5 Things That Make Your Gaming Marketing Campaign Great

The gaming industry is one of the hottest topics for marketers in 2022. It’s a no-brainer, seeing as society has become a gaming society. According to Statista, there are around 3.1 billion gamers worldwide. Quick calculations show that about 40% of people in the world call themselves gamers – almost every second person you meet on the street play games.

Yet, the ultimate question is, how can we target gamers effectively? Influencer marketing, discount codes, or an extensive social media campaign? While there is no one answer about the overall strategy, some things can influence your gaming marketing campaign and its ROI. What are they? Let’s find out!

Table of contents:
1. Go for video content
2. Take advantage of the interactivity
3. Make your content inclusive
4. Be creative!
5. Be compatible with your target audience

Go for video live streaming content

Youtube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, Vimeo – we could go on and on. Video content is the king of the Internet. According to Interdigital, video viewing accounts for 82% of all internet traffic. And gamers love it. Years ago, the Internet was flooded with “Let’s play” clips. Gamers were creating commentary clips showing their playthrough. However, in 2022 the top form is live streaming.

The game provides context. The draw is the commentary and charisma of the streamer. People watch game streams because of how they feel about their favourite streamers, and  the numbers prove it. The monotony of battle royales, FPS, MMORPGs, and games with large player and streaming communities offer diversity by the individual characteristics of the streamer. About 64% of live streaming viewers claim that they are far more likely to support a brand that supports their favourite streamers. Working with gaming streamers can boost your sales, brand awareness, and image.

There are many ways you can use video content in your video game marketing campaigns. For example, you can:

• collaborate with streamers,
• enjoy product placement in both games and streams,
• create ads on platforms like Twitch or YouTube,
• +many more,imagination is the only limit!

Learn more about Gaming Marketing here. 

Take advantage of the interactivity

Gaming is all about interactivity. From mobile gaming to social media, everything is interactive. There are many strategies you can choose from, and not all will suit every user. To make the most out of it, you will need to select the most relevant channels and choose one (or a few) of the following activities.

Interactive Marketing Activities in Gaming Include:

• Advergames – stand-alone games created for the sole purpose of being an advertisement. This technique is no longer considered effective, with rare exceptions for advergames targeted to minors.
• Static and dynamic in-game advertisement – a marketing technique that integrates the ad with the game environment, becoming a part of the game itself. As opposed to the typical product placement, it allows for some interaction. Static in-game advertisement stays unchanged after implementation. At the same time, dynamics give the game’s manufacturer the power to control the ad content in real life. It declined in popularity after the rise of social media, though you can still find it in some modern games. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most expensive marketing techniques one can utilise in the gaming industry.
• In-game additional branded content – as the name suggests, it’s all about attaching other content to the game, such as a level, a weapon or a map, the advertiser brands that. This option requires a big budget.
• Gaming cross-promotion – combining the brand’s real-life offer with a special bonus in the game. As you can imagine, it’s also a technique that has proved to be a little pricey.

Make your content inclusive

The gaming audience is just as diverse as the world around us. So it would be best to consider it while creating your campaigns, ads, or even apps. Games like Fortnite or League of Legends went global partly because of their diverse and relatable characters instead of these stereotypical, perfect heroes you know from older games.

In the marketing world, you can hear from all over that we need to go niche. It’s true in most cases – adjusting the product to a niche is much easier than going global. However, gaming is global. All players differ. They are of different skin colours, genders, ages, cultures, and even unique gaming styles. That’s why creating a more inclusive and welcoming brand identity in your marketing campaign is crucial. 

The best way to ensure that your campaigns will be successful is to consider activities for a diverse audience. You can hire various influencers, address multiple problems, or adjust your campaign to each market, to name a few. 

Be creative!

Gaming marketing, like every marketing, needs to be creative. Playing games is all about fun and new experiences. A survey in August 2022 found that approximately three-quarters of gamers in the United States played video games as a stress relief. Additionally, 19% of respondents gamers strongly agreed with playing games to be together with friends, and 29% agreed with that statement.

Brands that want to blend in this world of impossible fun have to get ready for bold, new ideas. Fortunately, many platforms allow us to do just this. As mentioned before, there are many ways to make your campaigns interactive.

Additionally, you can also search for outsourcing solutions from industry experts. For example, inStreamly mechanisms allow you to create a gaming marketing campaign using AI to recognise game events and adjust artwork to them. Other mechanisms include:

• Chat voting.
• Changing artwork based on external data (like weather).
• Personalising by adding random nicknames from the chat.

Creativity can mean so much more than just new technology. Check out our article about the 5 most revolutionary gaming marketing ads and campaigns ever made for more inspo!

Be compatible with your target audience

Great gaming marketing campaign has to address the needs of the target audience. Social media can be helpful, but knowledge of your audience’s motivation is a key component. 

Gamers are not a homogenous group; they differ in their motivations. Players of games like League of Legends, CS:GO, or Dota 2 focus more on competition and excitement, while players from Animal Crossing or City of Heros are all about the fun of discovery, community or design. Take a look at the graph below.

Considering gamer motivations and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly will affect its effectiveness. If you want to know more about who gamers are and what defines them, check out the second module of our Gaming Marketing Course! 

Last words

And that’s it! Share this information with your team and start preparing your gaming marketing campaign and strategy for online presence! We hope it will help you develop the most notable campaign we could write about in our next piece. If you need more help, check out our guide on staying up to date with digital marketing trends and the top 10 gaming influencer platforms online!