In recent years, esports has experienced a real boost in popularity. This, in turn, has alerted brands to the potential of esports marketing. A lot in esports happens online — via tournament live streams and dedicated websites and platforms. Inevitably, social media is also an important platform for esports fans.
Social media walls like Walls.io help increase engagement during esports event and help the esports community connect on social media.
What is esports marketing?
Esports marketing is a rapidly growing sector within the broader digital marketing landscape, focusing on promoting brands, products, and services through the world of competitive video gaming. As the popularity of esports continues to surge, marketers are leveraging various strategies to engage with the highly dedicated and tech-savvy audience. This includes sponsorship deals, influencer partnerships, in-game advertising, and content creation across platforms like Twitch and YouTube. By aligning with popular esports events, teams, and players, brands can tap into a global audience that is both passionate and highly engaged, driving significant brand awareness and loyalty.
Esports marketing offers unique opportunities for data-driven targeting and community engagement. Through advanced analytics, marketers can understand viewer behaviors, preferences, and demographics to tailor their campaigns effectively. Social media plays a pivotal role in this ecosystem, with platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Discord providing direct channels for interaction and feedback. The immersive and interactive nature of esports allows for innovative marketing tactics, such as virtual reality experiences and interactive live streams, making it a dynamic and evolving field. As esports continues to integrate into mainstream culture, the potential for brands to reach and resonate with diverse audiences is immense, solidifying its place as a cornerstone of modern digital marketing strategies.
Here’s a social media feed that updates automatically with content from Instagram, YouTube, X and Linkedin on the topic of eSports marketing. You can create one for any topic with Walls.io.
A global market for global esports marketing
With its clear focus on online, esports as an industry has developed globally without being restricted by geographical borders. The globality of the market is what draws many brands to esports as a marketing vehicle.
According to research from Nielsen, 7 in 10 esports fans are male, with an average age of 26. And that represents pretty much exactly the valuable market segment of male millennials that many brands are hoping to sell to.
Do you want to increase engagement during your event?
Integrate a social media feed on your website and display it on a big screen.
Esports for brands
Contrary to rumours about esports fans not wanting any advertising, esports is a surprisingly great place for brands to get involved — as long as they’re the right brands. Endemic brands with some relation to esports and gaming tend to be accepted best by fans. So brands like energy drinks, fast food, gaming hardware and software, etc. would do well to look into marketing to esports fans.
Brands often enter the esports landscape as sponsors of teams, tournaments or even broadcast platforms. Putting a logo on-screen overlays, in-venue signage and equipment is a popular way to be visible in esports.
But many brands are beginning to use social activation with good results. By truly connecting and interacting with esports fans online, brands trigger not just ad-hoc buying power but are creating long-term followers that can (hopefully) be turned into brand evangelists.
Gaming, in general, is already strongly tied to communication technologies and apps. There’s in-game communication through chat, VoIP, and apps like Team Speak, Discord, etc. People watch other people play games on platforms like Twitch or YouTube Gaming and follow their favourite gamers or teams on YouTube, Twitter and other social media channels.
Social media provides both a synchronous and an asynchronous way of staying up-to-date on esports and in touch with other fans and teams. The beautiful thing is that social media doesn’t care about time zones, e.g. games in other time zones, and becomes a hub for esports activity and conversation. It’s also not uncommon for fans to follow live streams and tournaments and simultaneously interact with other fans and gamers on social media.
Ferrari esports marketing example
Ferrari is a great example of using social media for eSports. They embedded a live social media feed on their eSports website, promoting upcoming events and sharing live updates with their fans.
Twitchvision esports marketing example
Another example of using social media for esports is the Twitchvision song contest, embedding a live social media feed in the livestream, encouraging viewers to post about the event on social media using the official hashtag for an opportunity to be featured in realtime in the stream.
Drag2Death esports marketing example
Drag2Death is one of India’s biggest esports platforms and agencies, dedicated to growing esports in India and supporting regional communities and teams. They always design a microsite for their event sponsors that also includes a social media wall for the event hashtag. Aggregation of hashtag-based posts for varied topics is a daunting task — one couldn’t possibly collect all the campaign-related data manually. This is where Walls.io fits perfectly into their overall event framework.
Walls.io allows them to easily integrate the social media campaign aggregation and analytics with their website and event microsites.
The social wall also allows them to easily prepare a report about social media trends and the campaign for their sponsors without drilling down into who said what with a manual approach.
There are plenty of ways you can integrate social media and social walls at your own esports event. Here are just a couple of ideas:
- Increase engagement during the event by showing the social media wall at a venue or integrating it with your website
- Post competitions using your hashtag to engage fans
- Involve brands by making your social wall part of sponsoring packages and integrating sponsored tiles with your social wall
- Give your sponsors insight into campaign activity and social wall analytics
Make your next event go viral on social media!
All you need is a cool hashtag and a social media wall.