Top 9 NFT Game Advertising Ideas For 2022

NFT Game Advertising

NFT Game Advertising

NFT Game Advertising Overview

One of the most challenging aspects of building a successful Web 3 game is acquiring DAU (Daily Active Users).  If you need help with NFT PPC ads, please reach out to us and let us know.  The fact is that compared to traditional Web 2 games, there just aren’t that many players who even have crypto wallets like Metamask and Phantom setup, and getting in front of them isn’t easy especially since many NFT gaming studios are willing to destroy their entire game economies via yield farming in pursuit of more DAU. So, how do you get in front of NFT gamers to acquire more players without giving away the farm?  This is certainly an important question, as failure to get more players means your game will surely die. At the time of this writing, I advise on 30+ games for guild scalability solutions and tokenomics.  And, I’m also the Co-Founder of one of the largest NFT gaming guilds called BreedFi in the world with 10,000+ NFTs and 5,000+ scholars across 25% games.  Not only do we have a lot of love for the space, but we also understand a lot of the pitfalls and negative aspects of the industry as a whole. Here are 10 advertising ideas for your NFT game:  

#1 – Build a good game

I know this sounds dumb.  But, the days of building a 3v3 round robin Axie knockoff game are long gone.  As one NFT influencer once put it as we entered into the first real bear market of modern NFT gaming, “Let’s watch all these token prices go down to 0 and see who actually has a good game.” You can’t paint a pig to make it look like a unicorn.  If your game sucks and you don’t have plans to make a great game in the future, there’s not a lot that can be done for you, and it probably deserves to die.  

#2 – Give out USDT or USDC instead of your token to players instead of your native token

If there’s one thing that we would like to encourage NFT games to do it’s to never give out your token to players, especially scholars who own nothing and only plan to take profits by dumping your token. One of the best shining examples in the industry of a game that has successfully done this is EV.io.  Rather than create their own token and then hand that out to people, they chose to distribute a roughly $10,000 / mo. marketing budget via SOL as a reward for players instead of emitting their own token.  The only downside of SOL is that the price fluctuates between $300 and $30, so that can cause some problems. Just set aside a stable coin marketing budget that is paid to your players for either coming and playing the game, winning the game, or a mix of playing and winning.  This will save your game from a death spiral economically. And, if you’re wondering what to do with your native token, use it a part of an entry fee.  In fact, we recommend charging at least $0.50 in USDT/USDC in addition to $0.03-$0.10 in your native token that just gets burned for participating.  Burn your token, don’t ever give it out for free. What if your token is already worth less than a penny?  Great!  All the more reason why you shouldn’t be giving it out in the first place. Your largest marketing budget should be spent on the players themselves.  If the game is good and the rewards are good, they will bring you most of the players that you need.  

#3 – Have a Free-To-Play Web 2 model

Somewhere along the line, games got the hair brained idea that a web 3 game has to be completely web 3.  It doesn’t. In fact, at it’s core, the only things that need to be on chain are:

  1. Your NFTs
  2. A Token

Outside of that, we recommend that you put as little on chain as possible.  Most importantly, and browser-based web 3 games have a big advantage in this area, you should allow web 2 players who don’t have any NFTs and can’t actually earn anything in your game to play with your web 3 players. Great examples of this would again be EV.io and Mini Royale: Nations.  As soon as you go to those websites on your browser, it throws you into a game without even having to do anything other than click to spawn.  The game loads and throws you into it before you even click. What’s great about web 2 players as opposed to web 3 players is two fold.  First, web 2 players are used to paying for something, whether that’s skins, battle passes, upgrades, or whatever.  Secondly, they are not looking to extract value from the game.  Rather, they add to it. Somewhere along the line, we’ve created this false narrative that it’s okay to have scholars pay nothing, extract everything, and everyone will get rich because of it.  That simply is not true.  If your token price is falling, it’s because you’re allowing people to exploit your game, and they will continue to do so until there is literally nothing left value-wise for your token(s) and NFTs.  

#4 – YouTube Ads

Now that your game is accessible to both web 2 and web 3 players, you’re paying out rewards in stable tokens instead of your native token, and your game doesn’t stink, you’re ready to start advertising on traditional advertising networks such as YouTube. One of my favorite games that we ended up buying into heavily is called Mech NFT.  We ran across this game on YouTube and ended up buying around 150 NFTs in it for our guild.  Here’s the actual ad that we came across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mVnH1iHbGc One of the nice things about YouTube ads is that you can choose what channels and topics your ads should run on.  So, you can literally select the channels of other top NFT games as well as crypto influencers and get directly in front of them. We would recommend having a daily ad budget on YouTube of about $30 / day.  And, if you don’t know how to run these types of ads yourself, no worries.  We’re an ad agency and we can totally help you out and do it for you.  

#5 – Landing Pages

Once you’re at the point where you are ready to start running ads, you’re simultaneously going to have to figure out where to send that traffic.  Having been in the ad agency space for 12+ years, we would recommend using a tool like Unbounce and create a squeeze page that tells your story with a video, asks people to buy, accepts payments in credit cards or crypto, and allows you to convert that traffic at a high percentage. Alternatively, another industry-specific tool to consider would be DeQuest, which is a web 3 native solution that allows you to set specific tasks such as:

  1. Follow On Twitter
  2. Join Discord
  3. Download Game
  4. Play Game
  5. Buy NFT

The point is, it’s important to send your traffic somewhere that gets people to do what you want for them to do.  And, it’s important to track and make sure that whatever you’re doing is driving a positive ROI. If for some reason you’re getting sales but not necessarily getting a positive ROI right away, that doesn’t mean you should quit.  Achieving a profit in any business is tricky, but it’s important to always be working on driving sales. If you’re not sure how to handle this piece, don’t worry.  We’ve made 500+ landing pages for people over the years, and it’s not even something that we charge existing clients for.  We just do it to help make sure that conversion rates are as high as possible.  

#6 – Facebook Ads

Keep in mind that not every brand can advertise on Facebook because Facebook doesn’t allow for you to advertise about crypto.  But, if you do have a web 2 version of your game that doesn’t require crypto, Facebook may approve some of your ads if you are careful. This is very similar to Steam.  We run into people all of the time who say that you can’t do NFT games on Steam, but this simply isn’t true.  I know for a fact that I’ve played The Harvest via Steam, and there are many other games out there that have been able to skirt around the issue. For Facebook Ads, you may have to get creative.  And, having a mobile app on Android or the Apple store may be advantageous. One group that has done some testing around this area is Guild of Guardians.  Luckily for us, Facebook now has a transparency policy so you can literally go see the ads that any page has ran.  For Guild of Guardians, they look like this in case you need some ideas: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=ALL&view_all_page_id=106335161037245&search_type=page&media_type=all Another approach that we haven’t seen much of is advertising on Facebook to get more scholarships going for guilds.  Often times after a few months guilds have a hard time keeping all of their NFTs rented out.  This is usually do to a collapse in token price but can also occur due to burnout. Running Facebook Ads to pages that help guilds rent out more of their NFTs is a simple way to get started with running ads.  Many guilds would be more than happy to receive Facebook Lead Ads types of leads that they can use to invite people to Discord or Telegram to help fill up their scholarships.  

#7 – Google Search Ads

The best way to start with Google Search Ads is to just advertise on your own branded terms. So, if your game is called “Star Heroes” or something, then advertise on that term exactly such as [star heroes] as well as similar terms like [star heroes nft game]. From there, you can also test running ads on the terms of other nft games that you think have players that would be interested in your game.  

#8 – AdFi Ads

This one is very new.  In addition to owning Lead PPC and co-founding BreedFi, I am also the co-founder of AdFi, which is the first ad platform for the Metaverse. At the time of this writing, we are very close in having integrations built via our API with several games such as Binamon Firewars, Fancy Birds, and CyberDogz.  And, we have about 6 more games that we will be adding after that. Our goal is to provide an opportunity for web 3 games to advertise their games inside of other games.  This is a great option for games that do not have a web 2 presence or have a great game but few DAU.  

#9 – Write Articles

Having a blog and writing articles that show up organically for terms that are important for you is a key strategy.  In fact, this is something that almost all businesses should do, period. After you write and publish the article, make sure to go to Google Search Console and upload that article’s url to be indexed by Google, otherwise they may not find it very easily. So… there you have it.  If you like what you’ve read but don’t want to do it yourself, no worries, we can help.  Just go to our Contact Us page and fill out the form there. https://go.leadppc.com/contact/   Budget wise, we would recommend spending about $1,500 / mo. on ads.  And, we charge $750 / mo. for our services.  So, all in you would need about $2,250.  It’s month-to-month so you can cancel any time. This is an industry that we care a ton about.  In fact, although we have 5 full-time Account Managers, chances are you would just be working directly with me because I am very keen on pushing the envelope forward for NFT games and learning as much as we can about how to help create profitable NFT games because we love the space. If you’re interested, we can chat more about it on the phone.  Thanks!

 

Video Transcript:

Hey, guys. What’s going on? My name is Grant James. I’m here with Lead PPC. I actually have a couple of different businesses. Since you guys are probably coming out of the NFT gaming space, I have a large guild. We have over 10,000 NFTs. We’re in 25 different games. I advise on around 30 different games for guild scalability solutions as well as tokenomics, because there’s quite a few broken things with tokenomics. And today, I’m going to be talking about the Top 9 NFT Game Advertising Ideas for 2022. And I’m just going to have my screen up here and just talk to some of the concepts that you’ll see on the page right here. I’m not the best at making videos, but I do know quite a bit about both advertising as well as the NFT space, whether it’s PFPs or NFT gaming or those types of things.

Also, I was like a semi-pro gamer. I played Halo 5 competitively competed for MLG stuff in New Orleans. I’ve been playing video games and doing LAN parties and stuff like that ever since I was really, really young. I’m 43-ish now and started doing LAN parties when I was about 15. So, I’ve been around for quite a while. So, here’s some advertising ideas for your NFT game. Obviously, if you’re here, you’re probably looking at ways to acquire more daily active users or build your community stronger or those types of things. Obviously, no one really knows that much about advertising for NFT stuff since all of this Web 3.0 stuff is really new, but I’ll try to share some concepts that hopefully will be helpful for you. The first thing I would say is you really have to build a good game.

If your game isn’t good, then there’s really not that much you can do about it and you’re probably just going to be scamming people. But having said that a lot of games start with a minimum viable product. And so, maybe your game isn’t that great right now, but could be pretty good down the road. I’d say that’s okay as well. One of the guys that I have a lot of respect for in the space is a guy named Brycent. And he’s huge on making sure that we are investing as a community in games that are actually good. And I think that if you want to get a viral effect or what have you, your game should be good. So, kind of a no-brainer, but why advertise for something that’s not a very good product in the first place? Number two, and this has to do with tokenomics in general, be really careful with how you’re paying your players, whatever token it is that you’re using to pay your players is what they’re going to exit with.

So, I always think it’s funny that people have a rewards token or maybe it’s a utility token, but then that thing just gets dumped like crazy. We’ve invested in so many different games that just get completely thrashed. And once the token prices aren’t good, the NFT value tends to follow right along with it, because people build spreadsheets, and they try to figure out how can I get my return and those types of things. So, my recommendation would be to when you’re giving out rewards, I would have that be USDT, USDC, BUSD something that’s a stable coin or a network token like WETH or ETH or Solana or something like that. That you’re okay if people exit with that and maybe your VCs will say, “Well, that’s not utility.”

Well, staking was really never great utility and just handing out tokens for free. Imagine if Ethereum, all the users that use Ethereum, if you just gave out Ethereum to everyone that’s using it, instead of burning it. What you want to have happened is treat your token like it is a network token for your game, and require it for everything, required for entry fees, required for upgrades, required for anything that needs to be done or can be done in the game and then make people pay in USDC or USDT or something like that along with your token for entry fees or things like that and then, let people earn from each other. That’s a much more sustainable way to go. Again, you may not think this has to do with advertising or marketing, but I would consider that USDC, USDT, whatever that budget is, is a big part of your marketing budget, because that’s one of the best ways to make your game go viral is by having good rewards.

I really like what ev.io has done, where they have… It may change by the time you see this, but $10,000 a month marketing budget plus doing Fractal Cups where people can earn $10,000 or what have you. But I think that that’s a good way to go where you have some type of sponsorships, maybe some ad revenue, and then just a general marketing budget. Number three. Have a free-to-play Web 2.0 model. This would be a good example. You could go to ev.io. Again, I own a few of those NFTs. I think we have 10 of them or something like that, but I think it’s a good game. Good example for marketing stuff.

Also, Mini Royale: Nations is a good one. We’re basically go right to the website and those two are browser-based games. But the point is that anyone can enter the game without holding an NFT, but they can’t earn, but they can play. This becomes really important foundationally as you start to get into advertising because groups like Facebook, especially sometimes Google and YouTube, Steam for instance. You can not participate in those networks unless you have a Web 2.0 version of your game.

So, don’t leave that part out. Having it Web 3.0 only, it’s such a small crowd. Those crowds are really expensive anyway. So, try to create your own shot, try to go out there and have a Web 2.0 model as a piece of what you’re doing and more and more games are moving that direction. Let’s talk about YouTube Ads. So, I have an example on here of Mech NFT, Trey Smith over there. He’s one of the best marketers that I’ve seen. He has close relations to Frank Kern who comes out of the NFT or sorry, comes out of the information marketing space actually have watched some of the trades videos back when I was in my early 30s. And those guys really know how to sell.

And they were the first groups that I’ve seen that ran YouTube Ads and also did number five, you’ll see Landing Pages, where basically have example, you can go click on it, but something that is very direct that says, “Here’s what we have. Here’s how much it costs. Here’s how you can get it type of the situation,” driving them to a Landing Page, reinforcing that message, allowing people to buy with a credit card, so you could take profits and then, also being able to pay with crypto. When we bought, when I got into Mech NFT, after seeing their video on YouTube, I think I bought 14 of their legendaries, and then it ended up as a guild. I bought like 150 total NFTs. And it was just if I hadn’t seen that YouTube video, which I saw, because I was looking up DragonMaster, actually I was searching for another NFT game.

Their video came up as the sponsor to add. And I was like, “This is really cool.” So, I ended up getting into it and I don’t know exactly how much I spent, but it was quite a bit. And I think that’s a really good way to go. Next one, Facebook Ads. I know Guild of Guardians has been doing a little bit of this. I have a link in here right here that goes to the library. A lot of people don’t know this, but Facebook, they have a policy where anyone can view what page is running ads, so you can go see exactly what Guild of Guardians is doing. And I think that they’re leading into the Apple or Android side of it. And if you have an app that’s Web 2.0 enabled to be able to do something like that, then it allows you to be able to advertise on Facebook.

Facebook, from what I understand does not allow typical crypto stuff to be advertised for because there’s a lot of bad stuff that goes along with that. But if you do have a Web 2.0 version of your game, then you can do that on Facebook Ads.

Google Search Ads. This can be a really great way to go, especially on branded terms. So, you could advertise on your own brand unless you’re already ranked organically and no one else is advertising, so maybe you don’t need to. But maybe take a minute and write down like the top 10 to 20 other NFT projects or games that you think their audiences would be a good fit. Maybe it’s boring at Yacht Club, maybe its Phantom Galaxies, or AXIE Infinity, or a sports game or whatever it is, you can advertise on those terms for those branded terms, just don’t use dynamic keyword insertion, and don’t use their branded terms inside of your actual ads and you’ll be fine because anyone can advertise on any term, as long as you don’t use that term inside of your ads.

Number eight. AdFi Ads. So obviously, I own an ad agency called Lead PPC, been doing that for 12 years. Most of our historic stuff has been in the franchising space. The NFT space is another space that we’re starting to get into because I think Web 3.0 is where everything is going. But in addition to the Lead PPC agency that I have, my partner and I, we created same co-founder that started BreedFi, we also started AdFi, which is really the first ad platform for Web 3.0 gaming. I compare it maybe to ZOO, which is more for just regular games. So, basically add placements inside of NFT games to that native Web 3.0 audience. So, if you’re looking for exclusively Web 3.0 audience, there may be some opportunities there for us to get you into some different games and do some advertising placements inside of there.

Right now, we’re working on our API so that things are more smooth with Unity and also with Unreal. But yeah, I’d love to chat about that as well. Number nine, Write Articles. So, I have my own philosophy on this, but I don’t pay for any SEO. I’m much more write good content, take that content, publish it on a blog, take that URL, take it to Google Search Console and plug it in there so that it indexes, how site maps used to work, but you can submit that built directly to Google.

And then, just like this coming back and maybe shooting a video on that same topic, reinforcing that, taking the links for YouTube, pushing them back over, maybe doing a transcript or something like that to add more text. But I know in the franchising space, I used to run a lot of ads around franchise leads and things like that. And what I found is that if people find me organically, they take the time to watch the video. It’s like having a conversation without having a conversation. And those leads are much stronger if they found me organically and they watched a video. So, that’s one thing to consider as well as, don’t be afraid for your game to write on relevant topics, to know what keywords you want to show up for, which ones give you good ROI and write around those and connect with people through text and through video.

If you’re interested in having us help you drive more leads, we have some very basic packages. We don’t want people spending a lot of money, but basically an ad budget of around $1,500 a month split up between YouTube Ads and Facebook Ads. If you can do Facebook Ads, maybe some Google Search Ads. Typically, on the Google side of things, you want to be spending about $30 a day, so about $900 a month there. And on the Facebook side of things spending about $20 a day, it’s about $600 a month there. We can move those budgets around some, but that’s what we recommend on that side and then we charge $750 a month for what we do. We create all of the ads, landing pages, the tracking systems, ROI reporting, CRM integrations, NFT sale tracking, those types of things.

We can also help you get set up on things like DeQuest to do gamified processes of people like following you on Twitter, join your Discord, download the game, API confirms that you downloaded the game, play the game, those types of things. But love to have a conversation either way and maybe since I also have one of the biggest guilds in the world, maybe there’s a connection there. We can talk about a handful of different things, but we’re big advocates for the space. Feel free to fill out the Contact Us form, which I think is linked here and let’s chat. Talk to you soon. Bye.