33 ICO Marketing Tips
In this article, I collected some tips and knowledge that I acquired myself, helping to attract millions for startups. I bet that after reading, you will find solutions with which you will significantly save your marketing budget, attract more funds and avoid mistakes when planning your marketing.
Just want to note that the text will be of interest only to those who are working or planning to work in the field of ICO.
1. Consider that the duration of the advertising campaign is extremely small - on average 2-3 months. Try to start marketing activities as early as possible so that by the start of the crowdfunding you already have quality traffic. Consider that you will not have time for long-running experiments and A / B tests during a crowdfunding campaign.
2. Marketing is very intense and aggressive. The use of outdated marketing techniques, ranging from annoying popups, giant banners, mass spam and ending with traffic wrap, bribing experts and opinion leaders, are considered standard marketing activities in this niche. Be prepared that they will often try to deceive you. Often.
3Prices for all services in the ICO niche are several times higher than normal. Usually $ 100– $ 500 thousand are invested in marketing.
4. Landing should look and work brilliantly, do not spare time and money to work with a good designer and developer.
5. What should be on the site necessarily:
6. One of the most important steps that should be taken by all ICO organizers is publication on trackers, the more such publications there are, the better. On average, ICO projects receive 30–80% of quality traffic from trackers.
Trackers help to find interesting ICO projects not only for private investors, but also for representatives of crypto hedge funds, as well as journalists for crypto.
7. Configure analytics and targets in advance so that you can see traffic from which channels are converted into registrations and purchase of tokens. If you know which channels bring the most revenue, it will significantly reduce marketing costs.
8. Since the ICO niche is still gaining momentum, most of the marketing and PR tasks need to be addressed through direct communications. The ability to negotiate will be one of the key success factors for your startup. Look primarily for negotiators, as well as people with connections.
9. There will be a lot of communication in manual mode. As a rule, conditions with advertising sites will have to be discussed through personal correspondence. In the overwhelming majority of cases, niche sites do not have a list of prices in any form, and in order to simply find out the prices, you need to spend some time on correspondence. On the other hand, a large amount of communication gives room for bargaining and partnership. You can safely negotiate discounts or generally free accommodation.
ten.Investors will look at the quality of work with social networks, they will evaluate not only the number of subscribers, but also the quality of communication within the community. For them, this is important because working with social networks reflects the ability of the team to build a successful business and attract broad masses to the project.
11. It is important to start an open dialogue with the community as early as possible in order to unite people around their ideas. Enthusiastic followers can significantly reduce the cost of marketing and PR, as in fact they do your job, telling your friends and partners about your project.
12.Backers who have already bought your project tokens are your main friends. They, like no one else, are interested in the success of your product - go to contact with them, agree on a partnership, ask them for help, encourage them to tell others about the project. Often the relationship between projects and investors develops into a profitable partnership or some backers become part of the team.
13. You must have an active thread on BitcoinTalk, the more meaningful discussions there are, the better. These threads are needed not only to convey information about the project to the community, but also show investors how interested the audience is in the project.
14. Mandatory on the landing page should be LinkedIn profiles of all team members and Advisors. The team profiles must be carefully filled, there must be posts or at least reposts of articles about your project.
15. Create a page for your project at en.bitcoinwiki.org Having a publication on this site raises the ranking on one of the largest ICO trackers, and this is just another free publication for your project.
sixteen.It is not enough just to create a page on a social network and sometimes publish something. In all social networks you need to regularly publish news about your project, links to other people's publications about you, discussions.
17 . All comments from your subscribers should not be overlooked. In social networks should be on duty community managers. Ideally, you will need to hire one, and not two, but a whole team of specialists.
18. Prepare yourself that your subscribers will constantly be written by scammers on your behalf, teach community managers to identify and stop the activity of scammers in time and constantly remind subscribers that scammers can write to them.
nineteen.Telegram is the best social channel for communication with your audience. It is safe and convenient. Often, ICO projects create a channel for publishing news and a chat for communicating with the community.
20. If you write high-quality and interesting articles, it is not enough just to publish them in niche media, the result will be minimal. If you want your material to get viral, invest effort and money in promoting content, then it will give a very good return.
21. Pay attention to the quality of the content. You need to explain to the widest possible audience the concept of your product, as well as why investing in your project is profitable.
22. People are attracted to projects in which others have already invested. Take a short interview with your investors and place quotes on your landing page.
23.Be more modest and creative in marketing texts. Investors are tired of the myriad of pitches about ICO projects that revolutionize or destroy some kind of industry. Separate from the background of competitors, come up with something original.
24. If you publish in the blog only news about the project and do not know where to get additional content, agree with the members of your team so that everyone makes one short article per month. Give them freedom - they can write about themselves, about the specifics of their position, about the project itself, about the niche in general, or just post beautiful photos from the office. The size of the average ICO team is about 15 people. This means that this approach will allow you to post new and unique content to your blog every second day. Investors will see that the team is fully involved in the work of a startup.
25. Unobtrusively subscribe visitors to PUSH notifications. They allow almost for free to return some of the traffic, which in this niche comes with great difficulty.
26. Always follow the deadlines. For your investors, the choice of ICO is a serious business, where all activities are planned for weeks and months ahead, especially with large amounts of investment ... If you postpone the sale date, then deprive yourself of investor money.
27. When you buy a domain for your project, for example yourico.com, try to buy the same domains in other popular zones (yourico.net, yourico.io, yourico.info, yourico.co). This will partially protect you from scammers who will try to copy your site and publish it on a site with a similar domain.
28Do not attract the masses to Banty campaigns. The overwhelming majority of professional bounty hunters show extremely poor quality of work, they cheat ICO projects, spam, spoil their reputation. At the same time, organizing a large bounty campaign requires huge time and cost. Instead, I recommend personally negotiating with partial contractors for partial payment of tokens.
29. Get ready for the fact that you have to work with your audience, investors and contractors from different time zones. With someone you will call up in the afternoon, and with someone late at night or in the early morning.
30. Founders and project managers should be actively involved in the fundraising process. Active management is always a good sign for investors.
31.Please note that you often have to change the layout of the landing page. Add new information, change the location of buttons, widgets and so on. Prepare with a technician so that changes are made as quickly as possible, including on weekends.
32. Having a working product or just MVP will give you a big advantage over competitors, which will greatly simplify fundraising, since about 90% of ICO projects have only an idea.
33. Let's make ICO a niche better - if investors trust you, meet their expectations, create a cool product that will be an example for everyone.
Just want to note that the text will be of interest only to those who are working or planning to work in the field of ICO.
At the beginning
1. Consider that the duration of the advertising campaign is extremely small - on average 2-3 months. Try to start marketing activities as early as possible so that by the start of the crowdfunding you already have quality traffic. Consider that you will not have time for long-running experiments and A / B tests during a crowdfunding campaign.
2. Marketing is very intense and aggressive. The use of outdated marketing techniques, ranging from annoying popups, giant banners, mass spam and ending with traffic wrap, bribing experts and opinion leaders, are considered standard marketing activities in this niche. Be prepared that they will often try to deceive you. Often.
3Prices for all services in the ICO niche are several times higher than normal. Usually $ 100– $ 500 thousand are invested in marketing.
4. Landing should look and work brilliantly, do not spare time and money to work with a good designer and developer.
5. What should be on the site necessarily:
- Whitepaper and Onepager
- Video explanation of the project
- Links to your project in social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Bitcointalk ANN thread, Medium, Telegram, GitHub, Reddit, BitcoinWiki)
- Information about the team and advisors
- The block with mentions in the press
- Block with publications on trackers and ratings
- Newsletter Subscription
6. One of the most important steps that should be taken by all ICO organizers is publication on trackers, the more such publications there are, the better. On average, ICO projects receive 30–80% of quality traffic from trackers.
Trackers help to find interesting ICO projects not only for private investors, but also for representatives of crypto hedge funds, as well as journalists for crypto.
7. Configure analytics and targets in advance so that you can see traffic from which channels are converted into registrations and purchase of tokens. If you know which channels bring the most revenue, it will significantly reduce marketing costs.
The key to success is communication.
8. Since the ICO niche is still gaining momentum, most of the marketing and PR tasks need to be addressed through direct communications. The ability to negotiate will be one of the key success factors for your startup. Look primarily for negotiators, as well as people with connections.
9. There will be a lot of communication in manual mode. As a rule, conditions with advertising sites will have to be discussed through personal correspondence. In the overwhelming majority of cases, niche sites do not have a list of prices in any form, and in order to simply find out the prices, you need to spend some time on correspondence. On the other hand, a large amount of communication gives room for bargaining and partnership. You can safely negotiate discounts or generally free accommodation.
ten.Investors will look at the quality of work with social networks, they will evaluate not only the number of subscribers, but also the quality of communication within the community. For them, this is important because working with social networks reflects the ability of the team to build a successful business and attract broad masses to the project.
11. It is important to start an open dialogue with the community as early as possible in order to unite people around their ideas. Enthusiastic followers can significantly reduce the cost of marketing and PR, as in fact they do your job, telling your friends and partners about your project.
12.Backers who have already bought your project tokens are your main friends. They, like no one else, are interested in the success of your product - go to contact with them, agree on a partnership, ask them for help, encourage them to tell others about the project. Often the relationship between projects and investors develops into a profitable partnership or some backers become part of the team.
Social networks
13. You must have an active thread on BitcoinTalk, the more meaningful discussions there are, the better. These threads are needed not only to convey information about the project to the community, but also show investors how interested the audience is in the project.
14. Mandatory on the landing page should be LinkedIn profiles of all team members and Advisors. The team profiles must be carefully filled, there must be posts or at least reposts of articles about your project.
15. Create a page for your project at en.bitcoinwiki.org Having a publication on this site raises the ranking on one of the largest ICO trackers, and this is just another free publication for your project.
sixteen.It is not enough just to create a page on a social network and sometimes publish something. In all social networks you need to regularly publish news about your project, links to other people's publications about you, discussions.
17 . All comments from your subscribers should not be overlooked. In social networks should be on duty community managers. Ideally, you will need to hire one, and not two, but a whole team of specialists.
18. Prepare yourself that your subscribers will constantly be written by scammers on your behalf, teach community managers to identify and stop the activity of scammers in time and constantly remind subscribers that scammers can write to them.
nineteen.Telegram is the best social channel for communication with your audience. It is safe and convenient. Often, ICO projects create a channel for publishing news and a chat for communicating with the community.
How to work with content
20. If you write high-quality and interesting articles, it is not enough just to publish them in niche media, the result will be minimal. If you want your material to get viral, invest effort and money in promoting content, then it will give a very good return.
21. Pay attention to the quality of the content. You need to explain to the widest possible audience the concept of your product, as well as why investing in your project is profitable.
22. People are attracted to projects in which others have already invested. Take a short interview with your investors and place quotes on your landing page.
23.Be more modest and creative in marketing texts. Investors are tired of the myriad of pitches about ICO projects that revolutionize or destroy some kind of industry. Separate from the background of competitors, come up with something original.
24. If you publish in the blog only news about the project and do not know where to get additional content, agree with the members of your team so that everyone makes one short article per month. Give them freedom - they can write about themselves, about the specifics of their position, about the project itself, about the niche in general, or just post beautiful photos from the office. The size of the average ICO team is about 15 people. This means that this approach will allow you to post new and unique content to your blog every second day. Investors will see that the team is fully involved in the work of a startup.
miscellanea
25. Unobtrusively subscribe visitors to PUSH notifications. They allow almost for free to return some of the traffic, which in this niche comes with great difficulty.
26. Always follow the deadlines. For your investors, the choice of ICO is a serious business, where all activities are planned for weeks and months ahead, especially with large amounts of investment ... If you postpone the sale date, then deprive yourself of investor money.
27. When you buy a domain for your project, for example yourico.com, try to buy the same domains in other popular zones (yourico.net, yourico.io, yourico.info, yourico.co). This will partially protect you from scammers who will try to copy your site and publish it on a site with a similar domain.
28Do not attract the masses to Banty campaigns. The overwhelming majority of professional bounty hunters show extremely poor quality of work, they cheat ICO projects, spam, spoil their reputation. At the same time, organizing a large bounty campaign requires huge time and cost. Instead, I recommend personally negotiating with partial contractors for partial payment of tokens.
29. Get ready for the fact that you have to work with your audience, investors and contractors from different time zones. With someone you will call up in the afternoon, and with someone late at night or in the early morning.
30. Founders and project managers should be actively involved in the fundraising process. Active management is always a good sign for investors.
31.Please note that you often have to change the layout of the landing page. Add new information, change the location of buttons, widgets and so on. Prepare with a technician so that changes are made as quickly as possible, including on weekends.
32. Having a working product or just MVP will give you a big advantage over competitors, which will greatly simplify fundraising, since about 90% of ICO projects have only an idea.
33. Let's make ICO a niche better - if investors trust you, meet their expectations, create a cool product that will be an example for everyone.