Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies caused a global interest in blockchain technology and Initial Coin Offering (ICO) projects. Dozens of new cryptocurrency startups are emerging each month, influencing almost every field of modern economy. According to the research, an average investment in blockchain projects is around $1 million.
However, it is not easy to reach such amount without some serious preparations. If you want to be competitive among others projects, you have to make a good plan for promotional activities. In this article, we will show you 8 tips on how to develop an effective marketing strategy for blockchain startups.
Analyze Target Audience
No matter what kind of project you are launching, you have to learn everything about the target audience before you begin. This goes for blockchain startups as well. First of all, you need to adapt marketing strategy so as to fit the industry. Always try to align your strategy with the latest trends in this field and match the taste of key opinion leaders.
Besides that, you should know that blockchain technology is still a new thing, which means that many people don’t know anything about it. Yes, they heard of it before but can’t explain how it works or understand the mechanism behind startups.
In that regard, you need to promote the project in a way that is equally logical both to cryptocurrency experts and amateurs who would like to try their luck in this field. This is crucial because you will hardly ever accumulate enough funds without the participation of both sides. Therefore, marketing communication should be two-fold and aim at these two target groups simultaneously.
Whitepaper Is an Anchor
A whitepaper is the core element of each project. As we already mentioned, you will probably attract some skilled blockchain professionals and many amateur investors, so the goal is to come up with a well-balanced document to indulge both sides. This type of project plan consists of 3 elements:
- Commercial details: You need to be transparent and let potential investors know more about the payment methods and what they get in return. Is there any kind of investment protection mechanism? Everyone wants to be clear about the commercial policy of an ICO.
- Financial details: People who invest in a project expect to gain a profit, so you need to explain the existing market potential. Can you predict the value of your project after 6 months, or a year or two? The more precise you get, the more investors you attract.
- Technological details: Describe how your product works and what kind of problem it can solve. This is the part where you really need to impress expert investors.
If you want to make everything look perfect, you can hire a special audit company to rate your ICO for investors. You will receive a special report of investment attractiveness that you can show to potential investors. This method could cost a few thousand dollars but it is extremely efficient.
Don’t Hide the Team
Clients often don’t trust projects but they tend to believe authoritative people behind those ideas. A part of your marketing strategy should be to reveal the names and resumes of professionals who develop your startup. This adds credibility to the project and sends positive signals to investors.
Put yourself in a position of an investor: if you don’t know anything about this group of individuals and their key developers, how can you trust them? After all, serious business people will always conduct a thorough research prior to making any concrete moves. In that regard, we suggest you post resumes of all team members on the landing page. Include their academic background, work experience, and previous results in blockchain industry.
Another way to strengthen the reliability of your staff is to add links to their social media profiles preferably LinkedIn – so that everyone can send them a message to learn more about this startup. Of course, you should not forget other partners like official sponsors or expert advisors.
Update Website
An official startup website is probably the first place where people will try to find you, so you need to keep it fresh and up to date. Don’t hesitate to publish important information about the campaign and follow the development through blog posts.
Besides that, as Tom Hitch at aussiewritings.com writing service states, you need a comprehensive FAQ page to answer the most common inquiries. Start from the simplest explanations for the first-time investors (for instance, explain what ICO means) and then move on to the more complex, technical issues.
Exploit Social Media
Any kind of modern project is hard to imagine without some serious social media engagement. You don’t have to spread throughout every single network but LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are more or less mandatory. This is where you and your developers should promote the business idea and convince potential investors to pay attention.
Don’t run away from hiring social media influencers to help you. They have to be highly credible individuals who match your style of work and know how to approach your target audience. The synergy between your social media communication and influencers’ word of mouth marketing should be enough to generate many fresh leads.
However, handling social media marketing is a time-consuming business. If you can’t stick around 24/7, perhaps you should hire a marketing agency for blockchain social media help. This way, you can completely focus on the startup but rest assured that you left social media pages in the right hands.
Paid Advertising
The best way to grow business is through organic searches but sometimes it’s impossible to achieve it without paid advertising. You shouldn’t save money on this activity because it will probably bring you a bunch of fresh investors in the early stages of the project.
You can conduct a research to find the most popular industry-related forums, web pages, and online communities. This is where serious investors spend a lot of time and they will probably notice your banners or floating ads.
But even if you don’t find too many interesting niche-related pages to promote the startup, you can always turn to sites specialized in cryptocurrency topics. There are dozens of high-quality options in that regard but we strongly recommend checking out pages like Coin Desk, Trading View, or Coin Telegraph.
Build a Community
ICO supporters are known for their devotion and the feeling of belonging to the wider blockchain community. You should take advantage of this fact and build a group of digital supporters for your startup. Online forums and social networks are the places where you should work on this task.
Use these sources to post information about the campaign and initiate discussions among followers. This is a great way to learn more about the crypto-public opinion, make necessary corrections, and perhaps even find new ideas to boost the project. Organize the so-called ‘ask me anything’ sessions to make the communication more transparent and interactive.
Another thing that online followers love these days is live videos. You can go live each day or week to talk about campaign details, while developers should be there to help you with the technical stuff. User engagement is extremely high with live videos, so you could also use this opportunity to answer questions posted in comments.
Don’t neglect email lists
In the abundance of marketing channels, most entrepreneurs forget that email campaigns still remain one of the most powerful marketing tools. You should generate emails from your website and send segmented messages for different types of potential investors. Segmentation is very important – as we explained already, some people know more than others about ICO campaigns, so you need to adapt emails to match their knowledge and interests.
When it comes to the first-time investors, try to emphasize commercial aspects of the story because that’s what they know and want to explore even more. On the other hand, blockchain professionals require expert approach and you need to provide them with technical explanations. Keep them informed about each phase of the project development and they’ll be ready to start or keep supporting your project further on.
CONCLUSION
Blockchain technology is the latest talk of the town, so now a lot of startups are trying to get a foot in the door and make a big breakthrough in this field. However, it is almost impossible to do that unless you have a good plan of ICO promotion. In this article, we showed you 8 tips on how to develop an effective marketing strategy for blockchain startups. Bear our tips in mind and write a comment if you have other interesting suggestions to share with our reader.
About author: Olivia is a passionate blogger who writes on topics of digital marketing, career, and self-development. She constantly tries to learn something new and share this experience on various websites. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
