
Frank cited how the Pechanga Resort Casino in Southern California launched an ad campaign in Los Angeles on Konami’s Titan 360 that involved a UFO.
“That was so popular that customers called Konami and wanted to get the UFO machine, and they produced over 300 of them,” Frank said. “A lot of my colleagues ask why I would advertise Konami’s product because everybody has it. At Pechanga, that machine did better than anywhere else in the country. Very few casinos do that, and I would encourage you to do that. Humor works.”
Frank said he has done Facebook interviews where there were hundreds of questions about slot machines.
“We talk about restaurants, and conventions and hotel rooms and swimming pools, all of which don’t make a fraction of the revenue.”
Loftness encouraged marketers to push slots in newsletters and marketing materials and contends customers want to hear about specific names of games.
“There’s an opportunity for all of us to boost individual titles and to engage more with players with that,” Loftness said.
Many audience members raised their hands when Loftness asked if slots were more than 60 percent of their casino’s revenues. But none said they spend 60 percent of their time selling slots.
“That’s why we’re here, and this is our product,” Loftness said. “I think we can do a better job of merchandising those games on the floor and targeting to players.”
Michael Meczka, president of MM/R/C, Inc., said the slot players casinos need to target are those with disposable income. He suggested that casinos need to do a better job of telling customers how the games work.
Frank said analytics tools are more valuable than ever and now allow casinos to look at player’s performance on machines, as well the game performance.
“There’s one machine that just there, but if you look closely, your very best player loved it,” Frank said. “If you took it off, you would have a big hit (in revenue).”
Meckza talked about the massive disappointment that players feel about speed of service, quality of games, card readers not working, and that’s consistent in all casinos they work.
“The customer has a finite amount of time to play in our casino, and we want to fill that time as much as possible with gaming and not with down time.”
Frank said casinos shouldn’t automatically accept that customers are unhappy with service because they think staff are unfriendly. At one casino, staff was retrained to be more friendly, only to find in more extensive surveys of customers that they were upset about the speed of service.
“We then focused on speeding up things and getting better processes,” Frank said.
Julia Carcamo, president and chief brand strategist with J Carcamo & Associates, described casino executives as being shocked when her customer research found the property was having service problems on the slot floor.
“The president of slots fixed it that night,” Carcamo said. “It was a quick fix because she didn’t know it was a problem because customers weren’t complaining daily. The research brought that out.”
Loftness said that shows efficiency beats friendly every day.
“If you only have $10 to spend on technology, spend it on slot service tracking software,” Loftness said. “It’s so critical. Your highest value players beat the tires more than anybody else.”
