ICO Marketing Case Study 1: Ubex

For any other ICO project, this article can be considered as Competitor Analysis and there are a lot of learnings for all ICO projects to improve upon their marketing strategies.

Brief Background:

Ubex is building a global decentralized advertising exchange. Its goal for fundraising through ICO is 9.8 million USD (equivalent to 24,000 ETH).

Ubex didn’t have any presale. The total token supply is 4 trillion and 72% of this amount is available for token sale through ICO.

Now coming to, what Ubex data tells us:

1. www.ubex.com — Traffic increased from 174 in March 2018 to 820,000 in June 2018

• This is a massive jump and a great leap in just 4 months, especially for a startup. Every marketing effort’s success is ultimately measured in terms of website traffic (top level funnel metric). Every startup faces traffic problem first and conversion problem second.
• This jump is the main reason why we chose to start our marketing analysis with Ubex, because we believed there would be a lot of learnings for other upcoming projects as well.

2. Traffic Source by Geography -

• Highest traffic from Brazil (13.4%), followed by Russia (10.8%), Ukraine (9.6%), Vietnam (7.8%) and Venezuela (4.9%).
• These figures are again commendable, showing that Ubex has been able to generate awareness throughout the world and not overly concentrated to particular countries.

3. Direct Traffic (44%) and Referral Traffic (33.5%) take a major share

• Direct Traffic is usually high because of two reasons -

i) The brand is already big which means Ubex must have aggressively tapped all marketing channels (Youtube, Twitter, Medium, Facebook, Bitcointalk.org, Reddit, Quora etc.) in these few months of existence,

ii) Strong omni channel presence, meaning there is strong complementary focus on offline marketing in addition to online marketing. This is done by conducting seminars/workshops or attending blockchain events/summits. The likelihood of trust for the project becomes higher in in-person communication and word of mouth is also more likely as audience attention and engagement is rich as compared to just hovering over a digital banner.

• Regarding referral traffic, it can be increased by having affiliate partners (quality matters over quantity) and several articles featured by media publications. Also, if there’s a strong incentive for referral registrations, then there might be inbound interest from several websites who might be interested in benefitting economically by sending traffic.

If your ICO project is missing out on this, start focusing on these traffic sources right away. You are missing out on a lot, not just in terms of potential ICO investors but also in terms of long term community building and user base.

4. Top referring sites -

i) adbtc.top (230k visits; with so much potential, every ICO project should explore this portal),

Through adbtc.top, ICO projects can target cryptocurrency users through ads with low CPC (Cost Per Click) and users get paid in Satoshis/Bitcoins for watching ads/giving their attention.

ii) bitcointalk.org (8230 visits),

iii) icodrops.com (4250 visits),

iv) icorating.com,

v) airdropking.io

5. Traffic Share -

• 85% from desktop
• This is a contrarian insight in the age of smartphones. Test this for your own portal and if found true, your paid ads need to be targeting desktop users more, for better ROI.

6. Search Traffic -

• i) Organic (80%), and ii) Paid (20%)
• And top search terms — i) ubex (55%), ii) ubex ico (7.3%), iii) ubexai (4.9%), iv) ubex token (3.3%), v) ubex tokens (1.7%)
• If your ICO Project is named X, you should definitely be targeting these keywords through your content marketing strategy: i) X, ii) X ico, iii) X token, iv) X tokens
• You can go much deeper into potential keywords to target by using tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, and getting access to comprehensive competitor data.

7. Social Traffic -

• i) Youtube (48%), ii) Facebook (30%), iii) Twitter (17%), iv) VKontakte (3.2%), v) LinkedIn (0.85%)
• Social Traffic takes a share of 9.1% of total traffic (which for June 2018 is 820k) for ubex.com. This means, Youtube as a channel was responsible for a monthly traffic of around 36k which is a great number. Ubex has a high number of Youtube review videos compared to other ICOs. If this is something that can be improved upon for your ICO, then ROI is great.
• Ubex has an active Youtube channel with a subscriber base of around 30k.

• Additionally, the following Youtube channels featured Ubex:

i) Ivan on Tech, ii) Best ‘ICO’, iii) Earn with RK, iv) Money Guru, v) Coinvogue, vi) saeed1618, vii) Money king, viii) Open4Profit, ix) Crypto Unboxing, x) Gadget Diary and several others.

You can refer to our article on Youtube Marketing to get an exhaustive list of Crypto Influencers to reach out to on Youtube.

8. Display Advertising Top Publishers -

i) coinmarketcap.com (45% traffic share),

ii) eobot.com (11.2%),

iii) febbit.com (5.8%),

iv) cpuwin.com (4.6%),

v) youtube.com (4.5%)

9. Outgoing links (where visitors go next from ubex’s website) -

i) t.me (58.7% traffic share) — shows how important telegram has become as a channel of community management,

ii) facebook.com (4.47%),

iii) icorating.com (3.64%),

iv) tokentops.com (3.6%),

v) trackico.io (3.5%)

10. Subdomains -

i) ubex.com (58% traffic share),

ii) tokensale.ubex.com (35.4%),

iii) bounty.ubex.com (5.7%),

iv) app.ubex.com (1%)

• Ubex has specific sub-domains for conducting token sale and running bounty program. The benefits of this approach is more precise analytics and designing better landing pages with a specific goal in mind.

11. Paid Competitors (for search/PPC ads) -

i) crowdif.com,

ii) gifcoin.io,

iii) multiversum.io,

iv) wiserico.com,

v) gameprotocol.io

12. Ubex Telegram Group —

• 100k members already (max. limit)
• This is a huge achievement, considering only a few ICOs have been able to reach this number.

13. Maintained a vibrant Medium Page (with over 20 articles)

• Ubex has been very proactive in keeping its community informed and updated of all that is going on, be it new events attended by Ubex, any product related updates, new marketing programs etc. This creates and maintains user trust and user engagement on a consistent basis.

14. Omni Channel Marketing Strategy

• Ubex not only focused on online channels, but has been quite aggressive even offline by attending several blockchain events/seminars/summits and presenting their ideas to the audience. As a lot of crypto influencers attend these events, an ICO can get rich exposure which might later help in spreading word of mouth. It also helps in opening up avenues for symbiotic partnerships with other projects. For e.g., Ubex signed a Partner Agreement with Civic in June 2018.

Ubex attended the following events:

i) Presented at d10e conference in Seoul (March 2018)

ii) Presented in Force at Vietnam Blockchain Week (March 2018)

iii) Presented in Money 20/20 Conference in Singapore (March 2018)

iv) Presented in Token 2049 Conference in Hong Kong (March 2018)

v) Attended Crypto Summit 2018 in Zurich (March 2018)

vi) Attended Slush Tokyo event (March 2018)

vii) Attended Deconomy 2018 Summit in Seoul (April 2018)

viii) Presented in Shanghai Blockchain Expo in China (April 2018)

ix) Attended World Blockchain Forum in Dubai (April 2018)

x) Attended Blockchain Summit in Zug (May 2018)

xi) Attended Consensus 2018 in New York (May 2018)

xii) Attended the International Blockchain Forum in Monaco on the 16–17 of May.

xiii) Attended Blockchain Symposium in Seoul (June 2018)

xiv) Attended BlockShow Europe in Berlin (June 2018)

xv) Presented at CES Asia in Shanghai (June 2018)

xvi) Attended Blockchain Conference in Japan (June 2018)

xvii) Attended World Blockchain Summit in Frankfurt (July 2018)

xviii) Attended Asia Blockchain Summit 2018 (July 2018)

xix) Attended Blockchain Expo Europe 2018 in Amsterdam (June 2018)

15. Getting featured by ICO platforms -

• Ubex has done pretty well in terms of getting featured by third party websites including ICO listing/review platforms. It was featured by the following websites. You should get your ICO listed on these portals as well (a more exhaustive list has been covered in this article):

i) icorating.com

ii) icodrops.com

iii) cointelegraph.com

iv) tokentops.com

v) trackico.io

vi) icomarks.com

vii) wiserico.com

viii) iconow.net

ix) icoranker.com

x) icotokennews.com

xi) coinschedule.com

xii) icodata.io

xiii) tokendesk.io

xiv) foundico.com

xv) cryptonext.com

xvi) icobazaar.com

xvii) cryptocompare.com

xviii) newsbtc.com

xix) smithandcrown.com

xx) icoholder.com

xxi) icowatchlist.com

xxii) icolighthouse.com

xxiii) icocalendar.today

xxiv) 52ico.com

xxv) icotracker.net

xxvi) investfuture.ru

xxvii) icobench.com

xxviii) coinspectator.com

xxix) coinhills.com

xxx) coingecko.com

xxxi) coinist.io

xxxii) cryptovest.com

xxxiii) cryptoslate.com

xxxiv) coinstaker.com

xxxv) thetokener.com

xxxvi) crypto-economy.net

xxxvii) investitin.com

xxxviii) icoglory.com

xxxix) icovoting.com

xxxx) cryptoground.com

16. Ubex Referral Program —

• If your personal link is used in the course of a transaction, you will receive 5% of the value of this contribution. In addition, the person carrying out the transaction will receive an additional 2% bonus.

We are sure every upcoming ICO project will have something to learn from Ubex’s approach. A successful ICO fundraising is almost entirely about the right marketing strategy and its perfect execution. Ubex has done it pretty well and your project can too. Learning from the successes and failures of other projects gives you an advantage in terms of knowing what works and what doesn’t.