With 2.5 billion avid gamers worldwide, new and established gaming platforms must create cutting-edge multi-channel marketing campaigns to ensure they get their share of the $198 billion market.
While niche gaming sectors, such as online casinos, rely on video slot bonus codes and other incentives to draw in potential customers, such as on this website, gaming platforms invest in a plethora of creative marketing activities to ensure their games, products, and services stand out in one of marketing’s most intense verticals.
This article will look at four marketing channels utilised by gaming platforms in 2022.
Discord Marketing
Described as “the centre of a million gamers’ universes”, Discord is one of the world’s most popular text and voice platforms.
Initially built for in-game communications between players, Discord has built partnerships with some of the gaming industry’s biggest brands, including major titles and brands, including Fortnite, Rocket League, and Xbox.
With an estimated 20 million daily users in 2021, gaming platforms and developers can leverage the platform’s social-first philosophy to create immense communities for their products and services.
What’s more, creating a community on Discord is totally free. Although premium accounts and partnerships are available for smaller gaming platforms, Discord offers the perfect starting point for any gaming company to build a loyal following. In February 2022, the biggest communities were:
- Fortnite: 815,000 members
- Genshin Impact Official: 800,000 members
- Valorant: 800,000 members
- MrBest Gaming: 800,000 members
- Minecraft: 800,000 members
Many gaming platforms and studios also utilize the platform to offer incentives, exclusive access to content, discounts, bundles, and member events. Creating a Discord server for a gaming platform, studio, or title could also be one of the most straightforward steps in marketing.
Live Stream Marketing
For those interested in gaming, it’s hard not to hear about streaming platforms such as Twitch. With the platform amassing 30 million daily users and 140 million monthly active users, there’s little wonder why the gaming industry has taken to Twitch with such enthusiasm.
According to one study, 26% of young adults say they access Twitch at least once per week, and the platform is responsible for 31% of revenue gained from all gaming video content. With a mixture of influencer marketing, ad campaigns, and branded channels, the platform provides ultimate reach in the relatively new world of online streaming platforms.
While Discord is the home of gaming communities, Twitch also has a reputation for fostering loyal and wholesome communities, as users interact through chats and reward streamers through donations and other in-house purchases.
Gaming platforms looking to push their products and services on platforms often do so through specialist marketing agencies with in-house talent departments that seek the right kind of influencers to push games and services to their followers. You can find a list of 14 of 2022’s leading Twitch marketing agencies here.
Influencer Marketing
Whether on Twitch or through other marketing channels, no one can deny the impact that influencer marketing has had on the gaming industry. For platforms looking to invest in the ever-attentive Gen Z demographic, a recent study found that no less than 52% of them trusted the opinions and advice of influencers.
Some of the biggest names in the industry have embraced influencer marketing, with brands and platforms such as Infinity Ward, Rockstar, Ubisoft, and Nintendo all taking to the channel to propel growth.
While gaming platforms are reaping the rewards for influencer-driven marketing, influencers are also reaping the rewards for streaming, with some mid-tear streamers earning $20,000 per month for streaming games.
However, platforms and developers must be careful when choosing influencers, as many factors can affect an influence campaign. For example, if the person doesn’t quite align with the brand, doesn’t have the right target audience, or performs an on-air faux pas, it could spell disaster for any campaign or partnership.
Social Media Marketing
While Twitch and YouTube Gaming are often defined as social platforms, the likes of more traditional apps such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat perform their marketing duties in largely different ways.
According to Facebook, over 600 million gamers are on Instagram alone, and the platform is the perfect app for creating visually enticing videos, grids, photos, and stories for gaming platforms and developers.
With the ability to offer razor-sharp targeting for ads, Instagram can target ultra-niche members of target audiences (right down to education and employment) to ensure that ad campaigns are well spent.
While Instagram campaigns tend to target millennials and older gamers, both TikTok and Snapchat yield the attention of Gen Z gamers. In fact, as of August 2022, there are more members of Gen Z on TikTok than on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Pinterest.
One of the biggest titles to benefit from TikTok is Sea of Thieves, which reaped the rewards of the Sea Shanty TikTok phenomenon of January 2021. With well-placed hashtags and carefully curated videos on its official TikTok channel, the game gained a player increase of 63% alone on Steam over December.
As for Snapchat, it is reported that over 100 million users have played Snap Games on the platform, and the platform launched over 60 new gaming and esports shows on Discover in 2021 alone.
