Everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. And for marketers, being able to disrupt the status quo can be the difference between being successful and fading into the background. 

But what’s the secret to differentiating yourself? 

In part three of our Marketing Leaders roundtable series, we take a look at how iGaming marketers are going beyond the traditional notions of marketing to ensure that they stand out in what is quickly becoming a very saturated industry. 

This time, we speak to Martin Hodges (Co-Founder and CMO, BetComply), Robin Becker (Director of B2B Marketing, Hub88), Michael Baker-Mosley (Founder, Triumph B2B), Seder Baburyan (Marketing and Partnership Manager, PartnerMatrix), Dorota Gruszka (Head of Marketing, Booming Games) and Pierre Pulis (Marketing Director, BETBY). 

In the last five years, we’ve seen a lot of brands enter the iGaming space. What do marketers need to keep in mind when looking to differentiate themselves from the competition?

Martin Hodges: The big issue is that we all live in the same bubble. We follow the same people on LinkedIn. We read the same industry news. We all go to the same conferences. It’s no surprise that so much iGaming marketing ends up looking and sounding the same.

So don’t be afraid to see things differently. You don’t have to be controversial for the sake of it, but it’s OK to have an opinion. Some of the posts that get people talking aren’t announcing a new feature or another partnership. They’re the ones that make people stop and think because they see something from a different angle.

I’d also invest more in the people behind the business. As I mentioned, some of the strongest brands in iGaming have recognisable faces, not just recognisable logos. People trust experts. They follow people who share their knowledge and aren’t afraid to give an opinion. If you’ve got people in your business with real experience, give them a platform. It’s one of the most powerful forms of marketing you can have, and it’s something that’s incredibly difficult for competitors to replicate.

Robin Becker: Differentiation isn’t just about having a better product anymore – it’s about having a clearer identity. Too many companies spend months developing their product but very little time defining how they’ll position themselves within the market. Launching because your games are ready isn’t enough. Your branding, messaging and overall identity need to be ready at the same time.

That’s something we experienced first-hand at Hub88. Building the brand from the ground up reinforced how important it is to think about your identity before you launch, not afterwards. Every decision, from your messaging and visual identity to your product naming, should reinforce what your business stands for.

It’s also important to recognise that simply having a good product is no longer a differentiator. Operators have access to more suppliers than ever before, so they’re looking for businesses that solve problems rather than simply offering more content.

For us, that meant focusing on what we can do to improve the workflows for our clients. Instead of competing purely on the number of games available, we invested in tools that reduced complexity, streamlined integrations and improved the day-to-day experience for operators and suppliers. Those practical improvements became part of our brand story.

Differentiation also comes from consistency. Every marketing activity should reinforce the same message, whether it’s your product naming, media strategy, exhibition presence or social media content. If every touchpoint communicates something different, people won’t remember what your company stands for.

Above all, marketers need to be patient; building a brand doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, consistency and a clear vision. Companies that rush to market without thinking about those fundamentals risk becoming just another name in an already crowded industry.

Seda Baburyan: Entering a saturated segment of iGaming doesn’t necessarily mean inventing a new category, but it does mean having a clear reason to be chosen: a genuinely new product, a better solution to a known problem, sharper specialization, or stronger execution than what’s already established. A large budget can buy visibility, it can’t manufacture that reason on its own.

The more interesting route is real value no one else offers, the case where a brand can differentiate itself not through brand colors or booth size, but through what actual issue it addresses and what core vision sits behind why it exists. That kind of differentiation doesn’t need to compete on presence, because it isn’t playing the same game as everyone else on the floor.

But innovation alone doesn’t hold. It has to be communicated well and fast, because nothing stays new in iGaming for more than a week or two. The rest of the market will either fold it into their own functionality or improve on it and crash the newcomer that introduced it. So the real differentiator isn’t just having something new, it’s the speed and clarity with which a brand can claim it, communicate it, and be recognized as the source of it before the market catches up and erases that distinction.

Innovation gets attention. Positioning and consistent delivery make the advantage last.

Michael Baker-Mosley: There’s a lot to be said for distinctiveness and differentiation. I always come back to a simple question: if you can’t explain why you’re different from the rest of the market, why should you be there? And would anyone notice if, one day, your company wasn’t there?

Sometimes that difference is a better product. Sometimes it’s better service or deeper expertise. But marketers can’t invent that on their own. It has to come from working closely with your internal team to fully understand the products and industry that you work in. Marketers should collaborate closely with product, sales and the wider leadership team to answer a fundamental question: why do we need to be in this market?

Once you have that answer, marketing’s job is to own how that message is shaped, refined and communicated. Marketing shouldn’t own the product itself, but it absolutely should own the story around why the business deserves to exist and why customers should care. From there, it’s about defining the target audience, shaping the content to suit that ideal client base and communicating it consistently.

Alongside that, you need distinctive brand assets. Own a colour, a logo and a tone of voice. If possible, even own a sound. Just look at Netflix, the Apple ringtone or the McDonald’s jingle.

The strongest brands don’t just have a message, they’re instantly recognisable before you’ve even read the headline. That level of recognition only comes when marketing owns a distinctive position in the market and reinforces it consistently over time.

Dorota Gruszka: For me, the first thing marketers need to keep in mind is that being different and being memorable are not necessarily the same thing. You can create something unusual that gets attention for a few days, but the real challenge is building an identity that people consistently recognise and associate with your brand.

From a slot provider perspective, that differentiation also has to come from the product. Marketing can create the story and generate excitement around a game, but there needs to be something behind it – whether that’s a distinctive mechanic, strong creative direction, a particular style of game or simply a clear understanding of what players and operators are looking for.

Consistency is also incredibly important. It’s tempting to follow whatever is trending in the industry, particularly when you see competitors having success with certain campaigns or styles. But if everyone follows the same trends, eventually everyone starts looking and sounding the same. Having a clear brand personality and being confident enough to stick to it is what builds recognition over time.

I’d also say marketers need to really understand who they’re speaking to. Our audience is exposed to an enormous amount of content every day. More noise isn’t the answer. The brands that stand out are the ones that communicate something relevant, do it in their own recognisable way and then deliver on that promise through their products.

You don’t need to be everything to everyone. It’s much more valuable to understand what you want your brand to be known for and consistently own that space.

Pierre Pulis:The biggest thing is to understand the brand values. This should really be your starting point. Why does your brand exist? What does it stand for? Is it about being innovative? Being the best at what you do? Providing a cheaper solution?

Then, based on these core values, you can start to differentiate yourself and carve out a gap in the market where you stand out. You cannot just be overly generic and try to target the entire iGaming audience. It just doesn’t work like that. You need to understand who is the right fit for your brand and product, and then build your communications based on those values.

John Cook: I think that we sometimes overcomplicate differentiation. There’s a temptation to believe that standing out means doing something nobody else has done before, but being different for the sake of being different has very little commercial value. 

The question marketers should be asking is: are we different in a way that is actually beneficial to our customers?

The question is always relevant  because genuine product advantages rarely remain unique forever. You might launch a new feature, technology or service that gives you an edge today, but if it works, competitors will inevitably develop something similar. If your entire positioning is built around that one differentiator, what happens when the rest of the market catches up?

For me, sustainable differentiation comes from understanding where you can add value beyond the product itself. That might be the expertise within your team, the quality of the insight you provide or your ability to understand a particular market or operational challenge better than your competitors.

Marketing has a huge role to play here because it can turn that expertise into authority. If your team understands a challenge better than anyone else, demonstrate it. Produce the research, contribute genuinely useful insight and use events and media to become part of the conversations your customers actually care about.

Ultimately, you don’t need to be known for everything. In fact, trying to be everything to everyone is often the quickest way to become memorable for nothing. The strongest position is to identify where your business can deliver strong  value, own that space and give the market consistent evidence that you deserve to be there.