8 key questions about Twitch influencer marketing: Sophie-Ann Bennett answers

1. What kinds of companies can succeed on Twitch?  

— Twitch is very well known in the gaming space. However, it is the perfect place for anybody to go and market on. 

I have worked with a lot of gaming brands on Twitch, whether that be new mobile, PC, or console games. We also work with a lot of non-endemic brands in the gaming industry. These are energy drinks, different crisps, crackers, and cookies, and very elite products, such as CBD oils and sprays. 

All these brands work hand in hand with the gaming audience and with people who are on Twitch to just chat.

The platform does open whole new marketing for any company. You can tailor your brand values depending on what kind of influencers you want to work with.

2. How to search for Twitch influencers?

At GameInfluencer, we have a database with about 3 million social media influencers. There is a well-versed community with our exclusive talents of gaming. This is why we know exactly who would be the best fit for future campaigns. 

But when we are looking for people we have not worked with before, we always go to SullyGnome (Twitch stats and analytics platform). For newbies, it is the best place to start, especially if you know what games you want to go after, what community would work best with your product. 

On the platform, you can reveal who are the biggest names in a certain niche, for example, Fortnite, at the moment. You also get a wealth of knowledge about how Twitch channels perform and what their average watch time is. Also, you can check whether given influencers have been streaming for seven days in a row or have not streamed for the last 30 days. 

Additionally, you can see what time streamers go live. It helps you to choose the best time for your campaign launching. As a result, you can get a big number of concurrent views whether your audience is in the US, the UK, or the Asian markets.

Sometimes we go through YouTube streamers who specialize in IRL (In Real Life) streaming and have a Twitch channel. You can check out your favorite YouTubers, too. Maybe, some of them have moved over to Twitch as well.

3. Are social listening tools helpful for Twitch influencer marketing?

Twitch is more of an audio channel which does cause some difficulties when you want to use social listening tools. They work tremendously well when you track descriptions like on YouTube or captions like on Facebook and Instagram. 

Twitch, as well as Snapchat, provide ephemeral content. The influencer can decide to save videos on their channel or not. Social listening tools can’t grasp all of that kind of stuff. However, we have used them in the past for YouTube and Instagram. 

For example, we used social listening tools for picking specific keywords and target words for hashtags. Also, with them, we track what people speak about the campaign that we have activated, the new update, or the new product launches. 

4. What are the options for influencer marketing campaigns on Twitch?

On Twitch, people playing games online. They get interacted with the game and showcase its best features. It comes across as genuine because there is no script to it. 

You can give streamers a few talking points and just allows them to interact with your product, whether that be a new game, headset, or even a smartphone. For example, they can showcase how they transfer from Android to an iPhone or vice versa. 

Also, you can do a lot of tournaments that integrate 5-10 influencers at the same time. We have done a lot of things like that across time zones. It is like handing over the baton from one time zone over to another. That is fun and engaging to watch on Twitch because you can see that game being played for 24 hours. 

Then, there are channel sponsorships. Your logo can be on the T-shirt or hat that influencers wear. It can be a sticker on their microphones. 

Additionally, there are panels on Twitch channels where you can post some promotion codes for games or products like vitamins or drinks. 

You can simply run ads on Twitch as well. There are a lot of big brands like Disney there now because it is owned by Amazon. 

However, people who subscribe to a channel can watch ad-free streams. This is why traditional media ads do not necessarily work on Twitch. It is always good to partner up with an influencer than launching an ad there.

5. What might a Twitch marketing campaign look like? 

Recently, I have got to work on a mobile interactive release called Erica. By playing the game, you are making decisions for the protagonist as you go through the storyline. 

The game was going to be released in the UK, the US, and Australia. To promote it, we created a Twitch initiative. We chose eight streamers who played the game, and their audience made the decisions for them. We kind of took the power from the influencers and gave it to the community. Users wanted to know what was going to happen next. As a result, we earned over a million viewers overall. 

Also, we included QR codes in captions for people who were watching the videos on their desktops. They had to pick up their phone and scan the QR code to go to AppStore, where they could download Erica and start playing alongside the influencer. 

Then, we took some of the content that we created on Twitch and ran it on TikTok. With the fact that it is a different platform, the videos there performed well. There were a lot of people clicking the links and getting downloaded. 

6. How to measure a Twitch influencer campaign performance?

The main metrics are unique viewers and average viewership. 

The total number of people that have viewed the video at the end of your campaign is also a great metric to keep your eye on.

Also, you need to track your organic traffic and your organic uplift, whether that be installs, purchases, any sort of code being used outside of the tracking link that you have created.

7. Are long-term partnerships suitable for Twitch influencers?

Usually, people that take on long-term partnerships on Twitch are heavily involved in the brand and its values. Similar to Instagram and Facebook influencers, they can be ambassadors who promoted the brand. 

However, it always comes across as a little bit more genuine on Twitch because it is live. There is a stronger connection to the drink they are having, or a specific piece of clothing they are wearing, or a game they are playing. These things are hard to fake when you are talking to your community and your community can see through it. 

Twitch influencers believe in the product because they want to showcase it to their fans. They want to stand by that product as well. 

This is why it is not often that you will see people do a one-off partnership on Twitch. A lot of influencers and brands work on a long-term partnership that last one month or even one year. This is primarily true for gaming stuff producers such as Logitech and Skullcandy. 

Another example of a long-term partnership is Red Bull. For example, influencers have fridges with the drink in the background or drink it during a live broadcast. 

These collaborations work well because they resonate with the audience. If people see the streamer is using the product or playing the game, they are going to want to do the same because they are seeing someone that they are happy with and that they know of. It already seems a little bit more genuine in comparison to likes on Instagram.

On Instagram, you can see that many bloggers are molded to say certain things by the script. Twitch gives more freedom to the influencer from the client or brand side since you can’t script it because it is a live stream. 

However, it is a bit risky because anything can go wrong with live content.

8. The key points in Twitch influencer marketing for newbies

Where you can find Sophie-Ann online?

You can connect with me on LinkedIn or find us on GameInfluencer.com. I would be happy to hear from anybody!