Let's talk expectations for working with organic content creators

Organic growth when working with content creators can be compared to SEO evaluations. Instead of paying for direct results, developers and publishers are working towards building a team of genuine ambassadors for their games. This does, however, take time but like SEO optimization if it is done right your team can create a powerful free marketing engine over time. Having an eager group of streamers and YouTubers ready to promote your new release or celebrate a new update is far more cost-efficient than paying for a one-time stunt with a massive influencer.

The impact on your current marketing activities

This does not mean that you should skip pay-per-post activities. Pay-per-post is a crucial marketing activity to secure reach for an upcoming launch and skipping over that potential could be detrimental to your campaign. Bigger content creators have the reach and luxury to live off of their content, which means that convincing them to promote your game is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.

This leaves traditional marketing strategies to look for alternatives. The best publishers and studios on the market take advantage of pay-per-post and organic content creator growth by understanding how to measure and value long-term investments. When evaluating an organic creator campaign, performance can be hard to measure but there is an easy shorthand solution that many studios are already using.

How to calculate the media worth

In short, 1 CCV every hour is equal to around 1 USD of media worth. While this may seem small, it scales quickly as a streamer with 10 CCV streaming your game for an hour for free can equate to around 10 USD of media worth. With keys being distributed to several content creators simultaneously, this number quickly grows if even 10% of them create content for your game. Three content creators with a CCV of 50 have already contributed 150 USD towards your game’s promotion for free.

Content creators are human beings and before creating content they need to accept the key, download the game, form an opinion about the game, and decide if it makes sense for their audience. This can take time, and your game is competing with thousands of other potential titles that they can create content for. Most content creators are not key resellers in disguise, rather, they may have just decided that the game did not suit their viewers or match their expectations once it was played.

Is it a good or bad investment

If you were to distribute 50 keys and only receive 4 content submissions, would you evaluate this as a good or bad investment? If even one of those streamers had at least a 500 CCV then you have successfully reached out to over 500 viewers and saved 500 USD in your marketing budget.

A majority of our publishers and studios have a conversion rate of 25-35% when it comes to content being created after keys are distributed. We have reported seeing a 40-50% conversion rate which is way above usual trends for standard campaign operations in some campaigns. What is the difference? It comes down to a combination of quality experiences and dedicated work from the developers or publishers when it comes to building and maintaining relationships with content creators over time.

Conclusion

By investing keys into organic content creator marketing, a team can see media worth thousands of dollars each month being produced. People have created content around your game and brand and become dedicated ambassadors for your product online. The best part is that now they can be worked with for long-term organic campaigns. A streamer that may have had 50 CCV a year ago now could have over 2000 CCV. With that preplaced trust and understanding, your new impactful ambassador could change the entire narrative of your marketing campaign and the public opinion revolving around your game.

It is time to stop thinking of influencer marketing and organic campaigns as quick fixes for marketing problems. Start developing a long-term strategy with long-term goals for your brand. With a new release every 52 minutes, and 5-10% of all Steam games standing for 85% of the revenue, it has never before been so important to find a cost-efficient scaling marketing option. Organic content creators are this option, and Lurkit is the best place to start building a lasting and sustainable relationship with your new brand ambassadors.