Strong gaming community around your brand
Gaming experience over capitalizing on attention.
Probably one of the reasons behind outstanding loyalty of esports core audience won’t be a commercial aspect of how business in esports works with the audience in social media and tournaments. That may sound outrageous to some, but going back in the history of esports development as an industry will reveal peculiarities of its growth. And what we’ll see is that esports grew out of the gaming community. The core audience precedes esports as a business.
It exists longer than the phenomenon of esports as an industry itself. That means that the business side of things is really a layer added on top. Business works great for those that amplify the audience’s gaming experience. Those who just seek to capitalize on attention usually fail. It may be too simple a conclusion to believe, but there have been dozens of businesses with potential that failed, because this simple fact about the esports audience was overlooked.
That being said, capitalizing on attention is important too. One who intends to do it, taking gaming experience in pictures, needs to understand one’s target audience. That beat is important, because the esports audience is not uniform. Different games invite different people. And it’s true not only because DOTA 2 is fundamentally different from CS:GO. Last year showed us a steady inpouring of traditional sports fans into esports, challenging sports entertainment business when it comes to audience engagement and money made. Is your client a sports fan? Is your client a fan of games we’ve used to associate with esports? Age of your audience is another variable in this equation that plays a role in how your business engages with people that love games. Gen Y and Gen Z have a fair share of differences that translate into differences in how they are approached.
Luckily, the business infrastructure within the business of esports allows for doing it the rightest way possible in order to grow and keep your audience engaged. There are companies that make it a point of their existence to get your business going in immense waters of ever-changing trends and astounding viewership surge of recent years.
I’ve previously emphasized the importance of connecting to your clients through social media and how they can help your business grow. Building your network is as essential as building up your reputation among other business actors in the arena. That can be done by leveraging videos, reports and blog posting. Reviews on social media also become instrumental in the process.
But the push to show what you’ve got ought to be intentional. Building brand awareness right is paramount here and constitutes a cornerstone for how your content will be laid out. The strategy for your presentation must be honest too. Esports community is a community to win over, not a community to bombard with flashy pictures, because as tradition dictates everything is built on trust between team/players and the audience that can sniff a peddling a mile away.
Getting the right SaaS platform for your business will prove to be a good decision, and business actors often understand its importance retrospectively more, than they do prior to hopping on the train of esports. And it’s so not because it’s available and cost-efficient. One thing is to know your partners, another is how systematic you are about engaging your audience.
There are a number of cloud infrastructures to consider, but take one offered by 27 Nerds as an example. It helps your business engage the audience without investing in tournament organization, builds brand awareness and creates additional advertising opportunities. It is a one-stop web/mobile place to view streams, tournaments and highlights from Twitch and Youtube based on your preferences and tags. It disposes convenient content categorization. The platform is oriented on gamification of user experience: users are rewarded for content viewing (watch X minutes of video — get Y points/drops/prizes). It groups your users based on clans: more points if clan’s viewing targets are achieved. Clan members are genuinely interested in adding more users to the platform and their clan. And, on top of that, prizes may be custom tailored to B2B partner business specifics (i.e. mobile operators may reward with Megabytes).
Systems like this can help you build your community and keep it intact. The record shows that having a SaaS platform in service of one’s business early on optimizes spending of time and efforts. If you want to know more about how cloud infrastructure can revolutionize your business, drop us a text. We’ll be glad to get in touch and help you achieve your vision in the world of esports.
