Influencer activations are a huge part of video games marketing in 2024 with social media leading discovery for video games across all other channels (GDC, 2024) and according to Humble’s 2023 survey, 31% of gamers first discover games they want to play via YouTube (Humble, 2023).
So how do we run an effective influencer marketing campaign without firing endless keys out into the void in the hopes of gaining traction?
Targeting
Firstly, your targeting is a hugely important factor in guaranteeing your video game influencer campaign success. Far too many agencies offer access to huge email databases with hundreds of thousands of names - or the opposite, a very small list of AAA influencers who can guarantee visibility, but cost the Earth.
Sending a cold campaign delivers little to no attention and worse, could land you on the naughty list. There’s a key balance between quantity and quality, which is why we use our influencer search engine to help build a bespoke influencer list for your game that threads the needle perfectly.
We begin by doing the research. Playing your game, learning what makes it unique, fun and exciting help us truly understand what we’re presenting. Next, we find games similar to yours and build out search queries with manually assigned bespoke tags for genres or playstyles, then add tags from wide ones like #RPG to ultra-refined like #cartoony or #supportscontroller. From there, we can build out a pretty accurate list of games across the venn diagram that qualify under the most tags, and refine the list accordingly.
The second step is to start to link the game with the content creators. We search for influencers who have played games that qualify for the most manually assigned ‘tags’, then refine further based on platform, recent play history, genre preferences, language or other elements such as maturity and tone. We now have a targeted list of influencers to approach for a campaign.
Interaction
Our work isn’t yet done, though! Ensuring the game is going to be truly interesting to those we message, we need to build a relationship with those influencers and ensure our outreach is personal. Hitting the right balance between quantity and quality, we begin to divide the list across elements such as viewer numbers, average watch time or follower count across social channels such as TikTok, Twitter/X, Instagram or others. We also check to see if their content has ever been tagged within games press, or whether influencers have appeared across podcasts or third-party media. Now we have an ultra-targeted list whom we can start to interact with ahead of time to ensure that our approach won’t be completely cold when the time arrives. These are the most valuable 10% of our wider list and we know they will love the game.
We interact on social, follow their updates, watch their streams and generally get involved with their work – providing value to them, even before the first email drops. When we send our messaging, we keep it light, to the point and human. This group of influencers is almost guaranteed to love the game, so all we have to do is present it in the best light and let natural interest take its course.
Stop Wasting Keys!
Now, where lots of agencies go wrong. How can we get keys into the hands of players without creating additional friction (making them submit a request ) or just firing them out into the wild like free Monster Energy at a games conference?
This is where the targeting comes in. For our ultra-specific list, we already know they’re going to love the game and know which platforms they will want to play the game on. There’s no harm in making the process as easy as possible for them, so we send them keys directly.
For the rest of the 90%, this is where things get clever. It’s not feasible to send our game keys to all, and we may not know the influencers well enough to guarantee their platform of choice. We employ a key generation system that generates a unique URL for each content creator that takes them to a page on our website. On the site, they can select their platform and generate their own key from a pool, avoiding wastage and increasing the likelihood of validation. Stop sending your keys out there into the hands of scammers to sell.
Looping Back
The final step is of course following up and checking in. We want to ensure players are happy with the game, didn’t experience any issues are in a place to stream or create content about it. A simple, heartfelt follow up is all that’s required. Influencers are people too and sometimes life gets in the way. A gentle reminder is great, but if we can help further by boosting their streams, sharing their content or even appearing on chat, we’re always happy to help and get involved. Most importantly, these relationships shouldn’t be forgotten! We aim to keep in contact with influencers via our clients’ social channels to build a permanent relationship that will last way into the future for the next game, and the one after that!
How do you run your influencer campaigns? Are you getting the conversion rates you’d like? Book your free 30 minute consultancy call here to sound out your approach.
George