The first question every businessman needs to ask themselves is “Who is the audience for my product?” Once you’ve answered this question, you need to find every possible way to reach it. You already know the most popular ways to reach your audience: billboards, social media, and offers among others. But there’s a new venue that’s turning everyone’s heads including your audience and your competitors. It’s the esports industry.
You’ll be surprised to know that the structure of the esports industry heavily resembles the popular sports of our day. Just like professional sports, it has leagues and teams. Its fans also pay to see players play live or watch broadcasts at home. Naturally, one of the ways it makes money is by advertising, which is what you can take advantage of to reach your audience. So here are four tips to reach potentially untapped audiences.
1. Find your audience
This is the first step in any type of marketing, including esports marketing. You may find it unfamiliar as it’s relatively new, but the basic rules of marketing never change. Just like everywhere else, you’ll have to differentiate between the people who are interested in esports. Not all esports viewers enjoy or watch, all games.
Some like strategy-based games like World of Warcraft while others may prefer team-battles in Overwatch. Some like to play online slot games in theonlinecasino.co.uk while others play virtual reality roleplay games for fun. Some game supporters are even rivals of each other, such as PUBG and Fortnite. Thus, you need to scan your existing customers to see if there are any affinities towards a game or set of games. You can also choose a game or league that has a synergy with your product.
2. Choose the right access channels
Once you’ve identified it, you need to find the right channels you use to access your newly found audience. Where can you reach them, and what’s the best way to approach? Some companies like Red Bull have it much easy since their product is already connected with gaming and such.
However, for businesses with other types of products, the approach needs to be surgical. Your best options are Twitch and Youtube. Twitch is a streaming service that’s built for gaming, while Youtube is the largest video streaming platform in the world. Find creators and broadcasters on these platforms that stream the games you’ve targeted and start running ads there.
3. Work with influencers
Once you’ve run ads on several channels, you need to evaluate their performance and find influencers you want to collaborate with. Depending on your brand identity and your budget, you can spend more time finding the right influencer and even take on multiple collaborations.
When you collaborate with an influencer instead of running ads on their channel, you avoid interrupting someone’s viewing. Moreover, influencers incorporate your brand into actual content and make it much more appealing for audiences sensitive to advertising.
4. Back teams and events
Sponsoring an esports team is not as big an investment as it sounds. The entire esports scenario is still in development, not nearly as big as it’s likely to get. So this gives you two options to sponsor a team: either start your own team as unsigned talent tends to be cheaper, or make a big offer to established teams with existing sponsors. It’s worth mentioning that established teams are much more likely to succeed in the long run.
If you’ve recognized an immense opportunity in esports for your business, then you can go all-in by hosting esports events. While the big tournaments have a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, you can comfortably host smaller, private events. They’re an effective way to set up your credibility and market your brand.
Act now
That’s all you need to market your brand in esports. Find your audience, choose the right channels, work with influencers, and back teams and events to find success. The esports landscape is constantly changing and evolving. What this means is that brands of any size can achieve their objectives. So get out there and start playing.
