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January 30, 2018
Consumer Driven Marketing – Inspiration Board
May 17, 2018

7 Marketing Must-Haves for a Successful ICO

Planning an ICO for you new Crypto token? Great!

You probably already know that you need to have a website with an ICO/airdrop countdown, a whitelist form, and a roadmap. Additionally, you have to add a nice moving interlinked background that crypto investors like. But, does it mean your marketing work on the way to the ICO is done?

Well, it’s a good starting point But if you want your ICO to be a successful one, you need to have an active and engaged community that will support your project and help your token climb up the CMC ranks (Coin Market Cap). You need to build hype. And that’s where it gets tricky.

So let’s look at what you can do  to achieve this:

1. Keep it clear & simple

Your retail investors are divided into three groups – those who live and breathe blockchain, those who understand the industry of your project (whether it’s medical/marketing. etc.) and those who are in it just for the money. Most of them also have a very specialised lingo.

In any case, there will be few people who actually understand the entire project from start to finish. This means you need to be able to explain this in simple words that ANYONE can understand. It means you will have to simplify a lot of it and skip a lot of the technical parts in your shorter presentations/videos/website, etc.

It’s ok to have a complicated version for each type of investor, but this will be in addition to the simple pitch and not instead of it.

2. Create an Explainer Video

Keeping with this notion of clarity, the best way to explain things is visual and in this case video is king. Invest in a good script that sends the right message and in a good quality animation, and it will all pay off.

3. Keep an Updated FAQs Section

People will have a lot of questions, most of the will be repeated. Make sure you have a dedicated section on your website that answers all of these questions and updates in real-time everytime a new repetitive question is coming up. Don’t forget not all people like to ask questions on massive groups so you’re better off making their lives easier.

4. Invite People to Your Telegram Channel

I’m sure you know you should have one and I’m sure you already have some people on your own channel. The only thing you should do is making sure you capture all new website visitors/presentation viewers etc. and get them to join in on the conversation.

5. Add a Secret Sauce

Now, this tip is not trivial, but it is the most crucial one to your success as it’s where the magic happens… You need to think of something that will get people talking. Something that will unite them in the conversation. Something that can get them engaged. It can be a worthy cause, a gamified approach, a riddle – anything goes here if it’s doing the job. Just think of Dogecoin (http://dogecoin.com/) as an example – it all started off as a joke but look at where it is today.

6. Tell the World About it

Once you have all the ingredients in place, don’t forget to share it with the world. You need PR and as much of it as possible. Think influencers, think relevant media channels and publications, think events, meetups, etc. This is one of these things you can’t have too much of it.

7. Treat is As a Campaign

Don’t think that just because you have a cool idea or a great technology you can get by and launch a successful ICO. You may have different goals from “traditional” advertising campaigns, and you are definitely using new tools and approaches, but at the end of the day, you are running a crowdfunding campaign.

Nobody raised $10 million on Kickstarter without a well played, ready in advance campaign and nobody wins an election because they have a pretty face or a great vision. You should have a strategy in place, a game plan with alternatives, different marketing materials, and a budget to cover up the costs.

The Takeaway!
To sum it all up, the key thing to remember here is that you need to support your community by providing them easy to digest information, be ready to answer questions and make sure people have a reason to talk about you. The better you are in planning everything in advance, the greater your chances to succeed are.

Good luck and may you get to the moon!

Like what you just read? Feel free to contribute ETH or any ERC20 tokens to this address: 0xF7F1A9F497c0Dbe26CD08C7fCbBfbf52c6Db960b

Want to suggest other topics for me to write on – connect with me on Telegram (@marketer4ICO)

Yifat Shirben
Yifat Shirben
Yifat Shirben is an entrepreneurial marketer, with over a decade of international experience in marketing, branding, PR and business development within the innovation and entrepreneurial environment. As a former start-up founder herself, Yifat has developed a unique consumer-driven methodology to analyse and allow cost-effective, tailored made marketing strategies and solutions for start-ups and entrepreneurs. Yifat is also a director at Jayride (ASX:JAY)

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