Targeting the Right Audience During ICO
It was the first time you were running an ICO and you were excited. You had successes running marketing campaigns in the past and decided to employ the same tactics in your ICO. With great confidence, you spend lots of money promoting it virally in Facebook, Linkedin, Slack, Twitter, Adwords, Banners ads, EDMs…etc. You saw people coming to your website but were not converting. Time ticked and you started to panic as you could not hit the soft cap and your ICO was about to fail. You started reflecting and decided to pour in more money aggressively but results only improved little. You had a great website and ran a great campaign. What could have possibly gone wrong and why didn’t people contribute to your ICO?
The answer is simple — You probably forgot that you were marketing to the wrong audience. ICO marketing is different from traditional marketing. The marketeer needs to understand the current ICO climate, what crypto people are thinking and their behaviours. Spamming keywords in Google Adwords just wouldn’t work.
Based on my experience, I like to share 4 types of ICO audiences that I’ve observed over the years.
Group 1: Pump and Dump Investors
These people are crypto whale traders who basically invest in anything without thinking, treating it almost like gambling. A lot of them come from China, South Korea and Japan. With the recent ICO ban in China and other parts of Asia, the eco system around their ICO marketing has been fragmented. So its a lot harder to do local marketing now. Driven by greed, these people have nothing better to do except controlling the price of cryptocurrencies. Its a lot harder for ICO to do well when a fork of Bitcoin is around the corner because these people are sucked into pumping the price of Bitcoin.
Group 2: Careful Investors
There is also a large group of rational and careful investors who love disruptive technology and consider a lot of factors before investing in an ICO. They want to see the the product potential and a credible team. This group is harder to convince but once they are convinced, they have the potential to invest a lot.
Group 3: The Nerds
A small part of the investors are highly technical people. They know how blockchain and cryptocurrency works. These people look at the ICO github account and scrutinise the white paper and product idea. They know what they are talking about and are brutal in their comments, often exposing scammy ICOs. They keep the ICO eco system healthy but are the hardest to convert.
Group 4: The Hobbists
Another part of the investors are crypto newbies still learning about cryptocurrency and occasionally show interest once or twice every time they read about it in the news or see an advert. They are non-technical and usually not motivated. They will need lots of guidance and engagement before participating in an ICO.
Summary
There are different techniques to target the different groups of ICO investors. So the most important task is to identify which group(s) you want to target. For example, if your ICO is not revolutionary or cutting edge, it might be harder to appeal group 2 and 3.
If there is enough interest in this article, I will be happy to share some techniques that I often use for the different demographic groups in the next article.
