Unconventional Approaches to Influencer Marketing | Macy Mills

So as he mentioned, I am the head of business development for Game Influencer. So we are a hands on influencer marketing agency. So we're focused on mobile, PC, console and VR games. Today I'm going to talk a little bit more in the mobile space since we're at Casual Connect, so I'll be focusing on that topic. And just by show of hands, how many of you have done an influencer marketing campaign in the past? How many of you are considering doing an influencer marketing campaign? And how many of you don't know what influencer marketing is? Yes, no, maybe. So just a quick overview. Influencer marketing for what we'll talk about today is basically promoting your game on social media stars channels. So that's YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, et cetera. So basically kind of promoting in a sponsorship type way your game or title. So obviously by show of hands earlier it's clear that the gaming market is starting to pick up on the influencer marketing trend. So I just wanted to show some stats. So 92% of consumers would trust an influencer more than an advertisement or traditional selection celebrity endorsement. So 92% more than, let's say a TV commercial. Liam Neeson promoting for Supercell. Different things like that banner ads, pop up ads if they still exist, but lots of them are actually being blocked as well. So this is something to take into consideration when you are formulating your user acquisition strategy. So 47% of customers use adblock technology and even more surprising, 70 to 80% of millennials are using adblock technology. So they are not seeing any of the ads that come before YouTube videos, any of those potential banner and pop up ads as well. And then 255 million a month is spent on influencer marketing. And this is a number that's obviously still growing. So what are your options? So obviously there are multiple genres of influencers on YouTube, Instagram, other platforms. And up to this point I would say a lot of us have considered considered gaming as kind of the main focus of what you look into for influencers for your game. So a lot of clients come to us and they say we have this type of game. We don't think it's going to work because it's not this hardcore game that's focused on the male audience, et cetera. And so that's why I wanted to go into today discussing different genres and different approaches that may work for different games and specifically casual games, since we are at casual Connect. So the obvious approach. So how many of you have heard of a let's Play. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So the obvious approach is a let's play. So just a quick intro. Gaming influencer, as I mentioned before, plus a game equals multiple video series. So kind of doing a full 10 to 15 minute in depth game overview, looking at the game, looking at different features, showing off different characters, etc. And this is kind of how influencer marketing got started and how gamers gaming influencers in general got started as well. So for some games it does work. So I want to make sure that I make clear today that let's plays aren't a bad thing. They do work if your game follows some of the following. So if you're looking at a male focused game in that 18 to 24 range, then that's something where they are watching these gaming channels and that's kind of the target market for let's say the gaming genre right now with influencer marketing. Another thing to take into consideration is your game mechanics. If you have super interesting game mechanics, a lot to look into, a lot to unlock within the game, then that may make Sense to spend 10 to 15 minutes with an influencer kind of showing off those different opportunities. Exciting synchronous multiplayer Clash Royale is one of the best known games on YouTube right now. There's plenty of influencers around the world covering that. So any type of exciting synchronous multiplayer features work really well for let's plays. And last but not least, great graphics. So if you have beautiful graphics, a lot to show off, then that's also making the game much more easily streamable and easily approached by the influencers. And some of you may think that let's plays only work for PC and console games, but that's actually not true. So we just did a campaign I would call a traditional let's play campaign with 14 influencers in Poland. This was for Tencent's new MOBA Arena Valor and we ended up with an effective CPI of under €50 cents. So there was 14 different influencers, they launched different videos and they were in that, like I mentioned before, that 10 to 15 range really diving deep into the game, showing off the multiplayer functions, et cetera. So let's plays do also work for mobile games, especially if you check multiple of those boxes that I discussed before. But here's the catch, we don't all have AAA games that are focused on that male 18 to 24 demographic. And this is where the opportunity to look into more channels becomes interesting. So for example, cosplay is obviously interesting case in the influencer marketing world today. So if you have really great character design or characters that stand out, then it may make sense to look at a full cosplay video where they're coming up with the costume, actually building it out, showing how they make the costume, and then obviously showing it off on their Instagram, YouTube, et cetera. Another opportunity is within music channels. We actually did a music video for World of Tanks with Wargaming and it was a rap music video, it was Polish, so I don't know what it said, but it seems to go over really well. Also for lifestyle vloggers, you have female, male, different age demographics of people who are kind of vlogging about their life. And those opportunities can show them kind of doing their daily vlog, but maybe taking a step back and looking on their phone and showing this new game that they're working on. So the four topics I'm going to discuss today outside of let's plays non gaming channels, which I just touched on briefly, Esports tournaments, Esports tournaments, licensing influencers into games, as well as user acquisition videos. So for non gaming channels, we actually just did, earlier this year PDK, we did Zombie Gunship Survival with Flare Games. So PDK Films has over 4 million subscribers. They're actually a Nerf gun channel, which is interesting. And this video actually garnered over 3 million views. So you'll be able to see that they actually acted out this let's Play opportunity with basically pretending that they were fighting zombies in this video. So I'll let this play for a little bit here. So this is basically an entire 15 minute video of them acting out the game, finding different weapons that are actually all dirt weapons, which was super interesting to see. And again, as I mentioned, over 3 million views, which was awesome. So for other non gaming channels, a lot of you may have games that are focused on female focused demographics. So we actually just did a campaign for Pet Paradise Bubble Shooter. That's their Halloween themed icon. It's more of a typical bubble shooter casual game. And so what we did for them, and these are three thumbnails that kind of show a good example of what we completed for them. So on the top left, it was actually a family vlog. So it's a mom and her two kids and they basically go around and film their lives. And for one of the episodes they were playing the game, it was showing the mom playing the game, the kids playing the game, et cetera. So it was a good way to promote more of these casual titles and showing that they work for, let's say the mom demographic as well as the children for what's on my iPhone that's been super popular these days that works with really any type of influencer. So anything from cooking to lifestyle. People who aren't always doing gaming channel can actually show what's on my iPhone and focus specifically on your game as well as showing other things that they're using such as Spotify or WhatsApp, et cetera. And last but not least here we also did a cooking influencer. So I know that looks super good, but that's actually a cake that they created that's a scene from the game. So they showed gameplay in the beginning and the end and then they also focused on baking this cake that was related to Pet Paradise Bubble Shooter. So this resulted in a 700% organic uplift. So I'm sure a lot of you are thinking with mobile games you're not tracking every install. At Game Influencer we use tracking links, but there's also obviously a lot of people that leave the game, sorry, leave the video and then download on their phone without clicking the link. So what we do is actually sometimes ask our clients not to seize all user acquisition in a certain territory and then be able to track that organic uplift. In this case there was 700%. And that's also something to think about, that actually more female focused. Female focused games have even higher organic uplift because perhaps they're watching on their iPad or their PC and then they're actually leaving that to download the game. This is one of my personal favorites that we've done recently. So this is an online esports tournament. So this is a game called Tiny Armies and we had four of the top German mobile influencers compete against each other. So what they did is on the first day they all launched at the same time. 1 let's play video about the game. And then they announced that they had guilds that they were inviting their fans to join so you could join your favorite influencers guild, so to speak, in the game. For two weeks they were doing shout outs mentioning the game and then at the end of the two weeks they actually livestreamed and they all had a tournament together. So all four influencers had their own guild. They're fighting against each other. They have thousands of people in their guilds basically at this point. And this resulted in an effective CPI of €1.66. We were also giving away tickets to Gamescom, Google Play and App Store gift cards as well for the winning team. There's also opportunities with offline esports tournaments. So at Gamescom earlier this year, up In Cologne, they hosted an Arena Valor tournament. So they had several of the largest League of Legends influencers join and then they actually arranged teams from the audience. They had over 20,000 viewers on Twitch as well as a huge live audience. So it really gave the opportunity for them to kind of showcase their game in a live atmosphere and then also with the 20,000 viewers who are watching live, be able to engage in the brand as well. So our friends over at Space Ape, they brought in over 20 YouTube influencers to their game Fast Road to Revenge, which was super interesting to watch how that this game unfolded. It's a super casual game, it's a runner game, but you unlock more and more influencers as you go on. And their combined reach was 55 million. Their day one retention was actually 56%, which as we all know, for a super casual game, that's pretty, I would consider that successful. So they, yeah, over 20 influencers, I would say mostly gaming, but also some vloggers and things like that were involved, had their own characters and then also promoted them on their channels as well. Another example would be PewDiePie launching his own mobile game. His total reach is 83 million. So this kind of shows you how you can look at, let's say, a group of influencers that add up to a larger piece or just one with the largest piece. PewDiePie being the largest in the world, obviously. And it's also interesting to think about potentially just doing short bursts of integrations within your game. So considering, let's say month long IAPs or events that are related around an influencer still give you that opportunity to be able to have them promote that game on their channel and then also feel more part of the brand and more integrated within the game. Also, our friends at Space Ape share this UA video with us. So there's a few ways to look at user acquisition videos with influencer marketing. So a lot of the time we've in the past we've been able to cut pieces of the videos that were already created for user acquisition. So let's say you cut a 30 second clip and then you're able to use that video and especially promote that to those influencers fans. And we've seen incredible results in comparison to your average UA videos which just show gameplay, et cetera. So this is a quick example. I would consider this a very highly polished version of UA video. As I mentioned, you can cut from an already created video that they post on their page, or you could also just do a more typical influencer in front of the Camera showing off the game saying they like it and that's a great way to get clicks and conversions in your user acquisition campaigns. So identifying the right approach for your game, one thing to consider is your target market. As I mentioned before, the target market that male 18 to 24 range maybe let's plays do make the most most sense for your game. However, if you're looking at female focused audience, it's also interesting to look into Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and places where these larger females are spending their time on the Internet. As we all know, YouTube is more of a male dominated platform. So there is opportunities outside of YouTube to kind of look into where your target market is spending most of their time. The other thing to think about is game mechanics. If you have tons of content to show then maybe you have 15 minutes to show it. But obviously we all know idle games are very popular right now as well. Maybe that's something that you show in a 30 second time shout out or a 3 minute brand integration. It just really depends on what mechanics you're trying to show off for your game. Budget is also something to consider. Obviously a huge esports event or licensing influencers into games and things like that are also something that may be a little bit more costly in terms of engaging with influencers. Influencers. So just take into consideration what budget you're looking at when thinking of your right approach. Campaign goals are also important. So clients come to us with all different goals they're looking at. I want a low cpi, I want a branding effect, I want to be number one on the charts in Germany and we can basically take those different goals and then come up with a strategy that makes the most sense. And that's something to also consider when you're looking at the right approach for your game. How could I ever know all of this? So brace yourself. There's a sales pitch, but it's only one slide. So game influencer. As I mentioned, we are a hands on influencer marketing agency. We have a database of over 6 million influencers and our goal is to work with you to pick basically 20 different campaign items that we put into our database to query and find the best fitting influencers for you. And right now we are also working on a guaranteed view model. So based on your budget we can guarantee you the amount of YouTube, Twitch, et cetera views and be able to basically present you with a successful campaign. That was all the sales part. If anyone has any other questions or is interested in learning more, feel free to email me or come up and talk to me after as well.