8 mistakes made in influencer marketing

[Music] can I just get a quick poll who here who here works in game development majority I think great who's an influencer hi and who else do I have third-party service platform ztc cool awesome nice to have so many devs involved alright so I'm here to talk about eight mistakes in influencer marketing there's actually plenty more mistakes to be done but these were these are some that I hope you get some practical advice for before I go into that a quick introduction I'm from match-made where the leading influencer marketing platform so we all actually have a gaming studio background I worked at super evil and supercell in

the past and it influenced their marketing over there so we have a very data-driven approach to influencer marketing because we we like to look at data and get to results versus get lured by big subscriber counts so we we built a platform where we essentially take the YouTube into which API pull all that in cross-reference it with 20,000 games and our intelligent algorithm does all these magical wonderful things and essentially we find the influencers for you based on who you want to reach you're not looking to reach the influencer you're looking to reach of their target audience so we dig a little bit deeper and do some clever things to find the right folks to work with it's an automated platform so you can run the whole thing from search to negotiating a deal and running analytics and everything on the platform but I'm not here to sell I just wanted to explain that so my name is Hany misunder i'm the CMO i've spent the past ten years and marketing pretty much I feel old I've been on studio side so

like I mentioned most previously being glory was was my game so work that super evil in California but then relocated back to Europe I am finished I might not always sound that it's the California ears rubbing on me and yeah so now let's get into eight mistakes so the first one the cardinal sin of everything what we marketers this is the essentially the root cause to all evil if we don't set our goals right this is actually a really cute gift but if it's if it's private that's fine you really need to be clear in your goal setting for influencer marketing from the beginning and I know it can be difficult because influencer marketing tends to live in many places in your organization super evil for example it was it was a mix of PR it was a mix of UA and it was a mix of community building so you want to make sure that you're kind of aligned and if you have goals that are not aligned then make sure you navigate navigate that so we had very select strategies for for non paid and paid influencers so just something to keep in mind anyway so how

do you fix this oh they're the gift is playing it I figured you know soccer goes at football sorry so typically goals that you have as a game company it's it's usually awareness installs or building a community so this is the type of metrics that you should really look at I mean we all know that a good goal has a it's specific it has numbers it has a deadline and it's easy to understand it's aligned with business so anyway so for the awareness bit you look at the the number of views that you're getting and then if you want to get into a little bit more kind of deeper and understand how how you are interesting for the for the channel is look at how the viewership for your paid segment or your video or your stream is comparing to the average on that channel so so you have a little bit more you're not looking just absolute so you're looking at relevancy as well installs is really easy your goal is install so you measure the install set that clear you can also

look at something like click-through rate and engagement to have have again a little bit more like relatable data and then number three community I look at views and then engagement and in the end you want to be very clear when you're building communities where where are you driving those folks where are you building that community if you're not pushing them to your game where do you want to push that yeah so then the next one bad content matching this is I think one of one of the biggest mistakes I think marketers we're really busy we have so many channels we have so many things to do that we typically look at a couple of games that are kind of similar to ours we look at a few influencers and then we just kind of make a list and go from there but that's a little bit too lazy and so this is one funny example ated a Listerine Instagram ad and it went all wrong and anyway she got death threats from it and it was kind of a horrible case but the point there is that make sure your product makes sense for the influencer don't think only you know like I need to sell

sell sell my game but make sure that you're thinking it's a two-way street you want to create cove al you together and hold on yes so don't be lazy selecting your influencers do your homework use some analytics and and be honest so so one thing like easy easy thing to do is you know who you're targeting you know your your sweet spot audience look at that and then go dig some data we can help where there's a bit slaughter can also help there's many many companies who can help with this but look at the data of the of their audience so make sure that you're overlapping so that you're not you know if you're targeting 40 year old women that you're not reaching 50 year old boys because that will maghreb situation and then the other thing is is be critical and evaluate and be honest like does my does my game make sense for this audience I've seen a lot of mobile games vainglory being one so I can lay my stake we were very heavy on Twitch cuz

we were a core game so we're like alright this makes sense to be honest there's not a single mobile game that's been popular on Twitch so I think supercell guys at this really well they've built it on all on YouTube also they're eSports side so that's something to just consider consider when you're when you're building your strategy all right numbers oh oh this is some data just a sample from from our platform so this is the type of data that you want to look at when you're evaluating the channels who you want to work with alright do you want a photo I was too quick the next mistake that I'm gonna go to is bad tracking because if you've set your goal did you find the relevant channels and then you do your campaigns and then you forget to set up the tracking properly you're screwed because as a marketer you want it you want to be able to explain what you did and and like this is a very critical part and it doesn't have to be all that sophisticated you can do do easily if you have a cut and I just you do unique links and you send those out and and just make sure you're kind of smart and and how you

organize your your excel and everything for this if you're not at the phase where you're using the Coachella's and adjust you can hack it with bitly it's it's a lot more manual labor but it's doable so just make sure and and when you do your tracking remember what are your goals and make sure that you're staring at the right numbers because that's also something that's easy to get wrong all right problem number four you're not experimenting enough okay so now you have your goals you have your influencers you have your campaign lives live and I'm gonna do this again because as marketers we want to scale and we want to save time great a lot of it is scalable but you should save some time on being experimental right now for tonight's massive so so I'm seeing this huge trend of I want to work with fortnight influencers well yes you can do that but you should also think about other things you can do as well so so in my opinion if you have a budget you should allocate some of it as a test budget look at alternative geographies you might find interesting

downloads and engagement rates and looking at a company a country like Brazil for example you should also look at different size and flitters not just get stuck and medium works for us too you might want to try out a little a little bit more and also the different platforms you could try YouTube twitch you could try you know Instagram and all those there's so many platforms now and then varying content so as advertisers I think we we like to think that my games the best I would I have a video of my game only yes but typically we see lower viewership rates for that so so something that can also work really well as an integrated video so that means that you know there's a video that the influencer is doing anyway and then you know they take a one-minute segment out of their video and put your game in here's an example the audio is not working but this is hilarious Milani China because friends in a circle and gave the last one standing $10,000 what a great

guy it was a good video but the only thing it was missing was chaos which is where I come in imagine a group of friends in a pool filled with slime in the freezing cold British weather battling out for five thousand pounds now I'll be watching over this challenge in my sole aim is to make my friends turn on each other not only is this going to be a battle of who can last the longest but I'll also be testing human nature and who my victims chunks AJ Sharkey Kenny and Johnny Kerry all I had to do was tell them what was on the line from

mr. Johnny Kerry all I had to do now was set things up okay it's freezing cold outside but it's time to set up this pool I know what you're thinking hell have I been able to buy swimming pool and get a 5,000 pound cash prize well I guess you could call me a legend it's such a good pun pun and a fun way to get into a sponsored bit and that kind of integrated content can really work as a lot of the times you're probably like but honestly like the viewership and the engagement for something like that can be a lot higher than dedicated so just just bear that in mind all right number five as marketers we think we think we know everything who thinks that money is the most important thing for influencers when they decide if they work with you I gave you that okay well you guys are

smarter than I thought it's actually what they care about we just run this survey recently the most important thing to them is if their audience will like it or or if the game suits their channel so it's all about relevancy if only four percent thought that you know money is the most important thing so that's something to keep in mind with keep in mind and also each influencer is unique and I know as marketers we want to scale and just have like a you know like a 1:1 cut way to do things but you have to have to be a little bit more creative and personalize things a little bit more so essentially don't don't think you know everything listen to the influencers personalize your outreach we all hate automated marketing emails so don't do it with fluencies either really think what you can offer them as well maybe you can you can throw some giveaways for their audience and stuff like that to make it make it even more relevant does your game suit they're 10 already went through that be critical

and also just look at the data like if you can tell him that yeah I think there's a match here that that's good data for them to know as well and and one really important bit is give them access to the game early if you can and ask for their opinion like hey what do you think do you think this could be a game that you want to work with it can be a smart strategy because they might really like it it can push their price down a little bit but also they're gonna be more engaged and the content will be better ok and then number 6 getting lured by big subscriber counts only I know it's very easy to go on youtube look at a channel ok that's that's that's a good sub-county let's let's go with this here's just some some data this is real data it's just anonymous you can compare some of the numbers so for example here's there's two quite big channels 5.9 million seven point 94 million but if you look at their 30-day average viewership which is the interesting number here you can see that the 5.9 million has only around 40,000 views per

video in the last 30 days versus the other guy has five five and a half million so that's the kind of stuff because a lot of influencers may have grown big and have big subscriber counts because they grew big on a game that's not big anymore but don't unsubscribe so essentially you might be paying for viewers who aren't really there so you want to be careful about that one and then vice versa the other one you know probably for at night because people are really watching it and they're subscribing so the numbers really add up there similarly in the smaller ones you can have a small channel reach so this is a 1.8 million subscribers two hundred thirty one thousand so a lot smaller channel reaching similar viewership and a lot higher engagement so it's not only the subscriber counts that matter also when it comes to Gio's don't only look at their location so this is also real data again this is a channel and if you go look on YouTube it's based in Australia but then when you look behind the scenes sixty percent is in the US and now if you're an early release in Australia and you want players in

Australia and you work with this person you're screwed because you're paying for people who can't install the game because they're not in the right Geo okay so fix it use the data compare compare their subscribers viewership engagement make sure that the numbers add up also track what performs for your game so when you start doing these influencer things it can be a little bit manual but in my opinion it's the easiest ways you just start to put everything together and you see kind of what's performing for your game and then you learn from there and then probably if you do a good channel mix you learn that okay you know what's really performing for me he's like mommy blogs ok great mommy blogs resonate with my player base great and it's probably not something you were expecting for a game okay I'm running out of time bad breeds bad mistake easy to fix just be be specific enough don't copyright for them if the influencers creative space they've built their channel

they've built their audiences that's what they do best but make sure you provide them with the necessary information in an easy way to understand have your CTAs your hashtags you're wearing to download descriptions and vocabulary and the few things they're not allowed to say just write it out in a clear way don't copyright and you can also do this in a video format I mean we are talking about influencers who do video so there isn't a really well with a video greeting then not enough time this is one of the cardinal sins it's really quick quick one to fix give them enough time you're not gonna get great quality content in three days I don't know if you can build a game in three days but you can't make a video quickly so that's one easy easy to fix start your influence our outreach early the negotiations take a longer time than you'll expect and then give them give them space and use your calendar set up pings and alarm clocks and all that lovely tech that's out there that's it that's a summary of everything if you want to grab a photo and then there's a bonus though sign up to our newsletter and learn more easily we send out we

send the newsletter roughly once a month we have the blog going out every week so there's a lot of tips and tricks in there my name is Hany thank you again for listening to me I know it's late in the afternoon good work your experience do the implements that you work with tend to only play games if they're paid they have a mix of they just pick stuff up like a normal gamer just cuz they want to do they have a mix of that usually the latter and I think a lot of the influencers I mean they're gamers at heart especially if you're working with gaming channels and they love playing games they might play a lot but then they might not publish content about that game necessarily so I saw we did a paid campaign with PewDiePie and then we saw him logging back later later on but because also it wasn't his main title so

he doesn't want to like push something to his audience if they're like reacting negatively but some of them will try out games and for example like Nick at night and molt they have variety channels separately so they've built their bases on supercell games but then they have smaller channels where they just try try random games and that that's actually a good place actually to work he's getting to you so I'm a developer so it's from your own experience when do you think it's the best time to contact an influencer I mean if you contact it too early before your your your game lunch you can't lost in touch and if you like do it too late it's like if there is not enough time to get up on together it depends on your game it depends on your launcher yeah I would think Laurie what we did because it was a very core game and we were bringing out like I mean a MOBA for mobile it was very like the seller was

really difficult so we brought them in very early we brought them I think right three months before launch and we brought them like we flew in some of the key folks that we'd identified from around the world to our office to hang out play the game gave them early access like what do you guys think what do you think would be better I mean it's not the cheapest way to go about but then we really got them invested and involved early on and it really helped us build a community of influencers then kind of from the get-go so then when we were alive they were really familiar with the games they knew the devs by name and everything so in a very close relationship with like like the close ten ones but then you probably want to figure out like like a two way strategy so have you have the ones that you're not paying like will the community ones but they'll come around launch when your games out and there's people who are fanatic and what I want to do YouTube content support them help them tweet out you know give them access give them give them some in-game currency if you can and then figure out what does the page

look like and it's kind of figuring out the balance between the two [Music]