Main steps in marketing an ICO
Original article by Alexandr Kerya
One of the main issues for holding an ICO campaign now is marketing. It is marketing that is driving the project by attracting traffic, new users and investments.
Prices for marketing ICO projects start from $300,000 and go up to $3 million for the whole campaign. But even with such enormous spendings, not all the projects reach their investment goals or even the soft cap. What is the cause? The wrong marketing strategy.
At INCRYPTICO, we often say that nowadays an ICO project needs to have 2 marketing strategies — one for the product and the other one for the ICO itself. And only the right synergy can lead to a successful investment, bringing the product and the token to the market, and raising the community.
Although each project should be treated individually, there is a common flow of ICO marketing that consists of the same elements.
1. Analysis of the market and competitors
In general, the companies that are preparing for an ICO have a special part with the market analysis in their white papers. They even often create a comparison table with the main players in the industry, showing that they overcome them in all terms. But these companies often skip the blockchain market analysis, namely, ICOs that are on the preparation stage as well, or that are going to launch soon.
For a quick and brief analysis of the similar projects, you can use icobench.com, icorating.com или coincheckup.com. But a truly in-depth analysis requires a couple of weeks.
2. Project’s target audience
Any project has its audience. And the marketing strategy requires an audience’s profile. But, when it comes to ICOs, there are often two audiences. The first one is the audience interested in the product itself, the idea that has a value and interested users. The second audience is the potential investors who are ready to support this idea financially.
Thereby, the audiences can intersect, or have more obvious distinctions. For example, the audience of potential investors can contain small private investors who are interested in the product as in the tool for further speculations, as well as institutional investors who are viewing the project as a long-term investment.
3. Short-term tasks and long-term goals
Any action in marketing should be directed at reaching a goal. The success of the project depends on the right goals. Long-term goals cannot be reached if you are not using short-term tasks. The marketing strategy envisions setting small goals that are leading to a global one, step by step.
For example, the main goal can be the product’s roll-out to the European market and reach the point of 1 million active users a month. But here’s what you should do to start:
- reach the first 100 users of the product
- find the influencers in the European countries
- make translations to other languages
- attract new users in each country
- …
The more detailed your tasks are outlined, the closer your path to the goal will be.
4. SWOT analysis
At this stage, we always make the product’s SWOT analysis, which allows finding strengths and weaknesses.
It is crucial to know and understand the product that you are going to promote.
Your user, especially the one who is going to invest in you, is the last person that you will be able to fool.
Therefore, the SWOT analysis with the understanding of strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities, should be true and public.
5. Positioning
Positioning your project as an ICO in the blockchain market is a knowingly no-win variant. A huge number of scams have created a situation when users are reacting very cautiously to the ICO. Here’s why there’s a trend of moving the main message to the product’s idea again. It’s like an experience mix of ICOs and startups.
Despite all this, your positioning and clear USP (unique sales proposition) Will allow your users to create an associative flow for your company that would lead to remembering you.
6. Media planning
This is extremely important in terms of marketing an ICO. The right choice of resources will bring you traffic and the audiences, especially, in the beginning.
Regarding the crypto resources, it is crucial to track how they evolve. Because, having worked in this industry for over 5 years, I saw some news websites that started a rapid development but, in the end, failed and became very non-influential. On the other hand, there are those that have obviously gained investment, the right team, and are now top websites where an ICO could be mentioned.
7. Advertising
We all know that Facebook, Google, and Twitter are hard to deal with when it comes to advertising an ICO or any crypto-related business. However, there’s always a way of creating ads about the product itself. Remember what I was telling about 2 audiences? These channels can be used to promote to the product’s users. With a large user base, it won’t be hard to get the investors.
I additionally recommend reading my article regarding the ads here.
8. Community
I often repeat that the blockchain industry is first and foremost working with the community. Attracting and engaging the right audience allows the project to reach the goals. Do not neglect social networks, specialized forums, and chats. Here’s where you can be left behind by your competitors.
9. Roadshows
Over the past few years, the number of blockchain-themed events has ridiculously grown. But it doesn’t mean you have to visit them all. Sometimes, it is physically impossible. Before planning to visit any conferences, it is important to analyze them in terms of the visitors, place, sponsorship options, potential media coverage, and, especially, your goals.
Preparation to the events is another thing that many ICOs fail to do, meaning, their promo materials look poor, they select wrong team members to join the panel discussions. Do your best and use roadshows as a great option to shout out your project to the world.
10. Pitching
There are many investment funds that are looking for worthy projects to invest in. The right contacts and pitching can do miracles, as ICOs are, in fact, startups. Similar to the situation with the roadshows, your success largely depends on choosing the right spokesperson, prepare a brief yet catchy presentation, and being in the right place at the right time.
11. Project’s development
We at INCRYPTICO believe that the end of the token sale is not the end of the ICO’s marketing. Even if you have already received investments, there’s a lot to do during the post-ICO period. I recommend checking out our recent article on that.
How to manage all that?
As you can see, there are many steps that should be done in terms of marketing an ICO. And all of them should be done well, otherwise, you will just spend much money in vain. Therefore, I highly recommend leaving the ICO marketing to professionals who have the experience exactly in promoting the blockchain projects. Even though there are many marketing agencies out there, they may not know the peculiarities of this industry. And you don’t want them to learn on your project…
