Influencers are one of the most popular ways to promote your brand. Their sales are off the roof, young people love them, and overall – they are a significant investment in the long run.
But you have to watch out. There are many stories about influencers with paid subscribers, lots of shady activity, and just not being the best people on the planet. To combat those, we’ve prepared some influencer marketing strategies so you can reach your gaming audience.
We’re not going to be checking out some specific influencers; we’d instead focus on the influencer marketing platform to create a gaming community with some help from the more popular influencers.
Influencer marketing is only one of the ways to promote your product. Here, at GamerSEO, we can provide you with a comprehensive marketing package that can help you out with your marketing efforts! Contact us and we will respond with some ideas!
With that in mind, let’s get into some severe influencing.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
The internet is an excellent tool for taking the world by storm on your terms. It’s a great democratizer as you don’t have to sell your soul to the entertainment industry anymore; you can just go ahead and start your Facebook gaming profile and reap the benefits for yourself.
Social media platforms created many possibilities for influencers, and online gaming created a space for them to use their influence.
So, when big companies saw what was happening, they thought – well, we can go ahead and buy a TV commercial and we have no way of knowing if anyone would click it. Alternatively, we can give this guy some discount codes and be certain that their audience will use them.
Well, it seemed understandable then, and it feels understandable now.
Whether you have your product on multiple gaming platforms or want to promote mobile games, you should know that social media influencers have changed the marketing and gaming world forever. It’s now almost impossible to market gaming without the help of game influencers.
Video game developers know that and often give some early access games to most gaming influencers so they can put the gameplay on their Youtube channel or other social platforms.
What Makes Influencer Marketing Different?
That is the most critical question to ask. The main difference between your everyday ad-based gaming marketing and influencer marketing is something we’ve hinted at before, which is – interaction.
As a marketer, you have come across this problem multiple times.
“I keep sending money to the media, and I just can’t help to notice that I have no idea if it does anything. I have those analyses of the audience segments and how many people the ad reached, but it almost feels like extortion.”
Media companies tell the people from marketing that if they do not put out an ad, their competition will have an advantage but how much of it is true?
It’s an industry standard where a significant portion of the marketing pie goes to the same few TVs, same billboards, and radio stations because it was always like this, but does it do any good for the game publishers?
Direct Approach
Well, you can’t know that. With influencers, you can easily find out the number of views of the video with your ad just by looking at the view count. It’s public information. You can see that they talk about your product, use it, etc. You have follow-up links with unique codes and can see whether the codes were used or not.
So, to answer the question in the heading – the difference between traditional marketing and influencer marketing is that the captive audience of an influencer will get you further ahead.
You can see it through Reddit posts, Facebook groups, Instagram, and whatever you like. Gaming creators have a loyal audience of thousands interested in what they’re recommending.
You cannot also undermine the individual approach when it comes to influencer marketing. People feel as if they have a direct connection with the influencer and therefore, the recommendation of the product they are getting, feels more immersive. It shows up in the popularity of this advertisment model, like in the recent study where it was obvious that the future of online marketing will be heavily impacted by the influencer marketing.
Why Invest in Influencer Marketing?
Why should you be investing in influencer marketing? If you’re asking that question, you’ve probably slept through some marketing seminars over the last few years, but don’t worry – we’ve got you covered!
Influencer marketing is one of the world’s biggest growth industries, so it’s great to get your piece of that pie, especially when you’d hear about the benefits those influencers can provide.
With that in mind, let’s see some benefits of influencer marketing.
Audience Engagement
As we’ve mentioned, there is no similar audience engagement anywhere in the marketing world compared to influencer marketing.
Some of those kids are real-life Stans of the influencers and would do almost everything their idols tell them to. Of course, in influencer marketing, we mean within the realms of the law, there were some instances of that not being the case. There are many instances of hate-raiding done by fighting streamers, doxxing other people or just straight-up swatting like in case of IShowSpeed.
Nevertheless, influencers have a lot of “influence” over their audience, so they can really make a difference in product engagement.
Phenomenal Targeting
You don’t even need to consider the target audience if you have a gaming influencer and a game. It’s already there. You don’t have to reach or lure them to your product.
They are already, willingly, spending hours every day watching and listening to their favorite influencers. They follow them everywhere, whether it’s a Twitch stream, an Instagram post, or maybe some Tik Tok dance. It’s an excellent opportunity to seize for sure.
Best Demographic
Well, depending on the creator, most gaming influencers have young audiences that can be easily convinced of your product.
Demographics is the key to marketing, and kids watching gaming influencers can ask for your product from their parents if you market it the right way. Of course, everything has to be within the boundaries of some basic morality, but there is nothing wrong with advertising a game for kids. It’s something they seek out on their own.
Just remember not to advertise mature games to audiences full of young kids, as it may pose some issues in the future.
Not Only Games
Of course, it is not only games in the gaming influencer marketing, as we’ve seen time and time again with individuals like PewDiePie who made a whole meme about his gaming chair. Influencers do not limit themselves to selling games, they also sell microphones, mouses, keyboard and even whole PC units.
It just shows that the influencer marketing is alive and well and can only get progressively, well, more influential.
What Are Some Gaming Influencers Strategies?
Marketing professionals worldwide are working on making the best marketing strategies for influencer marketing, and not without reason.
Many loyal fans will try the product even if it’s not something for them because their idol recommended it.
So, if you’re interested in growing your product, pay close attention to those strategies, and you will surely get ahead of the game!
Coupon Codes
Whether you’re advertising shoes, psychological help, or anything else, influencer marketing is something you need to use. And one of the most popular ways people use it is to provide the influencer’s audience with special coupon codes they can use with a purchase.
It’s a great way of accomplishing a few things simultaneously. First, as we’ve stated before, it allows you some central tracking of new audiences. When you put out the unique codes for the influencer, you can see where the audience comes from. That way, you can have more names in your database and make sure that the influencers you’re working with are worth the money.
For example, if you’d pick the right influencers, you will quickly see their audience migrating to your website and getting your products to support the creator. But, if you choose more risky ones, you can see the audience slipping away from you or not even reaching the product.
So, make sure to get the best influencers for your product!
Early Access
Another great way to promote your game is to give the influencers early access. The gaming industry quickly learned that gaming influencer marketing campaigns could be just an experience of watching someone play the game.
Therefore, many games changed their scope to migrate towards massive online multiplayer gaming. No one would want to walk through a single-player game they saw someone already playing.
But we digress. The most important thing about this way of promoting your game is that the audience will be encouraged to play when they see how much fun other people have when playing it. Content creators have a lot of ways to engage with their audience. Gaming is one of them. Most of them would be interested in making a paid live stream, so if you want your target audience to be involved, it’s a great way to do so.
You can pay the influencers to play your game during the Livestream or give them an early access copy. Depending on the influencer’s size, you can negotiate some terms.
You have to understand that getting the hyped-up game early is also content for them, so they will be happy to work with you.
Giveaways
More and more influencers work with companies by providing giveaways for their audience. For example, let’s say they’re watching a stream during which an influencer is playing your game.
During the stream, they can put out some game giveaway codes or in-game currency for their audience. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. People are waiting for the discount codes, and influencers have an audience that is encouraged to stay during the stream.
On the other hand, the gaming company has people invested in the game while not having to put out a costly campaign on TV or elsewhere.
Of course, some giveaways will have to be paid, but it’s so much cheaper to pay a few influencers to get the talks about your product than having to pay the whole media conglomerate that will never be satisfied.
Ambassadors
Another great way of making influencers invested in your product is to make them ambassadors of the game or, for example, some of the fractions in the game.
That way, your personal PR company will be for their audience, talking up your product and constantly growing the hype for your business.
Gamers love when their idol has backing from the companies, and they will be more than happy to check out the product if their favorite influencer is an ambassador for it.
People are social creatures, and the engagement is enormous if they’re in a group.
So, if you work with influencers, try asking them if they would be interested in this partnership. It will probably cost a lot more than just getting coupon codes or something, but in the long run – you want someone hyping your product up from time to time. And creating a group of prominent influencer ambassadors for your game is interesting.
Micro-Influencers
Sometimes, it’s not advised to go big and grand. It’s best to go medium or even micro when it comes to other influencers. Brands found out that sometimes a way to success is by advertising their product through multiple channels and influencers on various platforms.
It may not seem that great at first glance, but in the long run – it’s beneficial to have this whispering campaign from multiple sources praising your product and engaging with it. Also, it may save you some money. Getting thousands of micro-influencers to talk about your product is sometimes a little cheaper than getting one big influencer that will ask for thousands of dollars for even mentioning your product.
Additionally, it is not the view count that matters, it’s engagement rate. Of course, you can buy dozens of views from India, but little to no one will buy your product. If you are an Instagram influencer who just posts some pictures of themselves at the beach without building a community, you will not be able to build a trust among your followers enough to market the product to them efficiently. That is why the engagement rate is much more important than simply how many people you can reach.
Gaming Influencer Marketing – Conclusion
As you can see, you can get many benefits from gaming influencer marketing. Plenty of people are using those strategies already, and it’s a growing industry to get into.
There are millions of gamers worldwide, and we can guarantee that most of them are watching some gaming influencers right now. It may be something different from what most PR/Marketing agencies are used to. Still, you can’t go wrong with influencer marketing when it comes to direct marketing with so many possibilities.
As you can see, the audience, demographics, and influencing quality are out there; you just have to make it your own.
Thanks so much for checking out our article; we’ll see you in the next one!
SEO specialist with over eight years of professional experience. A/B test and Data-Driven Search engine optimization enthusiast. In his work, he focuses on the development and implementation of a strategy that achieves predetermined, specific goals. Privately, a fan of mountain biking.