Introduction

Are you trying to figure out Twitch influencer marketing? If so, you're onto something quite exciting. There's a big corporate appetite to partner with the latest wave of Twitch influencers.

“63% of U.S. marketers are eager to utilize new platforms such as Twitch and TikTok” - eMarketer.

Twitch represents a massive opportunity in an untapped, rapidly growing marketing channel. But, many brands are struggling to understand Twitch and find the right influencers. Finding the right influencers remains the biggest challenge that has a predominant impact on your campaign ROI.

So let’s dive into it, shall we?

Status Quo

Finding the right influencers on Twitch can be a daunting task, especially if you're new to the platform. Brands often gravitate towards top streamers, partly due to a lack of data and understanding of the platform. This can be a costly endeavor, given agency fees, and may not yield the best ROI as these streamers are often overused and less relevant for their brand.

Although Twitch is primarily associated with gaming, it’s quickly becoming the go-to place for livestreaming content at large. As a matter of fact, Just Chatting is the most popular category.

So, however small your niche is, there’s likely a community on Twitch ready to be marketed to.

Considerations

In the rapidly evolving world of Twitch influencers, understanding the key factors that determine success is vital. Promotion type, budget, market and streamer performance metrics are crucial considerations when looking for the right influencer to boost your brand's visibility.

Promotion types

Your influencer marketing goals and promotion type significantly influence the choice of Twitch influencers. Whether it's shout-outs, product placements, or sponsored streams, each method aligns with different objectives. For community-building, leverage your brand advocates. Rising stars, with their highly-engaged followers and proven conversion rates, offer great ROI potential. The key is to align your goals with the right promotion, ensuring strategic collaborations that deliver desired results.

Budget

Your budget plays a significant role in choosing Twitch influencers. If you're working with a tight budget, think about partnering with micro-streamers. These streamers have smaller, but highly interactive communities that can deliver a substantial return on investment. They're usually less expensive to sponsor, which means you could potentially sponsor more streamers within your budget. This strategy can expand your brand's visibility and provide better value for your money.

Here is a simple standard formula to calculate the cost of sponsoring a streamer.

(ACV) * (Minutes of sponsored content) * (0.02)

ACV, or average concurrent viewership, is the average number of viewers a streamer has at any given moment

Streamer performance

Furthermore, aligning your budget and the cost of the partnership is essential for a beneficial collaboration. However, the cornerstone of a successful influencer marketing strategy on Twitch lies in the ability to gauge a streamer's performance.

Metrics like viewer engagement, followers' growth rate, and stream frequency are just as important as raw viewer count.

Growth

ratio of average viewers to followers to be greater than 0.6%

Engagement

ratio average viewers and subscribers:
male 0.5-2x
female 2.5-5x

Sponsorship friendly

To assess a streamer's suitability for sponsorships, examine their past collaborations and analyze the frequency and nature of these partnerships. It's crucial to ensure they haven't been overused or lack brand affinity. Thoroughly understanding their previous engagements provides valuable insights into their sponsorship compatibility.

Stream frequency

The frequency of a Twitch streamer's broadcasts is a key factor when selecting influencers. Regular streaming schedules can lead to more consistent viewer engagement, which is crucial for successful influencer partnerships. It also indicates the streamer's commitment, which can translate to reliability in a sponsorship context.

Market

Your target market significantly dictates the choice of Twitch influencers. While Twitch doesn't offer streamer audience data by country, language filtering is possible. Additionally, an influencer's country of residence can often be found by examining their other social media or the Twitch panel description. An intelligence platform can automate this process for enhanced efficiency. Remember, English-speaking streamers generally have a global reach, whereas those using languages like French or German usually cater to specific countries. Thus, language selection can boost your market reach effectiveness.

Tapping into Micro-Streamers: A High ROI Goldmine

Micro-streamers, those with smaller but highly engaged communities, are often overlooked and underutilized.This oversight could be costing marketers, as these influencers often yield a higher ROI compared to more established streamers.

A compelling statistic from twitchadvertising.tv reveals that "80% of Twitch users approve of brand sponsorships," making this demographic a fertile ground for brand collaborations.

Micro-streamers, in their quest to build a larger community, put in substantial effort that their followers appreciate. Their communities understand the significance of brand sponsorships for channel growth and an enhanced viewer experience, hence they show great support—provided the brand aligns with their interests. This underscores the importance of grasping what specific communities are passionate about.

Fun fact: 85% of 1,058 Twitch rising stars '(with less than 200K followers) have minimal to no sponsorship deals.

Twitch Audience Affinity: Key to High ROI and Influencer Success

Understanding audience affinity to your brand and the nuances of various communities on Twitch is crucial in finding the right influencers. These insights can help you identify streamers whose audiences have a high likelihood of resonating with your brand, leading to higher ROI.

The concept is simple: brand affinity equals relevance, which ultimately translates to high ROI. Paying attention to brand mentions across the platform can also guide you to relevant streamers. The more aligned the streamer's audience is with your brand, the more fruitful your sponsorship is likely to be.

How to find the right influencers

Finding the right influencers on Twitch can be approached in four ways, each with varying levels of effort and insight.

1. 😅 Manual search: You can start by searching for streamers directly on Twitch. This method, though time-consuming, allows you to personally explore different channels and get a feel for their content and community.

   
   

2. 🤑 Outsourcing: Hiring an agency or talent agency can save time in finding influencers, leveraging their expertise and networks. However, they may prioritize their own talent roster and charge higher fees. Consider balancing their suggestions with exploring smaller relevant streamers for a cost-effective approach.

   
   

3. 🤔 Free Twitch analytics tools: Using free tools like TwitchTracker or Sully Gnome can help you find streamers based on key metrics such as follower count, hours watched, and growth statistics. However, these tools lack deeper insights into audience engagement and sentiment.

   
   

4. 🤩 Twitch intelligence platforms: For a more thorough analysis, consider using advanced tools like Uncloak. These platforms provide comprehensive insights into engagement, sentiment, and audience demographics, helping you identify rising stars, brand advocates, and the most engaged communities. It's an investment that can significantly enhance your influencer selection and maximize your marketing efforts on Twitch.

Here is a comparative table illustrating the advantages of utilizing a Twitch intelligence platform over manual methods for identifying relevant streamers:

Case studies

Let's explore specific case studies to illustrate our point: one featuring an endemic brand, "Starfield," one of this year's most highly anticipated games, and another featuring a non-endemic brand, Sephora. These case studies serve as blueprints for finding relevant streamers on Twitch.

Sephora

Sephora, is launching a new skincare product and wants to tap into the world of Twitch. They aim to partner with relevant, high-engagement streamers who have beauty-conscious communities.

In addition, Sephora wants to build a beauty-focused community on Twitch for future events, and aims to authentically enter the gaming market.

Discovering relevant streamers for Sephora will heavily rely on tracking brand mentions related to health and beauty, both for Sephora itself and its competitors. Utilizing audience insights becomes almost essential to ensure a satisfactory return on investment (ROI) for a non-endemic brand.

Starfield

Game launch on 06.09.23

Navigating the labyrinthine world of Twitch marketing for a major game launch like "Starfield," due out in September, presents both unique challenges and exciting opportunities. As a marketing professional, it's essential to think creatively and prioritize Twitch community marketing over a more conventional influencer marketing strategy. Bethesda's three-fold goal—to boost sales, enhance brand visibility, and cultivate a vibrant community—shapes our strategic roadmap to spotlighting the right Twitch streamers.

Staying in the top 10 most-watched games requires carefully orchestrated efforts. You must sustain gamer loyalty by constantly providing fresh content for streamers. Additionally, you should secure a balanced roster of both micro and macro streamers, representing various game genres, themes, and preferences. Each category plays a significant role, from hardcore, single-game grinders to variety streamers.

To rise as the genre's go-to game, establish a solid streamer base and dominate your game genre/theme on Twitch. Incorporate new updates or content into popular streams with wide-reaching influence.

In the case of "Starfield," we can pinpoint four main categories of streamers.

Firstly, those passionate about the game's release—this group may promote "Starfield" regardless of sponsorship due to their affinity for the studio or genre. Instead of financial incentives, we recommend a community-focused approach. Empower their communities with benefits, such as community subscriptions, early access to the game, beta tester roles, or exclusive merchandise. Their authentic promotion of "Starfield" can do wonders for both sales and brand image.

The second approach involves pinpointing and collaborating with rising stars within expansive game genres like RPGs or adventures. This strategy not only fosters robust engagement and high ROI, but it also cultivates a loyal streamer base. This long-term relationship with streamers is crucial for keeping a game top-of-mind among the vibrant Twitch community.

The third category involves the hardcore gamers of the adventure, RPG, and science fiction genres. While they might not currently show interest in "Starfield"—partly due to Bethesda's infamous launch hiccups, exemplified by Fallout 76—they represent a significant share of the target market. To win them over, consider sponsoring some of the biggest streamers currently playing competitive titles like "Star Citizen," "No Man's Sky," and "Elite Dangerous."

Lastly, we have the variety streamers known for playing single-player games with a gripping storyline, such as "Red Dead Redemption 2." They may jump onto the "Starfield" bandwagon, given its potential to deliver engaging content to their audience and boost their following. The key is to find the perfect alignment between the streamer's interests, their audience's preferences, and the unique offerings of "Starfield."

In conclusion, securing the right Twitch influencers involves a lot more than just cutting a check. It's about building relationships, fostering communities, and sparking genuine enthusiasm about the game. By doing so, you're not just selling a game—you're creating an experience.

Build relationships

To maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns, it's crucial to evaluate each streamer's impact on your brand. By closely monitoring metrics such as engagement, conversions, and audience feedback, you can determine which partnerships are delivering desired results and which may need adjustments or even be discontinued.

Adopting a mindset of running short and fast experiments allows you to quickly assess the effectiveness of different promotion types, enabling you to optimize your resources and focus on the streamers that provide the highest return on investment. Building strong and enduring relationships with streamers is a continuous process that requires careful evaluation and adaptation to ensure long-term success in the ever-evolving landscape of influencer marketing.

Final thoughts

Wrapping up, taking on Twitch influencer marketing is like starting a new adventure. With the right strategy and the right Twitch marketing tool, it's a place where daring brands can find a lot of success.

Have any questions or thoughts? Drop a comment below, I'd love to hear from you. Or, if you like, you can send me an email at florent@uncloak.co. I'm here to help.