Your game has just been launched and you are so excited to promote it to the public. However, in today’s competitive game industry, it has become more difficult to increase visibility by using traditional methods. Game marketing becomes a tough quiz that the user acquisition team needs to address. So, here is our suggestion – Influencer Marketing

That is one proven method that Gamota found really effective nowadays. Many major brands are investing millions of dollars in it, ensuring their game reaches a wider audience and gains popularity

The Growing Impact of Influencer Marketing on Gaming

With the gaming industry growing quickly, game developers and publishers need to find productive ways of promoting their games to the target audience. Influencer marketing pops up as a powerful solution to achieve these goals. By teaming up with influential content creators who have a solid follower base, game developers and publishers can leverage their impact to drive brand awareness, increase game installs, and boost revenues

Influencer Marketing is an effective strategy for game promotion. But, carrying out a successful campaign requires careful planning and execution. Okay, let’s dive into each step of implementing an influencer marketing campaign that converts like crazy. 

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Step 1: Define Your Goals

Before jumping off to any idea, it is crucial to clearly define your goals. Normally, game development companies have two significant objectives: increasing brand awareness and increasing the rate of game installation or revenues. While these objectives are not necessarily exclusive, focusing on one based on your company’s vision and mission is important. 

In this step, you have to distinguish between a Branding campaign and a Performance campaign. A branding campaign focuses on boosting social metrics such as overall reach, views, and engagement, while a Performance campaign drives sales and earns a particular return on investment (ROI). By organizing your objective from the start, you can set realistic and measurable targets for your campaign

Step 2: Set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

To measure the success of your influencer marketing campaign, it is essential to determine key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs help you track and assess the effectiveness of your campaign based on specific metrics. Here are some common metrics that Gamota evaluates our campaign: engagement rate, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost-per-engagement, and return on investment (ROI). You should also consider these metrics if your company wants to incorporate running ads into the campaign: return on ad spend (ROAS), lifetime value (LTV), cost per view (CPV), and cost per install (CPI).  By setting clear KPIs, you can monitor the performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaign.

Step 3: What is your target audience?

You need to understand your customers, if not, how can you persuade them to download your game when promotional ads are becoming more unreliable? Influencer marketing is not an exception either. Knowing who your game attracts and understanding their preference, demographics, and gaming habits will help you with choosing the most relevant influencers who can reach and engage your target audience. Conduct market research, collecting insights such as demographics, geographics, and behavior to create perfect buyer personas. We always quote: “To know oneself is true progress”

Step 4: Choose an Influencer Wisely

Choosing the right influencers for your mission is essential for its success. You don’t want to select the influencer whose content is completely misaligned with your company product, right?  Searching for influencers who have an interest in gaming and align with your game’s genre, style, or target audience. Assess their engagement rates, follower demographics, and past collaborations to ensure they can successfully promote your game and resonate with your audience. 

Today’s trend is micro-influencers, with a more modest follower base but often convey more impactful results than macro-influencers. Partnering with Micro-influencers such as streamers, YouTubers, content creators, and gaming KOls is also more cost-effective.

You can consider using these tools to discover and manage the most suitable influencers for your business: AspireIQ, Upfluence, CreatorIQ, Traackr, HypeAuditor, and Famebit

Step 5: Comparing In-House Teams VS Agency

Planning your influencer marketing, consider whether to work with an in-house team or outsource an agency. The two choices have their pros and cons, of course. An in-house team offers better control, direct response, and possibly lower costs. Then again, agencies bring expertise, industry associations, and scalability. If your company already worked with influencers on the previous campaign and wanted to “copy and paste” the procedure again, in-house would be more suitable.

But if you want to scale up the campaign with a large budget pouring in such as Ubisoft’s “Rainbow Six Siege Creator’s Program – partnering with Twitch streamers and YouTubers to promote new in-game content and events,  an agency is a perfect choice. However, when choosing an agency, the in-house team must communicate properly with them, delivering all important details to come up with the final big idea. You don’t want both sides to bombard each other with meaningless deliverables 

Step 6: Be Creative and Collaborative, Influencer Does Need a Little Push.

Creativity plays a crucial role in an influencer marketing campaign. Encourage influencers to make exceptional and engaging content that highlights your game’s features, gameplay, and storyline. Consider providing the influencers with early access to the game, exclusive content, or in-game rewards that they can share with their audience. Team up with influencers to organize exciting challenges, contests, or live streams that generate buzz and encourage audience participation. The collaboration is an economic contract so the monetary incentive for the influencer is a must. The more creative and real the partnerships, the higher the chance of catching the attention and interest of potential players 

Your influencers do need a push but you have to deliver your message to them effectively. Tools such as Trello, Slack, Asana, or Google Docs are great options to streamline the campaign workflows and stay communicative with influencer partners

Step 7: Analyze Results and Optimize Your Campaign

Regularly analyze the results of your campaign to measure its impact and identify areas for improvement. Track KPIs and use analytics tools such as  Sprout Social, Hootsuite Insight, and Meltwater to collect precise information and insights. Learn from successful campaigns and continuously refine your influencer selection, content strategy, and targeting to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign.

Want access to the profound influencer’s profile? Choose Gamota

As a leading publishing company with 10-year experience, Gamota has launched many successful influencer campaigns in the past. We know best about our clients, target customers, and market, thus our influencer marketing campaigns for the mobile game have brought notable achievements such as +30M downloads, 25000 ARPDAU, and a game lifespan is 1.5 higher than the market. Gamota is proud to be a reliable and professional partner of a wide range of gaming KOls in Vietnam, from micro to macro influencers. So, rest assured, your game is going to rank high with our support.

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