So many new cryptocurrencies and NFTs are launching, seemingly every day. How do you stand out from the crowd?
If you are preparing for an ICO or launching a platform that features NFTs, or just want to understand how to utilize blockchain marketing, then this ultimate guide is for you.
Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about marketing your cryptocurrency or other digital assets to explode in popularity:
- What is crypto marketing?
- The importance of building your crypto community
- Top tips for NFT or ICO marketing
- A beginner’s intro to blockchain advertising
- How to spend your crypto marketing budget
- What to look for in crypto marketing agencies
Let’s dive in! ?
What is crypto marketing?
Crypto marketing is marketing that maximizes the success of initial coin offerings and non-fungible tokens. Crypto marketers not only focus on crypto projects as clients but also sometimes use blockchain technology to run more effective marketing campaigns.
Crypto marketers specialize in two main types of digital assets—ICOs and NFTs. Let’s take a look at each:
- Initial coin offerings: An ICO, similar to an initial public offering or IPO of stock, is the launch of a new cryptocurrency or crypto project. Successful ICOs, much like successful IPOs, raise money that is awarded to the sponsors of a crypto project. Investors in ICOs receive crypto coins or tokens, much like investors in IPOs receive shares of stock.
- Non-fungible tokens: NFTs are digital tokens that are not interchangeable. Whereas one bitcoin is identical to every other bitcoin, enabling bitcoin to be easily exchanged, non-fungible tokens are used to signify ownership. NFTs are most commonly used to indicate ownership of digital assets such as images and game avatars, but can potentially be used to verify ownership of anything, including real assets like cars and real estate.
Crypto marketers use a variety of channels to raise awareness about crypto projects, with some channels commonly used by all digital marketers and others specific to NFTs and crypto. The channels that crypto marketers use include:
- Digital marketing: Online marketing can take many forms, not all of them obvious as advertising. Digital marketing starts with having a great website and extends to content marketing, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, and many other channels.
- Social media: A strong social media presence, including on instant messaging apps, is a must for effective crypto marketing. Platforms like Reddit and Discord are popular among crypto enthusiasts. Check out our Complete Guide to Reddit Marketing to learn more about how to gain followers and fans on Reddit.
- Incentive programs: Crypto marketers sometimes organize incentive programs like bounty campaigns to promote crypto projects. Bounty campaigns incentivize—with cryptocurrency or NFTs—enthusiasts of a crypto project to perform awareness-raising promotional activities on behalf of the project.
- Crypto giveaways: Giving away free crypto—known as an airdrop—is another way to raise awareness about a cryptocurrency. Crypto marketers send small amounts of the cryptocurrency to many wallet addresses, either randomly or in exchange for a small “service” like retweeting a post about the cryptocurrency.
- Affiliate marketing partnerships: ICO and NFT projects can leverage the established marketing channels of relevant brands by establishing affiliate marketing partnerships. Affiliate marketing arrangements reward brand partners with a percentage of the proceeds that the partner generates for the crypto or NFT project.
Building your crypto community
Much of crypto marketing is digital marketing, but the savviest crypto marketers excel at building trust and a robust community around your blockchain project. Building community leads to user adoption of your cryptocurrency or NFT.
Heard of Dogecoin? Of course you have. Maybe you even own some DOGE yourself. With 2.2 million “subshibers” on Reddit, it’s “the most amazing place on Reddit! A subreddit for sharing, discussing, hoarding, and wow’ing about Dogecoins. The much wow innovative crypto-currency.”
The primary reason that DOGE crypto retains any value is because of the vivacity of the Dogecoin community. The best crypto marketing can raise DOGE-level awareness that translates into a vibrant, sustainable community for your cryptocurrency or NFT.
And “community” for crypto marketers is not some mysterious or nebulous term. The strongest crypto communities have a few common types of participants:
- Enthusiasts: Crypto enthusiasts are passionate about a cryptocurrency or NFT project, usually because the project has a mission or cause that resonates. Enthusiasts, often through word of mouth, raise awareness about the crypto project to friends, family, and coworkers.
- Influencers: Crypto influencers are much fewer in number than enthusiasts but can have an outsized impact on a crypto or NFT project. The most effective crypto influencers have large social media followings composed of many crypto enthusiasts.
- Partners: Crypto projects with corporate partnerships often have larger and more active communities, as the established reputations of affiliated brands can help to attract significant attention to a crypto project. The most impactful partnerships for crypto projects are often those with traditional financial institutions.
Every crypto community also includes many people who are just curious about the project. If you’ve ever been intrigued enough to click on a crypto-related link or joined a Telegram channel dedicated to a crypto project, then you’ve already consumed some crypto marketing.
Leveraging blockchain tech for digital marketing campaigns
You might be wondering how crypto marketers use blockchain technology to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. So let’s dig into blockchain advertising.
What is blockchain advertising?
Blockchain-supported advertising, or blockchain advertising for short, is a set of tactics that some crypto marketers use to leverage blockchain technology. Blockchain advertising strategies can be applied to crypto projects or any other digital marketing campaign.
Whether you are promoting an ICO, launching an NFT, or want to advertise digitally for something completely different, blockchain advertising can help you to get more out of your marketing budget.
Crypto marketers who leverage blockchain tech for advertising often use smart contracts to collect information and automate processes. Here’s what the blockchain can do for digital advertising:
- End-to-end ledgers for media trading and advertising supply chains
- Real-time marketing data on current campaigns
- Site quality rankings
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Payment processing and tracking
How blockchain technology is disrupting advertising
Blockchain technology is likely making some traditional marketers nervous. And rightfully so—using blockchain tech confers several important benefits for crypto and other marketing campaigns:
- Increased transparency: End-to-end ledgers and the ability to monitor advertising activity in real-time increase the transparency of advertising supply chains and ad campaign performance.
- Greater security: Blockchain technology enables more and better data to be collected and evaluated, sometimes with the help of artificial intelligence. The result is enhanced detection and prevention of security threats.
- More effective ad campaigns: Marketers using blockchain tech can detect low-quality sites to avoid placing ads on those pages.
How to spend your crypto marketing budget
With so many strategies and tactics available to crypto marketers, you may be wondering which methods are the most effective.
What’s the best way to spend your limited marketing budget? The crypto marketing agencies that achieve the most impact tend to focus primarily on—drumroll, please—social media!
A strong social media presence is your most important community-building tool because the social platforms are where technology and community intersect. Let’s take a look at the best social platforms that many crypto marketers use to build community:
- Reddit: Are you aggressively promoting your ICO or NFTs on Reddit? Establishing a strong Reddit presence can be particularly effective for launching your crypto project since subreddits exist for nearly every niche imaginable. Like looking at pictures of chairs underwater? There’s a subreddit for that.
- Twitter: Despite its status as a mainstream social media platform, Twitter retains a prominent place in the cryptoverse. Affiliating with one or more crypto thought leaders with strong Twitter followings can be an effective way to raise awareness and generate excitement about your crypto project.
- Telegram: This instant messaging platform, which is encrypted for privacy and security, is widely used by crypto projects to build and sustain a community. Many crypto projects use Telegram as a forum to share real-time project updates and facilitate chatter directly among project enthusiasts. And you can further raise awareness of your crypto by posting about the project in the top Telegram channels for crypto.
- Discord: Another encrypted messaging platform, Discord was originally designed for gamers to communicate while gaming. Discord functions similarly to Telegram, with some channels dedicated to cryptocurrency and others focused on specific crypto projects. We even have a guide on how to get free discord members for you!
Social media platforms are free to join, but quickly establishing a strong presence on any of these platforms is often the work of crypto marketing professionals. With a limited marketing budget, you can hire a crypto marketing agency to focus on a range of promotional strategies specific to social media. Some of these tactics include:
- Seeding your social media content with user engagement in the form of likes, shares, and comments
- Purchasing and renting the profiles of active social media users
- Buying upvotes and downvotes on Reddit
- Investing in backlinks on prominent crypto sites to increase your social media traffic
- Strategic mentions of your crypto project on Quora and other Q&A and social media websites
What to look for in a crypto marketing agency
You don’t need a giant marketing budget for your crypto project, but you do need to choose a crypto marketing agency wisely.
Crypto marketers, especially those using blockchain technology and focusing on social media, are well-positioned to maximize the success of their clients’ crypto projects.
The best crypto marketing agencies use a combination of traditional and crypto-specific campaign tactics, with a primary focus on community building to encourage the rapid adoption of your cryptocurrency or NFT.
Frequently asked questions
How do I promote my ICO?
You can promote your initial coin offering by focusing on building a community to encourage user adoption of your cryptocurrency. Community is formed by first raising awareness of your ICO.
You can pursue a variety of traditional and crypto-specific marketing strategies to boost awareness, although your marketing budget may be limited. A strong presence on social media, including instant messaging apps, is the best way to promote your ICO.
Where can I advertise my cryptocurrency?
Advertising your cryptocurrency or ICO can be challenging, as major ad platforms like Google and Facebook prohibit crypto advertising as of this writing. The best way to circumvent these restrictions, and build your crypto community at the same time, is to think differently about how to promote your crypto.
You can establish large and active followings for your crypto project on social media platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. You can also pursue an expansive content marketing strategy that helps your domain to rank well in Google search results.
Building a fantastic website that explains everything about your crypto project is another indirect yet effective way to advertise your cryptocurrency.
How is blockchain used in marketing?
Blockchain technology can be used to enhance the quality and effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Marketers that leverage blockchain tech collect more and better data, which can be used to increase the transparency of ad campaigns, redirect ad spend to higher quality platforms and detect and deter security threats.
What is a crypto marketing agency?
A crypto marketing agency is a team of marketers that specialize in promoting cryptocurrency and NFT projects. Crypto marketing agencies use a variety of channels and tactics to generate excitement and build a vibrant community for your crypto project.
Do you want your crypto project to take off? ?
Soar has helped hundreds of moonshots achieve success, and can get your coin or project out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
See how we hacked over 18,000 site visits in 1 day via Reddit, then schedule a strategy call to connect with the Soar team