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What marketers need to know about Twitch

February 28, 2020

What Marketers need to know about Twitch

It’s all about that influencer relationship.

Twitch is one of the biggest and most exciting live streaming platforms that focus on video games, e-sports, and creative content. It’s a platform that is often referred to as the future of live, interactive entertainment.

If you are new to the concept of ‘people-watching-people-playing-video-games’ it may seem a bit weird at first. In a ‘Who would do that?’ kind of way. It is not something that the marketing world is used to yet. But all you have to do is look at the numbers and make up your own mind about it.

Launched back in 2011, Twitch quickly established itself as the place to stream gaming-related content, and it grew to over 3.64 million unique monthly broadcasters and 660 billion minutes watched in 2019. It doesn’t stop there – January 2020 was its biggest month yet with over 1 billion hours watched.

There are over a million live viewers and over 30k live channels on Twitch at almost any time of the day. New viewers and content creators join every day and the platform is still growing in size. And with an outstanding 3,987,461all time viewers peak Twitch is definitely not a social media site to be ignored.

This kind of entertainment is still entirely new and different from the traditional media concepts because in it’s essence, it focuses on community and interaction. The two very things that social media before Twitch seem to grasp at a very superficial level.

You can think of Twitch as a massive hub of individual channels, each one delivering a unique type of content to a dedicated community. Since streaming allows people to come together, chat and interact with the streamer, it is a much more personalized experience than traditional media. It brings in a personal connection to entertainment – something that could never be done before on this scale.

What is excellent about Twitch specifically, is that it’s a very organic platform – a community there can’t be bought, and it needs to build over time. There are no paid broadcaster ads on Twitch. No pay to be featured options. No gimmicks to get instantly popular. Followers have to discover content creators on their own, by navigating content that interests them.

Twitch categorises streams by game and by type of activity. There is something for everyone, professional gamers beating games at the highest difficulty levels, speedrunners trying to get world records for beating certain games as fast as possible and casual streams, including Just Chatting, a separate category for more relaxed broadcasts, including city tours, music sessions and, as the name suggests, chill out discussions.

No matter if you’re starting with social selling, or expanding your influencer base, Twitch can bring you excellent exposure and value for the investment. Why? Because it’s a platform that’s all about people’s interests and passions. Content that is naturally engaging, compelling and perfect for building a robust, stable community around. If the ever was anything odd or unusual that you’d like to watch – it’s probably on Twitch somewhere. You should definitely go and have a look.

It’s all about rethinking your social platforms.

The one and true marketer’s goal is to establish connections with their audience – wherever their audience may be. With so many established and emerging social media platforms, it’s not easy to choose the right one. To be 100% sure that Twitch is the one for you, you need to understand what kind of people spend time there.

Over 81.5% of all Twitch users are male, 55% of which are 18 – 49-year-old.

Is your main demographic a Millennial male? You just hit the jackpot. With such a targeted audience, Twitch is the ideal platform for you.

It’s all about tight-knit tribes.

If you partner up with content creators on an interactive platform like Twitch, it’s in the influencers’ best interest to keep their viewers engaged while reaching your goals.

Since Twitch communities are based on an authentic relationship and a personal connection with the streamer, the level of trust is very high. Those, sometimes smaller audiences with a few thousand followers, are more focused and genuine. The chase for likes and comments is simply not present here — there’s no fake fame or validation. People can only follow, subscribe and show up for streams to hang out with the streamer, and they do it all based on the quality of the content.

This simplicity is excellent news for a marketer since content creators can’t fake their presence on Twitch, a marketer can quickly get a comprehensive, accurate idea on which influencer is the one they should connect and work with to get visible results. As a brand representative, you can look at the chat activity and instantly see if the community is buzzing. If it is – it’s all real people having meaningful conversations and having fun together.

Do you need any more reasons to start working with a Twitch influencer? We have more of those 30 here.

It’s all about Adshot.

Are you looking for an easy way to reach out to twitch influencers? Adshot has you covered. With us, you can create a campaign and find influencers you’d like to work with in just a few steps.