Many brands neglect Discord when developing their marketing and engagement strategies. This is because people do not consider the app a social media site.
Discord boasts 6.7 million active servers daily and over 200 million active users monthly. So why aren’t brands taking advantage of this exposure?
Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
Marketing and representing your brand on Discord differs slightly from other social media platforms. Keep reading as we explore how to navigate brand representation on Discord and increase engagement with this bustling social media tool.
What Is Discord?
You may be familiar with Discord as a platform for gamers to share content and create live streams for their following. But there’s a lot more to it.
Discord is an app that allows users to create their own servers. In these servers, some channels contain content related to certain subtopics of the main server. For instance, if you were to create a Disney princess server, there may be subtopics like ‘Ariel’, or ‘Belle’.
The beauty of Discord is that it allows you to share a wide variety of content with all users on your server and channels. You can post voice recordings, photos, videos, and emojis and even establish a video call for live streaming.
Discord has no set use – it’s perfectly viable for businesses, gamers, hobbyists, and content creators.
Why Don’t Brands Use Discord In Their Social Media Marketing Strategies?
Discord doesn’t offer paid advertisements, so many brands don’t use it in their marketing strategies. However, you don’t need paid advertisements to use Discord for social media marketing.
By setting up a Discord server for your brand, you can host live events, games, and create content to share with your followers, helping to build an active community for your audience.
You can also use the platform to post FAQs, reviews, and social media announcements to ensure your community is kept up to date with any new developments or activities.
Another important thing to note about Discord is that you can monetize it. You can create a private subscription-only server to offer exclusive content and previews to your fanbase, though it should be noted that direct or unsolicited self-promotion is prohibited on the platform.
Why Choose Discord?
Weighing up social media sites to target for engagement? Discord brings a lot to the table. Here are some of the benefits of including Discord in your social media marketing:
Engagement
Besides offering access to millions of active users, Discord provides engagement unlike any other. Since users can engage with such a wide variety of content in a live feed, they actively participate in the events, games, or content you share.
This active running commentary lets you see what users say about your content and generate instant feedback as the stream or event progresses.
The user is also less likely to passively watch and disengage during your events. Discord’s increased engagement and wide reach make it a worthy endeavor for any marketing effort.
Security
Discord has extensive security offerings to prevent hacking and ensure your server is only accessible to authorized people. If you wish to livestream on Discord, you can reroute through another server to ensure your IP address, location, and identity remain secure.
Your Discord data will be encrypted and unusable to anyone who might infiltrate it, so you can rest assured that your personal information and details will stay safe.
Diversity
No matter who your target audience is, you’re bound to find them on Discord. Discord unifies people from different realms of the internet, typically tech-savvy ones, and allows them to explore their interests in more detail.
You can find servers related to your brand and harness them to draw more attention to your brand. For instance, if your brand was a hardware brand, you might approach administrators running similarly-positioned servers to strike up a collaboration and capture a larger audience. This audience will be especially interested in your topic, and more likely to pay attention to your content and media.
Automation
One of the best things about Discord is that it enables bot use for seamless automation. If you’re a small brand without enough staff to maintain consistent communication with your customer base, you can delegate tasks to bots. These bots will help you manage your Discord with minimal human intervention, saving you and your team time.
How Brands Are Using Discord In Their Marketing Strategy
While Discord doesn’t offer ads in the traditional sense, there are alternative ways to navigate social media marketing on the app. For example, with the launch of sponsored Quests, game developers and publishers can now challenge Discord members to stream themselves playing select games in return for special rewards, promoting organic engagement and traffic via the Discord platform.
This is just one example of how Discord approaches social media marketing in a fresh, natural and engaging way, below are some additional pointers to help inspire your marketing plans.
Hosting Live Events & Games
Discord’s main selling point is that it allows you to create a virtual hangout for you and your followers.
You can host events and games that are relevant to your audience. For instance, if you had a new product release coming up, you could host a live event to give your community exclusive content and behind-the-scenes information to build anticipation before your final launch date.
The new sponsored Quests feature may also be beneficial here, incentivising users to both try out new games and share their experiences with an existing audience in return for exclusive in-game rewards. Brands may choose to partner with game developers to create in-game ads for their own services, enabling them to leverage Discord audiences to promote new offerings.
Not only does this help to raise engagement with your brand, but it also allows you to create more awareness for your latest products, services, and releases. You can use exclusivity to encourage users to engage with your content and follow you for more updates.
Games also allow you to increase engagement with the prospect of ‘winning’ a prize or incentive at the end, and you can incorporate elements of your brand, product, or service into the game.
With events like these, your marketing becomes more of a community-based effort, and more relatable and enjoyable for your following.
In-Game Marketing
Many brands are using in-game marketing to ensure their ads aren’t just part of the scenery. By securing ad placements in games that are popular on Discord, your community building efforts and ad campaigns can be linked. Here are some examples of in-game marketing strategies:
- Interactive Ads: An interactive ad is one the user can ‘play with’, such as a mini-game or an interactive game element. Making the ad interactive increases the likelihood of brand recall.
- Native Advertising: Many brands are collaborating with game developers to incorporate their ads into the plot or narrative of a game, creating a seamless incorporation of your brand.
- Targeted Ads: A targeted ad is placed in a game, but appears based on the user’s interests and behaviors. This makes certain that the ad is relevant to the user.
- Mobile Gaming: Mobile gaming has appeal due to its accessibility. Users can play from anywhere. You can leverage mobile gaming for ads in the form of in-app banners and rewarded videos.
Providing Customer Service
Discord brings a new approach to customer service. Representatives can engage in live chats and make announcements to provide updates, troubleshooting, and advice to your audience.
Being accessible via live chat also means that other customers can add their commentary, creating a forum-like discussion space. This can reduce the workload for customer service reps while allowing customers to receive answers to their queries more quickly.
Discord might be the key, allowing your business to provide more hands-on customer service that makes people feel heard.
Introducing Bots
To provide instant access to more information about your products and services, you can add bots to your server. Bots allow you to use AI chatbots and equip them with all relevant information about your brand and business. When a customer or fan has a quick question, they can receive the answer immediately.
Bots also play an important role in helping you to moderate your Discord server, ensuring there are no breaches of server rules or spam accounts sabotaging your business.
Integration
You want your customers to know you’re available on Discord, which is why leveraging the integration capacities of Discord could work to your advantage.
You can include highlights from your Discord server on your business page, and you can incorporate access to your business page and features on your Discord server. Blending both platforms creates a seamless user experience, keeping users aware of the various platforms you use.
Offering Exclusive Content
Many brands are using Discord to offer exclusive and paid content. There are two main routes you can take to add exclusive content to your server:
- Offering rewards to consumers who are loyal to your brand via a private server.
- Offering a paid private server for more niche or elevated content.
Leveraging private servers to your benefit is a great way to monetize your Discord server and increase your revenue, and it is particularly beneficial for content creators. However, Discord has strict rules regarding saleable content on the platform, so it’s important to review their monetization terms first.
Using Sponsored Emojis And Stickers
Sponsored emojis and stickers allow you to increase brand awareness and exposure in a fun and accessible way. When users share your emoji or include it on their profile, your brand gets exposure.
Your page will include a list of branded emojis that your following can use in the chat. You can create a cohesive emoji ‘aesthetic’ using multiple emojis in a particular style, or you can simply add your logo to the emoji collection – how you use them will depend on what’s most relevant to your brand. For instance, if you’re a decor or beauty business, you may emphasize the aesthetic of your emojis to make your brand image more impactful.
Leveraging Roles For Custom Experiences
Roles on Discord allow you to tailor alerts and experiences for your customer base. By implementing roles on your discord, you can be more selective about who receives notifications based on your posts.
When you use an “@role” tag, only the users listed under that role will receive a push notification, because the content is relevant to them. This way, you can keep notifications specific and reduce the likelihood of followers muting your page.
With roles, you can also allow users to customize the color of their nametag when they participate in your server. And, to make your server more inclusive, you can allow users to include their gender identity in their roles.
Creating a VIP role on your Discord will grant your most loyal customers access to exclusive levels of content and perks. You can make special offers and discounts available to your VIP members by using the role’s “@” tag when you make an exclusive promotional announcement.
Photo by Denis Cherkashin on Unsplash
Outsource Discord Marketing
Many brands don’t have time to manage their marketing in-house, and don’t have the resources to hire additional staff on their payroll.
Their one-size-fits-all approach to other social media sites may not mesh well with Discord’s structure, as their marketing templates may only be compatible with ad-friendly social media. Many companies are choosing to outsource campaign strategy creation to Discord for business specialists.
Discord specialists can create branded content for businesses wanting to reach their fans on the platform. They can even help you plan events to engage your followers directly.
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash
Is Discord Social Media? Final Thoughts…
Although Discord isn’t compatible with the traditional approach to social media marketing, a creative mind can leverage it to increase engagement more directly. Discord can be better for increasing brand engagement than other social media sites, given proper thought and strategy. Consider whether Discord might be the marketing masterpiece you’ve overlooked!