The Ultimate Guide for ICO Marketing Strategy
The decentralized market is growing and the ICO era is rising rapidly. An ICO that is ‘Initial Coin Offering’ is a method by which startups crowdfund the capital by trading their own coin for Cryptocurrency namely Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Investors are interested in ICO because the returns are much higher than initial investment but, so are the risk factors. Thus, to gain the trust of investors, ICO has to prove its genuineness. If you want your ICO to be a success you have to hustle a lot initially.
Here is an ICO Marketing Checklist that you must follow in order to make a perfect ICO Marketing Strategy.
1) Gain the trust of investors through the whitepaper
Creating an ICO Whitepaper is your first step. Your whitepaper should provide each and every detail of your project. Mention your idea, your planning, legal aspects, and every necessary yet impressive detail.
Your whitepaper should convince your investors on why they’ll get huge returns for your coins. Your white paper has to be well written in simple language that should be understood by everyone. Do not copy the content from other whitepapers as this may be considered as spam. Your content has to be unique and by far comprehensible. Keep it point to point and clear.
Here is what you should focus on while crafting an ICO whitepaper.
- How your company or idea stands out from competitors?
- How and who will be benefited by your company?
- How are you planning to make it big?
- How much capital do you need?
- How is the token allowance distributed?
- Mention some society benefits
- Mention about your team too
Remember: Whitepaper will decide the fortune for your company. So leaving a good impression is a must.
2) Create a website and promote it socially.
Create an attractive website for your company. Your website will be the first impression for your investors. Make sure the first impression is perfect. Work on design and architecture of your website. Include all the information about your token, investment return plans, ICO and, teams and conditions. Your website should have ‘About Us’ page and ‘Contact Us’ page including a page for your whitepaper. Make sure you create a website which is SEO friendly as SEO is the only thing that will bring visibility to your website. Make sure that all the URLs of your website are SEO friendly. Follow the Google guidelines for SEO friendly website.
Once the website is done, it’s time to promote it socially. You can hire digital marketers to promote your website on social media platforms. Advertise your websites on various social media sites with attractive infographics and your offerings. You can prefer social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus to name a few.
3) SEO and PPC for your ICO
Once your website is ready, it’s time for SEO. As already mentioned, create a website which is SEO friendly. However, just developing an SEO friendly website isn’t enough. Your website has to go through search engine optimization process to build a win situation for your ICO.
Don’t you want to rank your website on Google Page 1? Well, SEO is the only way to get an organic reach. SEO or search engine optimization strategy will decide your search engine popularity. Blockchain SEO involves both On-page as well as Off-page activities. On-page SEO activities involve working on website content, meta descriptions and titles, header tags on your web pages, content architecture, etc. Off-page SEO activities will work towards increasing the authority of your website in search engines. This authority will increase when high-quality websites will link to your website.
You can either do this by yourself or hire Blockchain SEO experts to help you with your ICO SEO.
PPC or Pay Per Click:
PPC is advertising online. You can pay Google, Facebook, and other good reputed sources for advertising your ICO. Recently, news flew that Google AdWords is going to ban Cryptocurrency Ads. However, Google Ads are still live for ICOs. You can sign in for Google AdWords and plan out Google Ads for your ICO. Facebook had put a ban on Cryptocurrency ads but, recently, it has lenient the Ad policy for Cryptocurrency and now it is allowing the Facebook Ads for Blockchain and Crytocurrency.
Note: There are talks about Google banning PPC for the Cryptocurrency thus, make sure to check the latest Google AdWords policy before you opt for Google AdWords.
If Google bans crypto Ads then you can move towards advertising on various Cryptocurrency and Blockchain websites like cointraffic.io and coinad.com which allows you to put a banner on their website. Make your advertisement plan wisely.
4) Social Media Communities and Influencer Marketing.
There are various Cryptocurrency communities, groups, pages and networks on social media. Be a part of these communities and actively take part in discussions and events. These communities will provide you with opportunities to meet many likeminded people and investors. Make sure to leave an excellent impression in these networks. Talk about your ICO and how your idea is unique. Try using infographics to explain your ideas as visuals have a great impact on human minds.
Social media will provide you many ICO marketing channels to promote your ICO. Here are some to start with:
- Telegram:
Telegram is an excellent platform for ICO Marketing. It is a major network for blockchain and cryptocurrency - Quora:
Quora is an amazing discussion platform filled with very rational people. Topics on Initial Coin Offerings are great for posting questions and getting a good exposure for your ICO
- Reddit:
Reddit has many popular crypto channels. Join them and start discussion threads. - LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is filled with the professional populace and these members are your best audience to expose your ICO. You can join the ICO and Cryptocurrency groups like
- Bitcointalk:
Bitcointalk is a forum where all sort of Bitcoin discussions takes place. You can learn and share on Bitcointalk. Participate in discussions that interest you and keep sharing your views and opinions.
ICO Calendar Listing
You can even publish an ICO proclamation in various ICO calendars. ICO calendars provide a list of all ICO projects. Announce the token release on ICO calendars as this is a quick method to generate a buzz about your ICO. ICO listing websites will let you add your project and website on it so that people will be able to see your ICO project on it. All you’ll need is:
- ICO project name
- Token details and token strategy
- ICO project synopsis
- ICO website details.
- Your contact information
You can register at various ICO calendars using above details. Make sure to choose well reputed ICO calendars only. Here is the list of few ICO listing websites where you can register.
- https://icobench.com/
- https://www.listico.io/
- https://www.popularico.com/
- https://icodrops.com/
- http://icocalendar.today/
Now, let’s talk about Influencer Marketing.
There are many Youtubers and bloggers who constantly generate content for crypto lovers. Your ICO will be benefited if some of the good influencers promote it. All you need to do it contact the influencer who generates great content online and has a good number of followership. Request them to promote your ICO. This will give a wide exposure to your ICO. Remember to choose the influencer wisely. Few ICO has tried promoting through celebrities but that doesn’t work so well. We don’t suggest you hire any celebs and promote your ICO as we think that the people who’ll be pulled towards your ICO might not be your right audience.
5) Email Marketing and Newsletters
Email marketing is still active and working for ICOs. Sending bulk emails and newsletters to people who have subscribed to you will allow you to market your token offerings. First of all, you have to create an email list to which you want to send emails. The best way to get this email list is to ask people to subscribe to you on your website. Once you have the email list, create an attractive newsletter and send it to all your subscribers. Your emails may even reach to some investors as well.
With our experience and expertise, we have listed this ultimate checklist for ICO marketing. Following this strategy will get you best investors and a potential reach in the market. Follow above ICO Marketing Strategy to make your ICO successful. You can even take help of professionals in blockchain SEO. We at Nethority are experts at Blockchain SEO. We can help you best.
