eSports Marketing Explained with Alex Martin

What is the business opportunity with eSports Marketing?

Alex Martin is a workaholic, software engineer, creator, and gamer. He’s the founder & CEO of esports and professional gaming startup, athletes.gg.

Prior to starting athletes.gg, he was an Integrations and Professional Services Manager at Tenfold, where he managed a large engineering team, as well as relationships with partners and Enterprise customers.

Prior to joining Tenfold, he held several positions as Lead Software Engineer. Most recently, at Springbox, where he lead many projects for large Enterprise clients; and prior to that, at Help.com, where he built up their entire engineering foundation for both, the code and the culture.

He started programming computer games when he was just 8 years old! In his senior year of college, he realized that building things is what he loved to do, so he joined the amazing world of startups and never looked back.

Connect with Alex:
Twitter: @suitupalex
Instagram: @suitupalex
Web: https://athletes.gg
Email: [email protected]

Contact Avrohom:
Web: https://asktheceo.biz
Twitter: @avrohomg
Instagram: @avrohomg

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:

[01:16] Many people don’t get the gaming industry. They think it’s just a bunch of kids playing video games. However, as we’ve seen with games like Pokémon Go, there are real world business implications to every kind of business leveraging this demographic. Can you help us understand what is the gaming industry?

[01:16] eSports is geared mainly towards Millennials and GenZ, and is a $905M industry, having grown over 30% from 2017.

[03:56] eSports differs from Traditional Sports in that you can make it big, literally overnight, thanks to the Internet.

[05:00] As a business – or marketer – why should I care about gaming? I’m too busy trying to make money than to follow the latest game tournaments!

[05:35] How are companies like NFL, RedBull, and Geico leveraging eSports to grow their businesses?

[07:39] As a marketer that’s looking to take advantage of this newly discovered demographic, what challenges am I likely to run into, that I should know about?

[10:00] Now, you actually built a business, athletes.gg, around this. Tell us about it.

[12:05] What is an eSports Agg score?

[12:05] How are eSports athletes measured?

[12:05] How can businesses choose the right eSports athlete for influencer marketing?

[13:35] How do companies, like Underarmour and Nike select eSports athletes for influencer marketing?

[16:10] Can you give us some examples of how brands would leverage a platform like yours to identify influencers?

[16:10] How do companies, like Uber leverage eSports athletes for influencer marketing?

[16:10] How can the average business select and negotiate with eSports athletes for influencer marketing?

[19:04] The mission of athletes.gg is to empower young athletes.

[20:10] Why millennials are uniquely suited as CEOs of eSports related businesses.

[20:56] How did you get started with this business?

[24:40] Can you talk about some of the emerging technologies being used in gaming, such as AR, VR, AI, and IoT?

[27:25] Robot assisted surgeries use a controller similar to an Xbox!

[29:35] How to educate yourself on leveraging eSports for marketing your business.