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3 issues with YouTube influencer marketing [and our solutions to them]

Today, influencer marketing is a channel every mobile game marketer wants to master. However, they get headaches from pay-per-video pricing, varying ROI, and the lack of transparency in the field. Performance based campaigns can be the cure, but only if executed in the right way.

Here are three headaches marketers often struggle with, and the pain killers we recommend for them.

“We did a campaign for which we overpaid, and the results were subpar.”

When you do a performance based campaign with influencers, make sure that 1) the influencer has history with similar products, and 2) the content they’ve done with those products has gotten a good reception from their audience. Once you hit the sweet spot, you can see that the users the campaign brings, are truly fans of your product. In the ideal situation, the quality of users you attract, is equal or even better compared to organic users.

You can also first do a smaller test campaign with a limited budget, targeting a very niche market. If the results meet your requirements, you can then scale for the next campaign and hit it out of the ballpark.

Understand the channel. If you’re working with a channel that exclusively caters to FIFA, then don’t expect them to be effective in promoting your nerdy RPG.

Simon Hade, COO & Co-Founder at Space Ape Games on gamesindustry.biz

“You can not attribute all installs.”

When you run an influencer campaign for your game, you will get a boost in organic installs. Understanding the amount of the uplift is usually mostly guess-work, since there’s no way to trace the installs back to the campaign.

To calculate your uplift, you need a lot of historic data. At Matchmade, we show you the estimated organic boost based on data we collect from campaigns we’ve ran. With the campaigns we have done so far, the average organic boost has been 108%

In this UA-driven, data-minded mobile economy, marketers and game developers will wonder how effective their influencer marketing really is. Think about influencer marketing as a mix of performance marketing and brand marketing. Your goal is to generate downloads but you also benefit from brand awareness and association with the influencer.

Sam Dalsimer, Senior PR Manager at Tilting Point on their blog.

“Influencers don’t want to do performance based campaigns.”

The traditional way influencers charge for promoting something, is by a fixed fee. Many companies have found influencers to be reluctant to switch to a CPI based pricing model. This is simply because it’s difficult for the influencers to estimate their earnings.

Using our data-driven forecasting tool, we’re able to estimate both the amount of installs the campaign will bring, as well as the sum the influencer will earn, making the process very transparent and taking out a lot of guess-work from both sides.

One of the biggest challenges for marketers in YouTube influencer marketing is a lack of transparency and standardization in pricing models. They end up getting unreasonably high quotes and overspend, not realizing the room for negotiation in this developing market.

Polina Haryacha, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at My.com on Kissmetrics’ blog.

If you have a game you want to market or an Youtube channel, you can already sign up to Matchmade.