The biggest marketing mistakes ICOs make and how to advertise smarter
Are you also frustrated with the way your advertising campaigns have been going? You spend thousands of dollars in these campaigns and yet, you have next to no results and negative return of investments.
In our previous article I mentioned why every ICO needs expert marketers, in this one I will focus on another problem the industry has, i.e. advertisements, that make most ICOs not reach their hard cap and how to avoid that.
I’ll point out what the biggest mistakes are that our team noticed while reviewing some of the most recent advertising campaigns.
Additionally, I’ll include some examples from other industries, as well as some of our own samples.
So, if you want to be part of the ICOs doing advertising the right way, keep reading this article.
Most ICOs focus on only driving traffic to their campaign, the wrong kinds of advertisements attract speculators and non-genuine users.
Now, if you are undergoing an ICO, don’t you want to reach your hard cap? Don’t you want to save money while you achieve your objectives? Don’t you want a successful business that will survive long after an ICO? By attracting those audiences, you might not be able to.
Shortly put, this shouldn’t be the audience that you want to attract to invest in your ICO.
You want the ones that turn into loyal followers who will make use of your product post-ICO!
That’s, however, only a small fraction of a more deeper problem…
Advertisements and in more in general marketing is the biggest piece of your ICO campaign budget. It speaks for itself that the stakes are thus too high too waste resources on an ineffective advertising campaign.
An advertisement campaign gone wrong means high costs and low return on investments. A negative return on investments is a marketing director’s worst nightmare.
The result of a bad campaign can lead to not reaching your hard cap… Or even worse, not reaching your soft cap, resulting in a failed ICO.
If you now think that most ICOs, would pay more attention to what sorts of advertisements they put out there to avoid failing their ICO, you’re wrong. Not even the high stakes stop ICOs from making the same mistakes when it comes down to advertisements.
In this article I will tell you what those mistakes are and then I will offer some tips and tricks to sell your product properly without ‘in your face selling’.
Most common ICO marketing mistakes
One of the biggest issues with the current trend in ICO advertising is that when ICOs advertise their campaign, the mail goal is to sell, sell, sell their tokens, this often leads into an “in your face” approach. They often forget to include a lot of essential things in the advertisement.
These are some of the most common mistakes made when it comes down to advertising your ICO.
- Lack of expectations
What is often the case with advertising ICOs is that the company provides an incentive for investors to gain out of investing.
However, the lack of expectations about the brand means that customers won’t really make aware of your company.
Telling customers to join your token sale, giving out free tokens in the form of airdrops, discounts on token sale… They’re all tactics of the same marketing strategy, lure as many investors as possible to sell as many tokens as possible.
What is wrong with this advertisement? The lack of expectations about the brand, means that the customer will be aware that you have some sort of an offer, but won’t realize exactly why this offer matters to them.
Without showing or telling your target audience what you stand for, the advertisement lures the wrong target audience, consisting out of speculators and non-genuine users.
The target audience should know immediately by looking at your advertisement how your company will change their lives radically.
2. Lack of pain points
Even if you did reach your hard cap, it’s very likely that you have to re-adapt a strategy, because you were only left with people who only cared about the tokens, never about the product.
Referring to pain rather than a vague description of what your company offers, needs or preferences reinforces the fact that customers are people too. They see the world through their experiences and they have challenges and things that bother them.
Often your target audience doesn’t know yet what can help them, and that’s where you come in….
By focusing on pain points, the target audience will be able to identify themselves with your advertisements. Without tapping into those emotions of annoyance or frustrations, you won’t be able to connect with your target audience, they will feel no urgency to investigate what your company is about.
What’s wrong with this advertisement? Even though the ad copy offers a vague description of what the company does because of the lack of pain points, it’s impossible to identify with the advertisement.
The targeted audience will not feel the urgence to click on this advertisement because they can’t see any reason why they should join this ICO.
3. Lack of Benefits
One of the most notable mistakes is that ICOs often focus on what they offer. Services. What they should focus on is what value their product adds to the target audience’s lives.
Without a clear insight of how your product will improve or change their lives, the target audience doesn’t have any reason to click on your advertisement to learn more about you.
What’s wrong with this advertisement? While the copy reads that this is the “Best Tokensale Ever”, there is no specific reason as to why the token sale in fact is supposed to be the best. A bold statement should always have a reasoning.
The mistake of this advertisement is that they don’t offer reasons why anyone should invest in their ICO, there are no benefits. The lack of language of benefits means that the target audience won’t be convinced there is anything in them for them. They won’t understand how this product will improve their lives.
4. Lack of target audience
Every advertisement has a specific message that is meant for a specific audience. Without a target audience, your advertisement will not work as effectively as you might think. Having the right target audience from the start, will result in positive return of investments.
By not having a clear target audience in your advertisements, your advertising campaign most likely will not translate in success.
What’s wrong with the advertisement? By advertising a too broad target audience, the company attracts a variety of buyers who may have very different needs and goals that you won’t be able to fulfill with your ICO.
An advertisement that doesn’t have a niched target audience, results in a lot of speculators and bounty hunters who are interested in airdrops. By identifying the right target audience.
5. Lack of images
Now, what do all the examples I mentioned so far have in common? That’s right, none of them have images.
The lack of images is not always a problem, but visual content is more efficient than text and often easier to understand. In just a couple of seconds your target audience needs to get a primary impression of what you have to offer, what industry you are in and what problems you solve.
In addition to that, it’s important that when you use a lot of text it also is catchy enough and sells. The quality of text is more important than quantity. Using jargon in advertisements, is possible when your target audience are also experts in the field. If they don’t know too much about the industry, you will limit the outreach, because they might not be able to understand what you mean and lose interest.
Your target audience will not spend more than a couple of seconds on an advertisement, that’s why if you use text it needs to be easily read, light to digest and grabbing their attention enough so that they immediately will go to your website.
What’s wrong with the advertisement? Depending on what the target audience of this advertisement is, the text consists too much of jargon. The text is not catchy enough for the reader to get interested by the product.
An advertisement should always have catchy copy that convinces, is short and to the point and isn’t tough to digest for the reader. After all, the audience only has a couple of seconds to spend on the advertisements and you need to convince them in that brief amount of time.
6. Lack of an emotional connection with the target audience
Many of the ICO advertisements lack in creating an emotional connection with the target audience. An emotional connection is important, because right from the start it’s already important to generate a certain amount of trust.
By using tactics such as tapping into different emotions, humor, intertextuality and references, you will be able to create that connection.
This seldom happens in ICO advertisements, where everything is centralized around selling the tokens.
What’s wrong with this advertisement? The advertisement doesn’t give much information about why you should invest in the ICO. This is because of the lack of creating an emotional connection with the target audience.
An advertisement should always try and create an emotional connection with the target audience, by adding humor to the advertisements, references, intertextuality and tapping into emotions that the target audience might be feeling, the audience will have a feeling of trust and will be inclined more to join your community.
7. Lack of eye-catching graphic design
One of the most common mistakes we have noticed with our team is the lack of an eye-catching design in the advertisement.
The graphic design of an advertisement is essential, because not only if done successfully will it grab the attention of the audience, it will also evoke emotions with the target audience.
Moreover, in an industry with many scams around, if you don’t invest enough in your graphic design and you make the mistake of using cheap fonts, templates etc. Your ICO might come across as illegitimate.
Fonts are something that should be chosen carefully while doing the advertisements, imagine you need to go to a sushi place and there are two options in front of you.
One place has its name in thick capital letters in black. The other sushi stand has its sign in a font with letters shaped and curved like Japanese brush strokes. Which sushi stand would you trust as authentic?
Choosing the wrong font can have a negative impact on your business. People can make decisions based on fonts. Moreover, fonts need to be easily readable so that the audience immediately will understand the message.
What’s wrong with this advertisement? The advertisement doesn’t have an eye-catching graphic design, uses the wrong fonts etc.
An advertisement needs an eye-catching design because it will be the element that draws the audience to the advertisement. A good graphic design will evoke emotions with the target audience.
How to make an advertisement that convinces?
The most essential thing to know that when you are advertising your product is that you should not try to directly sell your product. People in general don’t like to be sold “things”, but they more want to buy the value that those things represent. This can be reached different ways. I will give you some examples of what you can do to ensure your advertising campaign is a success.
- Pain points: when running and fundraising for an ICO, always remember that you should create a unique product that will tackle some sort of a problem in the real world by using blockchain technology. By using pain points your company developed around, your target audience will be able to identify themselves with the advertisement;
- Solutions: By focusing on pain points, you present them the solution that they need. The solution that will convince them that your product will add value to their life and they need it.
- Benefits: By using the language of benefits you can convince the target audience with what’s in it for them. They will have a clear understanding of how this product will improve their lives and why.
- Use different emotions: by tapping in to the audience’s emotions, you will be able to create a connection with them. Do they feel frustrated about a certain pain point they might be struggling with, use that to advertise your product.
- Use of humor: Not in every case humor should be used in advertisements, however, by using humor you will be able to set your brand apart from your competitors’.. Most brands take themselves too seriously, and come across as boring or stiff. By adding some lightness or even humor in your advertisements, your target audience will be able to trust you and your message more.
- A picture says more than 1000 words: When you work with images, make sure that the picture is able to deliver the same message as the text. Also, sometimes it is better to let a picture do the talking instead of the text. After all, visual content is much more efficient than text.
- Intertextuality: Good advertising campaigns often uses intertextuality as a tactic to try and engage your target audience with points of shared cultural references. They are often used to break down the consumer’s resistance to advertising appeals, because in general people don’t like the idea of things being “sold” to them. By using popular cultural references your target audience is familiar with you’ll be able to gain the trust of your potential investor, without giving him the feeling you’re trying to sell something.
- Reacting on relevant happenings worldwide: Nowadays it’s very popular to react quickly to current developments in the world in order to make good use of it for your brand. This is called trendjacking. By using the tactics of trendjacking in advertisements, brands boost their exposure by getting on board with a trend at the right moment.
Non-ICO related examples
To understand what advertisements in the ICO industry should radiate, let’s take a look at examples from other businesses, who apply the same methods as we do.
McDonald’s
Even though McDonald’s doesn’t use a lot of text in this advertisement, a picture sometimes says more than a thousand words.
With their own product, the fast food chain giant, refers to the one symbol that everyone is always looking for in every hotel, bar and restaurant.
The advertisement clearly addresses the benefit of offering WiFi for free in their restaurants. In our modern society, this is a huge benefit.
People often prefer places that offer free WiFi and it’s also a service that restaurants and cafes like to offer, people spend more and spend more time there.
What’s so good about this ad, you may ask? This advertisement is really creative, but minimalistic. Even though there is not much text and it’s kept quite simple, it tells you exactly what it needs to tell you.
It tells the story of how McDonald’s now offers free WiFi and that it works well with their wide selection of food. All-in-all the ad is very inviting and clearly refers to a symbol that everyone knows.
By tapping into emotions that users of Facebook might be feeling while scrolling down their home feed, Facebook announces their new function: the unfollow button.
By targeting at customers who might be annoyed by certain posts, the social network is able to create an emotional connection with their target audience.
Those who were resistant of signing up for the platform, might now be convinced to sign up for Facebook as well.
The ad works so well because it has a clear picture, with a message that reacts on a phenomenon that many users on Facebook might be feeling.
By tapping into this emotion, the advertisement creates a connection that you also want to create for your ICO, they believe in Facebook.
IKEA
In 2017, Balenciaga promoted a blue tote bag design online for over $2,000. The internet immediately reacted the designer of the bag seemed to have drawn inspiration from the well-known design of the IKEA shopping back.
IKEA took this to their advantage and made sure to react on the new Balenciaga design with humor, by different advertisements.
By reacting quickly on this new viral development happening, IKEA made good use of the trendjacking tactics of trendjacking.
Nowadays it’s very popular to react quickly to current developments in the world in order to make good use of it for your brand.
This is called trendjacking. By using the tactics of trendjacking in advertisements, brands boost their exposure by getting on board with a trend at the right moment.
SMOOVALL
Smoovall is a product that is very specifically designed and addressed for women experiencing pain because of chafing.
Any women who has used these tools to prevent legs from chafing, will immediately understand that this problem is one that solves their urgency to get rid of this problem.
The strength of this ad is that it’s so specific only a select audience will understand it. But that audience will immediately feel the urge to buy the product. Because they understand the pain and and the hassle that it comes with it. The solutions out there are only temporary and usually create a really bad mess. This is where Smoovall comes in.
This advertisement makes clear why it is so important to have a granular approach to grow your audience and to get the most sales.
Volvo
This advertisement is the perfect example of selling without actually selling the product. As you can see, the car Volvo is promoting with this advertisement, is not even in the picture.
Volvo XC90, instead, using the technique of storytelling by playing around with intertextuality.
The car manufacturer refers to the fairytale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, made famous by Disney and a very important figure in pop culture. Have you heard of anyone who doesn’t know what Snow White looks like?
Why does this ad work? The advertisement tackles the resistance of the consumer where they don’t like the idea of being sold #things”.
By using a popular cultural reference, the target audience is familiar with, Volvo is able to gain trust in the car they are selling.
What can you do for your ICO specifically?
The previous examples are not specific to the ICO industry, however, as you notice from all of the examples none of these companies have anything in common when it comes down to their products, however, they all have a fresh approach to marketing.
All of these companies, however, share the same goal: to sell more.
So, by applying the same advertising tricks for ICOs that you would use in more traditional industries, you will be able to create outstanding advertising that will certainly attract more users.
- Ultimately, a good advertisement is:
- Memorable;
- Provides information quickly;
- Is easily recalled;
- Doesn’t confuse or overwhelm the viewer;
- Connects with its audience, their needs and their desires;
- Is specific;
- Doesn’t contain too much/too little of information
- Make sure your advertisement contains:
- A clear and prominent brand logo, if a logo is not present, then make sure that the advertisement has a clear branding;
- A clear message;
- The company’s contact information and URL to the website;
- A clear call-to-action to invite the user to the whitelist.
Inspirational samples
In this section, I will give you some concrete examples of how to create catchy advertisements for your ICO.
When our agency is onboarding new clients, we start always by intense brainstorming sessions together.
In these sessions we sit down and gather as much information about the ICO as possible. From there on we start crafting pain points, solutions, benefits and the target audience.
It is only after that session that we can come up with the ad copy, advertisements, content and the strategy.
Crafting advertisements means that you do have to do a lot of groundwork and research to first build a certain foundation before you start actually doing the work.
In these examples I am showing merely templates that only scratch the surface. They should, however, give you an idea of how to improve your ads.
Moreover, in many of these cases these ICOs don’t focus on the pain points of the target audience, sometimes it is thus not clear what problems they tackle in the first place.
This is a reminder of how important it is to focus on what your customer needs as a value, rather than to focus on your ICO.
Final Thoughts
I hope that during this article you got an understanding of how you can create eye-catching advertisements that will lead into getting more loyal followers to your campaign.
The most essential thing to know that when you are advertising your product is that you should not try to directly sell your product.
People in general don’t like to be sold “things”, but they more want to buy the value that those things represent.
Because of that advertisements should include pain points solutions and benefits and focus on the right target audience.
By tapping in to the target audience’s emotions, using humor, intertextuality and references to relevant developments in the world, you create a memorable advertisement that catches the target audience’s attention.
To identify these pain points, solutions, benefits and the right target audience, it’s very important to do a lot of groundwork to form a foundation.
You can only target an audience if you know exactly what they are going through.
As you know understand the importance of advertising and the stakes of not creating the best campaigns, you know that only when you created an eye-catching, smart advertisement, you will be able to harvest the benefits from it: a positive return of investments and ultimately reaching your hard cap with ease.
Would you like to get even know more tips on marketing? We wrote an article on how to cut ICO costs with messenger marketing. You can read the article by clicking the banner below.
