The Ultimate Guide For An Effective ICO Marketing Strategy
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have become a popular fundraising method for startups in the last couple of years. Entrepreneurs all over the world have turned their heads into this crypto-based process as a viable alternative to raise money against the heavily regulated venture capitals.
Despite the so-called ‘crypto winter’, the number of ICOs has continued to grow consistently over the past year. So far in 2019, companies have collected more than $40 million through ICOs, according to a recent study by crypto exchange BitMEX.
With Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies coming back to life, it is expected that more companies will jump into initial coin offerings to raise capital. Carefully designed marketing and PR strategies are vital to ensure that these companies reach out to the right public and engage them with their unique value propositions.
Here are the key tips that every successful ICO market strategy must follow:
Focus on business, not money
Unlike what you might think, the focus of your fundraising campaign shouldn’t be the ICO itself, but rather on the business that you are trying to promote. If you’re conducting an ICO, it is obvious that you want to raise money to grow your business. Making sure your communication and marketing efforts answer “why” is so important that your business expands will certainly be a great advantage when addressing potential investors. Sure the ICO is a big step to reach your strategic goals, but it is just one step among many.
Narrow your target audience
Emerging among tons of new startups in the ICO market is not an easy task, and one should be well-prepared before the initial launch of the project. Defining your target audience is the first thing to do when it comes to preparing an ICO marketing strategy. Without a clear understanding of who are you targeting, the chances are your marketing efforts will get loss on the way, along with your marketing budget
Master earned, owned & paid media
Before you jump into the digital space, it is mandatory that you have a clear understand of earned, owned and paid media. Each of these media alternatives are online communication channel that you can rely on to reach potential investors. All of these channels need to work together to guarantee maximum impact:
Paid media
Also known as ‘bought’ media, it refers to any form of online paid advertising. If you are planning a Google Adwords campaign, those efforts will fall into this category. Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn advertising are also paid media. The greatest thing about paid media is that you are in full control of it. And its success will depend on messages, targeting and budget.
● Pay per click
● Display ads
● Retargeting
● Paid publications
● Social ads
● Paid influencers
While you might think that there are plenty of obstacles for crypto projects to advertise online, you would be surprised with the number of alternatives. Paid ads will make your project visible to the people that matters to you.
Owned media
As its name suggests, these online communication channels belong entirely to your company. Basic examples of owned media channels would be:
● Website (landing pages)
● Blogs
● Social media profiles
● Newsletters
Earned media
You can think of earned media as the digital form of ‘word-of-mouth’. This category includes mentions, shares, reposts, reviews of your project, articles about it, among others. Let’s imagine for a minute that you want to buy a new microwave. What do you do!? You could certainly check the brand’s website for technical details, but your decision is likely to be based on external customer reviews or articles mentioning that product. Investors act just the same way. Earned media will help you build a reputation, making it easier for people to trust you.
Optimize your content
Someone once said ‘content is king’. And regardless of who said that, the idea is absolutely right. While some marketing voices might argue that content is only relevant for companies in the B2B market, our experience in this field shows that well-crafted content has the power to increase conversion rates for any type of business. Those conducting ICOs are no exception.
Developing and distributing optimized content is essential to ensure your target audience will grasp the essence of your project and understand what you are trying to promote. From your core values to the business model to the roadmap and the people behind the company. Transparent, straight-forward and high-quality content will bring you closer to potential investors.
Make sure to integrate inbound marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy. It is mandatory that all communication efforts are aligned with your main goals. Content will speak about your project, and this is why it should be done carefully and handled by professionals.
Your content doesn’t need to be ‘salesy’, but it should always link back to your project and include some of your key messages. Don’t think of content as only landing pages. Nowadays, people consume content faster and that means you need to deliver accordingly. Blog posts, social media posts, infographics, podcasts, videos, and even press releases are all opportunities to bring value to your potential investors. High-quality content will help you build a trustworthy relationship with your audience.
Keep your message consistent
If you are planning to go public and be the ‘star of the show’, you need to prepare in advance. All your marketing collaterals must share a unified vision, as well as consistent tone of voice and messages. This rule applies to all marketing materials in the marketing plan (ICO website, social media accounts, video demos, whitepaper, and presentations).
Putting together random materials with different messages will simply not work. Over the years, lack of government regulation in the crypto industry has left an open door to plenty of scam projects. After numerous reports of fraudulent companies, investors have started to look more carefully at each project. That said, developing a useful investor-centric message-consistent collection of media could help you get ahead in the race to get funded.
Build a strong community
Your ability to build a community around your ICO will play a major role in its ultimate success. What can make a great difference here and help you grow the community around your project is your whitelist campaign. Then again, the end goal is not reaching a great number of people, but reaching the right kind of audience — the people willing to invest in your project.
To that end, it is also necessary to keep your company active across multiple social media channels. Implementing a well-structured SMM branding strategy for your ICO project will help you connect with the targeted audience and get you close to millions of potential backers.
Your SMM strategy should be focused on delivering compelling content regularly to increase visibility, reach, and engagement metrics.
Make sure that you create accounts on all of the following social media platforms:
Apart from those, there are a few channels that have become a go-to choice for crypto enthusiast, such as Quora, Telegram, Reddit and even LinkedIn Groups. Developing a presence in those channels will increase your chances to get in touch with investors.
Don’t forget about PR
Public relations will ensure your project gets media coverage. In other words, it will help getting people to talk about you. Remember about earned media? Well, PR is essential to activate this category and secure multiple materials with positive impact on your reputation. It also encourages endorsements from top tier media, industry analysts and influencers.
Media pitches
Believe it or not, press releases continue to be an effective way to earn publications. Of course, if the person writing it knows how to communicate with targeted journalist. A single piece mentioning your project on a high authority website has the power to put you first on search engines, making you visible to an extensive audience.
Expert quotes
Journalists might not be writing directly about you, but they might need a quote from an expert in your field. Offering a quality quote in return for a mention is a great way to boost your media presence and establish a good long-lasting relationship with journalists.
Events
At the end of the day, we all want to see who is behind the project. Events are a perfect opportunity to show potential investors your talented team, answer questions directly and collect feedback that might be useful to adjust your products or services.
Webinars: you can organize weekly webinars to go over your latest announcements, answer new questions and even host some valuable speakers to cover particular topics that might be interesting to your target community.
Meetups: these are small, informal events that gather people with a shared interest. For example, you could host a meetup focused on a problem that your project is solving somehow.
Conferences: if money is no object, then a conference could potentially put you in the radar of thousands of people in only a few days. From investors to renowned personalities in your field to media outlets. All coming together in one place to discuss topics relevant to you.
Another way to get exposure without bearing the cost and time of preparing your own events is joining others as a guest speaker or exhibitor.
Looking for an ICO marketing agency?
DisPRuptive doesn’t just claim to be the best marketing & PR agency for crypto and blockchain based projects, we have a record to prove it. With offices in London and New York, DisPRuptive has already overseen and deployed successfully marketing and PR campaigns for dozens of ICOs, STOs and IEOs all over the globe.
We guarantee:
● Fast, fluid & flexible PR
● Digitally-integrated PR — for search engine visibility
● Connecting innovators and game-changers with their key audiences and influencers
● Comprehensive marketing campaigns, across multiple channels
● Business acumen — commercial KPIs matter
● Always on-call — we don’t have a ‘9-to-5’ mindset
Contact us at hello@disPRuptive.com or via our telegram channel: https://t.me/dispruptive
