Why Twitch is so powerful for video game promotion?
Twitch is probably the best place to promote your video game, in addition to Youtube. In a competitive world like the video game industry, promoting your game to gamers is imperative. It is therefore logical that most of our missions at Sparks Forge involve the management of gaming influencer marketing campaigns for the promotion of video games.
But before you jump right in, we’ll tell you what makes Twitch and streamers so successful in the gaming community and how to effectively use the information at your disposal to identify the best content creators to promote your video game.
Twitch is loved by gamers
The popular online live streaming platform acquired by Amazon in 2014, continues to grow year after year, gathering 15 million daily users in 2021. Widely used for broadcasting live gaming videos, streamers show originality and inventiveness in their content proposal and attract a wider audience every day.
For video game influencers, the platform appears to be the perfect complement to YouTube. While YouTube’s polished videos generate long-term visibility by offering on-demand content, Twitch’s streams focus on immediacy and direct interaction between influencers and their viewers.
Twitch provides a deeper sense of belonging for viewers. As a community platform, Twitch offers many tools that facilitate engagement, discussion and interaction between the streamer and his community as well as between viewers. Live broadcasts are meeting places where users gather for several hours with the ability to communicate with the Twitcher and guide the live content
The resulting relationship between content creators and their audience is not top-down like on Youtube, but multiway, direct and more authentic. The nature of these types of relationships is particularly popular with the 15-35 year old audience.
This adherence is reflected in the data. Twitch users spend an average of 95 minutes per day on the platform, which is considerably higher than any other social media (52 minutes on TikTok, 28 minutes on Instagram, 50 minutes on YouTube).
Human relations at the heart of Twitch
Twitch is a community-centric social media and it is essential for each game studio and publisher to know its particularities in order to understand how content creators work and thus effectively promote their video games on the platform.
When streaming for several hours straight, influencers necessarily share a lot of their privacy with their audience, which builds a trustful and authentic relationship. The high level of engagement and interaction during game streams makes Twitchers a very powerful relay to reach your target audience.
Therefore, building a loyal and engaged community is paramount for any content creator. The video game streaming world is subject to intense competition where Content is King, more than ever.
Game content creator for a living
The business model of a content creator is based on generating revenue from donations and subscriptions from their audience, in addition to possible sponsored operations for the most influential among them.
To stand out and keep growing their community, Twitchers work on their editorial line and their relationship with their audience. Like any company, their ability to listen and exchange with their community will be a strong element of their progress in order to propose original and differentiating content. Their own personality during streams and their proximity with their audience will be as important as the type and format of their content.
Streamers are above all creative, social people and video game enthusiasts who want to make a living from their streaming passion if they can. We can also draw a parallel between their final goal and the one of the video game developers. Don’t you think?
Streamers are effective video game promoters
Your targets are content creators who have played several games similar to yours, and the more recently, the best it is. Building a consistent contact base is time consuming and tedious if you set out to do it yourself so here are some tips on key points to look at.
A well-organized influencer marketing campaign will prove to be an undeniable success factor for both a Kickstarter campaign and the release of your game. We invite you to discover the impact of our organic influencer campaign for the release of Terraformers outside of early access, as well as some case studies that have involved running such campaigns.
Pitfall of a streamer with too large a community
At a certain level of community, it becomes difficult for an influencer to maintain a balance of appeal between their content and their personality. Contacting streamers with millions of subscribers seems a good idea and yet it is usually not the best strategic choice for you. Not to mention the fact that they are very difficult to reach and often expensive to make a video by them. of course, we have all heard of this or that game that exploded thanks to 1 streamer… but the correlative is that we don’t know the thousands of games that failed with this strategy.
Because of his good work in achieving his goals (having a huge engaged community of fans – kudos to them) some influencers are more often supported for their personality, regardless of the games they play. We are not saying that you should not contact influencers with a large community, only that some of them have a gamer community that, in fact, will not be receptive.
Shoot for the Stars
Content creators are referred to as influencers because their followers are more responsive to their recommendations than to advertising. The authenticity of their relationship perpetuates the phenomenon called « Best Friend Effect ». Recommendations for a purchase are more valuable if they come from a close friend, right? We can also make the link with « Word-of-Mouth » marketing when these recommendations are spread within a community. Plus, you’re more likely to get a free video from them since you’re offering content that they and their community like. After all, they are still video game enthusiasts.
We recommend that you take the time to develop a list of content creators to contact to promote your game to their community. This is of the utmost strategic importance!
Some video game content creators will offer you cover for your game for free and others will offer you the production of sponsored videos. A mix of these solutions is often the best strategy to reach your goals. Prefer collaboration with several well-identified middle tail or micro influencers because these operations are the most profitable and effective. They may generate less overall visibility at times compared to other acquisition channels but will improve your awareness and produce better results on increasing your community, your wishlists, and your sales.
Data is Queen
Content is king, but Data is Queen.
In order to target relevant content creators to contact for the promotion of your video game, you need to consider the content created by video game influencers but also their « data ».
You can find hundreds of relevant game content creators for your game based on their game history. Now it’s time to filter them using their unique Twitch data and rank them in order of importance.
This is one of the most representative metrics to consider when looking for a streamer to collaborate with. The average CCV represents the average number of viewers that are watching a live stream at any given moment. This metric allows you to accurately determine how many people are actively interacting with a streamer daily. The average CCV is very significant since it combines two key metrics: reach and impressions. It gives you an image of the current engagement of a streamer, the higher it is, the more engaged and receptive the audience is to its streams; however, it’s not the only data to consider.
In addition to the average CCV, the number of followers gives you a good representation of a streamer’s reaching capacity by showing the size of its community. Be careful, this metric is not necessarily very representative. In fact, following an influencer on Twitch does not imply that the user is actively and regularly watching its streams. Therefore, collaborating with a micro-influencer or a Middle Tail influencer with a higher CCV is more interesting than a more popular streamer with a lower CCV.
To complete those two metrics. You might be interested in looking at the monthly impressions depending on your objectives. For example, if you’re looking for long-term partnerships with influencers such as placing your logo on a streamer’s overlay or getting your game tested by the same group of people, it will be more effective to look for a streamer with a large fan base that is more attentive to the streamer’s proposition, then monthly impressions is a key metric to look at.
Expert tips: if you multiply the average CCV by 30 and get a value close to the monthly impressions, it suggests that the same viewers return every day, which shows that the streamer has a very strong fan base. If you just want to reach the largest audience, consider looking for content creators with an average CCV similar to other streamers but with a higher number of monthly impressions. The viewer’s loyalty is lower, but the overall visibility gained will be higher.
For more details about Twitch metrics, you can have a look at those interesting articles:
This dive into the world of Twitch will surely have converted you to promoting your video game to consistent content creators. In a future article coming soon, we will explore in more detail the gaming influencer marketing strategies to use and how to achieve them.
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