by Game Marketing Genie, on 11-Aug-2020 16:18:05
The marketing world has changed. No longer can you rely on traditional methods to sell your games. With today's gaming audience active on social platforms like YouTube and Twitch, working with influencers is one of the best ways to acquire new users for your game.
Influencer marketing is a massively popular marketing method and will continue growing. It is the fastest-growing online customer acquisition method ahead of organic and paid search, email, and display advertising.
Figure 1: Fastest-growing online customer-acquisition method Source: Tomoson
The reasons for this popularity are affordability and huge returns on investment. Also, there is the broad reach that comes with popular influencers. But how can brands measure the success of their game influencer marketing strategies?
While working with influencers has proven successful, it’s still challenging to determine the ROI. At Game Marketing Genie, we know influencer marketing and have made monitoring your campaigns easy with our campaign creation, launch, and tracking software AtisfyReach. But more on that later...
Let’s look first at why influencer marketing is the future and then jump into four ways to monitor the success of your gaming influencer campaigns.
Why is influencer marketing the future?
Every day we come across many advertisements. People find them annoying and avoid them — ignoring the calls to action. But businesses (including gaming studios) still need to advertise, so they must find other ways to capture attention.
Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to do this. We're not talking about when a celebrity appears in a commercial to promote a brand but when a thought leader tells their followers about something that will interest them.
An influencer marketing study from BrightLocal showed that 50% of consumers are happy to take action after seeing a good review. It's easy for people to buy a product or seek a service when they see others using it, especially those they trust. You've probably done the same! Influencers in their niches have earned their followers' trust, making them a great marketing asset for any brand.
They know the type of content that works for their audience, and their practical experience helps them present your product in the best possible way.
Figure 2: Influencer marketing ROI comparison Source - Mediakix
Regarding ROI, 89 percent of marketers say influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other channels. And we know that the ROI from influencer marketing is 550% higher than other digital marketing media ($6.5 earned for every $1 spent). These statistics show the impact influencers have on a recipient’s purchase decision.
We have highlighted more benefits of influencer marketing in detail in our blog on Atisfyreach: Why Influencer Marketing is the Future.
After identifying the right influencers to promote your game, you should also measure the success of your campaigns. Below we have shared the key indicators you should track to determine the success of your campaigns.
Awareness
One of the benefits of working with gaming influencers is their access to interested audiences, which can increase the visibility of your game. This is a critical step when you need to boost your brand awareness and create new relationships. There are a few metrics that will let you know the impact of your messages when working with an influencer, and they include:
Number of followers
How many followers does your influencer have on critical gaming networks like YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Instagram? This criterion should be considered early on, as it will give you a rough idea of how many people might view your sponsored content. The follower count will also play a significant role in determining the cost of your campaign since macro and celebrity influencers with many followers usually charge higher fees than micro-influencers with a small (but loyal) fan base.
To guarantee the success of your campaign, take the time to assess your influencer's followers to ensure they match your target audience. You should also check how many of those followers are authentic since some may be inactive or fake accounts.
Pro tip: Remember that a lot of followers doesn't necessarily mean a good ROI! Micro and nano-influencers often have a better impact.
Reach
Reach is an essential indicator in measuring the success of an influencer campaign as it indicates the number of people who view your influencer’s posts. This metric will help track how many new users became aware of your game and how well the influencer campaign reinforced your game to existing users.
Impressions
You should also check the impressions your influencer’s posts generate, as this will show how many times online users saw your sponsored content. Impressions correlate to brand awareness; as such, you will want to work with a creative influencer who will generate more visibility for your brand through their posts.
Conversions
If your influencer campaign is working, then you’ll be getting conversions. Your influencer should create a positive brand experience with their audience that will organically increase sales. You need to look at three things to determine how your campaign affects your bottom line.
Your conversion ratio
Your conversion ratio is the percentage of visitors to your landing page that converts. Game influencer marketing campaigns work to increase your brand awareness and this drives conversions. By choosing an influencer whose followers are in your niche, it'll be easy to move traffic to take a specific action and get them to download your game, upgrade, sign up for a subscription, or any other conversion action.
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the average conversion ratio via influencer marketing is anywhere from 1 to 4%, and a higher rate shows that your influencers are doing a great job improving your brand's visibility.
Your ROI
Your ROI measures your returns from the total investment made into your influencer campaign — track influencer sales during the campaign to see how effective the campaign was. You can use unique promo codes or affiliate links to determine the sales from influencer collaboration accurately.
Your CPO
Cost per order (CPO) provides the most transparent view of your marketing performance. It’s a ratio of the total cost of the campaign to the number of conversions the campaign generated. Influencer marketing can bring your brand before a large audience, but we are interested in how many users the campaign converts.
Target the right people by working with the right influencers to generate many sales opportunities for your brand. Engage a game marketing agency to help choose influencers who resonate with your brand.
Traffic
At the end of the day, if your site isn’t getting traffic from your influencer campaign, then what’s the point? Some of the essential metrics you’ll need to watch are:
Total website traffic
You should track the total number of visitors to your site from the influencer’s post. The sponsored post should have a unique link to your website to make it easy to track how much buzz your influencer’s post has generated.
Percentage of traffic that are returning visitors
Returning visitors are people who landed on your website, liked what they saw, and are back for more. A higher percentage of returning visitors shows online users have come to identify your brand as a trusted source because of your association with the influencer.
This doesn't mean they'll convert on their second return, though. Use this metric to gauge interest in your brand.
Pageviews
When visitors land on your website, what pages are they viewing? The pageviews metric will let you know which pages are a hit with visitors and which are not.
Bounce rate
This is the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your website after viewing just one page. Your influencer could be doing a fantastic job bringing visitors to your site, but once they land there, they might find a poorly designed website that doesn't meet their needs. If people cannot see what they are looking for when they land on your website, they will leave and move on to other things. Remember: this is not your influencer's fault.
A healthy approach is to view a high bounce rate as an opportunity for improvement. Try to understand why visitors leave without visiting other sections of your website and solve the issue. This will make it easy for users to find what they want when they land on your website.
Campaign value
Understanding the value of your promotional material will help you determine the quality of the content, influencers, and campaign as a whole. You need to look at three things:
Can you use the content that the influencers post in other areas?
You shouldn't get your influencer to just post content. To enhance your marketing efforts, you should be able to reuse the material in other areas to attract more users to your brand. For instance, an Instagram post can be circulated in feeds for weeks, while you can use promotional videos to create custom content for the influencer's followers.
What type of content are they producing?
Give your influencers creative freedom as they know what their followers want, but still, check what content they are producing to ensure it’s aligned with your brand values. Give the influencer an idea of the content you expect from them and ask them for their input on how they can package it better for their audience.
Making it count with influencer marketing
Don't lose opportunities to convert! Get all the video game influencer marketing facts in our ultimate guide here: The Definitive Guide to Influencer Marketing!
Influencer marketing strategies can be incredibly compelling when managed well. But why manage it all yourself when something can run it all for you?
The team at Game Marketing Genie can help you find influencers, and set up, run, and manage your campaigns with our end-to-end influencer marketing platform AtisfyReach. Powered by AI and machine learning, AtisfyReach enables you to connect with the right influencers in moments and create excellent campaigns that engage your audience.
Want to learn more? Head over to AtisfyReach today!
