Like any other community gamers as well have their own platforms for interacting with one another, talking about games, gameplays, tips & tricks on how to be better at a game, and so forth. That is why it’s important to understand which platforms are the best ones to gain gamers attention. So, if you are a small gaming business here is where you need to focus on:
1. YouTube – Still to this day is considered one of the most effective platforms for marketing especially when it comes to gaming. One of the biggest reasons is the fact that if you rank for keywords, it allows you to show up higher on Google search results. Like so is a great opportunity to increase your reach.
More importantly, it has a huge gaming community and it has been like that for many years. There are many YouTubers with more than 10 million subscribers so a good idea would be to promote a game via them. By sponsoring their video, they would be ready to play the beta version of a game and create a video about it and then share it with their fans. It’s important to understand also whom you choose as the promoter, it is advisable to try and find a YouTuber that you think its traits match with the nature of the game you want to launch. By that meaning to not ask a youtuber that plays sports related games like FIFA, 2K, PES, to play and advertise your shooting game. Of course, it’s never easy or possible to find the perfect match but at least getting close to it.
Lastly, it is always fun to release a behind-the-scenes video where you explain the journey the game followed from its development stages up until its launch.
2. Reddit – Is a platform in which everything can be found, from dark horror stories of some users to amazing life hacks. What is interesting is the fact that it is the center of many small gaming communities, gamers use it a lot maybe the most out of all the platforms that will be mentioned later. There are so-called subreddits for every game or topic related to a game that probably some gamers have not even thought of. Furthermore, Reddit users appear on these so-called subreddits and discuss game-related topics, and this is where there is potential to attract gamers. Small gaming enterprises can start by creating a small subreddit prior to launching the game at least 3-6 months beforehand. There they can just ask some random gamers of the community to try the beta version of the game for free or watch the planned trailer about it or just provide them with some details about the game. What the gaming company can expect in return is that they will be getting the most honest and informative replies they could have imagined. Likewise, this would help in the development of the game, maybe some changes seem necessary in the eyes of the gamers so why not fix the game before launching it.
Lastly, if the game seems interesting to these gamers it would attract even more gamers to join the subreddit in this manner even before launching the full game there will be many fans rooting for your game. If this was your first time hearing about Reddit check this video to understand it more clearly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlI022aUWQQ
3. Discord – Is mainly used as a communication platform but similarly to Reddit it has created the so-called discord servers. In these servers’ users can interact, hang out, and meet people that are connected to a specific topic in this case a game. A simple example can be the Valorant Discord Server, which has thousands of members in it and any Valorant gamer can join to find new teammates, tricks, problems related to the gameplay, and everything related to the game. As a result, is a platform that can help to easily promote a new game, what is even better is the chance of streaming in a server. So, developers of a game can play the game themselves and stream it on a private server, while commentating the gameplay, how its played, when its planed to be launched, what to expect from it and so forth. To visually see everything related to what I mentioned here is a short video that explains it all:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ13BA3-NR4
4. Twitch – Every gamer knows it and uses it nearly on daily basis. Its best feature is the ability to broadcast your game live while there are spectators watching as you play, from all around the world. Twitch can be considered as a broadcasting platform similar to YouTube, but its main difference is the ability to communicate with your fans, interacting with them so it’s the best platform for social gamers. Moreover, based on reports there are around 15 million people watching Twitch streams on average so therefore it can be considered a great platform to promote new games. If you are new its not easy to have an audience but again partnering up with an influencer or a known Twitch streamer can help boost your reach much more. So if you are interested in starting to stream here is a short video that will help you out: https://youtu.be/wt-ac45JQaU
5. Facebook – It may seem a long shot to think that Facebook is still used that much especially from gamers, but that’s where you are mistaken. Based on recent data there are no less than 2.9 billion monthly users in Facebook (data from April 2022). So, there are tons of opportunities even gaming wise to reach new potential customers. Some of the methods that can be exploited in Facebook are:
– Fan Pages: there are a lot of them about nearly anything quite like Redditt, people gathering around the same topic. So, finding gaming fan pages and promoting a game there can turn out to be very successful.
– Playing Environments: as Facebook has offered the chance to play games in their page for a long time now if the game in hand does not require high system requirements to be played making it possible to be played there it’s a great idea.
– Advertisements – Facebook might be the best place for promotion especially because of its many features about creating ad campaigns and its options to specifically focus on your interested target group.
Honorable Mention: Steam
Steam cannot be considered as a platform where you socialize or interact with potential future customers, it’s just a platform where gaming developers can sell their games. In most cases its necessary to sell games on Steam there are also other platforms similar to it, but Steam is an all-time classic known from all gamers. Likewise, it is important to understand how to increase your visibility on Steam, which can be done through some easy steps:
– It is important that at least three months prior to the release to create a Steam page, to start sharing interesting material related to the game, and giving out early access bonuses or giveaways to create and audience.
– Worth mentioning is to know that to enhance the rank of your game on search list it’s important to use at least 15 tags in the description.
– Creating a cool minimalistic thumbnail image, do not put only the logo of the company, play around with other images.
– Create a short trailer about the game and focus on making the 10 first seconds interesting because if that’s not the case people will stop watching it after the 10 second.
To summarize it can be said that with the power of digital marketing only on the increase in the last few years there are many options where you can easily and with few costs promote anything, especially games which can be done completely online. What remains important is to understand your resources, your abilities, the genre of the game and of the potential target group you are trying to attract and focusing on some specific platforms to reach out to those gamers. Only one platform can be used if the resources are lower, but the best idea is to use a combination of them, for example Twitch and Discord always go together, but why not trying to create a unique combination of your own as well.
References:
https://www.blog.udonis.co/mobile-marketing/mobile-games/promote-game-social-media
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-awesome-social-networks-just-for-gamers/
https://www.gamemarketinggenie.com/blog/social-media-platforms-for-gamers
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-for-gamers/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/which-social-media-platform-best-advertising-video-games-/?trk=organization-update-content_share-article
https://looprmarketing.com/5-social-media-marketing-strategies-to-grow-your-gaming-community/
Very Nice!