Challenge: Attract 10K+ active players to the beta version of Knights of Cathena within 6 months on a tight budget
We elevated Knights of Cathena from a promising mobile game to a thriving Web3 Play-and-Earn platform by implementing strategic marketing initiatives. By leveraging targeted social media marketing, effective influencer collaborations, and comprehensive paid advertising, we didn’t just attract players — we built an engaged, loyal community that drove significant game downloads and active participation.
We combined strategy creation, social media management, influencer marketing, and paid advertising to deliver undeniable results:
- 101,912+ downloads
- €17,737 total ad budget spent
- €0.11 average cost per download
- 4,323 downloads from influencer campaigns
About the client
Knights of Cathena is the first casual mobile turn-based tactics Play-and-Earn game bridging the gap between traditional and Web3 gaming.
With an easy onboarding process and seamless blockchain integration, gamers can log in through socials, monetize their play time, and convert it into crypto.
Knights of Cathena players fight intense PvP matches against other players and earn Cathena Gold ($CGO) – the native token of the game.
Services provided
- Strategy creation
- Social media management
- Influencers management
- Facebook ads management
- Google ads management
- Ads content
Timeline
- Started working: 2023 February
- Time worked: ongoing partnership
- Campaigns together: 7 marketing tactics, 1 month setup & ongoing execution
Gameplan
To reach Knights of Cathena’s initial goal of attracting 10K+ active players to their newly launched project, we implemented four key tactics as a part of the overall strategy: social media marketing, engagement campaigns, influencer collaborations, and paid advertising.
Twitter management
The core of our social media marketing strategy was a clear balance of content:
- 2 educational Twitter threads
- 1 light content (meme)
- 1 engagement campaign
- 1 poll
- 1 industry-related tweet
The combination of this content applied both to casual gamers who have under 10 min a day to read the content and true fans who engaged with the account several times per day looking for research-based content. The engagement campaigns were also posted in strategic timing on Thursday, giving the audience the whole weekend to participate.
Examples of the best-performing content:
Increase of Twitter engagement in 3 months
To keep the engagement up, we also moderated the profile replying to tweets and managing relevant DMs. Unsurprisingly, the engagement campaign conditions and results tweets bring the most amount of followers and profile visits to the profile. People are interested in the monetary reward and want to participate / catch the next one.
Best performing influencer campaigns
After two months of dedicated effort, we successfully initiated nine influential campaigns. Most of these campaigns focused on engagement through trying games + giveaways. Additionally, we executed two campaigns to enhance brand awareness and two campaigns to show rank. The overall impact of our efforts resulted in an impressive total of over 701k+ impressions, accompanied by an encouraging 4,323 downloads, 34k+ retweets, and 9k+ likes.
Best performed Twitter influencer campaigns:
Social media ads
To get direct downloads after the end of the alpha stage, we launched social media ads on Facebook and Instagram leading directly to the download page.
To gather initial traction and generate volume for the project, we advised the Client to go with cheaper regions in the South East.
Here’s a sneak peek inside the Facebook ads manager
Key insights:
- In 5 months, we found that the Web3 audience is more likely to engage with digital advertising than traditional groups like RGP and mobile gamers.
- The best-performing ads were 17s long and without sound.
- 98% of the converted users were males and 2% – were females.
- The target audience age who’s mainly engaging with ads is between 18 and 34.
- Top 3 performing countries: Brazil, India, and the Philippines.
After reaching the first 5,000 players, we moved on to testing Google ads. Knights of Cathena ads were shown in multiple formats, including simple display ads and ads with creatives. Brazil led the way in terms of conversions followed by players from India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Here’s the sneak-peek inside the Google ads manager
Key insights:
- Top 3 performing countries: Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
- The best-performing ads were static visual ads.
- Google ads CPR is lower in comparison to the Facebook ads’ cost-per-download. However, both demonstrate a much lower CPR compared to the industry average.
Listing on PlayToEarn.net
To boost brand awareness and drive organic traffic to the game, LKI Consulting coordinated the listing of the project on the key industry platform PlayToEarn.net.
Within the first day of listing, the community spotlighted the game, and it now continues to grow in popularity. This tactic was essential for becoming a key part of industry conversation and authentically connecting to the target audience.
Spotlight on Knights of Cathena profile:
Final insights
By combining social media posting, KOL marketing, and digital advertising, we brought 75K+ downloads to Knights of Cathena in ten months of active execution, over-exceeding our initial goal of 10K+ players in 6 months.
- The goal for mass-adoption should directly translate to your marketing campaigns.
- By differentiating between casual RPG players and Web3-natives in our advertising efforts and tailoring content for them separately, we were able to reach phenomenally low CPR and target both demographics successfully.
- When user acquisition is the primary goal, diversified KOL marketing is the major driver behind brand awareness.
- Combining giveaway campaigns for maximum reach with organic influencer mentions highlighting USPs of the project bring both quantity and quality to leads.
- Consistent social media posting schedule on Twitter is key to engaging existing and new-coming players.
- By daily tweets and diverse content types both for casual and Web3 audiences, the account was able to retain users and generate interest in the game.
