Influencer Marketing in Eastern Europe! A Hidden Gem or a Waste of Money?

[Music] hello everyone and thank you for being here my name is Mario and I'm part of Imperia online marketing and business development team today I would like to talk about one of the trendiest changes but at the same time really good ways for acquiring new users influencer marketing some of you may have probably done in freezer marketing and some of you may not but there is things in common between influencer marketing and every other digital campaign first of all you need to know who your users are and second of all you need to know your tools and in digital advertising costs at times you have facebook business panel Google ads or any other kind of panel but here you need to deal with

real people the human factor is more important than ever and since it's you always do your campaigns based on let's say interests regions demographics and so on make the perfect sense to do the same for influencer marketing that's why today I would like to talk about influencer marketing in Eastern Europe but before we continue I would like to tell you more about Imperial online we were found in 2005 in Sofia Bulgaria and currently we are the biggest Bulgarian game developer everything is done in-house and there are 80 people working in the company we are doing the development community management social media presence visuals and so on this was one of the reasons why we got the quarter - in 2018 by steal from group for those of you who are not familiar skip front group is the biggest group for independent game developers and there are students from all across the globe Imperial online currently has 25 release titles and we have a core competence in mmm artists and MMORPG games one of the reasons why Imperial

God's our success wind years was the flagship title Imperial online and the thing is that everything we were earning in the game we were investing back in marketing we were doing a lot of budget in facebook and also in Google that's why we got recognized as top advertiser in the Bulgarian region however with the recent years with the increased usage of ad blockers we knew that there is a time for change and in a way to avoid those users who are using ad blocker and them influencer marketing was the right choice because we are located in Eastern Europe it was pretty normal to start there more about the region there is no common understanding what Eastern Europe consists of there are many countries which we both attributed to Central Europe or Eastern Europe however we can get this map which basically includes countries which were part of the ex-soviet Republic and also those who were in trade relations with them that

makes approximately 300,000 million people and furthermore Russia he has the biggest share with approximately 50% of that Eastern European population in other words this is around 40% of the total European population on average the average age here is 40 years old which is a little bit younger than what we have in Darwin countries in Western Europe and also the divide distribution is 79 percent Android but please note here that the mobile phone at all or the device we're sharing is seen as a status quo so you will see a lot of people who may be earning a given type of wage and their phone will cost probably two times more and finally one another economic indicator is the GDP per capita on approximately 26,000 which is almost 2 times less than what we have in Germany Poland is seen as the waifus country in that region now since we have an

overview about the region I would like to ask you something was the first thing that comes in your mind when I told you Eastern European gamer was the first thing when you think about Eastern European gamers be honest I know what what you're thinking right now okay I was thinking more about their personal traits so that's what usually people think you were not here to say it but that's what people think about Eastern European gamers that's how I think - Elise so basically almost the same but let's face it all of you have been playing those multiplayer games when you were in team with other players and near the end of the game you get a person from Eastern Europe who just decided to quit it at the most heated moment and you lost the game because of that getting it was serious stuff and the profile of the Eastern European gamer first of all mobile and PC hit the hash

share and konso is still seen as a luxury there is simple reason for that first of all mobile your devices think as status quo so it's pretty important to have a good phone second of all there are a lot of PC manufacturers in the region so it's not that hard to get new parts for your gaming PC and third of all the fact that console is seen as a luxury is simply because you have to buy those games it may sound strange but torrent websites and trackers are still really popular in the region and no one is doing anything at all to stop them so this makes it also important to say that gamers in the region are simply reluctant to pay for premium games and it's normal why do you need to pay for something when you can get it absolutely for free on the other hand when a player is paying in a free to play game they some synth feel that they have some kind of advantage in comparison to other players so if you're working and you're

having some influence some gamers from Eastern Europe and they have made a payment in your game you will be hearing from them when they complain that they will say something like hey I'm paying your salary do whatever I tell you this means that they also have like a really strong national identification and in online games it will be pretty often when for example players from Russia we were playing in the same Alliance they won't be that cooperative in with other players and the same goes for other Eastern European countries furthermore something q I guess you were not able to say but Blaire toxicity there was recently a research of online gamers they asked what is the biggest problem of online gaming recently and all of them said that there are a lot of toxic players this was the meaning and what sets like players which were located in tier 1 countries and Americas and after this they were asked to say

which is the most the region with the most toxic pairs and of course 82% said that its Eastern Europe and finally I have said a lot of things which are not showing the players in that region as good ones but it's important to say that they are really competitive and for every game if you're having an online game and it's pretty important to have a conflict in it you need to have those players because they'll stick together they will be having their own alliances where they are played with people from their country and they'll make it pretty interesting for everyone else now another step is to say what the influencer marketing in Eastern Europe is at the moment first of all the market is heavily lagging behind things which were popular in Germany let's say four years ago are now trendy here the same goes says the way influencers are working with let's say with other

companies and one thing is for sure that many influencers you prefer to work without an agency the reason for that is that it's there is no need because you're having less premium content on their channels furthermore it's still seen as a hobby they're really few content creators which are doing influencer marketing as their full-time job and furthermore this will make it harder for you to work with them first of all of language barrier it's always good to have an agency which will help you there but if you don't have it you would work to work directly with those influencers and second of all the paperwork this could be a problem also for you because they we'll take longer to read the contract and it's not sure that the points you have put in that contract will be executed in the right way our important thing to mention is that product placement is the only way to earn money

in that region for influencers according to social blade the same influencer in the United States may be earning around $400,000 per year simply from from ads and for influencers in Eastern Europe the Datsun will be approximately 20 times less so their only choice is to make that kind of product placement and this is why they're also more open to make a dedicated video since you're going to pay more for dedicated video in that region now I would like to tell you about the campaign we recently did in Bulgaria basically the idea behind that one to start it was to create a highly engaging influencer marketing campaign and what we really wanted to do is to benefit from the synergies those influencers are having between each them we had one problem imperium online is again which lacks entertaining battle visualization so if

you make an integrated video and you simply show gameplay of Imperia online it may not bring enough attention from the players this is why we decided that the best possible solution here is to make people play Imperial online not because of the actual gameplay but because of the influencers because we already know how influential they can be and it's pretty well known fact that for some people knowing what their favorite content creator things is more important than knowing for their family things so what we did first of all we had a two about Garen influencers we create the special anniversary cross-device room for all local users why we did that first of all we had the anniversary version of Imperia online this was new content for the pair so they were more excited about it second of all we opened the neural and let's face it in any game no one who

is competitive competitive enough wants to enter a game where they're players who have been playing for two years and they're so far of their development that it makes no sense for them to be competitive and even paint us in this game what we did next is to add additional features in the game for example there was a specific feature which gave the opportunity for those influencers to send messages directly to players and they could be saying something like hey people today we need to attack this player because we need to win this war furthermore we opened this core channel between those influencers and also our team it's really important to do it first of all because I've already mentioned it it's hard to work with them they're not that used to product placement making content for a brand so you need to be guiding them and furthermore those people were one of our best choice because they were constantly

saying hey this one is not working right or players are complaining about this and this and this can you fix it can you help us make it more competitive so more people are interested about it of them posted their videos on the same day we wanted to make a hype around it that's why we decided to start only in Bulgaria so that the whole country we weren't about this game and finally it's pretty important when you make in France or marketing campaign no matter in which region is to have it synced with other campaigns you may be having for example it was at the same time we got our featuring from Google Play and Appstore and we were also spending some cash on advertising for that one this is basically how the videos look like as you could see each one of them is not showing a commercial in their videos but they make a dedicated one and all of them were playing they were showing the main features of the game and they were inviting the players to join them to

join their alliance and play together in imperial online there was also one another guy who decided to take completely different approach I'm not sure if you have heard about mr. beast it's one really popular and creatin but what he's doing in his videos is basically he's giving money to random streamers on Twitch for example and one of them decided to do the same stuff so we gave him that creativity we said okay do whatever you want as long as you're not harming the brand and this video easily gotten topping up number one in utopian training you're more interested now about the results what we found out about this campaign is that we got the highest user engagement rates we have ever seen Imperial online and this is compared to targeted advertising on Facebook and Google between the 14 and a 21 we get engaged rates which were 15% higher second of all we reach top charts in Google Play Bulgaria after the featuring was done so there were still a

lot of players who joined Imperia and Google organically boosted us turnable several videos reached top 10 trending on YouTube which was also important because the reason to have dedicated videos was that those videos will stay forever on YouTube and no matter if the campaign is over no matter that you may not be working any more with that influencers there will be always the video of someone a familiar face will be showing how they play the game and giving you some tips and make it entertaining for everyone who decided to play Imperial and for first time something important we saw that our towel it's much more than what you are getting for example from targeted advertising and it made perfect sense since first of all content creators especially the one we hired and it's in overall they're having people which are much younger than for example what you

can get from targeted advertising the average profile the pair in imperial online is approximately thirty five years old and people who are coming from that improvisor campaign were on average 18 years old so that's why we got the lower number I want to give you some index from this presentation and after this I'll be happy to hear your questions if you have any first of all we really advise you to work closely with influencers open escort channel or you can for example chat with them on telegram on Facebook or whatever you want there will be your best feedback of the game because they have been playing a lot of games they know their community so they will be having a feedback from their community which would after this will transfer to you second of all try to aim for dedicated video it's much cheaper to get a dedicated video in stern Europe than for example to get a dedicated video in any other countries which are let's say in Western Europe or the Americas it could

it could go like dedicated viewer for 500 euro and you know that in Italy or Spain it can easily go for up to 20,000 euro another thing is really important to state clearly your requirements where you doing with the legal part it's hard to work with them and you need to have it in the contract do this did that that amount of videos or post it on that exact date or say the things like this in our video another thing it's really good when you have additional budget for rewards yes there will be some people who may decide to start playing this game because of that given influencer but when you give that extra incentive such as let's say Google Play cards or like vouchers or Amazon ones or whatever is trained in that country it will bring even more users so that's another incentive and I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't cost that much and finally

don't expect to always give positive ROI it's region which is much poorer than what you get for example in Western Europe but at the same time the amount of players you'll be getting there will be much higher the cost per CPI will be much much much much war and at the same time I'm pretty sure that you'll get players who are really competitive and who would stay in the game even after that that's what we saw also in Imperial those new friends are some of them are still playing the game some of them just ended playing it once our contract ended but the players who came with them are still in the game because there was someone to show them that this really interesting game and that's how they states so thank you for your attention thank you so much I don't got any questions not in the room mmm just the one cool okay thank you very much you pointed out that the people engaged with

your campaign were more engaged in the typical user and sadly there are that was lower what did other kpi's look like did the retention graph really closely follow the campaign's lifetime or did they stay for longer it was it was longer especially the retention rates the average number of sessions which at least two times higher then in comparison to advertising campaigns we were hearing and basically all kinds of engagement rates were higher of course at some point during the campaign we were seeing that some players were leaving the game and that's why I have mentioned that it's really good idea to have additional rewards which you can use for example for type of reactivation of the campaign such as you can have something like a given influencer to challenge everyone in the game to play against them and if they beat them they'll be getting getting a specific reward you can even give a video card

you can give a voucher you can give whatever you want equipment gaming equipment works really nice in the region so if you make them challenge against the player they against the oppressor they have always admired this could really boost again your matrix I see thank you how about best practices for ethical considerations do you ask your influences to declare upfront in the video that you're sponsoring them that's something I have missed in my presentation but in the region almost no one is labeling their content a sponsored one so they may mention it at the beginning of the video that someone is supporting this video but you won't see it anywhere that's like those message that this is sponsored content or in the description they will do it something like okay this video was supported but they are not saying it it's like the paid content so people are also not familiar the ones who are

following them that is the paid content is still tricky it's a little bit shady to be honest but there is no one who is taking care of that so yeah I thought it worth mentioning because it stands in contrast with working with say US influences yeah you know that it's completely different at what I have just presented him thank you very much all right cool that's all the questions we've got not seen any hands okay thank you so much Mario thank you [Applause] [Music]