Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Joachim Lemmens on marketing for the betting industry and the use of Bitcoin:

Carlota Pico 0:15
Hi everyone, I’m Carlota Pico from The Content Mix, and I’m excited to be here with Joe Lemmens, who is The Coingaming Group’s global social media manager, and has over four years of experience in marketing. Joe, welcome to The Content Mix, and thank you so much for joining us today. So let’s just jump straight into the interview. Joe, could you tell me a little bit about your background and why you’re so passionate about marketing?

Joe Lemmens 0:40
Thanks a lot for the brief introduction again, Carlota. So yeah, why marketing? That’s a question that I already had a couple of time. So it all started at my first job, which was at a startup in the Netherlands. I was doing sales and marketing over there for that startup, and at that moment I felt, well, that marketing part, that’s more something for me. And I immediately felt something different as well. And that was that I actually studied for sports management. And in my first job, there was nothing sports related. And I really felt that that was something that was burning. So when I got my second job at Unibet, I became social media manager for the Belgian market over there. And I felt that that was really something that was better for me, and that suited me better. And that’s actually how I ended up right now as well becoming global social media manager at Sportsbet.io. So you were exactly and correctly telling that I’m working for The Coingaming Group. One of the brands that’s falling under the umbrella of The Coingaming Group is Sportsbet.io. So Sportsbet.io is basically the sports book brand, the betting brand of The Coingaming Group. So this is easy to link back towards my passion, which is in in sports and in sports management as well, and linking back to that marketing background that I have as well. So I can give you a bit of a better overview what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis well, to give it to give a bit of a complete overview of what everything is, how I can connect the dots of content management and of social media management. So I’m developing, managing and monitoring the the global social media strategy when it comes to our sports book brand, Sportsbet.io. So that means that I’m busy doing the content strategy on a day-to-day base. Something that is quiet frequent on my plate as well is influencer management and ambassador management. So we have a couple of influencers that are working with our brand. We have some ambassadors that are working with our brand. And a big part of my day-to-day job is sponsorship activation as well. One of the biggest sponsorships that we are having is with Watford FC, which is a team in the English Premier League with a very global approach. And obviously, we have some VIP boxes over there where we can get some of the influencers in, we have access to the players, etc. And this is something that is super interesting for social media purposes as well. So this is a bit of a broad overview of what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis.

Carlota Pico 3:54
Wonderful. So since you’re from Belgium, my first question is, how many languages do you speak? And then my next question is, how many markets does your group operate in? And is it necessary to speak all the languages that your group operates in? Or do you outsource those content needs to other agencies? How do you tailor your marketing strategy according to markets? Do you do everything alone?

Joe Lemmens 4:22
Well, obviously, having a global strategy, it’s very hard to speak all the languages of all of the countries that we’re actually touching. Now personally, I speak three languages quite fluent, which is Dutch, which is my mother tongue, English, which became my second language as well, and French is something that I speak quite fluent as well. I’m educating myself in Spanish right now as well. So we can try to continue in Spanish but it will be a bit early for that one. And I can understand a fair bit of German. With Sportsbet.io, we have however a global approach. But I wouldn’t say that we are cherry picking some of the countries. Another audience that we are targeting is actually people in the crypto industry. So Sportsbet.io is a sports book that’s accepting cryptocurrency as one of the main currencies. So we found and we figured out that our USP is actually in these crypto industries and the people that are more tech savvy, so we are focusing on these guys and we are pushing quite hard on people in the crypto industry right now as well. So the way that we are trying to execute that as good as possible is by partnering up with some of the industry leaders in the crypto industry. Some of the influencers that we are getting for our brands are in that industry as well. And for example, a good way, and how we managed to get a lot of respect in the in the crypto industry is by putting the Bitcoin logo on the sleeve of Watford FC. So in the Premier League, you actually have two big spots on the shirt where you can put your brand, so we agreed to have our brand on the front of shirt over here with Watford FC. And then our CEO had an excellent idea to put the Bitcoin logo over here on the sleeve of the Watford shirt as well. And in the beginning, when Watford, when the team launched that they would have the crypto, the Bitcoin logo, on their sleeve. There was a lot of questions in the crypto community. Why would Bitcoin put themselves on the sleeve of a Premier League? Because Bitcoin is not something that’s managed by a company or something like that. It’s like if it would have a euro symbol on the sleeve, and there was a lot of speculation, who can actually be that crazy to pay a big amount of money to put the Bitcoin logo on the sleeve of a Premier League deal? And then a lot of people and the community they figured out that we were accepting sports bets in cryptocurrency as well, and they managed to make the link between Sportsbet and the Bitcoin logo on the sleeve themselves. And there was so much appreciation, and we managed to make so much deals on the back of the launch of the Bitcoin sleeve in the crypto industry, and a lot of people in that industry, they’re still very thankful for us for that one. Obviously one of the main purposes for us, but for the community as well, is to push further mass adoption towards cryptocurrencies and towards Bitcoin. It’s good for us because the more people that are into cryptocurrency the more likely they are to eventually have a bet and eventually have some fun on our website as well. And obviously the more adoption there is in the crypto industry world as well, the higher the price of Bitcoin will be, and it will be quite profitable not only for the community but for us as well. So it was a win-win situation by having that Bitcoin on the sleeve.

Carlota Pico 8:35
Well, it sounds like you’re completely disrupting the sports gambling industry, because traditionally sports gambling has always been in currency, in cash, and in transfers and euros and dollars and name the type of coin that you’d like, but to actually be trading and be gambling in Bitcoin is quite a differentiator. How hard is it to market your product to different countries? Because each country has its own legislation when it comes to online gambling. So there must be a huge challenge for you in social media in terms of how you communicate with your audience.

Joe Lemmens 9:22
That’s correct. And that’s something that’s always said to us. Once you can do marketing into betting, you probably can do marketing in every single industry, because we have a lot of legislations that we need to take into consideration. So especially in the UK markets, because of the sponsorship that we are having over there, we need to make sure that we are definitely targeting people that are over 25. We can’t use people that are looking under 25 in any of our marketing communications that we are pushing out. So these are some things that we definitely should take into consideration. On a bit more country-specific level, we are in a state of development right now as well. So we still need to set up a lot of things. But a thing that we already see right now is, when it comes to countries, that some of the countries, especially countries where people are not that good in English in general, I’m thinking of Japan, I’m thinking of Brazil, we will need and we do have for some markets already some country-specific pages that are purely focused on the audiences we have over there, because working on a global level is not as easy as it seems. A lot of different countries, they engage with your content in a different way. The people they want to see different sports, they want to see a lot of content pushed in a different way. So we try to cater for a couple of our key markets in a very specific way.

Carlota Pico 11:07
Okay, are you also going to follow the same strategy when it comes to your influencers and ambassadors? Are you going to be looking for local influencers, local ambassadors that can attract the local audience that you’re trying to move towards your platform?

Joe Lemmens 11:24
When it comes to the crypto industry, we see that these influencers over there, they have quite a global audience. It’s obviously a bit depending on where they’re based, but we see that they attract a bit more of a global audiences. So we have, on one side we have the crypto influencers. On the other hand, we have the more sports-focused influencers. For the more sports-focused influencers, we try to cater them and we try to get a bit more specific influencers for the specific markets that we are targeting. For example, for the Brazilian market, one of our biggest ambassadors that we have over there is Denilson. Denilson is a player that used to play for the Brazilian national team. A couple of, well it’s already tens of years ago right now, but he used to be a big star in Brazil. And we know that he got such a big influence in Brazil, that we just need to set him up for the Brazilian market and let him work his magic over there.

Carlota Pico 12:35
Okay. The next part of the interview will be structured into three parts. We’ll be talking about social media, we’ll be talking about content marketing, and then we’ll also be looking at localization and translation. We have touched upon all three topics already, but I want to dive further into each one of the sections to understand better your strategy and also your future goals. So let’s start off with social media just because that’s your specialty. The Coingaming Group currently has around 400 followers on Facebook, 240 on Instagram, and over 3,600 on LinkedIn. Do you target different audiences per channel? It looks like LinkedIn is working particularly well, and I’d like to understand the reason why, the reason behind that.

Joe Lemmens 13:22
So I should give big cue just to our team when it comes to The Coingaming Group socials because they’re fully managed by them. And obviously, all of these channels, they serve different purposes when it comes to what they’re actually meant to do. Indeed, our LinkedIn, our Coingaming Group LinkedIn is working quite good. And we make this quite a focus area for us as a group as well. Because if people will see that your company culture is good on LinkedIn, and that’s something that, that’s someone that’s looking for a job or someone who is looking to make a deal on a B2B area, it’s one of the first things that you will always do is actually have some research on the group and the company that you’re going to work for or that you’re going to make a deal with. So, we do have a focus on these social medias in order to get the right employees, in order to get some successful deals in as well. And then we try to get our Facebook for The Coingaming Group up to date as well. So we are having a bit of more focus on there as well, and same that we are doing for all the other social medias when it comes to The Coingaming Group. We try to make our company as attractive as possible for potential employees as well.

Carlota Pico 14:56
Awesome. Let’s take a step back then, or let’s take a step forward. So The Coingaming Group is the overall umbrella, and within The Coingaming Group, we have several different branches. You currently manage the Sportsbet.io branch, is that correct?

Joe Lemmens 15:11
Correct.

Carlota Pico 15:11
Okay so let’s talk about the social media strategy of Sportsbet.io, because I think you’ll be able to speak towards that much more fluently than towards the entire group strategy. When it comes to Sportsbet.io, I understand that you’re following influencers, ambassadors, and you’re also engaging in different sponsorship activities to draw more attention to the brand. When it comes to social media, are you posting several times a day? Are you posting only once a day? What type of content are you uploading? How are you really trying to attract the audience that will be your clients?

Joe Lemmens 15:53
So for the Sportsbet social medias, we have different strategies per platform. Something that we we found out is that on Twitter, we have a very crypto-related following base. So these are people that are more into cryptocurrencies, that are really focused on these more financial things and they’re a bit more into betting as well. On the other hand, on Instagram, something that we clearly see over there is that we’re having a lot of following base that’s more interested into sports in general. A lot of our following we got off the back of some of the activations we did in the past with Watford as well. So we got a lot of Watford fans over there as well. We got a lot of fans that came on the back of some of the partnerships and some of the things we did with Mia Khalifa as well, which we had as an ambassador for some time as well. So we are really focusing on these two social media platforms. And because we know that on Twitter content is really a bit more swift, and is a bit more fast paced, we try to cater a lot of the content that we have on Twitter as well, which is a bit more betting related, which is a bit more financial related, which is a bit more about Bitcoin and crypto in general, because we know that our audience over there is more likely to engage with that specific content. So that’s something that I really feel that you should always do is get a good understanding of which of your audiences is on which platform and which is, which would be your focus platform for which audience. On Twitter, we try to post on average two times a day, I would say. On Instagram, we try to go a bit for more graphic content and we try to limit the amount of posts we have on Instagram and focus them a bit more.

Carlota Pico 18:02
I want to talk about blogging, because blogging also seems to be one of your content marketing strategies. I’ve been on your website, I’ve seen that, when it comes to blogging, Sportsbet.io does have an active blog that’s only in English. Why is that?

Joe Lemmens 18:21
We do have blogs in other languages as well. But it’s depending on your geolocation, obviously, and depending on the language that you select in our site. So why do we have a blog and what’s crucial and what’s the main reason behind having this blog, is obviously to get some relevant content for the specific countries that we are targeting as well. So we have a blog in Portuguese for the Brazilian audience. We have a blog in Japanese as well. We have a blog in English as you correctly pointed out. So having a lot of relevant sports-related info is very crucial if you want to get some customers in as well. And a big part behind having these blogs on our website as well is to get our rating on SEO, to get that rating up as well, because we try to use a lot of tag words over there as well, that’s pushing Sportsbet up when it comes to SEO.

Carlota Pico 19:28
Okay, well since I am in Spain, I understand that that’s the reason I’m seeing your blog only in English. I have gone on the website, though, as well. And I haven’t seen other languages being offered. I’m not sure if that’s because of the settings I have on my browser. But regardless, I want to still focus on the content that you’re uploading to your blog. Are you regularly uploading content per week, two times a week? And are you translating that content into several different languages? Or are you adapting the content, for example you said Portuguese, to the Brazilian market? But would you… is that a translation from original content that was written in English for example? We are moving into the translation and localization part of our interview with this question.

Joe Lemmens 20:17
Okay. So it depends on the article. Some of the articles that we write are very market specific. For example, something that you can see is that in Japan, for example, they are watching a lot of different sports than we are right here in in Europe. When it comes, for example, to football, we will write the main article in English and then we will translate this article into all the relevant countries where people watch football as well. When we will have a sport which is for example, very country specific, we will write the base article in the country where it’s catered for. And depending if it would be a bit relevant for other countries as well, we might be able to translate it back to English or we might be able to translate it back to another language. But depending on what the key focus of an article is, that’s how we decide in which language we will actually write the original content.

Carlota Pico 21:31
That seems like a lot of work and a lot of time. How do you manage all your time?

Joe Lemmens 21:39
So I must be honest, it’s not me who is writing these articles. And we have a team who is focused and who is consisted of a lot of different nationalities and people who are focusing on a specific language, who are focusing on a specific sport. And we have really content writers who are dedicated to, for example, one language or who are dedicated to one sport, because as you probably have seen as well, we have quite a lot of content when it comes to blogs on our website as well. So it’s impossible to have all this content managed by one person.

Carlota Pico 22:22
That’s why I was saying, tell me your secret, because I’d find it quite an achievement if you were able to manage all the languages, all the content, social media networks, absolutely everything, wow.

Joe Lemmens 22:34
No no no, I’m not there yet. I’m not there yet. I’m trying to work on it, but I’m not there yet. We have a very good dedicated team on that one who is writing a lot of articles, so very, very thankful for them, to have them writing all these articles as well.

Carlota Pico 22:52
Yeah. On the same topic, because although we are talking about translation and localization, that topic crosses over to content marketing, crosses over to social media. When it comes to social media, do you have one page, one Sportsbet.io page per market that you’re interested in operating in, or that you’re already operating in? Or do you have one page for the entire branch of The Coingaming Group?

Joe Lemmens 23:25
It’s all depending on one, the brand, because all of our brands they have different focus areas and they have different target areas. I can give you a bit more, a bit deeper insights into the Sportsbet social media channels that we have set up right now. So we see that people that are following the global social media channels, these are mainly based in Europe, these are mainly based in countries where English is either their first language or their second language. For some of our other target areas, for example Brazil, we have some separate social media pages set up over there as well. So we have a Brazilian team focusing on these social media pages as well. They’re taking care of all the content that is appearing on our social media pages. They’re taking care of the local deals of the local influencers that we’re using in Brazil. The same, for example for India. India is… they speak English as well. But in India, we can clearly see that cricket is such a key focus area for people in India, and that if we would push this amount of cricket content on our global social media pages, that people on our global social media pages would think, hey, why am I getting all this cricket info? Why am I getting all these crickets visuals? This is not of my interest. So that’s how we define and how we decide which content we will push for which specific country.

Carlota Pico 25:19
Okay, that totally makes sense. So just as a overview for our audience, you have one page in English per network that’s targeting your international fluent English-speaking audience. And then you will have additional fan pages for other audiences that aren’t fluent in English or that prefer to communicate in their local language, or that have other interests that are very particular to the markets that they operate in. Is that correct?

Joe Lemmens 25:52
That’s completely correct.

Carlota Pico 25:54
Awesome. So we’re speaking the same language. We understand each other. Moving into the last part of our interview will be the rapid-fire questions. I do have a set of three questions about recommendations to other industry professionals, according to your interests, according to according to your experience. So what’s a lesser-known app or tool that you cannot live without?

Joe Lemmens 26:23
I must say, I’m not really using lesser-known apps recently. What I’m using a lot recently is, because of the work from home situation is Slack. Slack is something that I’m using on a, not only on a day-to-day basis, but on a minute-to-minute basis, basically. Obviously, all the calls that you’re having with Slack, same with WhatsApp, and same with Google Docs and Sheets. Google Docs and Sheets is so easy to just share your thoughts with different members of the team and having their insight straightaway, in one document as well.

Carlota Pico 27:02
Definitely. I use the exact same tools; I use Slack, I use WhatsApp, I use Google Docs. I also use a lot of other time tools. So time management tools that just help me break my day according to my priorities, because sometimes I have so many priorities that I just need something to like structure my 24 hours out.

Joe Lemmens 27:24
Exactly. Sometimes you just are too focused on something and then you completely forget about anything else that’s around you. And then your follow…

Carlota Pico 27:37
Oh, we just lost you. Joe, are you with us?

Joe Lemmens 27:42
I’m still with you.

Carlota Pico 27:43
Awesome, good. Okay, so last two questions: a marketing influencer in Europe that you follow and why?

Joe Lemmens 27:52
I must say that I’m a bit biased on that one. I was lucky to work with Mia Khalifa, which you would probably know because of her former career. But right now she’s an Instagram influencer. And she is so smart in everything that she’s doing for her audience. And she knows perfectly how to entertain her audience, and what things she needs to post, and what things she needs to say, in order to get the engagement up as much as possible. So once you work with her, you know how smart she is in influencing her audience and the specific audience that she has.

Carlota Pico 28:36
What a privilege to have her as a mentor. I mean, not everybody can say the same, so definitely take advantage of her wisdom and her experience.

Joe Lemmens 28:46
I try to.

Carlota Pico 28:49
And hey, if she has some extra time definitely bring her our way. I’d love to have an interview with her.

Joe Lemmens 28:58
Go ahead.

Carlota Pico 28:59
A valuable European industry group, association or event?

Joe Lemmens 29:07
So I already told you that my passion is in the sports industry. And that’s why I’m getting a lot of information from Sports Business, which is an industry group as well. I use it a lot for my own personal career growth, and to stay up to date with the latest developments that are happening in sports, which kind of activations that some sports-related companies are doing, which influencers they all sign up, which deals they sign, and it’s just a great way to keep up to date with new products, new activations and new brands that are being launched that we can engage with as well.

Carlota Pico 29:50
Awesome. Well, that’s a wrap and those are fabulous tips, to not only jump upon because I’m gonna take you up on some of those tips as well. Once I’m done with this interview, I’ll have to see how my networking capabilities can get me to Miss Khalifa. And then also, I’ll have to check out the industry event that you kindly suggested as well because although sports isn’t my playing field, I do love sports on a personal level. I am a Real Madrid fan. So I oftentimes follow soccer, football by European vocabulary.

Joe Lemmens 30:29
Not sure if that’s a good thing. But let’s talk about that later.

Carlota Pico 30:35
We’ll have a conversation about that, Joe, off the record. Well, that was Joe Lemmens on behalf of The Coingaming Group. He’s global social media manager for Sportsbet.io, for an interview for The Content Mix. Joe, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure to have you here with us.

Joe Lemmens 30:54
Thanks a lot for having me, Carlota.

Carlota Pico 30:56
And to everyone listening in, thank you so much for joining us as well. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out TheContentMix.com. We’ll be releasing new interviews like this one every week, so keep tuning in. Until next time, see you soon. Ciao!

Joe Lemmens 31:13
Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai