The Best Way for Gaming Influencer Marketing
A fresh, fun, and engaging way to interact with consumers is the Holy Grail of any brand marketing. In search of it, modern marketing has turned to games and gamer influencers. Is gaming the right choice for your brand? How can you find the right gaming influencer agency?
- Why should you include gaming influencers in your marketing strategy?
- Who are gaming influencers, and how to reach them?
- What are the types of gaming influencer agencies, and how do they work?
- How to choose the right gaming influencer agency for your needs?
Why Should You Include Gaming Influencers in Your Marketing Strategy?
Regardless of age, people love games. The statistics speak for themselves! Gaming is a fun and engaging activity. The potential to build positive connotations is higher than in any traditional media. Gamers are the passionate, tech-savvy and ambitious audiences brands dream of connecting with.
Plugging into the gaming culture lets innovative brands build a strong presence in the gamer audience. There are many ways to include gaming in marketing activities. If you are interested in them, check out our article [LINK].
TL;DR: one of the fastest and most effective ways is to connect with gamer influencers.
Who Are Gaming Influencers, and How to Reach Them?
Gaming influencers are creators whose content revolves around games and the gaming culture. It shouldn’t be a surprise that in Internet culture, based on video content, the most popular ones are YouTubers, Tik Tokers and live streamers.
Streamers, in particular, have considerable potential to present and promote branded content. During streams, creators interact in real-time with their audience. This way, viewers somehow turn into co-creators of live stream broadcasts. Interactions such as this form a tight bond between the streamer and their community. For a brand working with gamer influencers, it means:
- Trust. Gaming influencers are perceived as experts in their field. So, if the streamer promotes a brand, it’s considered a good choice.
- Loyalty. Viewers appreciate brands supporting their passion and are loyal to them.
- High engagement and excellent CTRs. Streamers, know that the results of partner campaigns impact their channels. So, they encourage their viewers to view and engage with sponsored content.
- Establishing brand awareness. Entering the gamer’s world as a supporter, not a product pusher, changes the brand perception. While gamers hate ads, they love their culture, so respecting it goes a long way.
Of course, you want your influencer ambassadors to match your brand identity. Finding the perfect fit out of thousands of creators is a challenge. Especially if you want to do it yourself. In-house research is a demanding process. This is why marketers turn to agencies and platforms connecting creators with brands.
What Are the Types of Gaming Influencer Agencies, and How Do They Work?
Influencer Marketplaces
These are portals and social networks focusing on a wide variety of influencers. From Instagrammers to streamers, these sites offer plenty of possibilities. The downside is the need to do some research. Sure, they help discover creators, but the deals are still made manually. This means that the contracts made through them are hard to scale.
They often tend to gather more traditional influencers rather than streamers. This is why some activations will not always fit the live streaming and gaming scene.
Esports and Gaming Influencer Platforms and Agencies
These solutions are the closest to a classic talent agency. In their portfolios, they usually have big and medium-sized streamers and pro-gamers. As with any celebrities, this also means more individualised sponsorships handled manually.
Scalability can be problematic here, due to:
- Individual negotiations of agreement terms.
- Manual campaign ‘setup and settlement
- Narrow (ca. 1%) penetration of the streaming scene
- These agencies are worth considering if you look for long-term cooperations.
Automated Micro-Sponsorship Platforms
As mentioned above, the gaming influencers scene is dominated by streamers and creators. Traditional agencies cannot reach deeper than the top one percent of the scene. This is true even with the ones focusing on the streaming scene in particular. With an average of 100,000 channels going live on Twitch alone, the scale of the scene is beyond the scope of any manual process. This is why automation of the sponsorships opens up a potential unreachable before.
With technologies like inStreamly, brands can work with gaming creators of all sizes. It may seem that smaller streamers without thousands of viewers on their streams may not be important. Working with hundreds of them at the same time though, the reach potential of any campaign.
What’s more, the communities of smaller creators have a personal bond with the influencer. This impacts the CTRs and ROIs for streaming campaigns. We know it from the experience!
How to Choose the Right Gaming Influencer Agency for Your Needs?
Gaming influencer advertising is a robust industry with many ways to work with creators. Agencies and modern platforms give brand possibilities never seen before. There is a difference between sponsorship and advertising, though the basics may seem similar. After all, the goal of both is to present a service, product or brand to the gamer audience.
The advertising wants you to notice it badly. For example, interrupting the broadcast to show sponsored clips is seen as advertising. And the gaming audience hates it.
Gaming influencers and their viewers welcome a more fair approach when it comes to sponsored content. The non-intrusive content presented in an attractive and engaging way works wonders. Viewers can become a part of the campaign. Especially if they feel that the sponsors want to support creators and not sell stuff.
To choose the right way to work with influencers first, ask yourself which path you want to follow.
