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3 Step Guide to Boost Your Online Game Player Base via Influencers in Stay-at-home Period

The coronavirus has hammered a lot of businesses, but it has lit a fire under others, including the online game industry. Its sales are soaring, but they could be even better. If you’re a game developer or publisher, one way for you to ramp up sales even further would be to use online influencers in your marketing.

This is particularly true for small companies with limited budgets. Influencers can take big online game makers’ sales to the next level and help start-ups and indie games gain a foothold in the industry at a modest cost.

Before we discuss how to use influencers to increase high-quality traffic to your game, and achieve other goals you have, let’s look at what self-quarantining during the virus has already been doing for the industry.

To start with, mobile game downloads jumped 39 percent globally in February as cities, states and countries began ordering people to stay at home to avoid getting coronavirus. In the United States, which has the world’s highest percentage of online game users — 72 percent of all mobile phone customers — online game playing spurted 75 percent at peak hours. Meanwhile, the gaming platform Steam saw a record 23 million users logging on. Turns out, all of the video gaming has actually been deemed a healthy way to stay connected to others during this period.

As good as these achievements were, online game makers and retailers could grab even more business by persuading current users to do more gaming and non-gamers to try their hand at it. And a key way to pull this off would be partnering with influencers.

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Most influencers would be glad to help because online game marketing would give them another source of income. Some would be especially eager because they have lost income from industries like travel that have been so hit hard that they decided to reduce their ties with influencers. So, what opportunities can influencers provide online game businesses, and how would you go about creating a partnership with influencers?

Here are some 3 Steps based on some of Keepface’s successful influencer campaigns with gaming companies:

#1 Target untapped-niche segments

With millions of people stuck at home, now is a great time to try to convince non-gamers to give it a go.

After you decide on traffic goals, choose the right social media platform for your campaign. YouTube and Twitch are the most popular for gamers, but depending on your strategy and the audience you want to reach, you might want to try something else — like Instagram, Twitter, or Tik-Tok.

There are a lot of micro-influencers out there. You need to identify those that are the best fit for you.

Start with vetting them on social media. Identify those who have high audience engagement levels and the ability to persuade their followers. Target untapped niche segments like intellectual youngsters, working women, or “experienced” fathers. ?

This means you need to find influencers who can appeal to different audiences.

Remember: A potential influencer’s gaming experience is the last thing you need to worry about. ?

#2 Launch an initial campaign

The next step is to make a trial campaign with a pool of selected influencers. Start with streamlined campaigns requiring minimal outlays. This can be as simple as putting a video link in an influencer’s story. Also, send your proposal to a lot more influencers than you need so you will be assured of a good response. For example, if you need 10 influencers for a campaign, pitch to 200. ?

A good strategy for pitching to a lot of influencers at the same time is to join Facebook groups that many are members of and float your proposals there. You will be surprised at how many micro-influencers will bite. Connect with them and you will suddenly enhance your influencers pool.

In addition, many automation tools can help you reach out to influencers. One is ours — Keepface. Automated tools not only help you select the right influencers but also help you make tailored partnership pitches to them.

Your pitch should consist of a concise but inspiring note that includes a description of your game, feedback from your clients, and an expression of how eager you are to work with influencers. Mention that you would like to do a trial campaign and, if the results are good, then begin a long-term collaboration.

Give them the content you want to be posted and ask them to do something simple in the first campaign, reward those whose posts performed well.

#3 Measure and optimize your success

Make sure you have measuring tools ready that can determine whether your campaign is succeeding. If you’re achieving the targets and milestones you set, you will likely want to stick with your campaign content and influencer. If not, change either, or both. The main milestone for any game marketeer is the cost per install (CPI), which you will need to measure with each influencer. CPI is what you pay each time when a user installs your game.

Give different download links to each influencer and compare the number of viewers, traffic, and the number of downloads that each generates. Use Adjust to gauge the performance of traffic coming from each influencer.

Also, give instant feedback to influencers who are doing a great job. And start a second campaign immediately with your best-performing influencers. Try different types of content delivery formats — like live streaming, sharing, tagging friends, and calling for group games.

Limit the time you devote to researching a campaign’s results. Start with one or two measurements, and add or subtract barometers as you need. Your goal should be to optimize campaigns one at a time, with particular focus on those that generate a higher return on investment.

If you are short on time and resources but still want to try influencer marketing, consider getting pre-built influencer campaign modules that you can launch immediately.

Some brands renovate delivering services

Due to the increased online shopping Amazon focuses on the stocking and delivery of the essential products following the situation. The company prioritizes the delivery of household staples, healthcare supplies, personal care, grocery and baby products. Sales outside these categories are suspended up to 5 April, which can be extended.

Cut down in marketing budgets

According to the Econsultancy and Marketing Week’s survey, product and service launches are delayed to uncertain times. 55% in the UK and 56% in US marketers said that their marketing campaigns are under review or delayed.

Besides the travel and hospitality, FMCG, restaurants, entertainment industries seriously stumbled in the first quarter and expected to continue in the second quarter, as well. Reduced ad spend on these sectors also cause fall off in the budgets of Google and Facebook. Considering the fact that in 2019, travel ads accounted for 10% of Google’s ads revenue. Marketers anticipate a 30% to 45% drop in Facebook’s revenue because of hits on travel, consumer packaged goods, retailer and entertainment in the first quarter.

Social responsibility

It is the best time to build public trust that will always be remembered. Through corporate social responsibility programs, companies take initiatives for the benefit of their employees and society. The different range actions include covering sick leaves of workers, helping the government to fight against the disease, producing face masks or hand sanitizers, giving food support away and etc. The American fashion brand Ralph Lauren donates $10M for the relief of the virus. The donation will go to the WHO fund, the corporation’s employees and cancer institutions.

Several brands run different social campaigns to invite people to stay at home. The global franchise chane McDonald’s separated its golden arch M to support self isolation. The change in the logo is only made in the social platforms. Nike, which closed all stores in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US, launched Play inside, play for the world campaign. To prevent the spread of novel Coronavirus, Starbucks stops the use of reusable cups in its stores. Plus, it offers a 10% discount to customers who bring their reusable cups or ask to use the brand’s cups.

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Now more than ever, we are one team.⠀ #playinside #playfortheworld

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Despite its diminishing ad revenues, Facebook offers $100 million grants as cash and ad credits to 30 000 small businesses in 30 countries that it operates. Along with donating 10M masks to the citizens in the US and Europe, Apple launched a website and an iOS app that allow users to screen themselves for the Coronavirus. Another tech giant Google gave $800M mainly in the ad form to support the fight against the virus, including $20M in Google Cloud for academic institutions and researchers, $200M for NGO and financial institutions, $340M for small and medium enterprises.

Difficulties create opportunities

With all complexity and obstacles, the virus challenges all markets to redirect their marketing and sales plans and utilize them to the current conditions.

Time spent on social media has enormously been rising as more people stay-at-home to minimize the risk of the virus. Now people have “unlimited time” to produce and consume more content than ever.

According to a report by Izea, 66% of the correspondents predict their social media usage will increase. Internet users believe that YouTube usage will increase by 64% while Facebook will increase 63%, followed by Instagram by 43% and Twitter by 34%.

Remote working is a new era now

Several business events shifted online such as Google Cloud Next, IBM’s developers conference. The loss of face-to-face communication and the cancellation of social events creates a huge demand for online conferencing platforms such as SLAC, webinars. Slack said there is almost a 40% increase in the numbers of paid customers. Daily active users of Microsoft Teams more than doubled from November to March. It also added new features to the platform for telehemedice.

The growing need for telehealth and teleconferencing accelerates the implication of 5G technology.

According to the Appsflyer’s report, there is a 15% increase in organic non-gaming app installs starting from mid-February. The non-gaming app categories mainly include communication, finance, health & fitness, news, a utility which means people turn their social habits to online presence.

Spike in online gaming industry

Social distancing makes people gather and entertain on online games. Video gaming companies either extend or introduce new promotions. In China, total game downloads in Apple’s app stores made a 27.5% increase that is a 12.1% rise in revenue. According to Douyu’s streaming index, games like “Honor of Kings”, “League of Legends” and “Playerunknown’s Battleground” now are twice as popular compared to 2019. “Honor of Kings” reached 63 million views during the New Year holiday.

In the US there is 75% upswing in the number of online game players. The largely damaged Italy sees a 70% increase in internet traffic which is mainly contributed by the gaming industry like “Fortnite”, “Call of Duty: Warzone”. Steam reached 22.5 million all-time user peaks during last week.

What is happening to influencer marketing in the meantime?

It is important to engage with the audience during this hard time. Social distancing is largely overwhelming fashion, lifestyle, travel influencers whose content is mainly based on outside activities.

Due to economic stagnation and slacking consumer behavior in different fields, lots of clothing, entertainment brands are constrained to withdraw or delay their partnerships. But, this will not cause the influencer marketing to go away.

We all know it is not the right time to pose in the perfect looking outfits at social events, holiday travels. At the same time, we see an increased number of social media usage, and engagements rise up. It is an opportunity to create useful and educational content and rebuild trust with the followers. As authorities who influence our lives, they can call people to understand the situation and follow the guidelines, spread positivity, advise on activities to effectively spend our time at home.

The different types of content such as streaming daily vlogs to show how they use their time well in these hard times, adding movie and book recommendations, distant learning programs, and home recipes. It will also help to reform the market in a more authentic and communication-based nature.

Gaming, fitness, yoga and wellbeing influencers are the most followed categories in the stay-at-home period. Psychology experts are the next category people feel the need in self-isolation period. Changing living habits, fear of health issues, and financial uncertainty in many traditional works make people seek to keep physical and mental balance in a sedentary lifestyle.

Challenges with uncertainty

It is early to voice the precise amount of economic loss. Continued uncertainty hinders to define needed actions to be taken. Drop-in the main spheres of the economy makes brands alter their marketing, sales strategies, and set new budgets.

Although negative consequences of the Coronavirus virus is expected to continue in the upcoming months, a positive lesson that we learned in these days is global lockdown opened a new and ongoing stay-at-home economy. The vast majority of businesses more or less can perform the same results as in the in-person working. Now it is possible to serve food, grocery, health care kits to millions of people at the same time. Purchasing habits of people will not be the same as the pre-break period.