In light of the recent Facebook policy changes that ban ICOs and cryptocurrency ads from running on the platform, for many marketers the main question now is what are the alternatives. Prior to the ICO marketing that we kicked off last year, we did mobile marketing and already had experience working with multiple sources of traffic. But the ICO industry has its own ways which I want to shed some light on. This should be particularly interesting to both those who has just started in ICO marketing and to those who have been doing it for a while.
The main purpose of ICO marketing is to build up a solid community of followers around your token sale in hopes that some of them will convert to token holders. Almost all ICOs rely on Telegram as the ultimate platform for hosting a community. It’s easy to use on any device and has both group and private chats at your disposal. It’s a great tool to communicate with your followers and answer their questions. Based on the number of users in Telegram one can roughly estimate the potential investments. My personal observations say that less than 5000 Telegram followers would result in less that $5M of investments. Over 10 000 users would most likely bring in $15M+ of investments etc.
With Telegram being the most user-friendly communication tool, you need platforms that can help generate a buzz and bring users to your group. Among such platforms is Bitcoin Talk, which is an old-school forum. Despite being old-fashioned, Bitcoin Talk allows you to announce your plans to the largest crypto-community on the web. Let me put it this way — no Bitcoin Talk, no token holders. Do you remember the news about someone ordering a pizza for 10 000 bitcoins? This was up on Bitcoin Talk back in 2013. Creating a topic about your project on Bitcoin Talk should be the first thing you do when you take on the marketing role in an ICO.
Reddit is another important channel you can leverage to raise awareness about your ICO. Many crypto enthusiasts hang around on Reddit to stay up to date on the latest news, community-verified ICOs and so on. You shouldn’t explicitly promote your ICO on Reddit as your post will be immediately down-voted. But you can post some useful stuff for the community that will inadvertently expose it. Make sure you register your account at least a month before starting your marketing activities, since it takes one month for an account to be eligible for creating your own communities (subreddits).
It’s important to be in direct contact with crypto investment funds. Multiple traditional funds turned to crypto for a quick profit. They usually attend conferences trying to find the best product to put their millions into. Just kidding — product is not their primary interest. Unlike traditional funds, these are interested in a quick turnaround. Why invest in a product and wait years until it takes off? Instead get a huge discount on the initial token price and make 10X your investments immediately after the pre-sale. So it all comes down to the terms you agree on with the investment funds. You don’t want your tokens’ valuation to drop right after the token sales ends, do you?
When it comes to paid marketing, any marketer’s first choice is obviously Facebook, followed by Google. Previously these two were enough to make the necessary impact. Now with the Facebook ban we’re expecting most of the budgets to be switched over to Google (while it still allows ICOs J). On Google you can specify your placements, such as Coinmarketcap or run video ads on YouTube. If you have more resources you can try other channels such as Twitter or Snapchat. If you plan on reaching out to Coinmarketcap and the likes directly — good luck. These guys are usually booked for months and it’s not uncommon to never get a reply from them. There are crypto-specific ad networks that you can use as well, such as Bitmedia or Cointraffic.
Public Relations (PR) is effectively the best way to communicate with the crowd specifically beyond the crypto community. You want to make sure the content is positive and distributed across as many medias as possible. PR is a strong tool to raise early awareness and familiarize non-enthusiasts with your project. Important note — try to get published in both crypto and non-crypto medias, such as Forbes or The Guardian. Ideally, hire a PR agency to take care of that for you.
There are plenty of individual influencers on social media, who would be happy to receive some coins for endorsing your ICO. We don’t suggest going down that route, as most of influencers are hard to communicate with due to the lack of professionalism and their sphere of influence (followers/subs) could easily be bot accounts bought and paid for.
We are very familiar with affiliate networks due to our mobile marketing background. The main advantage here is that advertisers are charged for an action, such as a transaction. Crypto focused affiliate networks in most cases charge a percentage fee from deposits. We don’t have a lot of experience with crypto affiliate networks, but in mobile they should be approached carefully due high likelihood of fraud. This type of marketing also requires an hour or two of developer’s work as you need to pass the size of deposits.
During a token sale, internal resources are not enough due to the time scarcity. Consider hiring a marketing agency that specializes on ICOs. It should have the necessary expertise and connections for a smooth process. This allows you to focus on the product and the community, and eventually leads to higher chances of hitting your prized hard cap.
To sum up the Facebook ICO ban simply means that budgets will flow over to other channels. ICOs will keep on reaching their audience and hitting hard caps regardless. If you allow me a little speculation and assumptions, I think that Facebook won’t completely stop ICOs from marketing. On a case by case basis, some ads will still be approved. My advice — always reach out to Facebook support to confirm whether your ads are allowed or not. If not, I hope this article will help you better navigate this complicated arena.
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This blog post originally was posted on our Medium account, visit the blog post on Medium here.