Measuring the Success of an Influencer Marketing Campaign

As game publishers and developers further explore gaming influencer marketing, it can be easy to get lost in the enormous amount of data and metrics. There are countless results to measure when it comes to analyzing campaigns, and many ways you can determine the success of a campaign.

To truly be successful with gaming influencer marketing, it’s important to be proactive, not reactive, with your campaign strategy. At Wehype, we ultimately see high-performing campaigns that convert and engage new players fall under a handful of key performance indicators. In this post, we’re hearing from Nils Gustavson, our Director of Gaming Partnerships, on the data to focus on tracking during their influencer marketing campaigns.

Change in Viewership During Sponsored Content

One of the most important metrics to track is how a content creators viewership changes depending on the game they’re playing. This data can be observed before you launch your campaign, by looking at what happens when a creator plays similar type of games. This can signal how game brands can be better informed, increasing the likelihood of getting value for their investment and also helping determine the long-term impact of spending.

It can be tempting to look at the average number of viewers a creator is reaching overall, but average viewer numbers can change by up to 60 percent depending on the content. Viewer numbers can drop sharply as an influencer plays a game that’s different than their typical game, and understanding the data can help prevent you from underperforming in a campaign.

So, why is this important? Creators typically have two different types of revenue streams; sponsorships and revenue from ads on YouTube or Twitch on top of their content. By setting up each individual content creator for success with engaging content leading to high viewership, you give your game the best chance to succeed.

Viewer Engagement and Sentiment

There are also innumerable metrics to analyze surrounding the engagement with your game and campaign. Ultimately, you want viewers to show interest in the content and to invest time in your game. The data points you select to track performance during your campaign can vary depending on whether it’s on YouTube or Twitch, but have extremely similar foundations.

Likes-to-views and comment-to-view ratios

This can show if viewers find the content engaging enough on YouTube to be active in the conversation online.

Retention on videos

This is the duration of time an average viewer watches the sponsored content, which can be a very powerful data point. Are people tuning in and then leaving after a couple of minutes, or are the majority of people staying to watch the content for the duration of the video or stream?

Performance in the first 24 hours

This metric can demonstrate the overall demand for your game.

Number of mentions in chat

The number of people talking about the game during a Twitch stream can show high interest, drive hype, and help click-through rates and user acquisition.

Depth of viewer comments

Are viewers providing feedback that’s more in-depth than “this game looks fun?” These comments can help you identify specific issues and potential areas for improvements to address throughout your game development journey.

If each of these metrics perform in tandem, the algorithm on YouTube and Twitch is likely to reward the content and help fuel future interest and drive organic content creation. The dream scenario is to have as many viewers actively engaged in the stream chat as possible, specifically reacting to your game in real-time. These particular metrics can help you understand how the game will perform; like higher user retention for a live service game or key feature awareness for a single-player game.

Social Interaction

If you’re launching a campaign for a multiplayer game, does your title enable content creators to quickly and easily play with their audience? Many games implement a way for influencers to connect directly with their fans. This can be through in-game lobbies, or using a viewer’s username.

We see that supporting avenues for interaction between a creator and their community can easily boost engagement, and could even make it more likely that someone watching the content will purchase your game. This effect can be exponentially more noticeable with micro-influencers than with audiences of large creators who have thousands of viewers. These are all strategies that we help brands consider and implement, with support throughout the entire journey.

There are many more significant metrics to monitor throughout the duration of an ongoing campaign and in any organic content following a sponsored opportunity. It’s important to have a clear overall end goal for your gaming influencer marketing campaign through high and achievable KPI’s and milestones you want to reach.

Here at Wehype, we understand reaching new audiences and keeping them engaged through a solid set of gaming content creators can be difficult. It’s why we guarantee that our gaming influencer marketing campaigns are simple, accessible and effortless for brands.Don’t hesitate to connect with us to learn more about how our team of experts can help you.