I love daily fantasy sports and I am dying to build a business around it. But how do I stand out in a saturated market where a new DFS website is cropping up every day? You probably go to bed every night with these questions only to be woken up troubled in the morning without many answers.

As you see more fans joining the likes of FanDuel and Draftkings, you often wonder if you will ever make it that far. Good news is there’s a fair chance you can have at least a portion of their share of success. As we deal with apprehensions of various fantasy sports entrepreneurs almost every week, we end up giving them a checklist of promoting their fantasy sports website. We might as well share it publicly now.

It’s no rocket science that the two of your most common challenges on the way to promote your daily fantasy sports platform would be – a) oversaturation and b) tough conversions. So now divide your promotion focus into two parts – before promotion and after promotion.

1. Before promotion

Even some of the most stunning daily fantasy sports websites find themselves on the 300th page of Google search results. Why? Because they are founded on the “herd principle”. It’s best to get over it as soon as possible so you can truly understand a problem in a saturated market. Here’s how.

Choose a sport, not just another fantasy sports website

Identify a league or a sport that people want to play but don’t have many options. Basically, don’t build just another fantasy sports website. Instead, choose a daily fantasy football or basketball or golf platform. Each one of these games has millions of fans and followers who are dying to play these games their way. The 2017 Super Bowl registered the largest total audience in United States TV history, as 172 million Americans tuned into the game at some point. Imagine if there was a platform built only around the Superbowl! You may also consider focusing on certain leagues such as EPL, NFL or NBA if you feel a certain region needs an exclusive DFS platform on a league. We will later tell you how this focus helps in promoting the platform after launch

Identify demographic

If you are in the daily fantasy sports business without user research, you are really shooting in the dark. For a cricket-loving nation such as India, a daily fantasy football may not echo as much. Similarly, a daily soccer platform will not have as many viewers in America as much as that of football. But it isn’t that simple, is it? A deep demographic research also involves most searched players in the region, the professions, age and gender of your users, patriotic feelings at play when they choose fantasy sports platforms and so on. This understanding will go a long way into making you a leader in your niche daily fantasy sports sector.

2. Promoting a DFS platform

You may divide your promotion into pre and post launch periods. But we have incorporated both the time periods to make a list for you.

1. Free sign-ups
Always start with free sign-ups so you come across a platform giving away some DFS fun to users in a certain region. However, ensure that you the users get to earn bonus points, referral bonuses upon inviting others, rewards, badges and free rolls. Every DFS player must win something or the other to take home. This helps in spreading the initial word of mouth for your website. Fun and rewards can never go wrong. For instance, we have built DFS platforms where users get bankroll builder upon sign-up.

2. Target new audience
Dedicate a part of your promotion to newcomers or beginnings of DFS. Create educational content on your website to inspire new users to start playing. Creating easy levels and rewards to attract the early birds so they can bring in their friends.

3. A twist into the usual SEO/SMO strategy
Since everybody in your niche is doing the search engine optimization, how does yours really benefit your platform? If you have chosen a niche DFS platform, half of your SEO struggles are addressed already. The next step is to stand out by doing unique things like publishing reviews, educational content and news analysis on your blog. Fantasy sports players love any kind of knowledge and they would throng on to your platform if you continue to publish engaging and informative content. Similarly, start shouting out on social media even before your launch to build a curious audience. Create small organic campaigns around certain features of your platform.

4. Create a buzz around a sport
If you are focused on say NFL, it’s important to identify the ‘hooks’ that keep people hungry for more. Create news feeds, analysis, photo galleries, off-season activities around players, leagues or events. This will give you enough fodder for creating content continuously that would drive users. At Vinfotech, we embed such features right on the dashboard that has feeds of live matches of certain leagues along with chats so users can talk about it. This gives our clients valuable user data along with making users coming back to the platform.

5. Push notifications
These are probably the most undermined feature that needs to be recognized. Every little development or change happening on your platform deserves a notification to relevant users. This is the best way to get the attention of your users who are already using mobile phones for social networking and other online activities.

6. Provide tips
Don’t ever forget that even the most seasoned DFS player wants newer tips to try and experiment. Always be a platform that’s a treasure-house of DFS knowledge in terms of tips, suggestions and hints. Remember this kind of content gives you an excuse for push notifications and it is extremely share-able on social media.

Just as we often advise fantasy sports startups, we want you too to see the bigger picture more clearly as you consider building a daily fantasy sports (niche) platform. Of course, we are always around to answer your queries personally.