Are you a game developer looking to tap into the rapidly growing world of non-fungible token (NFT) games? Or perhaps you’re a marketer seeking to leverage this exciting new sector for your brand? In this comprehensive step-by-step guide, we’ll walk you through all the necessary strategies and techniques to drive success in marketing NFT games.
From understanding the fundamentals of NFT games to identifying your target audience to partnering with the right influencers and crafting compelling marketing campaigns, this article will provide you with the ultimate roadmap for achieving your goals. With our expert tips and insights, you’ll learn how to create a buzz around your game and attract a loyal community of players and collectors. Get ready to unlock the secrets of effective NFT game marketing.
The current NFT gaming landscape
The potential investments gained from NFTs have created attractive prospects for gamers, investors, and business people alike. In fact, experts believe that the market cap of NFTs is growing at a 1000x rate, with a transactional volume of $338 million reported at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 alone. Similarly, the global gaming industry is expected to grow by $314.40 billion by 2026, with a CAGR of 9.64% over the next six years. With both sectors growing exponentially, the unification of both industries is inevitable.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were first created in 2012, but they didn’t become mainstream until the late 2010s. When marketplaces like OpenSea and culturally defining NFT projects like CryptoPunks fueled the NFT revolution. NFTs forced people to reconsider their definitions of ownership, creating digital scarcity. NFTs have altered the lives of digital art creators since their inception. The NFT gaming industry is now on the rise, and it has the potential to irreversibly change how we think about and interact with games.
In the past, gamers had to pay to play their games in the traditional sense, but NFTs have created a new way for players to own, trade, and sell in-game digital assets. This gives them a chance to earn significant amounts of money just by playing their favorite games. Ultimately, they have flipped the old pay-to-play model on its head and transformed it into a play-to-earn model. Play-to-Earn NFT games allow players to earn money by playing and interacting with the game’s larger ecosystem. Some games award tokens and NFTs to players, and these tokens can either be used or sold.
Other games allow players to create or construct in-game assets, which they can then sell on in-game marketplaces. Other players can then buy these assets to improve their gaming experience. In-game assets have varying values depending on their aesthetics, rarity, and utility in the game. To give you an idea of how much money can be made from in-game assets, a virtual plot of land in the Decentraland metaverse sold for 345 ETH. This was due to its advantageous location in the game.
NFTs make gaming a viable day job for millions of people, especially in developing countries where tens of dollars go a long way. However, NFT gaming changes how we think about games and disrupts what was once considered a ‘leisure activity. An excellent example of this can be seen through the NFT game Axie Infinity. A rural community in the Philippines noticed that they could earn hundreds of dollars a month playing the game. This helped members of the community earn multiple times the minimum wage in the country.
This NFT game has encouraged players to become more engaged because their livelihood depended on playing in a disciplined manner rather than just logging on to relax. This is the primary and fundamental shift that has changed the industry and the types of games available.
Another significant change brought about by NFTs is protecting the financial investment you’ve made after you stop playing a game. In the traditional centralized gaming model, players must pay for the game. Sometimes this payment comes in the form of a subscription that is required to keep playing. Alternatively, players must pay a fee to connect to the internet, or additional money for in-game assets such as weapon packs or skins to improve the gaming experience. If a person plays the game for a few years, they can earn hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. However, when a player leaves, there is no way to recoup this investment of hard-earned money; it simply disappears into the pockets of shareholders.
NFTs, on the other hand, create a gaming ecosystem in which players have complete control over the in-game assets they buy or create. Players can sell their in-game assets (a.k.a. NFTs) to other players via a secure marketplace when it’s time to quit. In-game assets include skins, buildings, land, weapons, and so on. This means that they will, at the very least, recoup their financial investment in the game. Alternatively, if the in-game assets a player collects are particularly aesthetically pleasing, rare, or have multiple uses in the game, they will almost certainly profit and leave the game with more money than they put in.
Beyond these changes that NFTs have provided for the gaming industry, there are also quite a few benefits to players, including ownership, the creation of gaming economies, and permanence. First of all, game players can own in-game assets by using NFTs in the gaming world. Thanks to blockchain-based transactions, these NFT assets have gained value. The transfer of NFTs is accomplished through smart contracts that send NFTs to players when they reach a certain level or find rare items in-game. Since the data in a blockchain cannot be changed, game developers and other third parties have no way of altering the smart contract. As a result, NFTs are rare and unique items that could develop into valuable assets for which many people would be willing to pay a high price.
Additionally, since in-game items and data are linked to the blockchain, players can trade NFT assets between games. Since these NFT items are stored on an identical blockchain network or other networks, players can sell them on the secondary market and other gaming platforms. By recording transactions conducted by the smart contracts underlying blockchain networks, buyers and collectors can value the rarity and authenticity of NFT items. Finally, an NFT can exist on the blockchain indefinitely once it is created.
This solves the problem of traditional online games where, due to centralized servers, game players lose all of their in-game assets when the game shuts down. NFT gamers can purchase and sell in-game items regardless of what happens. Moreover, new games can be built to integrate with an existing blockchain protocol. Furthermore, since each NFT generates a permanent record when it’s issued, blockchain-enabled game assets cannot be duplicated or tampered with.
So far, we’ve identified why gamers will be attracted to the incorporation of NFTs in the gaming industry. It’s now time to talk about how to promote your project correctly.
It doesn’t matter what kind of NFT you are trying to promote – it could be digital items, art, or game artifacts. Regardless of what the NFT is, the ability to properly create, sell and exchange them is what attracts a large number of collectors and traders. This is in addition to projects, artists, and developers who are already working in the field. Let’s look at the steps you need to go through if you want to market an NFT project.
1) NFT idea and implementation
As a starting point, we’ll assume that your company already has a solid and interesting idea and is putting it into action. We’ll assume that your project is worthy of widespread attention on all fronts. Let’s also assume you’ve ticked all the boxes including technical implementation, good documentation, and presentation. You also need a professional website, and any other documents that may be required, depending on the project.
2) Community for NFT projects
Once you’ve established the idea, it is time to focus on spreading the word about it. The community is crucial for most crypto projects. NFTs are no different. The people who will support, spread the word about, invest in, and buy a company’s NFTs are its primary community.
However, there are many different communities that you can dive into and connect with. Let’s look into how to build an initial community.
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Social media networks for NFT
You need to understand the impact that social networks have on promoting an NFT project. If you hope to achieve online visibility, you need to spend time developing an active presence on social media networks. Don’t just assume that crypto enthusiasts are the only people who are interested in NFT technology – members of the general public also appreciate the utility that NFTs offer. For this reason, when posting on social media, you should introduce your content with explanatory posts. These are posts that can help the average person understand how they can benefit from paying for your NFT assets. As a standard, you should set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Medium, Reddit, and LinkedIn (optional as a corporate page).
Keep in mind that it’s not enough to simply set up accounts on these platforms. You need to go beyond that and build a community of people with whom you interact regularly. This is a good way to earn public trust for your NFT project and win clients over.
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Telegram and Discord
Telegram is extremely popular among the crypto and NFT communities because the platform offers heightened security. Moreover, the platform allows brands to build communities where they can interact with potential clients and make branded announcements. Discord is popular in the gaming industry. Since the NFT industry has similar needs, Discord can be an excellent alternative to Telegram. This is especially the case if your target audience already spends time there. It’s incredibly convenient to create multiple chats within the same channel, which is a huge plus.
Telegram continues to be the most popular platform in the crypto space. For this reason, it’s a good idea to start with Telegram, even if you’re set on creating a Discord account. You must ensure that the project’s chat team is competent, polite, knowledgeable about the project, works on the FAQs, and promptly responds to questions and feedback. After all, the crypto community will often base their perception of your product on how your support team performs.
Ultimately, any marketing experts you hire should create buzz about an NFT gaming project on various platforms. This is not only useful for promotion but also for the generation of adequate feedback from the NFT community. Additionally, you need to remember that you should not be spreading spam. Rather, you should focus on initiating a dialogue that’s relevant to your project and seek the community’s opinion about the project.
3) NFT Marketplaces and listings
There are already NFT marketplaces where various companies can sell their ideas and tokens. These are diverse, so you should try to pick the ones that fit with the project’s features. Some of the largest NFT marketplaces include OpenSea, SuperRare, Raible, and Makers Place. You need to take time to understand the benefits of each so that you can decide on the ones you like. Alternatively, you can create your own marketplace. If you opt for the second option, you also need to place your own marketplace in various NFT marketplaces and project lists.
4) User-friendly interface
You need to try and make the most convenient and user-friendly interfaces so that consumers have an easy time buying and selling your NFT. Since most consumers have a relatively low attention span and want something that does not take a lot of time, effort, or confusion, this is vital if you want to gain coverage for your NFT.
5) Influencers and PR for NFTs
Advertising with thought leaders and influencers is beneficial, despite the fact that it takes time to achieve meaningful results from influencer marketing. Often, an influencer’s audience must hear about your company a few times before becoming a member of your community.
Similarly, the more media that writes about your company, the better. You need to focus on PR and get published in different media publications and formats, with content ranging from guest posts to interviews and quotes. Additionally, depending on the project’s features, you can go beyond just focusing on crypto media to focus on media in general.
If you are unfamiliar with how to successfully do PR or believe that your time and effort will be better spent on developing your NFT project, you can partner with a PR agency like Pressfarm. The PR specialists, expert writers, and certified designers at Pressfarm can help you create quality content to generate publicity for your NFT project. This content ranges from email pitches and press releases to guest posts and press kits. All of this content can be distributed to media professionals for external publication or published on your owned media.
By distributing this content to the right media outlets, startup directories, and professional networks, Pressfarm can boost your online visibility across different search engines. This makes it easier for members of your target audience to find you through organic searches using keywords related to your niche.
Once you sign up, the Account Executive at Pressfarm will also create a personalized media list of relevant journalists and influencers in your niche. Moreover, with the contacts, you can get from Pressfarm’s media database of 1 million+ media contacts. You can do extended media outreach for your NFT project for up to a year after you sign up.
Conclusion
NFT gaming is transforming the gaming industry in the same way that other blockchain technologies have done. NFTs have the same effect on games as cryptocurrencies have on finance. They reverse the traditional gaming model, in which powerful centralized institutions benefit the most, and transform it into a model in which each individual is empowered and fairly compensated. For that reason, NFT gaming companies need to make sure that they have a great product and know how to promote it effectively.
How Pressfarm can help
For an entrepreneur, your brand image can determine your success or failure. At Pressfarm, we help companies define the right narrative in the media for their brand – either to improve their credibility or resolve a PR crisis. If you are an entrepreneur wondering how to improve your company’s publicity, get in touch with us. We can help you to craft and distribute your press releases, develop compelling guest posts and design eye-catching media kits for your brand.
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