By: Hedaa Ashraf, Senior Social Media Marketing Manager at LA3EB, Sony’s Esports Company

Hedaa Ashraf, Senior Social Media Marketing Manager at LA3EB, Sony’s Esports Company

With many publications constantly reporting on the eSports “boom” and its tremendous growth, marketers became familiar with eSports marketing and its impact on brands.

Esports is no longer a laughing matter, it’s one of the most thriving and fast growing industries worldwide with 1.08 billion U.S. dollars esports market value In 2021, an almost 50 percent increase from the previous year. 

Yeah, we can say eSports is having more than a moment!

Despite the rise in popularity of eSports, marketing to the eSports audience isn’t that easy! However, there’s no rulebook yet. Marketers can enter the esports space in a variety of ways; from gaming community creation to Influencer marketing and sponsoring a team, there’s a lot that can be done. 

Identifying the right eSports audience 

With the variety of games titles, categories, platforms and interests, it’s quite tricky for marketers to identify the brand eSports audience. The global audience for eSports is huge, young, active, super engaged – mainly Generation Zers and Millennials, both males and females. 

Among all of these categories, make sure to identify your audience wisely by analyzing each category, game audience demographics, behavior and interests.

Investing in the right channels 

Now, you know who your audience is, and it’s time to identify where they spend most of their time. In addition to the well-known streaming platforms like Twitch, YouTube gaming and Facebook, gamers mostly spend their time in Discord and other social platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

Creating a gaming community

This is not a common strategy and needs time, resources and budget but if you play it right, it will be one sure way to build your brand in the gaming world. Gamers and eSports fans have an extreme sense of community. They do love participating publicly in gaming communities showing off their expertise, milestones and even the best performance in their games. Building a community for them and gathering them in one place will give them a chance to build their own communities under yours which will certainly reinforce your brand. Red bull gaming hub is an excellent example for it.

You might even reach that point, instead of hiring a team to start topics and engage with gamers, the community members will do that for you FOR FREE! 

Collaborating with gaming influencers 

No! Influencer marketing is not dead! In fact, influencers drive authentic conversations and engagement. Collaborating with highly-vocal streamers with a huge following across different platforms to promote your brand, you’re increasing the brand awareness, and you can even drive their audience to take a certain action like purchasing, subscribing, etc

Thinking of how to measure? Success of eSports influencers campaigns can be easily measured by looking at the total number of views that their streams receive and the total number of people tuned in to their streams across a certain period of time. This data allows you to determine the return on investment you’re getting from your campaigns and will help you choose the right influencers for the next campaign.

Investing in content creation 

Content is King! It may sound outdated, but for two decades since Bill Gates wrote his famous essay, it’s proven that content does miracles!

In the esports sector specifically, when gamers aren’t playing, they tend to look for the creative and unique content or participate in trendy topics and here’s the brand’s chance to get noticed by its target audience.

Creating original content will maximize the brand’s opportunities to reach it’s esports target audience. For instance, blogging about  how to pass certain level in specific games, tips and tricks, games releases and news, etc 

Believe me, when gamers find your content share-worthy, they will share with their community, and they will end up following your brand just for its valuable content. 

Sponsorship 

It’s considered a pricey strategy, however it grants access to the niche target audience. If brand awareness is one of your goals, this is one of the best strategies you can go with. It will keep your brand fresh in mind.

There are many options when it comes to sponsorship like sponsoring teams, tournaments, arenas or single gamers. For instance: Red bull sponsors the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) and teams such as G2 Esports, Cloud9, and Vodafone Giants. 

Louis Vuitton also leveraged on eSports marketing by its collaboration with League of Legends and providing in-game characters with skins featuring luxury items. Louis By this collaboration, Louis Vuitton penetrated the esports audience circle and got 100 million impressions over its lifetime.

As eSports continues to grow, there will be a lot of attractive marketing opportunities for brands. Now is the right time for brands to get into the game and start leveraging the eSports marketing and tweak their strategies to reach its hybrid audiences.