The global gaming market has been consistently growing since back in 2012, with this being an industry valued at over $135 billion worldwide. Considering this strength, it’s no wonder that gaming has joined forces with blockchain, Play2Earn systems springing up, which provide their users the unique opportunity to earn money while playing their favorite games.
While this industry is still developing, there are some breakaway stars, which are more often than not run by powerful GameFi PR campaigns. In this article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about GameFi PR, including:
Let’s get right into it!
What is GameFi?
GameFi, which is a compound of two words (gaming and finance), is a blockchain-supported gaming system. Games that come through this structure are often named ‘Play2Earn’, with users that actively play on these games earning cryptocurrency and other rewards while doing so.
Depending on the game and its objectives, a user might be able to earn cryptocurrency from completing certain questions, obtaining certain items, or beating their opponents. Whatever the main objective, the marriage between gaming and finance is an innovative new industry that blockchain has enabled.
There have always been digital assets within games, where players can buy different skins for weapons or characters or in-game perks. The problem with traditional gaming systems is that they’re centralized, meaning that if the developer pulled out of the project, anything related to that game would instantly lose all of its value.
Opposingly, GameFi runs on a decentralized system, meaning that players can take their assets off the platform. Users will be able to ‘cash out’ of these games, turning the assets they’re collected within the platform into their own local currency through exchanging with a brokerage.
GameFi is just one of the many ways that blockchain is weaving itself into distinct industries around the world.
How does the Play2Earn system entice the community?
Gaming definitely isn’t a new concept. However, gaming through which any player of any skill level can generate an income is a fairly new idea. Using the power of blockchain, developers are able to add an extra initiative to playing their games.
While the pull towards traditional gaming on centralized platforms is the fun that a person can have during their sessions playing, Play2Earn further incentivizes playing. Due to this dual reason, both fun and the ability to earn while playing, GameFi has become incredibly popular in recent years.
In a report constructed by DappRadar, they documented the $1 billion that was invested into the GameFi industry in the month of January 2022. This is a radical shift from 2021, in which the whole industry saw $4 billion in investments during the whole year. This investment shift reflects the movement to this industry, with gamers and investors alike loving the dual potential of these platforms.
What Play2Earn Systems Are There?
There are three ways that Play2Earn systems generate profit for the users that play the game:
- Currencies – GameFi platforms are rewarding top players with a cryptocurrency token alongside the XP they earn in a game. With leading games having their coins listed on major exchanges, this allows players to actively make an income for performing well within the virtual space.
- Digital Assets – GameFi has revolutionized trading card games, with certain powerful cards becoming NFTs that players can buy, sell, and trade around. Based on pack openings based on doing well in their games, users are able to find NFT trading cards that have special abilities in the game, helping them win and providing them with a valuable digital asset.
- Participation Rewards – Some games reward players for logging in each day and completing a match, incentivizing playing and ensuring that their audience remains committed to the platform.
This new form of gaming economics is an incredibly exciting prospect, one that is currently gaining steam in the world of blockchain.
Where has GameFi come from?
GameFi has a relatively short history, seeing its first launching steps in November of 2019. MixMarvel, a well-established blockchain gaming platform, gave a speech at the Wuzhen Blockchain Conference. This speech focused on how, when combined with gaming, cryptocurrencies could easily revolutionize this whole industry.
Although the above is the real first time that GameFi was established, most Western audiences attribute the term to Andre Cronje from a tweet they posted in September of 2020. Yet, even before this term was coined, there were elements of gamification within blockchain from as early as 2013.
On October 27th of 2013, the owner of Gambit posted in a forum on Bitcointalk, telling users that they can log onto his game and play in order to win bitcoin. When a player collects 10,000 Bit Points, they can cash it out for 1 BTC.
2013 and Beyond
In 2015, a similar concept cropped up in the game Bomberman, with users that do well being able to earn bitcoin as they play. These concepts all followed a similar style, with users being able to earn a certain currency for playing the game.
When Ethereum launched their ERC-721 token, which is the token that NFTs run on, new options arrived for those that are looking to create gaming that incorporates blockchain elements. From these early beginnings and fruitful revelations, GameFi has grown into a billion-dollar industry.
But, one important thing to note is that behind every single successful GameFi launch has been a PR team or marketing department, guiding them towards success. GameFi PR is vital when launching a blockchain game, especially in this more competitive modern climate.
What is GameFi PR?
GameFi PR, which in full stands for gaming-finance public relations, is the action of promoting a game’s launch through various media and social channels on the internet. As with every application of a different type of PR, the channels and focuses of PR vary incredibly.
Within GameFi PR, users will have to utilize a mixture of blockchain PR and gaming PR tactics, finding a middle ground that makes the most of all of the different potential streams.
With the complicated additional features of integrated blockchain economics systems and potential extensions into non-fungible tokens, GameFi PR presents a challenge for those not experienced in the various channels that you should utilize for this style of marketing and PR.
How does GameFi PR Work?
When entering into the world of public relations, especially for GameFi PR, you need to be ready to think creatively about how to best present your gaming project. Yet, going beyond this, you also need to know which channels are the best possible locations where you can launch discussions about your projects.
Just like with other fields, people respond best to think that they’re genuinely interested in. There is no point in launching a GameFi PR campaign on networks that aren’t meant for gamers or sites that don’t’ directly engage with people interested in niches about blockchain, cryptocurrency, and gaming.
When launching a successful GameFi PR campaign, you’ll want to ensure that you’re making use of the following different channels and opportunities:
- Influencer Marketing
- Social Media Ads
- Community Engagement
- Guest Posting
- AMAs
Let’s break these down further.
Influencer Marketing
Calculated by InfluencerMarketingHub, this is an industry that has been growing significantly year upon year. What was worth only $1.7 billion back in 2016 has now grown incredibly to $13.8b in 2021. This industry has no chance of slowing down anytime soon, with the usage of social media having also grown over this period.
When launching a successful GameFi Pr campaign, one of the strongest areas that you can turn to is the gaming community itself. There are already established YouTubers, Instagrammers, Twitch Streamers, and more that have engaged communities that follow them and appreciate their recommendations.
The power of influencer marketing is astounding, with popular players turning to a game and either making videos about it or streaming it and then the game itself seeing a large uptake over the next short period. If you’re looking to have positive sentiment behind your GameFi PR campaign, then you should definitely turn to this stream to create excitement.
Additionally, many medium and smaller-sized influencers often have lower rates, meaning that your budget can go even further when utilizing this category of GameFi public relations.
Social Media Ads and Crypto Advertising
When looking to construct Social media ads within the GameFi space, Facebook advertising should actually be the last place you think of. Instead of moving towards traditional routes for advertising your project, you should attempt to either directly advertise on sites that talk about GameFi, or organize ads through a GameFi advertising agency.
Major agencies like Converti, CoinZilla, and Bitmedia.io have specialized ad platforms that work with GameFi companies. With networks of over 30,000 brands services, these platforms are fantastic for launching the advertising portion of your project.
Additionally, by using their case studies, you’ll also be able to see which sort of GameFi projects have had success in recent months. You can take direct inspiration from their campaign styles; refining your own advertising based on what you’ve seen has done well for other developers.
Not only will you be able to outline what’s great about your project, but if you’re using a play-2-earn coin system, you can outline the utilities of your currency in these advertisements. Then, even if someone isn’t interested in playing the game, they might still see the value of your currency and invest in your project through exchanges.
Community Engagement
If there is one thing that’s certain about blockchain and cryptocurrency, it’s that there is a fervent community that follows this niche till the very end. As an extension of this community, play-2-earn PR projects can utilize the ingrained networks of the crypto community.
By turning to sites like Reddit and Steemit, you’ll be able to get automatic (and free!) access to large audiences that have an interest in these niches. Within sites like Reddit, there are millions of people that have signed up to different communities that discuss blockchain projects.
By posting in these regularly, giving updates about your project, and making the most of the community is a great way of building up a group of users that care about the game you’re launching. With a balance of fun gameplay features and a beneficial play-2-earn system, you’ll be able to get people on board with your GameFi project without having to directly sell it to them.
Be open, honest, and focus on the benefits and positives of your work instead of trying to just sell.
Guest Posting
One of the largest aspects of any PR campaign is guest posting, with this whole industry driven by an interconnected list of articles to post on different sites. Guest posting is the act of moving through different sites and getting your articles posted on them.
These articles don’t have to directly be about your project, instead perhaps offering advice or tips on the industry that you’re working in. However, these posts should always have a link that goes back to your website. This is a backlink, with one website pointing to another and giving it the green tick of approval in the eyes of Google.
The more websites that link back to a project, the stronger your domain rating on search engines will become. This is a figure calculated by search engines in order to see how valid and reliable your site is. A strong domain rating is one of the factors that push certain websites above others on the Google search rankings.
Due to this, creating articles for a wide range of different websites is a central aspect of successful GameFi public relations campaigns and one that you should definitely invest your time into.
If you’re wondering how to get these guest posting opportunities, one of the easiest ways of doing so is using the power of Google.
On Google, you’ll be able to type search terms in quotation marks to get direct results for this term. For example, typing in “Crypto” + “Guest Post” will give you a range of sites that are currently accepting guest posts around the crypto niche.
You’ll be able to adapt this trick to your particular PR project, finding opportunities that relate directly to your project.
AMAs
Returning to Reddit, AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) are a great way of communicating with the community that you’re building up in order to gain even more exposure for your GameFi project. A lead or senior game developer in your project can schedule an AMA with certain Subreddit communities, in which they will be able to ask them questions about the upcoming project.
It surprises many people to know that PR managers often falsify AMAs, with PR managers creating accounts and then asking pre-arranged questions to the developers. The developers will then be able to paste in a comprehensive response that frames the project in a positive light, gaining community support while also coming across as a useful member of the community.
In fact, PR stunts like these are so common that 80% of marketers believe that live events like AMAs are the number one way to gain attention quickly. Creating these forums can also be a great opportunity for real people that are on the fence about your project to learn more, helping to entice more players into your virtual world.
Especially considering AMAs cost absolutely nothing to run, this strategy is a big win-win for GameFi public relations campaigns.
Top Tips for a successful GameFi PR campaign
Running a successful GameFi PR campaign definitely isn’t an easy feat. Instead of worrying about whether your strategies are right or wrong, we recommend incorporating the following tips into your campaigns. Focus on
- Ensure P2E Elements Are Worth it
- Diversify Your Website Tier Postings
- Utilize SEO strategy
- Utilize PR distribution
These four tips will ensure that you’re on the right track towards having a successful GameFi PR campaign. Let’s break them down further.
P2E Elements
One of the driving factors that brings players to a GameFi project is a flawless P2E system. In your development stages, you should be sure to outline strong pay-to-earn pathways that players can experience.
Once you have these pathways, you can focus a great deal of your PR outreach on drawing attention to these elements. Not only will you be able to highlight why your game is fun, but the additional earning potential that you demonstrate will further entice players to the game.
We recommend making sure that you have your P2E in-game elements and online marketing strategy solidified before you start your campaign. If you’re not sure how to construct these elements, then get in touch with us today, and we’ll walk you through the process.
Diversify Your Website Tier Postings
Another incredibly important element of running a successful GameFi public relations campaign is to ensure that you correctly distribute your PR postings. If you’re paying for a PR company to disseminate resources and articles about your project, you’ll get access to several different tiers of publication.
A tier one publication would be something like Cointelegraph, which is one of the most read news sites related to blockchain projects. Getting onto this site would mean lots of eyes on your project, but it would also cost the most as these sites often charge for postings or are harder to access.
Instead of just focusing on tier one PR sites, you should actually try and diversify the sources that you’re posting on. Try and go for tier two and tier three sites, looking for sites that have lower readerships but still enough to make a difference. Over the past few years, tier 3 media outlets have been growing, with people finding their news from alternative sources. Due to this, it’s actually much more sustainable to focus on getting your name out to a high quantity of tier three sites rather than just one or two tier-one sites.
By diversifying your postings, you’ll be saving yourself your PR budget while also ensuring that you can run the campaign for much longer without hitting a budgetary wall. Being around for a longer amount of time will make sure your project looks more consistent, stable, and attractive to players and investors.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important elements of any PR campaign, this being one of the defining factors that will help boost your rankings on the search pages and secure a top spot in the GameFi listings.
The closer to the first position that a site ranks, the more likely it is to get clicked on by someone that searched for that term. If you’re looking for one of the most effective ways to run your blockchain PR campaign, you should make sure that SEO is at the very center of it. One of the first steps towards doing this is outlining your keyword strategy.
You’ll also be able to start using this SEO strategy for both your on-site optimization and your off-site optimization, the joint forces of these helping to increase the visibility of your project.
Online gaming projects that have a stronger web presence are also more likely to receive recognition, with you being able to build familiarity with your prospect audiences before the big launch launch.
From there, you’ll have a much better idea of how you can begin to push your GameFi project up the Google listings.
PR Distribution
Although paying your way onto different news websites is certainly a way of going about your PR project, this will often also lead to you running out of budget far sooner than expected. One way to make your information go further while spending the same amount on your GameFi PR campaign is to make use of PR Distribution channels.
These channels are sites that you can post on for free, with places like Reddit being the perfect place to then launch additional news about your project. You’ll be able to create links to recent articles or to your site with the information actually in your post. These methods will ensure that you’re making your information go as far as possible when uploading to any site.
The amplification effect that you can expect to experience from this strategy will ensure that your GameFi PR budget goes much further than you could have thought possible. You’ll be maximizing exposure while ensuring your budget stays within expected constraints.
Final Thoughts
Just like blockchain PR and crypto SEO, GameFi public relations is a complicated market that’s difficult to manage on your own. Our best advice would be to get in contact with a blockchain marketing agency that can help you drive traffic to your project.
If you’re looking to boost the user count for your GameFi project, secure additional funding, and develop an unforgettable GameFi PR campaign, then this guide has absolutely everything you need to know. With these tips, you’ll be well on your way to crafting a project that explodes onto the scene.
Got any questions? Let us know in the comments down below, and we’ll get back to you.
FAQ:
What is PR and why is it important for GameFi?
Public Relations (PR) is the strategic management of communication between an organization and its target audience, with the goal of building and maintaining a positive public image. In the context of GameFi, PR plays a crucial role in helping to establish and promote the new genre of Play-to-Earn gaming and finance. GameFi projects require PR activities to build awareness, generate interest, and attract users to their platforms. This involves creating compelling and engaging content, leveraging social media and influencer marketing, engaging with communities across various platforms, and establishing thought leadership through various PR channels.
Without effective PR, a GameFi project may struggle to gain traction in the highly competitive gaming and finance markets. Effective PR helps GameFi projects to expand quickly, reach new audiences, and establish trust and credibility with their users. By engaging with communities and leveraging PR tactics, GameFi projects can generate excitement and momentum, leading to increased user adoption and ultimately, business success.
What are some effective marketing strategies for GameFi projects to reach and engage with their target audience?
Planning your GameFi PR campaign ahead of launch is crucial to its success. It is essential to brainstorm your ideas, develop a story angle, and find skilled writers who understand the technical aspects of your project and can simplify them for the masses. By taking the time to plan and strategize your campaign, you can ensure that it is well thought out and targeted to the right audience.
You can also develop a strong brand voice that resonates with your audience and stands out in the competitive GameFi market. Another essential aspect of your GameFi PR strategy should be to leverage various marketing channels to reach your target audience. This could include influencer marketing, social media advertising, community engagement, guest posting, and AMAs.
By using a mix of these channels, you can build buzz and virality around your project, generate interest, and drive traffic to your platform. Furthermore, it’s essential to track and measure the success of your PR campaign through analytics and data. This can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your strategy accordingly. With the right planning, execution, and measurement, your GameFi PR campaign can be a massive success and help your project stand out in the crowded GameFi market.
How can I measure the success of my GameFi PR campaign?
Measuring the success of a GameFi PR campaign is essential for assessing the impact of the campaign and identifying areas for optimization. To evaluate the effectiveness of a GameFi PR campaign, it is important to track relevant metrics, such as:
- Traffic and engagement metrics
- Conversion rates Influencer marketing metrics
- Social media metrics
- Search engine optimization (SEO) metrics
- Media coverage metrics •
Set specific goals and objectives for the PR campaign, such as:
- Increasing website traffic
- Driving user sign-ups
- Generating media coverage
- Improving brand awareness
By monitoring these metrics and setting clear goals, GameFi project teams can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their PR strategy, and make data-driven decisions to optimize and improve their approach. Overall, measuring the success of a GameFi PR campaign requires a data-driven and strategic approach, with a focus on tracking relevant metrics and setting clear goals and objectives from the outset. By taking this approach, GameFi project teams can optimize their PR efforts, drive user engagement, and achieve long-term success in the competitive GameFi market.
About the Author
Yuval is a savvy SEO and marketing expert with over a decade of experience. Specializing in the blockchain industry, he's the go-to guy for crypto companies looking to simplify their digital marketing strategies and achieve explosive growth. As a digital nomad and successful company builder, Yuval brings a fresh, creative perspective to every project he tackles.
