Initial coin offerings or its more popular acronym, ICO, has taken the world of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and investments by storm. It presents a dependable channel of fundraising, especially for crypto projects. For technology enthusiasts and people who did not find ways to directly buy stocks using IPOs, ICOs are a welcome bliss.

Developing an ICO is a tedious and cumbersome process. Thankfully, for this purpose, there are a lot of dedicated ICO development companies that can take care of the dirty job. However, the real challenge in making your ICO a holistic success lies in effective marketing.

Marketing and ICO is a combination of both traditional and modern methods. It should be a melange of marketing activities common to any digital endeavor and some of them specific to crypto projects.

A bit about ICOs

Although the first ICO might have happened in 2013, it is the Ethereum ICO that brought it to prominence. It had to wait for another three years before it became a phenomenon. In 2017, ICOs accounted for about $5.6 billion raised. Although they might seem lucrative from the surface, the fact that ICOs are not regulated gave rise to a lot of scams, ultimately marring the image, not just of ICOs but crypto and blockchain at large.

Therefore, your marketing efforts should be bent not only on increasing the possibility of your tokens being sold but also in building credibility.

We have outlined below, a few steps that need to be followed in marketing your ICO.

Design an Informative Website

A website, when it comes to an ICO, enjoys an oxymoronic position. Sometimes, it is the point of start for an interested investor, and sometimes, it also serves as the point of culmination for your marketing efforts. Therefore, your website needs to be designed in such a way that it caters to every kind of audience. Your website should contain everything related to your ICO.

Among the bits of information to be included on the website, the most crucial one is the whitepaper. As you may have already known, the whitepaper is the epicenter of your ICO documentation. The whitepaper serves as an exhaustive material for your investors to go through. Generally, not even 10% of your investors might go through the whitepaper. However, those 10% of people are quite sure to be convinced investors.

In addition, the website should also display information about the tentative timeline, the roadmap of your project, and also the details of your team members. It is to be remembered that all these bits of information might not directly influence the sale of your tokens but surely help in building the essential credibility to give your ICO the jet-assisted launch it requires.

Stay Active on Social Media

Social media has become the virtual hangout giant for people, and its importance and relevance cannot be more emphasized, especially during the times of the COVID-19 crisis. Therefore, when you are at a time when anything related to blockchain and crypto is slowly racing its hood, it is strongly advised that you stay active on social media.

Not every social media platform can double up as an advertising platform owing to the restrictions imposed on advertising things related to cryptocurrency and blockchain. However, it does not in any way mean that you cannot capitalize on the organic leverage it can provide.

A Few Social Media Platforms That You Can Consider Using Are:

Facebook - it is the world’s largest social network and boasts of a user base that exceeds the seventh of the world’s population. There are a lot of dedicated Facebook pages and groups that discuss blockchains, ICOs, and cryptocurrency. This is a great channel for you to engage in active participation, so that you establish your credibility before you talk about your ICO.

Reddit - this platform advertises itself as the first page of the Internet… And it can be considered true to a great extent. The platform houses the largest crypto community and you can tap into this specific-yet-wide repository of crypto enthusiasts and investors.

Telegram - no longer does this term invoke the innovation by Morse. Today, the term refers to one of the most democratic communication apps that has been the apple of the eye for crypto enthusiasts and traders. You can become a member of a crypto community and use it as a platform for marketing your ICO.

Quora - Quora is nothing more than Yahoo! Answers clad in full formals and more serious content. This question and answer forum can help gain visibility by participating in tropical threads.

Crypto-specific forums - some forums like BitcoinTalk are dedicated to talking about cryptocurrency, blockchain, and its offshoots. These forums can serve as perfect places for you to mark your presence and also gain leads and traction for your ICO.

Media outreach

In the context of an ICO, the reach and visibility play a crucial role and almost every avenue of that exposure should be exploited. One of the best platforms in this regard is press releases and media outreach. There are a lot of top-notch websites that can help you publish your press release, and some of them are quite focussed on the crypto space. Most of these websites charge a premium amount but there are chances that your content might be published for free if the PR website feels that they can gain more traction from publishing your content.

For all the above-mentioned marketing endeavors, you can consider approaching an ICO marketing agency. These agencies take care of all the aspects of marketing your ICO in digital forms and in mainstream media. It also helps you dedicate your attention to the core aspects of your ICO and not in marketing it.

Bounty campaigns

Bounties are rewards given to individuals for accomplishing certain tasks. In the context of an ICO, you can announce bounties for finding bugs or connecting your ICO to a certain number of elite investors. Bounty marketing can be considered the crypto equivalent of affiliate marketing - the rewards are performance-oriented.

ICO listing sites

There are certain specific websites that are dedicated to listing your ICOs. These sites are frequented by enthusiastic investors and marking your presence in these places is mandatory.

The “how" of Marketing Your ICO:

The key to the marketing success of your ICO is in narrowing down on your audience. It is to be remembered that in most cases, you pay for reaching people, and the narrower your audience are, the more likely you are to convert your audience into investors through effective marketing.

You can always take the help of an ICO expert marketer. They bring together a confluence of experience and expertise, and they will take care to reduce the possibilities of losses that you might incur from unproductive marketing investments.

Publish as much information as possible, as transparency leads to better confidence. Confidence can also be established through a team that is always ready to answer all questions regarding yourICO.

Any expert marketer will tell you that it is the emotion behind a product or project that catalyzes the conversion. Given this fact, it is strongly recommended that you build an inspiring story around your ICO. The story does not have to essentially be in terms of a problem and a solution. It can also be a spark of an idea.

Above everything, to ensure that your ICO does not get caught in legal tussles. Therefore, always have a legal team on standby to address compliance issues. Lack of compliance not only drains resources of the time and effort but also attenuates the credibility that you built over time.

Conclusion

In most cases, your ICO development company can also sport the avatar of an ICO marketing agency. All you need to do is get in touch with your blockchain development partner who works on your ICO and let them know of your target audience and the way in which you would like to position your ICO.

They will take care of not only to develop your ICO but also to craft an effective marketing plan that will ensure that your ICO acquires the essential marketing wings.