Many businesses are struggling to gain the attention of their potential clients, and the methods for achieving these goals can differ a lot. In this blog post, Cloutboost uncovers one of the most efficient techniques for winning new players in the gaming industry–influencer marketing. Implementing the key learnings from this post in your video game marketing will help you advertise your game more effectively.

Quality content can make a great positive impact on your brand’s prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey. However, compelling content alone is not enough. To promote your brand, you need some influential backup voices to support your message. If you engage opinion leaders in the industry or social media influencers whose venue is Twitch or YouTube, you are likely to increase the chances for your brand to be seen, heard, and recognized.

By partnering with a social media influencer, you can get your brand’s message out there and have it heard by a wider audience, which translates into more prospective customers interacting with your brand. Read on to learn how gaming influencers can empower your game marketing.

Reasons To Partner With Gaming Influencers

You probably have a good grasp of the benefits of influencer marketing. In case you’re not convinced yet, here are some specific reasons to leverage gaming influencers for your game:

Influencers are Professional Content Creators

Influencers are recognized by their audience as they’ve done their work to make themselves stand out by creating unique content for a certain demographic. They know what their followers will best respond to and they can craft a message that will resonate with their community.

Collaboration between a brand’s content team and social influencers is a recipe for success. Combining your creative team’s efforts with the expertise of a social influencer can turn a piece of content into a masterpiece.

Cloutboost’s video game marketing case study for Sony Pictures Entertainment is a good example of how to create engaging influencer content. For this campaign we worked with CoryxKenshin, one of the leading YouTube gaming creators, to promote the upcoming release of the zombie film, Dead Rising: Endgame. The filmmakers tapped into the interests of the gaming community and provided a unique way to engage with the film. Our client, Sony Pictures Entertainment, saw firsthand how powerful the gaming audience on YouTube is. As a result, the content reached more than 1.5M views, 62K likes, and 16K comments.

Expert Tip:

To maximize the outcomes of your partnership with an influencer, you can repurpose the influencer-generated content. We have a whole article about influencer content repurposing, check it out to get some inspiration for your next influencer campaign.

Reach New Audience

The reality of today is that influential individuals can outperform brands and even media companies in their audience reach. If you get these folks on your side–you can dramatically increase the number of organic views for your content.

Let’s take a look at YouTube, where Gaming Video Content is massive. According to Google, 48% of YouTube gamers say they spend more time watching gaming videos on YouTube than playing games. The percentage of those who enjoy watching gaming video content is impressive as well:

Three quarters of YouTube gamers say they watch YouTube videos to learn how to get better at a game.

Image Source: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/advertising-channels/video/video-game-culture-youtube-trends/

Live streaming has also gotten huge and it is Twitch that drives the industry. The platform accounts for an average of 15 million daily active users. According to Streamlabs, Twitch represents 72.3% of the market share in terms of viewership:

Boost Organic Growth

The impact of gaming influencer marketing goes far beyond the clicks and downloads attributed to tracking links. Google Play published research that investigated the post-watch user journey of more than 250 game videos with over 60 million views. The findings are impressive:

For every person who clicks on the tracking link of an influencer video on YouTube, there are 4 more people who are not clicking but still download the game within four days after watching.

Win Trust

A recent report published by Tubularlabs compared YouTube channels of influencers vs media companies by their average loyalty levels. Tubularlabs found out that influencers tend to have a more loyal followership than media companies do.

Moreover, the research showed that the audience loyalty on YouTube differs heavily by content genre with gaming viewers being >50% more loyal than the average, proving these audiences stick to the creators they like and follow.

The American gaming influencer behind ClashWithAsh YouTube channel said to Google:

“Gamers are critical and skeptical by nature. If you’re marketing to gamers, it’s important to have someone who has already established trust with the viewers.”

The upshot is evident–you need real people to stand behind your brand. Recruit gaming thought-leaders as advocates to spread your brand message because a genuine recommendation from them will generate more credibility among their followers.

How to Work with Gaming Influencers: Tips to Keep in Mind

If done right, collaboration with gaming influencers can significantly boost your marketing results. However, to ensure rewarding outcomes from such a partnership, you need to approach influencers strategically. Here are several recommendations on how to effectively engage influencers in your gaming marketing activities:

1. Recognize The Influencer’s Expertise

Industry experts are bombarded with collaboration requests from brands and peer bloggers. Influencers are quite picky about accepting partnerships as they are wary of harming their reputation by entering a sketchy or mismatched engagement. Their major priority is to develop thought leadership, so they are looking to deliver valuable content to their audience.

When reaching out to an influencer with an offer to collaborate on your video game marketing campaign, appeal to the ideas and values your brand promotes. It’s crucial to demonstrate that your product will make a good fit for the influencer’s audience.

Connect with the influencer and brainstorm together on the best way to showcase your brand. Make sure that the message resonates with the influencer’s audience and is delivered in an authentic way.

2. Select the Right Creators for Your Video Game Marketing Campaign

Here’s where size does not matter. When looking for influencers, don’t focus on vanity metrics such as the number of followers.

It’s crucial to identify the right gaming influencers who lead the conversation in your domain. We recommend that you combine quantitative analysis (looking at additional metrics such as True Reach, Sentiment Score etc.) with manual revision of a channel’s relevance to your brand. When picking the ideal candidates, carefully look through their profiles and study what ideas they are contributing. It might turn out that people with fewer followers have gathered a core of your target audience in their circle.

Expert Tip:

Looking to learn more about Twitch analytics to select the right streamer for your campaign? Check out our blog post that breaks down the key Twitch metrics game marketers need to know.

3. Narrow Down the Audience

If you are going to promote a game with the help of gaming influencers, it’s important to look for those who create content in the same game genre. Here’s where the keywords come in handy.

Let’s say you are looking for influencers to promote a mobile RPG on YouTube. You’ll need to identify the YouTubers who talk about games in this genre. A free browser extension like VidIQ can help you get a deeper view of any YouTube channel or video. By looking at any video on an influencer’s channel, you’ll be able to see what tags are used for that video:

The tool will also suggest other search terms related to your keyword:

Shrinking your influencer pool by niche topics will maximize the affinity of the target audience and will lead to greater effectiveness of the campaign.

Free tools like this can help you with sourcing influencers for your campaign. However, as an established influencer marketing agency, Cloutboost uses its own proprietary software to make searching by keywords easy and effective.

To Sum It Up

In the age of the fragmented digital world, it’s harder to reach your target audience with traditional advertising methods. With the increasing consumption of online media, influencer marketing strategy is an ultimate ‘must-have’ for any marketing department.

Embracing influencer relations is a vital technique that helps reach more people with your brand message, establish trusted relationships with your prospects, and turn them into loyal customers.

Cloutboost believes that Twitch and YouTube influencer partnerships are an integral part of successful video game marketing. Our team has the expertise and industry connections to help you build a bespoke and impactful influencer marketing strategy. Speak with a Cloutboost expert today on how your brand can collaborate with gaming influencers by filling out this simple form.

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