How To Promote Your Game Through Influencers in 2022

With over 2.7 billion gamers worldwide the massive growth of the gaming industry, getting your game noticed has become an increasingly challenging task, even for established publishers. For instance, Steam saw 11911 games released in 2021 - close to a 20% increase from the year before. Looking back to 2015, the amount of released games has increased by 320%. 

At the same time, gaming video content and its impact on the industry has been growing explosively. In 2021, over 9 million channels went live at least once a month on Twitch, a 30% increase from 2020, and a 430% increase from 2015. The viewership has followed, with Twitch boasting a massive 2.84 million concurrent viewers annually during 2021, up 34% from 2020, and a 435% increase from 2015. In addition, other content platforms such as YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming have followed suit, further validating the importance for gaming marketers of establishing a presence among these channels to get the results they desire.

We created a video to show how you can get your games in the hands of relevant influencers with a few clicks:

Your Most Important Marketing Channel

From video teasers to streams, the core of modern game promotion relies on engagement with your audience. And as far as creating engagement goes, there is no stronger tool in a video game marketer’s arsenal than influencer marketing.

So how do I get influencers to play my game? Influencers have the power to skyrocket your game to fame in the blink of an eye, but in order for that to happen, you need to get your game in their hands. When handled manually, this is a tedious process. Identifying the right influencers for your game and the total time spent on CRM activities such as platform matching, media distribution, game distribution, tracking links, and keeping track of results can quickly add up to hours every day. On top of this, marketers need to engage with the influencers and build relationships to keep scaling their efforts and generate traction.

Influencers are called influencers for a reason - they hold a lot of sway over their audience, with 64% of viewers reporting they purchase products recommended by influencers. By working with influencers relevant to your game, you will guarantee that you reach your audience and if your game is enjoyable, this will also drive sales. So the question remains, how do you get your game in the hands of the right influencers?

How To Make Influencers Aware Of Your Game

Finding and contacting relevant influencers is time-consuming if you don’t use the right tools. By using Lurkit, you can make sure you target the right audience for your game and get good RoI on your time spent. There are two main ways to inform influencers of your game and start collaborating with them.

From Pre-launch To Launch And Beyond - Take Control Of Your Creator Funnel

Use Lurkit to set up your campaigns and gather them all in one place to make sure you have a smooth distribution process. This way, you can easily handle any inbound requests you will get and ditch the spreadsheets for tracking which influencer got what game, and you will automatically be notified when they create content. By setting up requirements for your campaigns in line with your goals, you can leverage the power of data and automation to streamline influencer qualification and distribution of media assets, games, affiliate links and much more.

Another method for scaling your influencer marketing is to set up a creator program. Enrolling influencers in your creator program and continuously awarding the influencers that create content for your games will let you create a loyal base of ambassadors you can call upon for future launches and activations. By setting up your company page on Lurkit, you can start enrolling creators and award them incentives to create content for your games.

Engage With And Build Your Community

Find and pitch your game to influencers directly and, hopefully, they will produce content. Generally speaking, this requires a lot of work, but by using Lurkit, you can significantly optimize the process. With tools to easily define your target audience and the influencers they follow and research their content and streams, you can ensure that you can allocate your time most effectively before directly contacting them to start collaborating on promotions. Also, be sure to compile a list of all potential creators and their contact information; this will save you time later when contacting potential influencers.