A Guide To ICO Marketing
Ever since Ripple and Ethereum's successful First Coin Offering (ICO) campaigns back in 2013 and 2014 respectively, ICOs have come to be the de facto fundraising mechanism for blockchain companies across the world.
In 2017 alone there were 435 ICOs raising over #9 million every year on average. That's a total of close to #4 billion, a 5,600% rise on the total amount of 68.8 million increased in 2016.
It goes without mentioning that 2018 will be a major year for the ICO. However,
Hire SEO Consultants with so many flooding the marketplace, how are you really going to stick out from the crowd?
Let's take a look at how to create an ICO marketing strategy that will set your product before the right investors.
Creating A Website
ICO SEO Strategy
ICO Media & PR
Email Campaigns
Occasions
Start With Your Website
A contemporary site is at the core of any ICO advertising plan. It is where investors will go to verify that you're who you say you are, and to discover more information on your offering.
Google recently declared that Dynamic Website Development. visitors will judge your website within the first 50 milliseconds of landing your page. And in certain instances the study found that a few consumers formed opinion on particular design elements in 17 milliseconds.
Significantly, they found that websites with low visual complexity and high prototypicality (how representative the layout is of the kind of site) were the most appealing.
What does this mean?
Make your site simple and comfortable. When a potential investor lands in your website they have an expectation of what a blockchain startup's site will appear to be. So deliver exactly what they are expecting.
Make it easy to navigate and ensure These features are visually appealing:
The company's emblem. Users spent about 6.48 seconds focused on this area before continuing.
The major navigation menu. Almost as much as the emblem, users spend an average of 6.44 seconds seeing the menu.
The search box, where consumers focused for just over 6 minutes.
The website's most important picture. Users' eyes were fixed here to get an average of 5.94 minutes.
The site's written articles, where consumers spent about 5.59 seconds.
The bottom of a site, where consumers spent about 5.25 minutes.
Additionally an ICO's website should also feature certain key elements:
A link to download or view your ICO white paper.
A roadmap for business and technology advancement.
The staff and advisers section outlining the experience of your employees.
Any and all investors will expect these components to be featured on your site, and with no your ICO advertising strategy will fail to get off the floor.
Do not let potential investors just see your website and leave. Make them finish an action whilst they are there.
Whether that is to register to pre-sale information, enroll an account or obtain a wallet, be sure you're generating prospects to whom you are able to advertise your product.
ICO Promoting CTA on site
ICO SEO Strategy
A solid search engine optimization strategy is in the heart of any electronic marketing plan. And if you're serious about creating an ICO advertising strategy
Organic SEO Marketing , it should be the base of your game plan too, particularly as you look from the brief to the long term.
SEO Content Writing
From website development to launch, to years down the line, you have to employ a very clear content strategy based on key word research from day one. Whether that's creating landing pages optimized for service phrases, or articles based on user searches.
Your webpages will not shoot to Google's top places over night. It is a long old fashioned to get there, however, as the saying goes,
"The ideal time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to start your search engine optimization strategy is currently."
HTTPS
Google has fully confirmed that procuring your website with an SSL certificate has changed into a ranking factor for SEO. In addition, the Google chrome browser will begin, from July 2018, to show websites with no SSL certification as'not secure'.
Imagine you create an incredible ICO marketing plan, get tonnes of users on your site but as soon as they are there they are told the website is not secure.
Secure this site.
There's a huge quantity of search engine optimization variables that will affect your SERP, all which we are not likely to get into here. But let's take a peek at one of the very importnat...
Backlinks
Still among the most important ranking factors, Google is always tweaking its algorithm to make sure SEOs can not abuse backlinks. Whilst it was true that the more links you had, the better, the thinking has changed now to:
Less links from more relevant sites.
Ensure you are getting links from websites with higher domain name and page governments. You may use tools like Moz's Open Site Explorer to take a look at possible linking partners.
Moz Open Site Explorer
A scarcity of an SEO strategy is a strong signal your ICO's focus is on the short term. This is a big no-no.
Investors want to know they're going to have a return on their investment, which means demonstrating future-thinking. A website undetectable in search rather than secured with SSL certificates will turn off prospective investors. Or, worse yet, result in accusations of fraudulence in the crypto community.
A strong ICO SEO strategy is only going to blossom and develop overtime, resulting in greater and higher returns. So do it right.
Read More: How To Write SEO Content That Actually Works
Media & PR
If you have followed the steps above you should now have a simple to use, visually attractive and search engine optimized site up and running. Now to the meat of your ICO advertising campaign -- actually getting the word out there.
Press Releases
Ever since the beginning of advertising, press releases have been the go-to operation for getting your information out there. The world of ICO promotion is just the same.
Just create a one-pager explaining your news, the critical facts and figures along with your contact details. But don't do it dull. A press release should be written to get journalists eager and excited to write about your business. And write about it in a way that excites others too.
If you choose to use a PR agency, they will have a whole heap of press links to spread your release . However, if you decide to go it alone, here are a Couple of sites to Begin with:
CCN
Coinist
Token Market
There are plenty of free and paid for services out there, but if you would like to do PR properly (and you do not have a seasoned team in house ), we highly recommend hiring a PR agency. At least bring an ICO PR writing service onboard.
Guest Posting
There are lots of magazines and blogs out there that specialise in crypto news, and which will gladly accept guest post content. This is not simply a fantastic way to advertise your ICO, but create quality backlinks from market books.
A lot of those sites will accept free submissions from independent subscribers, but charge a rate for businesses searching for publicity. Here are Only a few Websites that accept guest articles to kickstart your ICO marketing campaign:
Hackernoon
Coin Telegraph
Blockonomi
Coin Desk
Again, in case you are looking to submit guest articles, ensure it's on a web site that has a high domain for this extra search engine optimization boost.
We all know how powerful social media campaigns may be, and using them properly to make a buzz around your ICO is remarkably effective. However, every channel has their pros and cons and their subtle little nuances. Ensure that you're in tune with what all these really are so you can use them to advertise your ICO.
Reddit
The Reddit community is astounding. The ordinary Redditor will be wise and well informed, excited to get their opinions around and create talks. This gives you a perfect setting to provoke dialogue about your ICO.
That said, Reddit also has a reputation for being unforgiving and you are opening up yourself to serious exposure on the website. It is therefore highly recommended that you hire a neighborhood manager that knows the platform.
It's possible to utilize Reddit to post hyperlinks on your ICO itself, and ought to create your own Subreddit which you can self-moderate to create a community around your coin.
For example, VeChainThor have created a whole master manual to their coin and company on Reddit.
Facebook
Facebook recently updated its marketing policy to Stop ICOs advertising on its own platform, saying,
"There are many companies who are advertising binary possibilities, ICOs and cryptocurrencies which are not currently working in good faith"
However, you are still able to create a business page to update your investors on how your ICO campaign is developing, and there are lots of both closed and open classes in which you are able to discuss cryptocurrencies.
Pro-tip: make your own group to guide discussions how you prefer.
Instagram
The very popular platform amongst millennials, Instagram is not the most obvious selection for creating ICO advertising campaigns. But, it is a wonderful way which you can demonstrate another perspective of your manufacturer.
It's possible to utilize Instagram to create the 'artistic' facet of your organization, developing a storybook of pictures. Alternatively you could use Instagram as a means to display behind the scenes of your blockchain business.
Want to know a secret idea for boosting your Insta followers?
Twitter
Though you cannot utilize Twitter to advertise your ICO, it remains a favorite platform amongst crypto enthusiasts. It is the go-to for the latest blockchain news, and spikes at the value of your currency on exchanges will have tens of thousands of users turning to Twitter to find out why.
Be sure to make your own'cashtag' to your own coin with the dollar sign. ($XVG, $BTC, $ETH, etc..)
Quora
Quora is a question and answer site where questions are asked, replied, edited, and organized from its community of customers.
How can this benefit an ICO marketing campaign?
It's possible to provide answers to active query threads to steer the conversation towards your company, and supply a link to your website. A number of these threads are extremely high-traffic, and therefore provide excellent exposure for your ICO.
Just search the site for relevant topics and create a considered reply. Just spamming comments won't do you any favours.
LinkedIn
Even though they may still seem to be on the fringes for most, blockchain businesses are companies like any other. Like any other business, LinkedIn presents an ideal platform to publicise and community. Firstly:
Create a Business page
Link your employees to the Firm
Link from the team section on your site to individual profiles
This will give investors the chance to check the background of your team, and verify that they are aware of what they're doing.
Additionally, there are plenty of LinkedIn groups talking ICOs and crypto. Make sure to get your voice heard here.
Telegram
Since its beginning in 2013, Telegram has rapidly been the go-to for crypto enthusiasts searching to get second-by-second talks on signs, ICOs and cryptocurrency news.
You can utilize Telegram to make your own channel and push out the most recent news to your own followers. Do avoid getting involved in a lot of discussions, however.
An honorary mention also goes to Discord which functions pretty much the same as Telegram, with a burgeoning crypto community creating discussions there. In fact, because Russia decided to prohibit Telegram, Discord could grow to be the way to communicate with your Russian shareholders.
REMEMBER: Investors can assess your social media stations as part of their proofing processes. Ensure consistency throughout all of your accounts.
Email Efforts
When you have nailed the CTAs on your website, you'll be increasing your mailing list minute by minute. Wishing you a direct channel to talk to your individual buyer, use this chance to re-engage your fans
Email Marketing Solution , shout out of the most recent news, and encourage investment.
The major tendencies for email campaigns in 2018:
Personalisation and segmentation are absolutely crucial.
Users need organizations to embrace a more conversational tone.
Interactive emails are on the rise, encouraging customers to perpetrate actions within the email.
Notes:
MailChimp does not permit ICO advertising campaigns to be run on their own platform.
Perhaps one of the most essential aspects of your entire ICO advertising plan, your school application needs to be on stage. But what sort of ICO bounty campaigns can you run?
Pre-ICO Bounties
Use social networking bounties to encourage participants to discuss your concept and content on social media. You can then benefit users based on participation amounts such as retweets, stocks, clicks and comments.
For those who have high-traffic sites, or a sizable social following, a content writing bounty can be conducted to get testimonials written in your own offering or technology. Bounty ought to be rewarded based on unique page views, stocks and other important content metrics.
Bitcointalk Signatures
Open to Bitcointalk Jr.. Participants and over, the player places an embedded bit of code in their own signature. The bounty is then delivered to forum members that have the highest rank.
Together with the fundraising round finished, now you need to focus on boosting your undertaking. And there's no better method of doing that than through community feedback. The subsequent bounties become incredibly useful at this point.
As its name implies, bounty is tendered based on translations of your content. This could include an ICO white paper, marketing collateral or site translation job.
Bug reporting is probably the best bounty of them all. It not only garners interest in your business, but in addition can help detect issues in your code that could be exploited. Win-win.
Note: create the bounty too small and no-one will be interested. Conversely, make it too big and people will believe you're up to something questionable. Try and discover the fine line.
By using their popularity being exactly what it is, you could be falling in the first step if you're not operating a bounty program as part of your ICO marketing effort.
Blockchain Occasions
Across the planet, blockchain events are occurring all the time and present a perfect opportunity to advertise your ICO campaign. Significantly, events give potential investors the chance to see your team (or a few of them) face to face and delivers a feeling of accountability. This can be invaluable in an industry whose reputation isn't the best to say the least.
Although the costs of running or attending such events may be high, the yield you can expect is large also -- so long as you are bringing the right attendees.
As interest in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency ramps up throughout the world, the ICO market is set to boom. And with regulations and restriction on advertising being upgraded all of the time, the emphasis is on creating an agile ICO marketing strategy which can be resilient to these changes.
No matter the primary tenets of an effective ICO marketing strategy should be:
Accountability
Transparency
Yield and Return
Delivering these continuously throughout all your marketing channels, and backed by powerful technology, your ICO advertising campaign can't fail.
