Ahead of the curve: An exclusive interview with William Hill's marketing director

“We are on a fast track to catching up, but the question now is what comes next,” Kristian Welch tells EGR Marketing from William Hill’s Gibraltar HQ. Getting ahead of the curve is a recurring theme in our interview with Hills’ marketing director – which is a far cry from the narrative coming from the operator only a short time ago.

“I’ll give you the example of Africa, which was so late to go with cable broadband that it’s just gone straight to mobile,” Welch adds. “We’re now seeing innovation happening in things like voice and home assistants, and what we’re now doing is positioning ourselves for the future in a way we haven’t done before.”

Since joining William Hill in January 2017, Welch has overseen something of a revolution in William Hill’s marketing strategy. He has brought with him a wealth of digital marketing experience from online-only businesses such as GoCompare and Skyscanner, and has pivoted Hills’ approach to one focused far more on digital-first customer acquisition.

Kristian Welch was named William Hill’s director of marketing in April 2017

The results? The business is now reporting a double-digit rise in acquisition against its target and a far lower CPA. But according to Welch, this is just the tip of the iceberg for William Hill and after getting the basics right, he has big plans to turn the company into an innovator and digital market leader.

EGR Marketing: What was your marketing background before joining William Hill?

Kristian Welch (KW): I have a slightly unusual background as I’m not actually from the gambling industry. I’m from what I’d call the high-growth and transformational industry, and I have worked in a number of positions with large brands which initially had some preconceptions and challenges in terms of what digital means for marketing and acquisition. I see that as the common theme that runs across the sectors I’ve been involved in – they are huge UK brands with a big following which live or die by digital acquisition and being able to acquire people for a cheaper cost than what they get from them in revenue. That’s the commonality.

EGR Marketing: And you initially started your career in the finance and banking sectors?

KW: When I was younger I really liked the idea of getting into an industry like that as I’ve always been analytical and numbers driven. What fascinates me is how consumers react to things, what makes them tick, and the nuances of messaging, pricing and promotions. That just really excited me, but although I had all numbers in front of me, there was no real interaction or the magic of marketing in there. I then spent seven years working in private equity-backed companies or environments looking to IPO, like Skyscanner, the RAC and GoCompare. I also spent a bit of time at The Telegraph and BSM.

EGR Marketing: Why did you find the opportunity to work at William Hill such an enticing proposition?

KW: I’ve been at William Hill for about a year now having started as digital marketing director and later promoted to become head of marketing across the group. This was the first time the budgets of online and retail came together, which is a massively powerful thing because it means we don’t have two competing P&L owners. From my point of view, I see those retail outlets as a massive opportunity we have paid for. We still need to understand how best to utilise them in the digital age and we are doing lots of interesting things to tie the two businesses together. We are looking at who is disturbing on the high street and understanding what the touchpoints are for consumers. Retail is a unique asset for this business.

EGR Marketing: What did you find when you looked under the bonnet of Hills’ marketing strategy?

KW: This department recently took on responsibility for CRM and BI analytics – that’s interesting for us because they are measurement tools we use to drive a lot of the acquisition. When we acquire a customer, the next question is what their lifetime is and how we maximise their value. I can now afford to spend more on acquisition and be more aggressive, but to make that work you’ve got to have good data, attribution, vision and an understanding of your growth areas. When I took over we had a double-digit deficit against target for acquisition, while we also had a fragmented structure, team and location, and were probably a bit too above-the-line focused. We also had what I would refer to as a low marketing stack capability or awareness.

EGR Marketing: How have you tried to revamp William Hill’s digital marketing capabilities?

KW: One of the interesting things with digital is you really start at some point to cross a line between statistical understanding and being a marketer. An above-the-line marketer would normally be quite creative, while someone who is more focused on numbers doesn’t really match. Sometimes pulling everyone back to the data just makes you double-check a couple of things. Our marketing acquisition numbers are now double-digit ahead and our CPA is significantly down for digital. We’ve also done a number of other things like putting a digital marketing tech roadmap in place, which is ahead of schedule, and closed our Tel Aviv office.

EGR Marketing: How will the opening of a new central London office help?

KW: I will be based in Gibraltar but I will be spending a lot of time in London which will be the day-to-day operational heartland of our marketing engine. Opening a new purpose-built HQ in central London is about building an environment which will help inspire our staff or is similar to where they may have come from previously. We have to look at how other digital-only businesses operate, as they live and die by digital acquisition, and what creates that freedom. We are also investing more to get ahead of the curve as we don’t just want to be me-too, and completely reorganised and strengthened the marketing team.

William Hill’s new central London HQ opened last month

EGR Marketing: And you believe voice search and home assistants is one area you are looking to get a lead in?

KW: You have to look at where Google, Facebook and Amazon are headed as it’s almost a proxy of what the market will do – very little they do these days fails like Google’s attempt at a social network. We are all surprised by the number of people who have home assistants in their house. It adds a conversational element which will change the nature of the way people search as the vocabulary will be very different, and we have to try and understand what that means and where the opportunities are.

With search you also get into this Henry Ford-type scenario where if you asked people what they wanted; at the time it was just a fast horse – they didn’t understand what a car was. There are things on the cutting edge of development that people don’t know if they really need, but to get that information we have to understand how our consumers use it, how it applies to our business, what the opportunities are and then to test and learn. We might fail, but we need to be far more aggressive and passionate about what comes next.

EGR Marketing: So you believe voice is the next SEO battleground like ASO was previously?

KW: It is changing the language to be much more colloquial. And people don’t search ‘betting shop Doncaster’ anymore, they will search ‘betting shop near me’ and they expect Google to have the AI intelligence to be able to localise. For us that means we have to index, but you first have to understand that change in behaviour, which only comes from the monitoring of trends. When we had a remote team, we did miss some of that. But now we’ve got a team in London where it’s all happening and we’re plugged into, that is when you get some real magic.

EGR Marketing: Affiliate marketing is a major topic in the industry currently. How have you changed your approach after what has been going on from a regulatory point of view in recent months?

KW: My view is that it is a very difficult channel to justify because you’re in a position where there are some areas where they are in a market auction with you. If you take PPC, for example, I don’t want to be in a position where our bids are being pushed up because there are more people in the market due to an affiliate fighting for the same traffic. So I have a strict view that we need to understand where affiliates actually do things we can’t and add real value, and where they just cannibalise what we should be doing.

We are very conscious about what Sky Bet has done, and we are looking at whether we need to review this. At the moment, we are working with partners to make sure the deals in place are the right ones and are working in the right way so we can make it more efficient and not have to do anything too dramatic. But ultimately I’d say in the future we will definitely have to work differently and it needs some adjustment for both parties.

EGR Marketing: Programmatic has been a big area of focus for William Hill. How will this actually help the business going forward?

KW: You’ve got to get the rest of digital acquisition working first. In a market where everything changes so quickly like scores, transfers and team sheets, programmatic can be plugged in in so many different ways and respond to that very quickly. The ROI is also very strong and complementary in terms of brand awareness. We have implemented it very well on sports, and on time and on budget, and we are rolling it out at scale very quickly. The early numbers have been extremely encouraging and I think this was one of the highlights of what the guys did last year and we are approaching it in a very different way to other bookmakers.

EGR Marketing: In what way are you different?

KW: With programmatic a lot of it comes down to which segments you target. We are very careful about how we do that and where it fits in with the other pieces we’ve got going on. I think what we’ve seen in the past is people going out with quite a wide programme and you can clearly see some cannibalisation. It all comes down to data and understanding that, pulling out the right interests and understanding the corporate objectives.

“You have to look at where Google, Facebook and Amazon are headed as it’s almost a proxy of what the market will do”

EGR Marketing: Taking all the above into account, why do you think Hills was too focused on above-the-line (ATL) marketing in the past?

KW: I don’t know if it was too much of a focus, but we were slow in changing it to the digital mix because we’d always done it that way. That often happens because people are nervous and don’t understand it, and you also find the channels where you might replace some of the ATL aren’t as well developed. We now have a better understanding of the attribution and data, and there are much better product sets from the likes of Facebook and Google, which can provide what TV gave us but with a better way of measuring it. We should have accelerated that quicker but we have definitely caught up now.

EGR Marketing: It seems you have really improved your relationships with companies like Google and Facebook?

KW: One of the things you have to do in any business like this, and which has been key in the businesses I’ve worked in previously, is around building on the relationships you have with suppliers. There is always a focus from these guys to improve their share price and telling you their products are amazing. What you have to do is filter through that, work out what it is you need and then set the agenda yourself. So I know exactly what Facebook needs from us, they know what we need and we are making fantastic progress. I’d highlight that as being one of the big success stories in terms of relationship. We have also had good relationships with Bing and Microsoft. Snap is the next one but we need to work out how best to commercialise that.

EGR Marketing: Are there any other digital channels you’re investing in?

KW: Instagram is very interesting. With Facebook, you can do lots of stuff, but on Instagram you can give someone a snapshot of a video – that is life now and you can show people what you’re doing through a person’s eyes. So we can share content we get backstage at sporting events and give people eyeballs into the world we’re in, what a press conference feels like and the tension builds up.

EGR Marketing: Boxing seems to be a particular area of focus for William Hill at the minute? Will that continue?

KW: Boxing is an area where we’ve done really well. During the last Joshua fight we hit over 50% share of voice on Facebook, which is dominant and unheard of, but we just did the simple things. For the McGregor versus Mayweather fight, we got a huge amount of engagement, even though we decided not to take a sponsorship package because I didn’t want to spend millions of pounds for a pair of pants. What we actually did was give people a chance to go to the event itself; we just realised that everyone wanted to be there. This is all about what consumers are looking for and what we can give them that no one else can. That’s what we plan to do in the future in all areas of the business.