GameOn Founder Sarah Blackburn on Why Reputation Is What People Say When You Are Not in the Room | Exclusive Interview with iGaming News Today

Sarah Blackburn came into iGaming in 2005 from a PR background, and founded the B2B marketing agency GameOn around 19 years ago.

In an exclusive interview with iGaming News Today, she set out what she thinks actually builds a B2B brand in this industry, and almost none of it is campaign work.

Reputation is what people say when you are not in the room

Blackburn’s definition is borrowed, sharp, and worth putting on a wall. “Reputation is everything,” she told iGaming News Today, and as she put it on a panel at the Hipther Prague Summit, “it is what people say about you when you are not in the room”.

What earns it, in her account, is not messaging but delivery. “You have to deliver what you say. If you say your product is the best, then it has to be up there.” Say you offer great customer service and you have to actually offer it. That, she said, is what builds credibility in the market.

She put consistency alongside it as the other half: “Consistency is very important, and building relationships is key. You cannot have a great marketing strategy without these elements.”

Do fewer things, properly

The advice most likely to be ignored is the one about restraint.

“You should not try to do everything,” Blackburn said. “Choose the platforms and areas where you want to focus, PR, events, social media, and do them well.”

Where that leads is a positioning argument rather than a channel one: “It is important to find your voice, your niche, and be consistent.” And when asked how an agency stands out in a market full of agencies offering the same services, she gave the same answer again. Differentiation, she said, comes from finding your voice, being consistent, and building strong relationships, not only with clients but with media, event organisers and industry partners.

Everyone who works with you is a brand representative

The part most marketing teams leave out of the strategy document is the rest of the company.

“Your strategy should include your entire team,” Blackburn told iGaming News Today. “Your sales team, account managers, everyone that chooses to work with you, is a representative of your brand. They need to believe in what you are doing.”

At GameOn, she said, many of the team joined without prior iGaming experience, and what mattered was that they brought the same level of care to managing clients and understanding why relationships matter.

What else Blackburn covers in the exclusive interview

• How she moved from PR in finance and insurance into iGaming, and why she was pushed to start an agency
• What has changed in marketing across the past two decades, from print to digital
• Why she says relationships have to go deeper than the commercial agreement
• How she sees LinkedIn having levelled the playing field for the whole industry
• The competitive analysis work she uses to find gaps a client can own
• What GameOn is building next, including its intelligence and fractional CMO services
  
  

The full exclusive interview with Sarah Blackburn is published on iGaming News Today.