Discord for digital marketing?
That’s something new.
Digital marketing agencies and business owners are constantly looking for emerging platforms where they can promote brands, and sometimes even niche platforms can be leveraged for growth.
Discord, is one of several promising platforms, that not a lot businesses are optimizing. If you are still asking if it is possible to use it to promote a brand, the answer is an absolute yes.
So can you use Discord for digital marketing? Let’s find out.
The first thing you need to do is come to understand what Discord is in order to get the most out of it
Discord is a real-time chat platform that is frequented by anyone who has developed a community of influencers and gamers. Anyone can join different kinds of servers when they receive exclusive invites.
Once they are in, they can interact with all the members of that community on dedicated channels. It is a community-driven voice-over IP (VoIP) software, which is available on Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. It is a famous chat app that features text, video, and voice-calling abilities.
If anything, Discord is considered one of the most useful tools a business can use today. A channel can be created and dedicated to everyone in a company and other channels can be developed to cater to the communication needs of different departments within the company.
A brand that is very public can easily be promoted on Discord and is perfect for brand awareness and generating community feedback. For brands that are more inclined towards maintaining an intimate set of followers, it is highly recommended that they consider hosting private servers.
Think of Discord as a chat room service
If you break down Discord to its essence; it’s a chat room service that allows itself to be integrated with other apps.
You have an admin that creates a channel for a particular group of people.
Playing a game with friends, watching a movie, and discussing a topic, all become easier with a service like Discord.
At one point people who were buying NFTs from a particular could get access to a particular server so that they can interact with like-minded individuals.
What kind of businesses/groups/organizations are on Discord?
There are several business niches that are utilizing Discord. They include the following:
- Marketing groups such as YouTube and Twitch advertisements servers;
- Fan communities often include celebrity groups, movie groups, video gamers’ groups; and
- Developer communities include software development communities, video game development communities, and video game modding communities.
If you’re into building an engaging community, then you can use Discord to get users or your products to interact with each other then Discord is the way to go.
However, here’s the catch.
It needs to be a community that’s built to talk and have easy discussion topics available.
You will be hard-pressed to keep a community going if you’re selling a single-use end-consumer product. However, you add modding, continuity, and a little spice to the discussion and you could probably leverage it.
Read more: BeReal for Digital Marketing: Can My Brand Use It?
How many people are using Discord?
Unknown to many, Discord has a very huge following. Data gathered as of February 2022 reveals that there are 150 million active users on Discord, 19 million active servers per week, and four billion server conversation minutes every day.
Jason Citron, Discord CEO, did surgery involving 20,000 of its users and asked them various questions, including, “What is the biggest misconception that people have about Discord?” The overwhelming response was, “The biggest misconception is that Discord is only used for gaming.”
There are various groups of people interacting on Discord. From sports clubs to art enthusiasts, and student groups, Discord has become safe haven for them to communicate with one another. One of the main reasons it has become so popular is that it is free.
Users get to enjoy 30 FPS screen sharing, which has low video quality. Users also get to maximize one server boost per server, Discord Bots for their servers, image sharing, and file uploads. Each user also gets the opportunity to belong to up to 100 servers.
Will marketing on Discord guarantee success?
It really depends on what kind of niche you are from. Discord is not for all brands. If you’re planning to consider it as one of the platforms for your promotional efforts, remember that there are three major groups of people who consistently use Discord: those who want to screen share PC games, host game sessions, and developers who wish to generate relevant feedback regarding products they are planning to launch.
If your brand is anything that will appeal to any of the groups, go ahead and strategize your content to attract your target market. Some brands make announcements of items on sale or upcoming products that will be introduced in the market soon. Simply put, if you are a brand related to the gaming or tech industries, then Discord will be your new playground.
At present, Discord has no advertising features like the ones you see on Facebook and Instagram. Presently, however, there are emerging servers that present themselves as Discord Growth Experts.
Takeaways with Discord for Digital Marketing
Discord for digital marketing is a niche.
But, every niche can be leveraged if you have the right entry.
As long as you have a product or service that you can build a discussion around, you can use Discord to create hype and build engagement around your brand.
All it takes is a little creativity.
