META: Where do you go to find your people? Where is your demographic spending a majority of their time? Find out here.
If you are a gaming developer or looking after a gaming brand, you’re going to want to know how to market it. Online marketing is your best bet, especially for the gaming industry. You’re looking to reach people who are already on the computer, playing or watching gaming content. Online marketing is more affordable, more effective, and more accessible than any form of traditional marketing, but where do you go to find your people? Where is your demographic spending a majority of their time? Find out here.
YouTube
YouTube has a massive gaming community. Some of the biggest players in the YouTube space have come from gaming and it evolved into the biggest genre of YouTube content to this day.
All that is to say that you’re stepping into a very overcrowded market if you’re going to make gaming content, but for a gaming brand, it means a thriving community of people who feverishly want to know more about your product.
This is where brands get the most use out of the gaming community. Affiliate brand deals can keep channels alive and keep eyes on your games with social media publishing. Creators can review, or simply play your game, getting it in front of other gamers. In turn, gamers will want to try it for themselves, no matter the state of your game.
Twitch
Additionally, Twitch streams are a great way to get your game in front of eyes;they are particularly useful to marketers because it’s more of a two-way conversation. YouTube videos have comments, but they don’t get replied to so they’re more generalised. Twitch streamers, on the other hand, will see what the chat is saying in real time, usually replying to what is happening in the stream in real time, offering more of a conversation. If you can follow that, and do some social media listening without the tools, you can get insights into what gamers expect from your game. This is important during the early stages if there’s anything they’re calling for or tired of.
TikTok
TikTok is a hub of thriving communities, and although gaming isn’t the biggest, it’s still one of the loudest. Game trailer clips get posted and reacted to, fan art and edits are made, streaming “best bits” are posted, topical discussions are had. It’s the place for everything.
And it has become a marketer’s safe haven. With an average runtime that is around a minute long, just about every clip is the length of an ad, and if the clip is about your game, it might as well be an ad.
Additionally, as mentioned, it’s made up of communities, so if your game can get into the hands of a micro influencer at the top of these communities, they’ll talk about it to their audience. That audience might be smaller, but it’s also a lot more loyal and dedicated to the influencer due to a combination of feeling like the influencer is just like them and that they should help out the little guy in this world of big bad influencers.