How to Advertise Game on Youtube [8 Inevitable Tips]

Gamers are a demanding crowd. Most of them are a bit fussy and have a strong sense of criticism when facing a new game.

Besides, presenting a new game is not easy. The hype can be too big or the expectations too high. Also, how do you decide which game aspects should you bring up and which ones should be shrouded in mystery?

In this regard, YouTube videos are the perfect media for creating expectations, encouraging gamers to research and play your game, presenting advances and short gameplays, and hyping users.

In this How to Advertise Game on Youtube guide, we are sharing some YouTube marketing tips that will boost the exposure of your game on the platform. Eventually, this will drive in more downloads, recognition, and buzz.

After reading this post, you’ll learn:

The pros and cons of promoting games on YouTube.
The best tips to consider when you advertise games on YouTube.

Why Is YouTube so Important for Game Developers?

In gaming, there is a fundamental concept that is not exchangeable with any other: Gameplay.

Of course, you can explain the gameplay of your game using words, images, creating articles, or giving examples, but the truth is that video content is always better.

YouTube is the favorite platform for those who are looking for tips, reviews, tutorials, or upcoming launches. With YT, they can watch how someone solves their issues and gain inspiration.

Also, YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google, so it’s a valuable tool for developers to show their work via their videos.

Google demonstrates it via statistics regarding YouTube. They indicate that gaming is one of the most popular topics on the platform.

Source: thinkwithgoogle.com

Reports state that hundreds of millions of users watch over 246 billion minutes of gaming-related content on the site every month.

We know that creating your videos for YouTube is not easy, but you can awaken hype in most gamers with the right marketing strategy.

What Do Gaming Advertisers Get Wrong?

The gaming industry is constantly growing. Also, it is one of the most complicated industries in the world. It integrates a lot of factors in addition to many people involved in its production. Let's take a look at some of these:

Planning a game can take years. Producers have to analyze the market, the budget, the right platforms, etc.
The pre-production stage is full of design decisions, storytelling, early prototype, milestone schedule.
Modeling, designing, creating audio effects, mechanics requires time and effort.
Testing, identifying bugs, issues may be a process that’s repeating over and over again.
Pre-launch and launch phases, when the studio advertises the game and is shared in, for example, gaming conventions, require developing an individual strategy.

With that in mind, several mistakes are made regarding advertising video games on YouTube or other platforms.

Focus on only one genre at a time. Targeting too broad around “the gamer” interest can be impractical.

Another common mistake is to assume that most viewers are younger males. The industry has changed in recent years, and not considering these changes is a common mistake.

Source: Statista.com

Currently, for most of the year, women have the highest view rate. While their rate is approximately 38%, that of men is even less than 30%.

And it’s funny because the gaming industry allocates 84% of its YouTube ads budget to men, while only 6% to women.

Repeating these mistakes regarding audience demographics only leads to higher cost-per-view and lower view rates.

Tips to Promote Games on YouTube

As the gaming world and the YouTube gaming community are vast and have different perspectives, tips abound. Because of this, using the expertise of a video game marketing agency, we have selected those that we think will be very helpful for your game.

Write Engaging, Must-See Titles

In one sentence: on YouTube, video titles and a video description are the hooks that bring people and create a huge fan base.

The same happens when you search for information on the Internet and read the meta title and meta description in SERPs.

On YouTube search, the story is not different. When you search for a review, tutorial, or whatever, you click on a video according to the title you read. Thus, creating a kick-ass and appealing video title is fundamental to get more visitors and show your game to more people.

Ask yourself questions like these:

Is my title video fun?
What do people expect to find here?
Is my title powerful enough to stand out?

The key to writing awesome titles is grabbing your audience’s attention without using clickbait headlines.

Click baits may be attractive to the eyes, but they may negatively affect your YouTube position. They may decrease the watch time of your videos, which in turn translates into the reach of your channel.

People crave engaging content that entertains. Besides, they want to know what your video is about from the first moment they read the title.

We recommend you spend time mulling over engaging titles rather than use the first idea that comes to your mind.

As an art teacher that I used to have said: “The first idea is stupid, the second one too, the third idea is not so.”

An oft-cited study conducted by Tubular Insights states that YouTube video titles should have between 41 and 70 characters.

On the other hand, tools such as CoSchedule’s headline analyzer recommend 55 characters for every headline.

Figure Out What Your Audience Wants

Promoting games on YouTube is similar to advertising products or services in online stores, any business, or social media platforms. You need to know your audience to offer them relevant videos.

The visual content you produce will depend, to a large extent, on who you address it to.

If you are an expert in your field, let’s say JRPGs, you may know what YouTube users want when they head to channels like yours. Maybe they want a good story, or they need to find all the secret chests of the game or all the dungeons.

You need to offer exactly what your audience wants. Of course, you can have your rules and style, but vision is relevant in your channel.

Source: Socialgains.co.uk

If you are new in this world and you’re starting, then check famous YouTube channels, popular YouTubers, not-so-famous Youtube creators, and your direct competitors.

Look at the videos that get the most engagement and views. Then you will have an idea of what topics your audience prefers and what they want to watch.

Suppose you have spent some time uploading videos, and you don’t see your numbers going up. In that case, you can always check your YouTube analytics, audience insights and see if there are changes in your subscriber count to get detailed information. This info gives you insights into the audience location, demographic, engagement, and other stats.

Learn From Popular Channels

A critical step to becoming a good practitioner in any discipline is learning from the best and your competition. In your YouTube career, the story is no different.

Reviewing gaming channels and their related videos is fundamental to learning the structure, style, and strong points.

Additionally, try to understand what attracted you to some type of content and channels.

Analyzing your favorite YouTubers will help you understand how to implement the best practices to drive engagement and subscriptions. Besides, you can draw inspiration and content ideas from their videos.

Anyway, you shouldn’t limit your analysis to gaming channels alone. Take a look at other videos on YouTube with good content. This way, you can check what non-gaming channels are doing to drive engagement and use the insights to create your content strategy.

YouTube Advertising

If you want to grow your channel, users and gamers must see your content or brand in many ways within YouTube.

Paid ads are an excellent way to promote your channel. This will mean a significant boost for your brand.

You can choose between skippable ads (after five seconds) and non-skippable video ads. The difference, beyond the possibility of skipping them or not, only lies in the price. This is not too much, but it’s a factor to consider.

Overlay ads are always a cheap and effective way of promoting your game. On the other hand, sponsored cards are a new feature but a good alternative for this.

Another good way to promote your game is by working with influencers who will share your relevant content with a target audience.

Find a popular gaming influencer in your niche and ask them to present your game to their audiences. They can mention and give good feedback on your game to their followers and potential customers. This will eventually drive more visits to your websites and conversions.

For instance, the Spanish YouTuber Caith_Sith is an excellent example of influencer marketing. He plays a lot of indie games and shares opinions about them. Working with an influencer like him assures you to generate the most views possible.

Engage With the YouTube Community

Contrary to what most people think, Youtube is a great social network where people interact with other people through a YouTube profile, “likes,” and comments.

Any interaction you do with your viewers is a positive signal sent to YouTube.

Conversationally engaging with your followers can help you build a stronger connection with your audience, keep them interested and optimize your relationship.

“Liking” comments only take a few seconds, so does pinning a top comment as a kind of personal message to your subscribers.

Also, asking your audience what they would like to see in the next streamings or episodes can boost even more engagement in comments and viewers.

SEO Your Youtube Channel

Optimizing your content for search through SEO, i.e. relevant target keywords, meta titles, and descriptions, even creating custom thumbnails, is the best way to get your channel off the ground and get more traffic.

But, What do you have to do?

The typical way is the following. Head to the YouTube bar and type for topics you want to make a video about. If you have written a script, you can modify it and enhance it with the new search results.

For example, if you want to create content based on “how to level up fast in Final Fantasy XIV,” just type this in the search bar. YouTube is going to suggest you related videos to this topic that people enjoy watching.

Pick some phrases or a word you’ll find and make videos about those. Then, encourage people to head to your content. Ensure that you’re building the right title, tags, and descriptions, including the phrase you’re trying to rank for.

Descriptions are fundamental for Youtube to determine what your video is about and calculate its rating. Make sure to add descriptions to all your videos. This way, they will appear in the Google search results.

Do keyword research, then choose the most relevant keywords and use them in the text. Include your primary keyword in the first 25 words. To avoid oversaturation of keywords, use no more than 3-4 keywords in the description.

Cross-Promote Your Youtube Channel

For better results and to get more visitors, taking advantage of other social media to cross-promote your channel is an excellent idea.

Most successful YouTube channels have several profiles in social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and apps.

You should share your most popular videos on every social media you have, including your live streams records. Add links to your channel to make it easy for gamers to connect with your content.

If it’s on Facebook, make sure that you’re sharing your content on your profile and Facebook groups. If it’s Twitter, the story is not so different.

However, the worst thing you can do is join a Facebook group page and start promoting your channel, saying stuff like “this is a video that you need to check out” or something like this because nobody cares.

One quick tip: you should become an active participant in the community before you start posting your content.

A good rule is that you post around 10 or 15 times a week about other people’s content for every post about your own.

Build an audience on the shoulders of other people’s amazing content. Sharing them and commenting on them is an excellent idea at this point. From there, you can reach higher goals. Sooner or later, your audience will develop, and eventually, you’ll be able to leverage your social following.

The goal is to become a world-class curator of the content in your niche. This way, people will know that there is knowledge and wisdom in your words.

If you have an Instagram profile, share some extracts of your YouTube videos and promote them. This also works for other social networks such as Pinterest and Twitch.

Create Compilations

Create playlists and compilations to get more subscribers by offering them a lot of exciting content. This can drive hundreds of thousands of views to your videos.

With a bit of creativity, you may be able to create some good compilations using the best parts of several videos that are helpful to bring in new audiences. Just make sure you compile with an interesting rhythm and create not-so-long videos.

Playlists and compilations let you leverage existing quality content on YouTube without the need to create a new one. Besides, compilations are the most-watched videos on the platform, according to YouTube data.

A great example of this is the League of Legends compilations you can find for hundreds on YouTube. People search a lot for this type of content since they are in demand of pure action. This form of content gives them precisely what they need. So, leveraging this situation is a good idea to get more views.

Conclusions

YouTube is most likely the best social media where brands can advertise their video games or topics related to the gaming world.

The reason is simple: video games are image, sound, movement, music, interaction, gameplay, and many other things. The combination of all these elements is possible only in video form.

Video games offer a complete experience, which features different kinds of emotions and interactions. However, some people prefer playing by themselves, whereas others enjoy following the adventures of others.

They love watching their emotions, reactions, and behavior, which is why YouTube is a perfect platform to promote your game content.

If you are not sure how to develop, embed or display a successful video game campaign on YouTube, a great idea is to contact a specialized marketing agency.

An agency can help you from the beginning and jump together to this world with a good strategy. Pay attention to case studies and see for yourself how a video game agency can help you with product promotion.

With the help of specialists, in a few days and weeks, you will be advertising your game as a professional, getting thousands of views in a short time.

Last but not least, do not forget to subscribe to our newsletter for more information and create your account. It’s free! You won’t have to wait anymore; you will receive all the news before anyone. Thanks for reading this article and our blog. Regards!

FAQ

How do I Advertise my Video Game?

Use social media platforms and groups.
Use YouTube as your main platform to upload and share gameplay.
Share your game with specialized sites to get some relevant reviews.
Use alternative app stores for more exposure.

Is it Legal to Post Gameplay on YouTube?

YouTube will not penalize you for uploading gameplay videos unless you break one of YouTube's Terms of Service, such as using inappropriate language or hate speech.

How do I Advertise my App on YouTube?

Create a cool intro with your app icon.
Watermark your videos with a small and semi-transparent icon or text in the corner of your videos.
Talk about your app, whenever it makes sense.
Setup short links through your website to make it easy for people to type in.
Configure annotations that link to your other videos and keep users watching.