Is Your Business Ready For a Successful ICO?
Running an ICO can be a daunting task, but the increased popularity of running an ICO is because it is less rigid than seeking venture capital and startups do not need to prove their idea in the marketplace before receiving funds. Announcing the planned token sale, publishing the terms in a whitepaper, and telling the story and goal of your project is enough for investors to get in on the project. On top of this, another benefit of running an ICO is that there is not that much regulation on this type of investment opportunity so investors could also be interested in entering such a deal.
The marketing campaign
The marketing campaign can be the hardest part to start when you are unsure of the process and the campaign behind it. The first and most important step, especially for new startups entering an ICO, is to focus on the target audience and to post on proper channels to reach the target audience. However, you should not forget about the risks that come with running the ICO. Remember to take into account scalability. If the network you are using, for instance Ethereum, can’t handle surges in transactions during an ICO, this will make it difficult to be used for any practical purpose during that time.
There are some more factors to consider when running an ICO campaign. Be prepared for peak interest in the beginning of the sale or registration from the hype around your new startup. Along with the peak interest, it is essential to keep your audience and investors informed. Investors are interested in the startups to include information on how long investors should wait until they purchase, whether there is a cap per person, what the minimum amount required for purchase is or how many tokens are left in stock. This is necessary to keep up your credibility and focus on customer service for the investors. The final but not only tip to consider is to have mechanisms in place that prevent fraudsters and bots from accessing the sale. Bots can help with this in the verification process, to figure out if every contributor is real.
An effective solution: project assessment
Now that we have covered the basic steps to run a successful ICO. Let us move on to our suggested solution which is project assessment. Project assessment is a practical solution to keep a new startup credible. Here you will learn what to pay attention to during project assessment and what to cover when launching your ICO.
Team composition is important. Make sure to pay attention to who is on your team and how you market them. Investors will want to know everything about your team, especially the development team and advisory board. It is useful to have some big-name players on your team or at least people who have experience in the cryptosphere, this will get you more attention and credibility to get off your feet smoothly.
A great follow up to the starting point is to have a company announcement on a thread, specifically on BitcoinTalk.org, as Bitcointalk is the biggest forum for Bitcoin and crypto related issues. It is highly recommended to read the messages carefully. Investor’s concerns will be answered (or may be unanswered) in this thread. It is a bad sign when the developers avoid answering specific questions or aren’t collaborating. Always remember to get the questions answered and do not slack on this step as it will decrease credibility.
The whitepaper is of utmost importance when just starting out your ICO campaign. Your whitepaper should answer what value your project will bring to the world. Make sure to include what the investors are actually investing in, what will they get for their money. The whitepaper should consist of all the necessary background of your project, the team, the ideals, the goals, the product in detail and the token distribution could be useful in there as well. Make sure the wording is not too complex and that people really get a feel for the energy and vibe of the project.
Viable projects will link their token distribution to their roadmap already. As each phase requires a certain amount of funding it is great to have the distribution mentioned as early as possible in the marketing. Consider your token plan carefully. Some projects just release their tokens hours after the ICO has ended. Some projects need to develop a beta version before sending out the tokens. There has been a positive correlation with releasing tokens later, for instance, if you release the tokens one year after the token sale you may see a higher percentage gain. This can be demonstrated with Augur (1+ years, 1,500%) and Decent (8 months, 350%.) There is an apparent discrepancy there, which leads us to suggest to release the tokens later in the game.
In the project assessment phase, the stage of the project and the VC investors play a large role in gaining interest. It is good to have a whitepaper, roadmap and beta version ready, but this is not all investors may prefer a project with some working code. This is something to consider, even a few lines of ‘working’ code could make a difference. It is also important to pair up with good VC investors in the early stages. Make sure they are listed on your website and it is great to have a well-known crypto investor involved in the project, for example Fenbushi, which is run by Vitalik Buterin. But of course, there are other options to team up with, the bigger the name partner, the higher your success rate.
Programming experience will give you an up in investor interest. Quality of the code and developers can make or break you. The quality of the developer can easily be determined by analyzing their coding skills so do not cut back on a low-grade developer for your project. Crypto projects tend to have an open source code in order to build up trust in the community and allow for the community to feel included by making suggestions or improvements. This is something to consider to run a successful ICO.
Stay focused on your community. Make sure to have an open community. A helpful tool could be having a huge Slack group for investors. Openness is a big key to success in the early stages. If your investors and community trust the brand, there is a high chance for a successful ICO campaign. You can also use Reddit, Twitter or Facebook to keep your community informed. Be aware to stay on top of bounty posts, which is giving a reward for positive posts about your company on social media, as this can look phony. Bounty posts may stimulate interest but in the long run, they are not objective and people will see through too many positive posts and may find the project unreliable.
The take away
Project assessment is not only helpful for your marketing campaign but also for the investors. Most quality investors will go through all these steps to check if your ICO is viable. Announcing the planned token sale, publishing the terms in a whitepaper, and telling the story and goal of your project is enough for investors to get in on the project. Project assessment can help you stay on target to provide the best customer service and obtain quality investors in the process.
There is more where this came from. If you are interested in the possibilities of raising funds through an ICO with a Blockchain startup, you might also be interested in how you can cut ICO costs by integrating a Telegram bot in your marketing communication. Read the article by clicking the banner below.
