ICO Marketing Strategy: How to Promote your ICO Effectively

By Alfred15 mins read

The rapid and robust growth of the cryptocurrency industry only made the rise of initial coin offerings inevitable. According to recent statistics, more than $3.3 billion USD was raised in the year 2019 alone. Present trends also reveal that ICOs’ performance tends to improve every year. Despite these facts, not all coins share the same trajectory, with some coins losing their value over time. According to an ICO market report made by the TUM School of Management, as much as 65% of tokens in July 2020 have lost all their value. This only underscores the necessity to come up with and follow better ICO marketing strategies to promote your ICO. Because, in the end, it’s still a lucrative field where the best stand out — much like the fields of business and investing.

What is ICO?

ICO is the acronym for Initial Coin Offering which refers to the highly unregulated process of raising funds for a cryptocurrency project. The process involves selling part of the cryptocurrency to early investors in exchange for bitcoin or legal tender. This is almost similar to IPO where investors purchase company shares.

ICO is a fairly new venture, that is growing fast because of the development of new cryptocurrencies. 2017 was the breakthrough year for cryptocurrency where over $5.6 billion was collected from different ICO projects. This amount was raised from about 430 successful cryptocurrency ventures. Despite this success, there has been a number of unsuccessful ICOs with only 48% of the ICOs in 2017 managing to reach their soft cap. Today, there are over 1500 cryptocurrencies in existence and more and more cryptocurrencies are coming up. This has increased competition making it even harder for new cryptocurrencies to reach their soft copy.

For a cryptocurrency to be successful in 2018, there is need to have an effective ICO marketing strategy to promote the ICO and enable it to reach its target market.

How to Promote ICO?

1. Design a Great Website

A good website can act as the foundation for your ICO digital marketing strategy. It is what will provide an impression to your target audience. So, before you launch your ICO, make sure you have a well-optimized website. Plan the layout of your website beforehand. It should be easy to navigate, with a simple design that will enable visitors to get as much information as possible in the shortest time possible. A website that has a lot of unnecessary information can drive visitors away which will hurt your ICO marketing.

2. Ensure that you Post Everything about your ICO Project on the Website

Providing a lot of information creates trust among your site visitors hence promoting your ICO. Easily accessible information also attracts quality traffic to your website. And to tap this quality traffic, ensure your website has a call to action where investors can invest in the presale.

3. Airdrop Campaigns

Almost everybody loves getting or trying out something for free, and tokens are no exception. Airdrop campaigns essentially involve encouraging users to learn about your cryptocurrency. In the process, you easily drive awareness about your newly-launched ICO.

It’s a terrific method that’s been working for the past years now because it also raises the value of your coins without you having to manage it. Data from 2017 to 2018 shows that there’s exponential growth in daily airdrops. They are also almost directly proportional to the number of ICOs growing over time.

Of course, much like most campaigns, it’s not without its risks. From the get-go, you need to follow these guidelines to raise your campaign’s chances of succeeding:

Build trust by designing a high-quality, responsive website and being active on social media channels.
Find the right balance in the number of free tokens you intend to give away.
Last but not least, set a solid goal for the airdrop campaign and don’t depart from it.

4. Participating in the Leading Events, Conferences, and Trade Shows

Attending any of the three will suffice, because they, more often than not, feature the top companies at present. Most of these programs have limited attendances so seize the opportunities they offer, particularly when you’re still building awareness and establishing your reputation.

5. Publish Major Events on Calendars

Much like how it’s important to acquire loyal customers in a business, you also need to come up with ways to maintain your current audience. Calendars are but one efficient tool investors use to proactively track the activities of numerous companies.

This is why it’s only right, as a company, to use calendars to let investors know about anything significant that’s happening in your company. These can be notable achievements or present feedback. You’ll only be hitting two birds with one stone this way because you gain exposure while convincing investors that your company is highly transparent.

6. Instant Messaging Applications

You can effortlessly share concise posts to engage your audience and communities via apps like Whatsapp or Telegram. Aim for platforms where there are patently large and active crypto communities, and as you do so, don’t overlook the kind of security they provide. Newly-minted token enthusiasts, curious people, and coin experts often converge in these communities, so they also provide a good chance to build your network, too.

7. Influencer Marketing/Crypto Influencer Partnerships

Influencer marketing or crypto influencer partnerships are an entirely different beast from plain, old interviews. With them, you pretty much work with an influencer who strongly believes in your project, to the point that promotion becomes close to smooth sailing. Otherwise, this may only end up doing more harm than good.

Also, if you happen to have any well-reputed financial institutions and companies you can partner with, it goes without saying that this will only do wonders for trust-building.

8. Podcasts & Interviews

Audio content has always worked decades ago, and it continues to enjoy clout through more contemporary options like podcasts. It’s safe to say that you shouldn’t hesitate to capitalize on their benefit of letting you inform interested people about your project’s details and features. Regularly releasing podcasts keeps your audience engaged, especially if you can come up with interesting content consistently.

As for interviews, you don’t need to look further than influencers to pinpoint which individuals you should be reaching out to for them. This way, you get to engage with a large, already established audience. Who knows how many of them are curious about entering into crypto or want to learn of worthwhile investments?

9. Community Management

Who says you can’t build your own community from scratch? The fact that you almost always get an active number of followers or audiences before long pretty much opens the doors toward it. A solid community should be one of your long-term goals since it only lays a stabler foundation, reinforced by your project’s steadily growing reputation.

In the end, as long as you’re proactive in engaging with and assisting users, whether they’re in other communities, social media, or forums, you’ll almost always be headed in this direction.

10. Paid Promotions and Advertising

Advertising is almost always a given if you want serious promotion of anything. Since ICO ads aren’t allowed in mainstream ad platforms like Google and Facebook, you need to look for platforms that do. Certain sites focused on Bitcoin advertising do well in this regard. A good example is https://bitmedia.io/, which can provide tools that let you offer plenty of ad targeting options and easy tracking at inexpensive rates.

Take the time to optimize your campaigns in each one, assuming you’re going for a multi-pronged approach. Otherwise, you can always avail yourself of online marketing services.

Looking for ICO Marketing Services?

Dot Com Infoway provides end-to-end ICO marketing services to help new businesses promote their ICO through successful marketing campaigns and make them reach their fundraising targets. Book a quick consultation with our experts.

11. Use Social Media to Reach the Cryptocurrency Community

Social media is an invaluable tool for the success of an ICO marketing campaign. The difference between the failure and success of an ICO lies in how you communicate your ICO to your target audience. Social media platforms provide a great opportunity to promote your ICO project and build trust among the community to potential investors. Some of the common online channels where you can promote your ICO include but are not limited to;

Network with LinkedIn

Like in a business, you have to be willing to go the extra mile in building networks and establishing and strengthening relationships. Look for every opportunity to do this and don’t hesitate to seize it. What’s good is that there’s already a solid platform you can do most of your networking like LinkedIn.

Based on 2021 stats, there are now over 740 million users on LinkedIn. Also, close to 25% of that total can be considered senior-level influencers, and up to 55 million companies have been listed on the platform.

Do you know what makes things even better? You can actually automate most of the preliminary steps. For example, did you know that Linked Helper lets you reach out to possible influencers and sponsors within the platform? It provides a perfect opportunity since LinkedIn users tend to respond to most kinds of messages better than on other social media platforms.

Facebook

There are many Facebook groups and pages that discuss blockchains, ICO, and cryptocurrency. This is a good channel to update the community and build & promote your ICO.

This exposes your ICO to the largest community of cryptocurrency. You can tap into this exposure by creating subreddits as well as commenting on the already created threads.

Telegram holds the potential of being the next big performer in community building and messaging. This platform is growing each day and has been embraced by the crypto community. This makes it a must-use platform for your ICO marketing.

Quora Channels

By providing quality content on Quora and staying active on regularly updated threads like https://www.quora.com/topic/Initial-Coin-Offerings-ICO, you stand a chance of gaining more exposure.

Specialized Forums

Most investors and cryptocurrency enthusiasts frequent the specialized sites to learn more about cryptocurrency and the available opportunities. Marketing on such sites provides you with a better chance to communicate your ICO to the right audience.

The majority of the social media platforms do not require much capital to run and therefore the best channels to use if you have a small budget.

12. PR and Media Outreach

Once your website is ready, you need to do an extensive public relations outreach. The best and most effective method to give your ICO project a large outreach is by use of a press release. There are several top-tier websites that you can approach to publish your press releases. Some of these sites are specific to crypto and therefore help you reach your intended audience. While most of these sites require you to pay a premium, there are those outlets that will be happy to publish quality well-written content for free.

If you have a big budget, of about $50,000, for your ICO marketing, you can hire the services of an agency. These are professionals who can handle all your PR and media outreach. While this might be expensive you are guaranteed far-reaching exposure.

For a low-budget ICO marketing campaign, you can use the Do-It-Yourself approach. You will be required to generate quality content and have it published on different sites.

In order to maximize your outreach, you need to do prior extensive market research and create good relationships with top-tier websites. The secret to doing it yourself lies in creating good content that can go viral easily

13. Bounty Campaigns

Bounty programs entail giving incentives and rewards in form of free coins to individuals for doing tasks. If done well, these programs are instrumental in promoting your ICO. This is because these tokens create awareness around your ICO. Bounty programs should be controlled as too many free tokens may give your ICO a bad image. Too little tokens, on the other hand, may not motivate people to help you with your marketing camp

14. ICO Listings

There are several top-tier sites that list ICOs. Having your ICO listed on such sites provides a high exposure and coverage to your ICO. Some of these sites provide placement without a fee, however, if you want comprehensive coverage then you can get placement on popular sites that charge.

15. Affiliate & Email Marketing

Better reach and more direct and effective ways to market are some of the perks you can enjoy with well-executed affiliate marketing and email marketing campaigns. For email marketing, make sure to keep your messages targeted toward the audience you intend to send them to. Engage with them with the goal of building trust and transparency.

As for affiliate marketing, it’s pretty much a sure-fire way to get the exposure you need, as long as you’re willing to pay commissions to businesses and other crypto project owners that decide to work with you. The greater their credibility and reputation, the better since this same acclaim is bound to trickle down to you soon enough the longer you work together.

16. SEO

Last but not least is good, old SEO. It’s technically the backbone of your digital marketing so it should be high up on your list of priorities as well. Nowadays, placing high on search results has a ready connotation of trust and reputation. This is why it’s just as effective as any kind of PR strategy that worked in the past.

As you’re probably already aware, Search Engine Optimization isn’t dictated by a single factor. To Promote your ICO, you want to focus on keywords you use in your business listings. Don’t forget about the feedback and social shares and mentions you get, too.

Key to Success

Whatever marketing strategy you choose to promote your ICO, you are bound to face stiff competition. You, therefore, have to be the best to beat the competition. To stand out in the competition here are some tips to help you:

1. Target the right audience

Despite the rising popularity of cryptocurrency, it doesn’t mean you should market your ICO to the masses. You will end up spending a lot of time and resources without achieving meaningful conversions. So, to be on the right track, ensure you understand your target audience and direct your efforts to that specific group. Segmenting your audience will help you in choosing the right marketing campaign for each group. This way, you will realize better conversions.

2. Seek the services of an ICO advisor

An ICO expert has the required experience to help you promote your ICO. You should, therefore, retain an ICO advisor to assist you to oversee the project. Such an expert understands the Dos and Dont’s in the crypto industry. They will be able to tell you which marketing strategy will work and which will not. This will reduce the losses that come with putting efforts into non-productive ventures.

3. Make your offer to be transparent

The most important thing to make your ICO successful is to make it transparent. Transparency creates trust and confidence in the buyers which increases the funds collected during the initial offering. To create confidence among buyers, give information of all team members behind your project. You should also give all financial information. People will also have questions to ask about your ICO. So, make sure you have a very responsive team on all the online platforms to respond to potential buyers’ questions and concerns.

4. Have an inspiring story

Backers like to associate with ICOs whose mission and vision they can relate to So if you have an interesting story to tell about your ICO, chances are, you will turn your potential customers into supporters. This increases the chances of success for your ICO.

5. Make your ICO compliant

ICO is a relatively new venture, as such compliance is a very critical issue. There is a need for any ICO to be compliant for potential customers to think of investing in it. If you want to be successful in this field make sure your ICO follows all the SEC guidelines from the word go. This will help make your ICO strategy successful.

Finally, to promote ICO, you need to choose a combination of ICO marketing strategies that work for you Creating an effective strategy will require time and in-depth analysis. So take your time to study what works best and on top of it all ensure your ICO is trustworthy and compliant.

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