Crypto startups normally find themselves confronted with several hurdles when developing blockchain marketing strategies for their projects. The usual challenges include educating potential consumers, creating brand recognition, generating leads, and expanding users.
Given that many crypto projects are open-source projects, founders, core developers, and advocates are pushed to think of new ways to advertise their products.
While traditional marketing channels such as email and newer channels such as podcasts both have a place in the blockchain marketing stack. The examples in this article will focus on some of the most innovative methods we’ve seen businesses use.
Why crypto marketing?
Since the cryptocurrency sector has expanded dramatically over time, many new firms dealing with cryptocurrencies are springing up worldwide.
If you want to launch your cryptocurrency or blockchain-based project, you need to make sure that others find it and learn about it. To help your company stand out, you’ll need a digital marketing strategy.
Many individuals wrongly believe that cryptocurrencies and initial coin offers (ICOs) are the same things. On the contrary, they aren’t. If you want to advertise your brand adequately, you must first choose your marketing goal. Is it your ICO that you want to promote? Or are you promoting the cryptocurrency itself?
Top marketing strategies for crypto startups
1) Have a proper working website
A well-designed website can help you to streamline your bitcoin marketing efforts. Having a professional website will generate a high level of trustworthiness among individuals who wish to collaborate with you. It also displays your level of dedication and the amount of time you can devote to building a quality project. Having a website will surely increase your customers’ trust in you.
2) Collect emails through email marketing
Email lists are essential since email marketing is a more effective way to communicate with clients than social media. In fact, emails are 6x more likely than tweets to generate higher click-through rates.
Furthermore, email is 40x more effective at attracting new clients than Facebook or Twitter. Emails can even help you generate publicity for ICOs and other marketing stunts such as airdrops.
3) Make use of LinkedIn
If you want to connect with professionals from various industries, domains, and backgrounds, then you should consider joining LinkedIn. You’ll discover lots of opportunities to learn about like-minded people there.
Sales Navigator is a LinkedIn premium product that helps organizations generate leads by making. It is easy to find and engage with their target audience in just a few clicks. Many LinkedIn groups dedicated to blockchain and cryptocurrency can help you to publicize your cryptocurrency.
4) Try out bounty campaigns
Bounty campaigns are a marketing technique in which potential contributors carry out promotional actions for a project in exchange for a percentage of the tokens.
Bounty campaigns aren’t required for all projects, but they can be incredibly beneficial on multiple levels. While they are most typically used for cryptocurrency marketing, they can be used for so much more.
5) Airdrops
An airdrop is a marketing campaign in the cryptocurrency sector in which money or tokens are distributed to wallet addresses to create awareness of a new virtual currency.
Minor amounts of the new virtual currency are distributed to the wallets of active blockchain community members for free or in exchange for a bit of service, such as retweeting a message released by the company that created the currency.
Airdrops are still quite popular and effective in the bitcoin world. If you’re new to the market, sending free coins or tokens to people’s wallet addresses can help you promote your new currency.
6) Press release
A simple press release is easy to write, but a good crypto press release takes more time and work.
Adapting a standard press release template to meet your company’s demands is a good idea. However, in order for a crypto press release to be effective, you must first establish which components of your news are the most important.
Customers are looking for precise information. Make sure they don’t have to go digging for it; provide them with the knowledge right away with a concise press release.
7) Social media marketing
These days, there are several social media networks that are accessible to the general public. This allows businesses to keep track of their customer’s or potential buyers’ activities.
By connecting with your target audience on social media, you can better understand them and even get insights into their preferences, dislikes, and interests. With this information, you can design a more effective marketing campaign to attract them.
8) Influencer marketing
By making recommendations, crypto influencers can dramatically impact the value of a coin. According to a survey, nearly 90% of buyers would prefer to buy something based on the advice of a trustworthy influencer instead of buying something that you’ve pushed through a media campaign.
With their skills, influencers can help you generate organic engagement, growth, and opportunity in the cryptocurrency sector. This boosts your general profile in the industry and generates community interest in your company.
9) Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is a low-cost, evergreen technique of recruiting new customers and growing brand awareness. Moreover, it can also have a significant impact on your bottom line if you follow a few basic methods from the outset.
It is not easy to talk about a company’s digital marketing efforts without mentioning SEO.
You must first select and keep track of the keywords relevant to your project in order to be productive with SEO. It’s also crucial to make your website mobile-friendly and regularly update your blog posts and material.
10) Telegram
Setting up a Telegram account for your cryptocurrency project will help you reach a wider audience. Telegram has recently gained lots of interest in the crypto community, and for a good reason.
Telegram is a good fit for a crypto firm because it has applications both within the industry and outside it.
To begin with, unlike other social media networks, Telegram allows crypto advertisements. Traders can also benefit from end-to-end encryption on the site, ensuring their anonymity.
Crypto marketing is the process of promoting existing and new cryptocurrency projects. It’s critical to encourage knowledge and trust in crypto products so that consumers are more willing to buy into the idea of purchasing crypto assets. Educating the public and building trust can even contribute to early adopters, who are critical to the success of any project. You can promote crypto in a variety of ways, including social media ads, PPC ads, SEO, and innovative ad stunts like Airdrops.
Ultimately, strong crypto marketing strategies will help you to promote your project in an organic, cost-effective, and scalable way.
Tools & examples for crypto marketing
1) Optimized GitHub documentation
Developer documentation and a well-organized GitHub repository are incredibly effective marketing tools. This is true whether your company is constructing a suite of solid APIs like Blocknative or establishing an entirely new blockchain.
With optimized Github documentation, you can grow your community, your network impact, and your ecosystem as well as the value of your project.
The crypto market is highly competitive, and one way to maintain a competitive advantage is to provide the best documentation for your developer community. This allows them to build quickly, find answers to common questions, and, most importantly, refer you to other builders in the network who will integrate your solution into their product.
Example: Yearn Finance’s GitBook Documentation
While GitHub is best known for hosting code repositories, services like GitBook provide a straightforward way for teams to organize developer documentation.
Yearn Finance is a well-known Defi mechanism on Ethereum. Yearn, also known as a yield aggregator, automatically distributes its users’ cash among many yield farms to maximize the income earned on their investments.
While Yearn Finance may be difficult to grasp from a financial or technical standpoint, the GitBook documentation’s clarity, organization, and simplicity make it easy for developers to build. It’s also easy for users to engage in one of today’s most intriguing decentralized finance projects.
3) Yield farming
The most well-known and sought-after marketing technique for token-based crypto companies is yield farming on decentralized exchanges (DEX).
A decentralized exchange allows investors to trade digital assets against a large pool of tokens, with prices determined by a mathematical formula (for example, a constant product function found in Automated Market Makers). This eliminates the need for a centralized entity to match orders between market participants.
Yield farming is when investors who hold a project’s token earn interest by providing liquidity (by adding their tokens to a large pool) so that traders worldwide can buy and sell freely.
Since yield farming allows investors to earn interest (up to 100% APY), it draws many investors who want to acquire, keep, and earn a yield on the project’s token.
Example: Raydium Promotes New Startups with AcceleRAYtor
Raydium is a decentralized exchange (DEX) based on the Solana blockchain that provides pools, yield farming, and swaps.
AcceleRAYtor is an incubation program that lets Solana-based entrepreneurs secure funding through Initial DEX Offerings (IDOs) while also receiving support from Raydium’s staff.
Media Foundation and Mercurial Finance were over-bought by 10,000 percent and 9,000 percent, respectively, during their first two debuts on AcceleRAYtor.
Since there were so many people who wanted to buy $MEDIA and $MER tokens, and there were only so many, they could only get a portion of what they desired.
On Crypto Twitter, this sparked a lot of FOMO and buzz. If you’re a new project, establishing a yield farming pool on a high-profile platform like Raydium can help you generate interest in your token.
3) Hackathons
You’ll need engineers to build with your code whether you’re building a layer 1 blockchain, an Ethereum L2 solution, or blockchain infrastructure like an oracle.
The decentralized applications (dApps) that operate on the Ethereum network are one of the reasons why it is the world’s most popular smart contract platform, despite its cost, performance, and scalability issues.
Aave, Compound, and Uniswap are examples of Ethereum ecosystem projects that add significant value to the underlying blockchain and Ethereum infrastructure providers.
Hackathons with large prize pools are a great way to get motivated blockchain developers to create with your tools, raise brand recognition in new geographic areas, and add value to your project.
Hackathons provide participants with substantial prize money and fantastic possibilities to gain expertise and develop industry connections. They also offer successful participants the chance to win startup funding after the Hackathon is over.
Example: Solana
Over 1,000 people registered for Solana’s first Hackathon in November 2020.
Solana’s Defi hackathon, which was held in collaboration with Serum, a decentralized central limit order book (i.e., a decentralized Nasdaq), drew 3,000 participants and awarded $400,000 in prizes.
Solana SZN, their third Hackathon, which finished in June 2021, drew over 10,000 participants from six continents and was awarded $1 million in awards.
Solana now boasts a rapidly increasing network of Rust developers producing DeFi protocols, blockchain tools, infrastructure projects, dashboards, and so much more. As a result, the Solana ecosystem has evolved into a legitimate challenger to Ethereum in just seven months.
Conclusion
Developing blockchain marketing strategies requires you to be savvy. This is especially true since you’re seeking to overthrow established financial institutions like correspondent banks with a decentralized alternative. You can learn a lot from the marketing tactics of community-driven crypto firms, regardless of whether you’re a crypto marketing agency, an in-house marketer for a blockchain startup, or you’re still working in the traditional marketing industry.
Pressfarm’s PR services can help you get featured in the press. This is a very important aspect if you are trying to build a credible and successful ICO.
With a professional press release, some engaging guest posts, and an eye-catching media kit, you can make a splash in the crypto industry. In addition to creating content that’s specifically tailored to the crypto industry, the team at Pressfarm can help you put it in front of the right eyes. By submitting your content to the right media outlets and startup directories, Pressfarm can boost your online visibility. This distribution method ensures your brand ranks in relevant search results across different search engines.
Finally, as a client, you get custom media lists. Together with a media database of 1 million+ journalists, bloggers and influencers, these media lists are designed to help you do effective targeted media outreach.
With a PR package from Pressfarm, you can boost credibility for your crypto brand.