- How to choose the best influencers for your game
- Published 21/04/2023
- 6 min Read
- Written by Julia Shandrokha
Table of contents
For marketers and brand owners, it’s essential to know how to choose the right influencers for your gaming brand – it’s a key to the modern audience that is heavily present on social media and trusts their favorite content creators more than any traditional ad source.
Influencer marketing offers unique opportunities that allow you to reach new audiences, increase awareness around your products and services, engage with gamers on a deeper level, and boost sales.
But without properly selecting your influencers, these strategies won’t be as successful as they could be. It is important for game brand owners to find the best influencers for their game by researching how well the candidate’s audience aligns with their game’s target demographic, evaluating engagement, and maintaining realistic expectations about promotions and ROI. When chosen carefully, influencers can successfully drive game downloads, increase game visibility and viewership on various platforms, and foster relationships between game developers and end users.
Additionally, having an honest discussion about expectations upfront will ensure that both parties benefit from any partnership formed moving forward. But how exactly do you discover relevant influencers to promote your game? And what are the important things that should influence your decisions? Read further to learn more about that and get some insights into the influencer marketing industry for gaming brands.
AN OVERVIEW OF INFLUENCER MARKETING AND ITS BENEFITS
Influencer marketing is a form of digital marketing in which content creators partner with brands in order to create engaging campaigns that generate attention and drive sales. This type of marketing offers the ability to showcase products (including games) or services in an authentic way and access a larger audience than would be available through traditional advertising.
While influencers’ posts can range from sponsored posts, product reviews, giveaways, challenges, stories, and more, these are all designed to raise awareness about the brand and encourage purchases. In the case of video games, influencer-generated content is often presented in forms of YouTube and TikTok videos, YouTube and Twitch live streams, and such, but they don’t limit to these formats only. Content posted by gaming influencers not only reaches customers directly but also creates trust between the customer and the brand since influencers have earned themselves followers based on their reputation for being impartial.
One of the advantages of influencer marketing is that it can be a cost-effective way to reach a large audience. Influencers often have a loyal following that trusts their recommendations, so partnering with an influencer can help a brand increase its credibility and reputation. Additionally, influencer marketing can help brands get user-generated content, which can be shared across multiple social media platforms.
Remember: to re-use influencer-generated content, a brand has to have a corresponding clause in the contract, agreed and signed by both parties.
HOW GAMES BENEFIT FROM INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing offers gaming brands a unique opportunity to tap into the networks of established opinion leaders in their industry, enabling them to spread the word about the game to a highly engaged and interested audience. Platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter allow gaming companies to access an even larger captive audience and establish relationships with leading influencers in their field.
Leveraging these influencer relationships has been found to be cost efficient compared to traditional advertising methods, while also resulting in significantly greater reach. In addition, multiple researches have also shown that when consumers are exposed to influencer marketing content, it increases brand awareness and leads to more conversions. As a result, businesses can truly maximize their marketing efforts by partnering with social media stars and engaging with gaming influencers who already have large followings and the trust of the gaming community.
Finally, a successful influencer marketing campaign can result in significant ROI. The report shows that influencer marketing ROI can be 11 times higher than that of other marketing channels. it offers the potential to reach relevant people who will be more likely to install your game or make in-game purchases.
To get the best out of influencer marketing, gaming brands need to carefully choose influencers who specialize in gaming and whose followers match up with the target audience. If done right, influencer marketing can be a great way to reach more people and spread awareness about a game.
WHAT YOU NEED TO CONSIDER WHEN SELECTING INFLUENCERS FOR YOUR GAME PROMOTION
Selecting influencers for your game promotion can be tricky – you want to ensure your influencers are the right fit and will get the most out of your marketing campaign. When selecting influencers, it’s key that they have a deep understanding of the game, as well as their own expertise in the gaming industry.
Ensure that the influencer’s posts match the voice and tone of your brand so it looks authentic.
Moreover, consider the influencer’s following – is their audience segment ideal for what you are trying to achieve?
Also, it’s important to look beyond simple metrics like follower count and average views when selecting influencers; it’s also worth considering things like age group and diversity (of genre or platform).
Finally, carefully look into influencers’ prior work with other campaigns to guarantee that their style meshes well with your goals for this one.
With these steps in mind, you can find influencers that suit both your gaming brand and your marketing strategy.
TIPS ON ENGAGING INFLUENCERS AND ESTABLISHING LASTING RELATIONSHIPS
As influencer marketing continues to grow, it is important for gaming brand owners to understand how to effectively engage influencers and establish lasting relationships.
Firstly, look for influencers that are relevant to your game and audience. For example, if you are marketing a shooter game, search on YouTube or Twitch for content creators that specialize in shooter games.
Also, assess the influencer’s engagement rate – the higher their engagement rate the more effective they might be as an influencer.
Furthermore, always provide influencers with one-on-one attention. Direct contact helps to build trust with them and create mutually beneficial long term relationships that can lead to sustained revenue streams in the future.
Pro-tip: find the influencers that are already interested in your game, even play it and create content about it and engage them. Such passionate influencers are more trusted as they create truly genuine and authentic content. Win their attention and make them your game’s ambassadors.
All of these steps help in creating successful partnerships with influencers that ultimately result in increased sales and better overall ROI.
EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGNS FOR GAMES
When it comes to game launches and updates, influencer marketing can be an invaluable asset for game brand owners. By leveraging the success and reach of popular game streamers and game-related influencers, companies can increase their visibility and game consciousness among gamers in a big way.
Successful case studies demonstrate how agencies experienced with gaming influencer marketing campaigns have achieved measurable positive impacts on game reception, via a tailored strategy.
For example, Famesters recently ran a series of influencer campaigns for Konami’s game “Getsu Fūma Den: Undying Moon”, reaching the click-through rate of 4.04% on YouTube and almost 26% on Twitch. All this resulted in an increase of game downloads, leading to strong gains in both game user base and game revenue. It’s easy to see why so many game brands rely on influencers as part of their wider digital marketing strategies.
Here’s another example that may interest you: the Yager case. Together with Yager, Famesters have been working on promoting its game “The Cycle: Frontier ” for 2 years. Our engaged influencers uploaded 200+ videos containing promotional content on YouTube and got over 23 million views. Read the case study to learn more about the challenges we faced and the results we achieved.
LET’S SUMMARIZE
In summary, the most vital factor in successful influencer marketing for your gaming brand is collaborating effectively with the right content creators. When finding and engaging influencers, you need to make sure they have the right audience size and demographics as well as an authentic passion for your game. You should also consider setting up a relationship agreement before launching a campaign with them.
Furthermore, even though it can be somewhat challenging in the beginning stages to coordinate campaigns with multiple influencers, working with an agency like Famesters can make this task simpler. This is because Famesters’ experts are proactive in selecting suitable content creators, monitoring each of their performance metrics and also provide data reports and support from A-Z. If you’re ready to take your gaming promotion to the next step by partnering with influencers and amplify the success of your brand, contact Famesters agency.
TAGS :
