Video Game Marketing Guide to Reach Gaming Streamers
Do you want to strengthen your video game marketing efforts? A good video game marketing strategy can help you attract new players.
The video game market is gaining immense popularity. According to a survey, more than 227 million gamers across all demographics in the U.S. play video games. The number will reach 3 billion gamers all over the globe. Over 90% of players think video games bring too much happiness through gameplay. Many gamers believe video games can relieve stress and anxiety and improve mental health.
The video game market is evolving rapidly and is expected to be worth $321 billion by 2026. Tapping into this fiercely competitive market is a great idea to generate revenue, but video marketing sounds easier said than done. As a marketer, you need an excellent video game marketing strategy to connect with the gaming streamers and lure them to the next buy.
From social media marketing to influence marketing, email marketing and SEO, you must master each marketing technique to promote your video game to your audience. A solid video game digital marketing strategy is the key to your business success.
Let’s discover how to create a result-driven marketing strategy for video games to achieve incredible results.
Interesting Facts about the Video Game Market
- The global video game market is expected to be worth over $200 billion in 2023, up from around $178 billion in 2022.
- Mobile gaming continues to be the largest segment, expected to generate over $100 billion in revenue in 2023.
- There are around 3 billion active gamers worldwide in 2023, up from 2.9 billion in 2022.
- The Asia-Pacific region represents the largest video game market, accounting for around 47% of the global games market revenue.
- The US video game market remains the second largest behind Asia, expected to generate $48.2 billion in revenue in 2023.
- Top gaming companies in revenue include Tencent, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, NetEase, Nintendo, Google, EA, Activision Blizzard, and Bandai Namco.
- Steam remains the most prominent digital PC game storefront, with over 140 million monthly active users.
- Epic Games Store continues to grow in popularity, reaching over 40 million monthly active users in June 2022.
- Cloud gaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now and Google Stadia are gaining traction as an alternative to traditional console and PC gaming.
- The metaverse and blockchain gaming are emerging trends, with games like Axie Infinity demonstrating the potential of crypto and NFTs in gaming.
- Esports continues its growth trajectory, expected to generate over $1 billion in revenue globally in 2023, with audience numbers exceeding 600 million.
Table of Contents
What is Video Game Marketing?
The video game market is a billion-dollar industry now gaining immense popularity. Most gamers are adults, and marketers must create a strategy to target the adult population. The video market is flooded with many exciting games. It will make it challenging for game developers to capture the audience's interest. Creating a solid video game marketing strategy can help you stand out in the saturated market.
Crafting a video gaming strategy allows you to make the video game popular among gamers, attract new gamers to install the gamer or lure them to buy the console from the game shop. Marketers can follow many free and paid video marketing initiatives to get the desired results.
5 Effective Video Game Marketing Strategies
1 – Community Building
Building a dedicated community seems more accessible and cheaper. However, building a solid gaming community takes a lot of effort and time. Growing and maintaining an engaged community for gamers requires you to connect with active gamers. Remember, a large fanbase can do wonders and take your video game marketing to a new level. Your engaged fans will recommend the video game to their family and friends, increasing the number of fans.
You can build an engaged gaming community on social media by building relationships with new players and sharing updates about upcoming game events. This will allow you to engage with thousands of players daily, creating a solid community.
Here are a few reasons to create a strong game community:
- Allow gamers to play with friends and make gamers spend more time on popular titles.
- Help game developers to get players’ feedback.
- Share ideas about different game titles to help developers deliver a better experience.
- Generate hype about new releases and updates.
- Share different types of content, such as video content and fan art, to engage players.
Steam Marketing
Steam is a popular community platform among avid gamers. As a marketer, you can make the most out of Steam and get the opportunity to connect with new gamers. You can share game updates and announce new releases. Many game designers and game developers find this platform helpful. The platform can serve as a great video game marketing tool as it has everything from official game communities to forums and pages.
Whether you want to share gaming activities, host discussions, screenshots, videos or news, Steam is the best platform to fulfil all your marketing needs.
Discord Marketing
Discord is one of the best platforms to discuss game-related issues, announce new releases and events and offer discounts and bundles. The hassle-free channel is an excellent choice to boost engagement among developers, fans, and gaming streamers. You can use Discord to connect with players waiting for the sequel to build a large fan base for your video game series.
The social media platform allows you to build brand awareness, create fans and brand advocates and convince players to purchase your game, accessories, projectors, and consoles from the game shop.
With Discord, you can collect valuable feedback from gaming streamers to help your development team improve the gameplay experience. Moreover, you can share the alpha build with the trusted members of software developers and get their valuable feedback. Discord lets you create a dedicated community for your game, a server where you can bring your fans, brand advocates and developers.
The server allows you to create different channels, topics, categories, and roles. You can answer players’ inquiries and offer solutions to the problems to earn the trust of your current and prospective buyers.
Twitch Marketing
Twitch is a fantastic platform that allows you to broadcast your gameplay and share the fun gaming experience with other players. For instance, if you get a Nintendo Switch from a game shop, you can publish your favourite gameplay. Unfortunately, many marketers underestimate the power of Twitch; if used right, they can tap into a young audience and create a large fanbase.
Twitch allows content creators and viewers to broadcast free content to the audience. Besides publishing a video gaming session, you can arrange a roundtable conversation or show a how-to video to solve your audience's problems. Twitch marketing can be used to promote your gaming accessories, services, consoles, and services through live video content.
Here are three effective Twitch marketing strategies that you can try for video gaming marketing.
- Influencer marketing: Twitch has hundreds of thousands of famous gaming streamers with a considerable following. The platform allows brand sponsorship and influencer marketing. You can reach out to the top creators and streamers, and they can promote your video game through different tactics—for instance, brand mentions, product unboxing, giveaways, and product placement.
- Paid Advertising: Twitch allows paid marketing and enables you to run in-video and banner ads to market your video game.
- Branded Channel: Marketers can create a branded channel to promote your products or services. You can host a live event, share live interviews, provide behind-the-scenes content and tutorials and build a community of followers.
TikTok Marketing
TikTok is undoubtedly a unique social media channel that can better promote your game-related content and build a game fandom. Whether you want to share gameplay clips, tutorials, or walkthroughs, it is the best place for game publishers to build a community. Create a business account to promote your gaming brand, build a following and engage your audience.
You can use TikTok-specific content formats to share game updates, new releases, events, and brand collaborations. It is also the best place to promote your gaming elements. Following some gaming community trends is the key to boosting engagement and interaction. Game marketers can create content for gaming audiences and incorporate different themes and their shared interests to attract new fans.
YouTube Marketing
Promoting your new game is a challenging feat. You need to create the hype to engage the audience. Thanks to YouTube videos that can set expectations share short gameplays, and encourage gamers to buy your game. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. According to Google, approximately 74% of players use YouTube to learn about the gameplay and get the latest playing secrets.
It provides an excellent opportunity for game developers, publishers, shops, and studios to promote their games. With YouTube marketing, you can upgrade your video game content and get titles discovered by the target audience. Whether you want to share insider tips, news, announcements, awaken hype among gamers, release upcoming titles, or game updates, YouTube is the best place for your video game content.
To make the most out of YouTube marketing for video games, follow these tips:
- Write engaging titles and descriptions to bring more people
- Know your audience and create relevant video content
- Share precisely what your target audience wants
- Check video analytics for more engagement and views
- Review other gaming channels to build a better understanding
- Invest in paid YouTube advertising to increase your brand reach
- Collaborate with a famous gaming influencer
- Engage with the YouTube community
- Promote your YouTube channels and other social media channels
A digital marketing agency can better guide you in creating a YouTube channel, engaging content for gaming audiences and starting a successful video game campaign. With the help of professional digital marketers, you can better advertise your game and build a game fandom in a short time.
Reddit Marketing
When it comes to video game marketing, choosing a gaming-specific platform is worthwhile. Reddit is the perfect platform to reach your gaming audience. The discussion website allows you to reach a large gaming community and market your games. Unfortunately, many marketers don’t use this fantastic social media platform for video game marketing. According to Statista, Reddit is the 6th most visited website and has approximately 1.5 billion visits.
Game developers, publishers and studios can invest in Reddit game marketing to target young gaming audiences. Knowing some important tips to promote your video game on this discussion website is essential.
Avoid promotional content: Reddit is the best platform to increase brand awareness, but self-promotion is prohibited. You can’t directly share the links to market your game.
Follow the Rules for Subreddits: If you want to position your brand as an industry expert, you need to follow the rules of the subreddits. Pay special attention to what the platform allows and is not. Post valuable content to gain players’ trust.
Post-relevant Subreddits: You can join many gaming subreddits to become active members and participate in discussions. Give feedback, discuss other games, and highlight game-related issues to become a trusted source.
Share Educational Content: You can create a large gaming community by posting educational content and practical solutions. You can become a subject expert by sharing short videos, informative articles, and how-to guides to address your audience’s pain points.
2 – Create a Video Game Landing Page
Developing a landing page is vital to making your video game release a big hit. With the help of a landing page, you can educate the audience about the gameplay, increase the conversion rate and convince players to purchase the game. If you are about to release a video game, it is advised to get help from a professional design agency to create a game website landing page. The team of designers will help you create a unique landing page that specifically caters to your gaming audience and persuades them to consume the content.
A well-designed landing page for your video game can act as a sales tool that provides the appropriate amount of information. It convinces the audience to perform what the page requests. It is important to note that video landing pages are specifically designed for your advertising campaign to target prospective gamers.
Here are a few essential elements to make your video landing page super successful:
- Embed a short video of your game.
- Add a powerful CTA
- Show some of the most unique parts of your game
- Show screenshots of the new features
- Avoid the Autoplay option
- Keep it simple
- Include reviews from well-known gaming steamers and critics
3 – Search Engine Marketing
You need to harness the power of search engine optimisation to get a competitive edge and a global presence. SEO is essential for brand building, recognition and achieving an organic position in Google. Interested buyers visit search engines to find the best video games to play. A solid SEO strategy for your video game can help your website rank well on Google.
Getting high-quality organic traffic for your website can increase players' numbers and build authority in the gaming industry. According to recent statistics, websites that rank higher on SERPs get 70% of all clicks. So, game developers and publishers should focus on getting a better ranking on SERPs. Here are some essential SEO strategies for your video game site:
Content Marketing
Creating SEO-optimised content is an important SEO marketing strategy that can help you achieve a top position on Google. To create SEO-optimised content for your video game website, you need to consider the following practices:
- Use gaming keywords relevant to your niche.
- Keep titles short and include the main keyword in the title
- Optimise URLs by adding main keywords
- Optimise images by compressing image sizes and using the relevant format.
- Create meta descriptions
- Add links to authority websites in your content.
Video Marketing
Video content is essential to your gaming website, serving an effective SEO strategy. Gamers want to see how this new video game can be played. They want to see whether this new game is worth buying. Creating video game content can help gamers find your website. Make sure to create engaging video content for your gaming website.
Social Media
Social media is undoubtedly a proven way to reach out to gaming audiences. It allows gamers and fans to engage with your brand and share valuable feedback. Furthermore, social media is the right place to share gaming-related content. You can establish a Facebook page to promote your game and create a gaming community for gamers. Facebook provides several tools and features to run the community and become a fun and safe place for gamers and developers.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a result-driven video game marketing strategy many game publishers and developers use to increase brand awareness. It is a great way to reach a wider audience and boost gaming community sales. You must find the best channels, content creators, or gaming streamers for video game influencer marketing.
Gaming influencers create relevant, authentic content for the new players and authentically engage with them. You can use different channels like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch for running a video game influencer marketing campaign.
4 – Create a Good Game Trailer
Yes, you need a fantastic game trailer to attract more players. You can easily capture new and veteran gamers with advanced storyline techniques and aesthetically pleasing graphics. An impressive trailer can help players easily remember the story and create a solid emotional brand.
When it comes to creating a good game trailer for your new release, here are some crucial tips that can make the video memorable:
- Add a straightforward story and dramatic structure
- Use beautiful images
- Add high-quality gameplay snippets.
- Capturing console and mobile device footage
- Add sound bites to give a trailer a realistic feel
- The right background music
- Use good-quality voiceovers
- Video compression for online posting
- Submit on Vimeo, YouTube, and other hosting platforms
5 – Email Marketing
Reaching prospective players’ inboxes is another effective video game marketing strategy that can benefit your gaming store. You can entice subscribers to become your high-value customers with beautifully crafted emails. According to Statista, email marketing revenue is expected to reach 11 billion by 2023. Email marketing in the gaming industry is a sensible choice to get gamers and send them personalised offers.
Creating an email marketing campaign will allow your gaming studio to better connect with prospective buyers and nurture the player base. Email marketing can give you higher ROI than other inbound marketing techniques if done right.
You can better target and segment your email list when users engage with your game, products, or services. It will help you create personalised email content for individuals based on their interests. To run a successful email marketing campaign for your video game, remember the following tips:
- Know your audience
- Identify the motivating factors to engage your audience
- Write efficient email copy to entice players
- Add special discounts that are hard to ignore
- Send emails at the right time
Key Takeaways
Video game marketing is challenging. People from all over the world play video games, adults and teens alike. To reach gaming streamers and capture the interest of active gamers, marketers can use these effective video game marketing strategies. You can experiment with Twitch marketing, discord marketing, influencer marketing, YouTube marketing and other video game marketing techniques to find which tactic suits you best. Each marketing approach boasts incredible results and can help you build a large gaming community and revenue. Now, it is your turn to develop a video game strategy for your video game to maximise downloads and increase revenue.
