Never before has there been such a surplus of media, yet so few people want to hear marketing messages. This reality has only intensified for casino marketers since 2020, when I first discussed the PESO model and how casinos could benefit from it. The pandemic changed customer behaviors, social media algorithms became more intricate, and the competition for attention reached a fever pitch.
Regional casinos face a unique challenge. You’re competing not only with other local properties but also with endless digital distractions, streaming services, social media feeds that never sleep, and other leisure activities. Your customers—those regulars who visit once or twice a week—are bombarded with marketing messages from every direction.
It’s time to rethink our media efforts—and by “media,” I mean all our communications.
This is an updated take on my 2020 article about the PESO Model, adapted for our current media-saturated world. Back then, many casino marketers began understanding how digital had changed the game. Today, we need a strategic framework that cuts through the noise, creates synergy between our efforts, and builds genuine trust with our communities.
Enter the PESO Mode, a framework that can help regional casino marketers maximize limited resources while creating exponential results.
The PESO Model, created by Gini Dietrich and her team at Spin Sucks, categorizes all media into four strategic categories: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned.
But here’s the critical point that most marketers miss: “The most common misconception is that the PESO Model is a checklist—something you ‘do’ by choosing tactics from each media type. That’s not the PESO Model. That’s a list of tactics that create activities. Doing it this way creates linear results,” explains Dietrich.
“However, the power of the PESO Model lies in how the elements integrate. When paid, earned, shared, and owned media work together strategically, the results are exponential.”
Here’s another key insight: While Dietrich chose the acronym PESO to make it memorable, it doesn’t reflect how you should implement these strategies. The most effective approach flows as Owned → Shared → Earned → Paid. Each stage builds upon the previous one, illuminating insights that make the next step more effective.
This sequential approach is exactly what regional casinos need. You can’t afford to waste budget on disconnected tactics. Every marketing dollar must work harder, and every piece of content needs to serve multiple purposes.
Let’s break down how each element works specifically for casino marketing and recommend the order in which you should implement them.
For resource-conscious regional casinos, owned media should be your starting point. This includes your website, FAQ sections, player guides, email newsletters, and SMS communications.
“Start with owned media. It’s the most cost-effective; you control it and can guarantee the right messaging and storytelling,” Dietrich explains. “By developing useful, findable content—think FAQs, local interest stories, or employee expertise—and optimizing it for search and sharing, you create a foundation.”
“In 2025, your owned media isn’t just a blog—it’s your digital backbone. It must be optimized for AI search, reflect your experience and expertise (E-E-A-T), and provide real depth,” says Dietrich. “This means that your content must demonstrate what is different about the brand, your subject matter experts, and your leadership.”
For casinos, this expertise content doesn’t require a corporate blog or white papers. Consider practical, helpful content that showcases your team’s knowledge:
This content demonstrates authentic expertise while giving you material to repurpose across shared, earned, and paid channels.
Starting with owned media gives you content you can then adapt and repurpose for the other three channels. It also helps you understand what topics resonate with your audience before you invest in amplification.
Key metrics to track are website traffic and time on page, content downloads, email open rates, and, most importantly, conversion flow from content to reservations or visits.
Now that you have owned content as your foundation, shared media leverages your internal and external community to amplify your message. This is where regional casinos can truly shine.
“Start with what you already have: your people, your events, and your community. Encourage staff to share their stories. Highlight winners or behind-the-scenes views on social,” Dietrich recommends.
Your intimate scale is an advantage here. In Las Vegas, casinos have thousands of employees. You know your team members by name, and you can feature their stories, expertise, and genuine enthusiasm for your property.
Take that owned content you created—perhaps a guide to poker strategy or a behind-the-scenes look at your kitchen—and adapt it for social sharing. Use Instagram Stories for behind-the-scenes moments, create short-form videos showing game tutorials or winner celebrations, and develop Facebook groups for your most loyal customers to connect.
The insights you gain from shared media—which content gets the most engagement, what questions people ask, what stories resonate—become invaluable intelligence for your next steps.
Remember Dietrich’s crucial point: “This is not ‘free media’—it takes structure and planning.”
Key metrics to track: engagement quality (meaningful comments, not just likes), social referral traffic to your website, and growth in your most engaged community segments.
Earned media becomes much more strategic with owned content created and shared media showing you what resonates. You now have proof points about what your audience cares about and content already tested in the market.
Earned media has evolved far beyond traditional public relations. While third-party credibility remains incredibly valuable, the sources and opportunities have multiplied.
Dietrich’s advice: “Use owned content as a source for contributed articles or local media pitches.” That research report about local gaming trends you published on your website? Pitch elements of it to your local business journal. And the FAQ section addressing common misconceptions about your property might be the perfect foundation for a contributed article in your regional tourism magazine.
For regional casinos, earned media opportunities include hyperlocal partnerships with chamber of commerce publications, local sports team newsletters, community event coverage, and collaborative content with other local businesses.
The beauty of approaching earned media third is that you pitch confidently. You know your content works because you’ve seen the engagement. You understand your audience’s interests because you’ve been listening to their responses.
Key metrics to track: referral traffic from earned placements, backlinks to your website, email signups from earned content, and foot traffic spikes following media coverage.
Finally, paid media becomes the strategic amplifier for everything you’ve learned and built. By this point, you’re not guessing what might work. You are investing in what you know works.
Paid media includes traditional channels plus digital innovations: OTT streaming ads, social media advertising, geofencing around competitor properties, programmatic display, and remarketing to website visitors. Dietrich’s key insight is that “Paid shouldn’t stand alone—boost content that’s performing well organically.”
If your behind-the-scenes video of dealers preparing for a tournament got significant engagement on your social channels, use paid promotion to amplify it. If your contributed article about local gaming economics drove considerable traffic, sponsor it to reach a broader audience.
You’re not creating separate paid creative when you already have proof of what resonates. Your owned content provides the foundation, shared media shows you what engages people, earned media gives you credibility markers, and paid media scales the winners.
Key metrics to track are the cost-per-click to your website, new email signups, conversion rates from digital ads to visits, and the cost-per-acquisition of new players.
Instead of managing four separate media strategies, Dietrich recommends creating “mini campaigns” that integrate all elements. Here’s how this works for a regional casino:
Scenario: Hosting a charity poker tournament featuring local business leaders and radio personalities
Step 1 – Owned: Create a dedicated tournament page on your website featuring participating celebrities, the benefiting charity’s story, tournament rules, and registration information. Include profiles of the local personalities and why they’re supporting the cause. This becomes your content foundation and helps you understand what aspects of the story resonate most with visitors.
Step 2 – Shared: Based on what performed well on your owned content, encourage participating celebrities to share their preparation stories and reasons for supporting the charity. Your staff can post behind-the-scenes content of the tournament setup and celebrity arrivals. Create social content featuring practice sessions and celebrity trash talk. Monitor which posts get the most engagement and what questions people ask.
Step 3 – Earned: Pitch the tournament story to local media outlets using insights from your shared content performance. You now know which angles resonate—maybe the charity’s impact, the competitive banter between local personalities, or the community coming together. Offer exclusive interviews with celebrities or charity representatives. Provide media with compelling photo opportunities during the event.
Step 4 – Paid: Boost the best-performing social content to reach fans of the participating celebrities and supporters of the charity. Use targeted ads to get people interested in poker or charitable giving in your area. Geofence around related businesses (the celebrities’ companies, charity locations) to promote the event. You’re investing in what’s already proven to work, not hoping something will stick.
“A simple and small integrated PESO Model campaign,” as Dietrich says. Each element supports the others, creating a multiplier effect that a single tactic never could.
As casino operators, we love our metrics. However, measuring marketing purely by revenue only tells part of the story, albeit a very important part.
Think about your casino’s sales funnel: everyone who considers visiting (audience) → everyone who walks through your doors (leads) → everyone who actually plays (customers). Marketing’s job is to build a large enough audience to drive sufficient foot traffic so operations can convert visitors into players.
Using a simplified example: If your analysis shows that every 10 people who enter generate one player worth $100 ADT, then each person walking through your door represents $10. Need $1,000 in ADT? You need 100 people through the door. Now you can work backward to determine how much web traffic, email engagement, and social interaction you need to generate those 100 visits.
Dietrich emphasizes that modern measurement must include “outcomes: leads generated, conversions, engagement quality, and trust signals (like backlinks or earned coverage in high-authority sources). With AI search altering how content is discovered, authority and credibility metrics are more critical than ever.”
This means tracking not just clicks and impressions, but also:
One of the most significant missed opportunities for regional casinos is employee advocacy. “Employees are your most credible—and often underused—advocates. Equip them to share content, celebrate wins, and engage online. Their networks often outperform official channels,” notes Dietrich.
Your team members have deep roots in the community. Their networks include exactly the people you want to reach. When your poker dealer posts about last night’s tournament excitement, or your restaurant manager shares the story behind your chef’s special, it carries more weight than any corporate post.
I recently explored this concept in depth in my article about creating in-house influencer programs for casinos. The data is compelling: employee-generated content sees 8x higher engagement than brand content, and in-house programs typically cost 60-80% less than external influencer campaigns.
But here’s the key insight for the PESO Model: your staff aren’t just creating shared media content—they’re providing authentic material that can flow through all four channels. That behind-the-scenes video of your chef preparing the daily special becomes owned content for your website, shared content for social media, a story angle you can pitch to local food writers (earned), and proven creative you can amplify with paid promotion.
The beauty of starting with owned content is that you can identify which staff members are natural storytellers before you invest in training them for social media. Maybe your slots manager has been writing detailed game explanations for your website that customers love. She’s perfect for creating shared content that showcases your gaming floor expertise.
Create simple guidelines for employee sharing, provide them with content they can easily adapt, and celebrate team members who become natural ambassadors for your property. Your intimate scale means every voice matters more, and your community connections run deeper than any corporate casino can replicate.
Regulated industries often struggle with the PESO Model because of approval processes and compliance requirements. Dietrich offers practical solutions:
Dietrich advises, “Create content blocks that will allow you to pick and choose from already-approved content.” If, for example, you create a long-form video that gets approved in its entirety, you can then break that down into smaller pieces and not have to go through compliance again to get approval.
She also recommends building “compliant workflows for approvals in shared and earned media. Some of our regulated industry clients aren’t allowed to share media stories on social media, for instance, so we lean on contributed content where we control the message.”
The key insight: “You don’t have to move fast to move strategically.”
Ready to implement but not sure where to start? Here’s a practical roadmap:
Month 1: Foundation Building
Month 2: Launch Your First Mini Campaign
Month 3: Analyze and Scale
The PESO Model isn’t about doing more marketing but making your marketing work smarter. As Dietrich emphasizes, regional operators should “start with owned media. It’s the most cost-effective; you control it and can guarantee the right messaging and storytelling.”
From there, stack your efforts rather than spreading too thin. Use owned content as the foundation for shared social posts, earned media pitches, and paid amplification. Even small integrated campaigns create exponential results compared to isolated tactics.
Remember that your intimate scale and community connections aren’t limitations but competitive advantages. While larger casinos struggle with corporate bureaucracy, you can pivot quickly, personalize deeply, and build genuine relationships.
Your customers don’t need the bright lights of Vegas. They need authenticity, community, and experiences that feel personally relevant. The PESO Model helps you deliver exactly that, even with limited resources.
The key is integration. Stop thinking in silos and start thinking in systems. When your owned, earned, shared, and paid efforts work together strategically, the results aren’t just additive—they’re exponential.
A strong brand can be your ultimate differentiator. It's not just about having a catchy…
Authenticity wins in regional casino marketing—and it starts with the people already on your floor.…
Rebranding isn’t just about changing your logo—it’s about changing perception, experience, and sometimes even operations.…
Digital may dominate the dashboards, but traditional casino advertising still dominates hearts. In a world…
Player churn is one of the biggest threats to casino revenue and the easiest to…
The expectations of today’s casino guest have evolved — and so must our marketing. What…