How to Develop an Influencer Strategy
You’re a Community Developer, chilling with your ideas and dreams to make your product a success.
Everything looks great in your mind, but suddenly your boss contacts you: “I need you to present the Influencer Strategy“. Blimey, what a good idea!
And then you gasp… you have to sort the mess in your brain, and make the full plan really clear on paper.
Oof, ok let’s go through this together.
I’m a What?
You’re a Community Developer Harry.
That h2 title will not help with SEO, but I don’t mind ❤️
An Influencer Strategy is part of the overall Game Launch Plan. Or an update, or an important communication/milestone.
In that mega document of yours, you could find the Community Strategy, and also the Social Media Strategy. It’s all part of the plan.
The global idea of an Influencer Strategy is to partner with individuals who have a solid presence on social Media.
Your goal is to arrange a collaboration between parties, in order to promote your product thanks to their expertise, skills, and platforms.
By working with Influencers, you will rely on their voices, and their relationships with their audience. Players will trust the influencer promoting your product.
I often repeat it in my articles: You are not alone in your company, and you are not expected to do everything on your own. Work with your colleagues to get all the information you need. No pressure, but that Strategy document will define how is everyone going to work for the campaign: So talk with your teammates and get it done together.
💡 Influencers usually have their own styles when communicating with their community.
Much like with the Moderators: do not police Influencers. Give them a guidelines, keywords, a goal, and let them do the magic so they can maintain their authenticity.
It is important to understand each other’s expectations.
Dances with Influencers
Having great relationships with Influencers will lead you to work on multiple projects with them, that is why it is of the utmost importance that you maintain these relationships.
It works the same way as friendship: Be present, be human & polite, respect the content creators work, and share common interests (in the end: money *cough*).
Seeing your brand name associated several times with an Influencer will also strengthen their community’s trust into your brand.
💡 It also shows that you are loyal, and support those who support you by allowing them to continue creating great content.
While your own community is following your product and the information you share, there are plenty of untapped sources!
Influencers will help you find find these sources, but keep in mind that these new sources must relate with your content. Communities, and players games types, and age, and location, and other demographics will be important when selecting the right Influencers for your strategy.
💡 Tap into the emotions. Because we’re humans, we tend to follow other humans.
If one chap says “Hey Saoirse, that product’s jolly good!” and the other gal confirms “Heck you’re right Teagan! I’ve been gobsmacked by it, and that content creator is full of beans!” you might simply conclude that I should stop reading old fashioned books… but also conclude that consumers are more likely to trust their peers when it comes to making decisions.
And that’s where we are going: Peers approval – Influencer Marketing.
The earlier you work with Influencers, the greater your bond will be. It shows that you have noticed them a while ago, and you really think they are a good fit for the collaboration.
💡 Asking for a collab soon before your project launches will be slightly shoned.
Give it time, develop a natural relationship with the influencers whenever possible. Possible engage with them if it is a good thing to do, but don’t force it.
I would refer to my article How to Work with Press & Influencers to help you find content creators.
The Big Plan
I don’t like to talk about money, but we all work for these little pieces of paper that drive our lives sadly so… let’s dive in.
Define your Objectives
Your Influencer Strategy has one goal in the end: You want your company to make as much monies as possible.
That’s why you must ensure that certain objectives are met: the famous KPI, Key Performance Indicators.
Product units sold, Reach, and Engagement are usually the most used metrics. The count of follower is not very important, the engagement is.
Identify the Influencers & platforms
Define the best content creators who will be able to deliver these KPIs.
Create a map of influencers and links who’s connected to who, what platforms, and why should you do this: Groups to tap in, demographics, influencers tiers, location/language, …
💡 If you are able to connect with the consumers on multiple platforms, you will increase the chance of selling your product.
- Top Tier Influencers are great for collabs,
- Mid Tier are great ambassadors,
- Low Tier Influencers cascading from Mid & Top Tiers allows a constant presence
I like to talk about resonance when an Influencer influences other influencers to create content. Or cascade, or snowball.
💡 There are multiple ways to pay influencers and possibly multiple ways at once: money via an agreement/contract, commission, free product or discount.
Craft the big plan
Remember, you want a great looking Influencer Strategy. So open a Powerpoint or a GSlides, and get to it.
You want to keep track of your campaign, detail everything from the why you do this to how, when, where & timeline, the costs, etc
Your document should look like this ~:
- Slide 1: Title
- Slide 2: The Team
- Slide3: Intro and why you’re doing an Influencer Strategy
- Slide4: The plan, possibly an organigram
- Slide 5: Detail the plan
- Slide x: Detail all the activities and the points listed above with why, how, when, where, costs…
- Slide x: Timeline
- Add more details and check with your peers.
It is also good to retroplan everything, and prepare for “what if it doesn’t work” so you don’t fall flat in case anything bad happens.
The activations with the content creators must not only be Livestreams & videos.
Tap into as much ideas as you can: inspire others with a bigger project, create something that will happen in real life, have content sent out in the Press that will link to your brand, … Not everything has to be plain “This is an advertisement”, you can weave around that and create lighter content that will connect your brand to new sources of humans.
For the budget, it all depends on what you have: It can be a few thousands of your preferred currency to millions, or even billions for Google, Nike, Electronic Arts, etc…
I have worked with a few thousands of Euros with Indies, to a few millions Euros with bigger companies.
Don’t forget that it covers everything from the Influencers, to the advertisements, the expensive collabs, the pricey Showcase presentations, the conventions, … The cost will go up easily.
Go for it
Once everything looks solid and is vetted by your peers, it is time to contact these Influencers and share the propositions with them.
Be kind, clear, honest, and don’t overdo it.
You want to work with them, explain why, what’s in for them and simply introduce the project in a very simple way.
If the influencers are interested, then you can discuss it with more details.
I encourage you to maintain an Excel Sheet or GSheet of the Content Creators so you can keep track of the Influencers’:
- Tiers,
- Names,
- Media Types,
- Channels,
- Social Channels
- Languages
- Followers
- Some metrics, like Average Views/Reach
- Suggested & Requested Costs for collabs
- Email Addresses
- Some notes about them, etc…
Thanks for reading CM Adventures.
Next week I’ll be back with the “Players” category, so if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about to help you better understand game development, leave a comment! 🙂