IGO PR: Everything You Need to Know

In the third quarter of 2021 alone, blockchain gaming generated over $2 billion in profit, demonstrating the extent to which this form of gaming has taken the world by storm. If you’re looking to get into this space, then an early fundraising strategy commonly used is an Initial Game Offering (IGO).

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In this article, we’ll be outlining everything there is to know about initial game offerings, demonstrating the best marketing practices and what you should know if you’re attempting to start a PR campaign in this industry.

We’ll be covering:

• What an IGO is
• Best practices for IGO Launches
• Benefits of hiring an IGO PR campaign team

Let’s get right into it. 

What is an IGO?

Over the history of blockchain projects, several different formats of fundraising have come out of the woodwork. What started with Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) has now matured into an industry with seemingly boundless potential fundraising opportunities. Specifically for blockchain gaming projects, a specific format of fundraising known as Initial Game Offering (IGO) has recently come to light.

IGOs are how a blockchain gaming project seeks to raise funds for the launch of its game. For investing in a game in its IGO stage, users will gain exclusive perks, like early access to the game, in-game assets, which can then be sold, or game-attached cryptocurrency. 

Another common offering that investors can expect within IGO projects is mystery boxes, with certain amounts of money donated to the project resulting in distinct reward sets for those investors. As with all blockchain funding opportunities, any capital that’s invested is locked into a liquidity pool for a certain amount of time, with those investors that keep their capital there for the longest time often seeing the biggest rewards.

With the early access gaming opportunities, enthusiasts of gaming and cryptocurrency seem to really connect with this format of fundraiser – gaining both an investment opportunity as the game’s assets increase in price due to the game’s popularity rising, but also a new gaming adventure to embark on.

Best Practises for IGO PR launches

Launching an IGO PR campaign without any experience in blockchain marketing is much easier said than done. For those that are inexperienced in this field, we’ve collected some vital tips that will help you with the launch of your very first project.

These tips allow you to start from scratch, helping you to identify your audience, cultivate a community, and maintain their active engagement in the project. Within your IGO PR campaign, you should endeavor to:

• Know Your Community
• Build Your Community
• Utilize Paid and Free Strategies

Know Your Community for IGO PR

An important part of launching any PR campaign is knowing the industry that you’re getting involved with. This spans from knowing the type of communication that works well for a certain population, as well as the general demographic that makes up the segment you’re targeting.

Luckily, in our modern-day, with the power of Google and market research on our side, it’s fairly easy to discover exactly what the community we’re engaging with looks like. For IGOs, you’re contending with two industries at once, with information from both helping you create a more complete user profile.

Within IGO PR campaigns, you’re going to be dealing directly with the blockchain community, as well as the gaming community. Recent demographics of the blockchain gaming community reveal that the majority of people you’re going to be dealing with are young, aged between 25-34, and based in either Europe or Asia.

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Knowing a general user profile allows you to tailor your communication styles to that audience directly. Considering that personalization is a highly effective marketing strategy, with 88% of consumers wanting personalized communications, knowing who you’re targeting is vital.

Start with the demographics of the community you’re engaging with, and then work backward. This will help you build stronger strategies and more direct lines of communication with your audience. 

Build Your Community for IGO PR

Any great PR project will have a strong foundation in the community that they’re targeting. Following on from knowing your community, you’re now able to actively seek to build out your community. The importance of having a community base cannot be overstated, with a following being an audience that you can directly market any project to when you launch.

One of the first aspects of building a community you should engage with is ensuring that you have a range of social media channels constructed. These will be the majority of peoples’ first point of contact with your brand, meaning they’re of vital importance.

Remember to actively tailor to the communities to which you’re serving. For gamers, the most popular social media platforms are Discord, Reddit, and Twitter, making these three channels that you absolutely must construct. 

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By constructing these platforms and having an active presence, you’re able to rapidly talk to your audience, give them information, and establish a connection. Social media is vital for a good public relations strategy, and will help you spread information about your IGO launches once they’re ready to go.

The more eyes that you can get on your campaign, the better!

Paid and Free Strategies

When launching an IGO project, it’s very easy to slip into the habit of paying your way to media success. One common practice of IGO projects is to pay for news articles to be posted on high-profile gaming or crypto websites, increasing the number of people that hear about the project and potentially invest.

Now, while we’re not discrediting this tactic, it is a particularly high-risk strategy, especially for those projects that don’t have lots of budget available to them. Instead of only focusing on paid IGO PR strategies, you should also include a range of free ones in the mix.

There are a huge amount of news sites, especially those related to cryptocurrency, that are free to post on. You’ll be able to get media attention by simply sending out emails that communicate the excellence of your project. Remember that anyone who works in crypto news is used to a fast-paced working lifestyle. Due to this, make sure you get right to the point and explain why your IGO is newsworthy right off the bat.

Additionally, you should utilize free social media sites, like Reddit, Twitter, and even Quora, to get the word out there. Considering these are free to post on, you’re able to get eyes on your campaign without having to spend money. What’s more, sites like Reddit are voting-based, meaning that every post you create has the possibility of going viral.

With even one viral post, you’ll significantly increase the potential of your IGO project to be a success.

Benefits of Hiring an IGO PR Campaign Agency

When it comes to launching your very own IGO PR campaign, there are a lot of moving factors that you need to consider and stay on top of. From understanding the correct channels to constructing the copy and actually executing the campaign, there is a lot to keep track of if you’re looking to hit it out of the park. Right now, blockchain games are at an all-time high in Google Trends, demonstrating the continual interest in Play-to-earn, NFT games, and more.

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A lot of the time, unless you have a direct background in PR in other industries, it’s going to be difficult to create a flawless IGO PR campaign on your very first try. That’s why we recommend contacting an expert in IGO PR, using an agency to get the very best out of your campaign.

At GuerrillaBuzz, we offer the following benefits to our clients:

• Expert Knowledge – With years of experience within crypto PR and beyond, we’re experts at what we do. Partnering with an IGO PR agency will help you take your campaigns to the next level, creating demand and ensuring that your future investors find your brand in the best possible conditions.
• Time Saver – When you partner with an IGO PR agency, all of the time that you once spent focusing on public relations, including hours of workshopping ideas, creating media templates, and actually executing the campaign, is now completely freed up. We take PR off your hands, creating hours more in your day that you can use to focus on other areas of building your business. Especially when it comes to CEOs that don’t have much experience in PR, when partnering with an agency, you’re going to be getting a better quality of campaign while not having to lift a finger.
• Media Management – Across the various social media platforms that are utilized in both blockchain PR and gaming PR, there is a lot to keep track of. When partnering with an IGO PR firm, we’re able to manage all of your social media platforms and profiles, ensuring optimized content that will resonate with your audience arrives to the correct people. 

In short, turning to an IGO PR agency will save you time, help you to create effective campaigns, and help you manage, refine, and cultivate a strong brand presence across all marketing channels.

Final Thoughts on IGO PR

Although IGOs are a fairly new form of fundraising for blockchain projects, they are already seeing huge amounts of success, with projects continually breaking records and moving to new highs in the industry.

By taking the very best tips from this IGO PR article, you’ll be well on your way to crafting highly effective and memorable PR campaigns. What’s more, by partnering with GuerrillaBuzz, we’ll take IGO PR off your hands, crafting high-impact campaigns that will boost your project to its fundraising goals.

Get in contact today with our team of experts for a direct quote.