The Top 5 Channels for an ICO Campaign
Since August, 2017 we at Port Agency have spent more than $6 mln on marketing and advertising campaigns and have singled out the five most effective channels for ICO promotion. So that you don’t have to go through that much trouble as we did, shall you want to repeat (or surpass, we see you, the ambitious ones) our success:
1. Facebook
Facebook advertising campaigns are as old as the world, but this is the most important channel that we use. Most projects restrain themselves from advertising there because of the company’s anti-ICO policy; however, it’s not impossible to continue using it in a smarter way. Moreover, you can justify your campaigns by providing them your licenses, or, and that’s what helped us a lot, use the advertising history of your Facebook Ads Manager.
If you have used Facebook for promoting other non-crypto related projects and have a proven track record of campaigns, meaning you have spent a sufficient budget* to establish a somewhat exclusive relationship with Facebook (we can just call a manager on the phone at this point), you will have no problems whatsoever shall your next project of choice be in crypto.
*Throughout the year of 2017 and up until February, 2018, you had to spend $500,000 on Facebook advertising in order to get a personal manager.
2. Google
This may come as a surprise (no), but using Google Ads is the second best thing you can do to your marketing campaign, and it is also what led us where we are today. With a pumping variety of possible promo channels and endless possibilities to mix them into a unique marketing strategy everyone is in a constant search of, we tend to unjustly discard the holy grail that has always been right under our noses. Google and Facebook are the best advertising systems the world has seen so far, and we strongly suggest you focus 80% of your efforts here.
3. Trackers
Trackers are sources that aggregate information about projects or agencies, usually with links to websites, descriptions, some comprehensive statistics that is used for a rating and ratings themselves. There are about 50 main trackers now that are worth attention, like, for example, ICO Bench or some ICO calendars.
After a series of massive Facebook bans, trackers have become unexpectedly and obsenely popular. They can list you for free and sell you additional promo packages you should probably look into. Why? Information from trackers automatically appears in Google Search results, so buying up some trackers would help you take over the so-called SERPs (Google Search Engine Results Pages), or, in simple words, you project can be the only one to appear in search in the first and even few subsequent pages.
As people would mainly find your project in search engines, you will therefore be getting organic traffic rather than direct one.
4. Mass media
The media played a substantial role in creating hype around crypto, and it still helps some projects to get massive attention towards themselves. However, if you chose to use a media source for promotion, you should not expect it to generate constant traffic. On the contrary, the interest of the audience will decrease by around 70% with the second mention. The media is a powerful card, but it’s a card you can only play once.
5. Influencers
Using bloggers, forums, chats or YouTube digests works perfectly fine. Unlike raucous airdrops and bounties, which we don’t really do, because they attract people who otherwise wouldn’t be interested in the project, influencers, if chosen correctly, entice mostly target audience. However, the one-time thing rule applies to them, as well.
To wrap up, there is no lack of channels and instruments that exist out there, and you will be always tempted to check out something new. We ourselves have tested more than 40 instruments over the last year. That’s how we ended up spending $6 mln on marketing and advertising campaigns and that’s why we know for sure, that the rest of the channels are just not worth the trouble.
We are not saying you shouldn’t ever use anything else shall you wish so, but next time the temptation for an exotic promotional channel or an adhoc campaign arises, make sure you’ve covered the basics, first. When you stand firm, it’s easier to find some residual budget you can spare for experiments, and it’s never the other way around.
However, if you are looking for a single ‘magic pill’ without a necessity to do or buy anything else, these five channels are the closest to it you can ever get.
Vanessa Emrith
About PORT
20 is the total number of project we supported during token sale, providing services in digital marketing, PR, technical counselling and exchange listing.
12 is the number of ICO campaigns we built from scratch, raising a total of $200 mln in investment.
2 of them made it to the list of the biggest ICOs of 2018 (Faceter and Patron)