A Deeper Dive into Gamers as Influencers

04/28/22 • 39 min

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Winfluence - The Influence Marketing Podcast

We learned on a recent episode of Winfluence that we’re all gamers. If you play Wordle, or 2048 or Solitaire on your phone, you’re considered a gamer. When you think of the label that way, and filter that label through the lens of influence and influencers, a stereotype is shattered a bit, right?

Gaming is a $250 billion industry. The demographic of a gamer isn’t what you think. The demographic of the gaming audience isn’t what you think, either.

One of the things about gaming I personally have had a hard time with about gaming is understanding why anyone would want to sit around and watch other people play games. But millions do. Whether they’re watching to learn game tips and secrets to get better, or just watching to be entertained, millions and millions of people do just that.

Because there’s an audience there, there are influencers. Some play their games for others to watch. Twitch has been built largely on the backs of these types of folks. But others create how-to videos and instruction and entertainment around games. Still others are creating content about the products and services around gaming, like controllers and peripherals.

Gamers are also now teaching people about the Metaverse since virtual reality is second nature to them. Video games have offered VR options for years now.

There are all kinds of reasons to look to gamers as part of your influence marketing, even if you’re not a tech or gaming product company.

Jordan Mauriello is the managing partner at More Yellow, a branded content and gaming influencer management firm. He not only has a roster of gamers who create great content, but a team that helps brands navigate partnerships and creative content ideas to leverage relationships with gamers.

I took another step in my own efforts to educate myself on the gaming segment of our industry with a great chat with Jordan, who opened my eyes to even more nuances of gaming, partnering with gamers, brand success there and beyond.

I’m sure you’ll learn more as well.

Speaking of Learning More, if you haven’t downloaded The State of Content Mangement from Storyblok, get that while the getting is good. That free report is available to help you see how businesses just like yours are managing the content mess ... creating it, distributing it and the like. Storyblok is a headless content management system and a new sponsor and supporter of this program via the Marketing Podcast Network. The report is a very useful survey of 515 businesses in the U.S. and Europe – companies just like yours – and how they are approaching content distribution through their digital channels in 2022.

I promise you’ll get some interesting insights and inspiration for your content management plans. That’s The State of Content Management Report from Storyblok. Just go to storyblok.com/winfluence for your free report.

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Gaming is a $250 billion industry. The demographic of a gamer isn’t what you think. The demographic of the gaming audience isn’t what you think, either.

Gamers are also now teaching people about the Metaverse since virtual reality is second nature to them. Video games have offered VR options for years now.

There are all kinds of reasons to look to gamers as part of your influence marketing, even if you’re not a tech or gaming product company.

I’m sure you’ll learn more as well.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

How to Find and Use CPM in Influencer Marketing

It could be the economy. Or opportunity. Or greed. But I’ve become fed up with the ever-increasing price tags influencers and content creators are putting on brand engagements. For you brands and agencies out there, I’m guessing you might be as well.

In the most recent edition of my monthly email newsletter, I shared some tinkering I’ve been doing with ideas that might help us know when we’re being fleeced by an influencer’s inflated prices. It has involved posing and testing hypotheses around various analytics and whether or not we could use common language from other marketing channels to understand influencer costs and value more clearly.

I’ve gravitated to what I think is a fair assessment of the CPM, or cost-per-thousand impressions, an influencer may produce. But it’s not as simple as comparing it to CPM rates from other channels because those channels aren’t communicating messages of validation via a trusted third party. The channels are also not the same because the costs are very different. You simply can’t engage most influencers for the same cost as running a pay-per-click ad. Or sending an email.

Today on Winfluence, I’m going to share a lot of my thinking on how to adequately produce a CPM rate for influencers. Then I’m going to share several CPM rates of creators and influencers I’ve calculated based on rate cards and other information I’ve gathered from several creators across content verticals and social channels.

I’ll point out the trouble spots and cautionary tales for how to use and not use this approach, too.

My hope is that we can start to analyze and understand the cost and the value of influencer marketing engagements in a more sophisticated and analytical way ... We can know when someone is charging far too much ... and perhaps even start to convince those who hold the purse strings, be they bosses or clients ... that there is a way to know an influencer or content creator is worth the investment.

A lot of the analytical data you’ll hear me talk about in today’s episode is information I’m pulling from Tagger. It is a complete influencer marketing software platform that allows you to find, engage, book, collaborate, pay and measure influencers. Tagger is also the presenting sponsor of this podcast and the platform I use in my day-to-day work at Cornett to manage influence marketing efforts of our clients.

In fact, I wouldn’t be able to get as deep into these ideas without Tagger because it offers a couple of critical pieces of information for my calculations. I’ll explain more of that in the episode.

But I highly recommend you give Tagger a look-see. When I have a new project for influencers, I have my campaign up and running, build my lists of potential collaborators, spit out one-page profiles of each for my clients to review and load in contracts, creative briefs and more, all in just a few minutes, provided I have the briefs written, of course. Tagger is good but it can’t write them for me.

When my creators post on their social networks, the data is pulled into Tagger automatically, so I can kick out analytics reports for our campaigns to give to our clients every day if need be.

All I ask of you is to do a demo of Tagger. See it for yourself. Go to jason.online/tagger and sign up for a free demo today. It might just be the influence marketing management solution you’re looking for. It certainly does wonders for me, my team at Cornett, and our clients.

That’s jason.online/tagger.

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Next Episode

Creating Influence in the Middle East

This is a special episode of Winfluence. I’m going to step aside and let you hear someone else guide a discussion about influence marketing.

There’s another great show on the Marketing Podcast Network called The Endless Coffee Cup. Matt Bailey of Site Logic is the host of that show. He welcomes expert guests from all around the world on a variety of marketing and business topics.

Matt and I have known each other since an event called Blogger Social back in 2008. He comes from the SEO segment of the marketing space, but he is an agency owner, an entrepreneur and all-around brilliant guy.

You should definitely subscribe to the Endless Coffee Cup podcast. Matt does a great job of dissecting the expertise of his guests. Which is why I wanted to share a specific episode of Matt’s show.

Back in early February, Endless Coffee Cup featured Rashid Al Awadhi. He is leading the New Media Academy in Dubai. Its mission is to transform the Arabic region through digital skills and developing influencers. But, as Matt points out, it’s not the way most people think of influencers. It’s the way we tend to think of them here on Winfluence ... as people with influence.

Al Awadi and his team are working to develop people to change the region in areas of women’s rights, economics, sport, environment and more.

I was fascinated by the discussion. As you can probably tell, this is my kind of influence discussion. So I wanted to share it with you.

A segment of Matt Bailey’s recent episode of the Endless Coffee Cup with Rashid Al Awadhi is coming up for you today on Winfluence. Of course, if you want to listen to the full episode or subscribe to Matt’s show, I’ll leave links to both in the show notes. Or, you can just search for Endless Coffee Cup on your favorite podcast app.

I also want to touch on two fantastic supporters of Winfluence today. You’ve heard me talk about Tagger quite a bit on this show. That’s because they are our presenting sponsor. Tagger is complete influencer marketing software solution. I spent a couple of days with the Tagger team last week at the Influencer Marketing Show. And not only is it great software, but the team is just amazing to be around.

Pete Kennedy and his crew really do have the growth and best interests of you in mind when you’re a customer of Tagger. I’m not going to spend more time talking about the features. You know I use it. You should check it out too. It might be right for your brand or agency. Go to jason.online/tagger to get a free demo and see if Tagger is right for you.

And, you may have hear me talking about LinkedIn Marketing Solutions before the show, or maybe during the breaks lately. That’s because LinkedIn has partnered with me to offer you a $100 advertising credit to get your message in front of the right kind of decision makers. I use LinkedIn advertising to target leads based on job description, company, seniority, industry and more. That means I’m not wasting advertising spend getting my message in front of people who aren’t my idea customer. You can do. Get started with a $100 ad credit just for listening to Winfluence. Go to LinkedIn.com/winfluence today.

Don’t forget to drop Winfluece a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You should pause and do it now so you don’t forget! Unless you’re driving. Then do it later, please.

Also, if you’d like a deep dive on an influencer marketing topic every so often, subscribe to my email newsletter at jason.online/subscribe. I send it every 4-6 weeks and go deep on a topic to make your influence marketing smarter.

Want to help make a future episode of Winfluence awesome? Ask your question about influence or influence marketing that you want my answer to or take on. Record a voice memo and send it via email ... or just send a regular email ... to [email protected]. I may use your comment on a future episode or your question to inspire a show topic. If I do, I’ll send you a signed copy of Winfluence the book as a thank you!

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