ICO marketing instruments list (add yours)

[stuartgh]

I start to do pre-ICO marketing & find out that it's quite hard: prices very, narrow expertise in agencies, no proper KPI's to be set etc. So I decided at least to collect all reasonable marketing (ok, including PR) instruments that will help to get the best results for ICO. Let's say one stop for ICO marketing:

1. Classic PR - press releases, interviews, Q&A
2. Banner advertising - display ads for extensive reach
3. Influential marketing - connect with opinion leaders.
4. Social media - connect with audience & opinion leaders.
5. YouTube - statements from founders, project introduction.
6. Bounty campaigns - referrals showtime.
7. Placements in blogs - native advertising.
8. Viral media - videos or pictures.
9. Community marketing - you know, Bitcointalk.
10. Events - meetups, conferences etc.
 
Contribute yours! Add instruments to this list.

Having recently help complete a successful  ICO marketing campaign for Lampix which raised $14.2m apart from the list of instruments - what I believe it’s good as a general rule is to have a marketing plan set up in advance - with your relevant ICO campaign metrics, and ways to capture those metrics in order to guide the performance.

So you can see how social media channels are contributing, and which channels are most effectively driving investors, for example.

And so you can ‘double down’ on those which are working during the start, and at the end of the campaign when investor activity is often at its peak.

Plus with such a plan you can decide which instruments are going to work for your ICO before the launch.

 

[Crumple Cat]

Regarding stackexchanges, this is a nice thing to do, but won't give the necessary exposure

Wow, thanks for the clue, that reminded me of ProductHunt - anybody ever tried submitting a profile there when doing ICO, were there any good traffic from there?

This is a good idea, but I don't know if anyone tested it. Usually "hunters" doesn't like to submit projects without a beta on Product Hunt. Is it only in the upcoming line (by PH managers), in most cases. I have the right to submit projects, but I haven't used it yet and don't have many followers. Probably worth starting

[feelideb]

Bounty is an effective ad ever. You can not match any campaign marketing instrument with bounty and banners especially on bitcointalk forum

[TraderPhil]

Good list!
I think what's maybe missing is building trust. This can be done through a good whitepaper, trustful team etc. ... but also through listing on ICO review/rating sites like http://www.icorating.com
There are some more of this platforms which (from my subjective perspective) do an objective review. 

[benjismarket]

Great list. Probably cover's it all. Best thing, get some influence from someone in the community.

[stuartgh]

I used this list of marketing instruments to structure my detailed look at the ICO marketing for the $14.2m Lampix ICO, which includes a useful list of ICO resources at the end of the article:
http://www.stuart-hall.com/2017/08/30/ico-marketing-guide-updated/

[hpmp]

I used this list of marketing instruments to structure my detailed look at the ICO marketing for the $14.2m Lampix ICO, which includes a useful list of ICO resources at the end of the article:
http://www.stuart-hall.com/2017/08/30/ico-marketing-guide-updated/

pretty good article. Do you provide some marketing services yourself? pls pm if you do

[stuartgh]

I used this list of marketing instruments to structure my detailed look at the ICO marketing for the $14.2m Lampix ICO, which includes a useful list of ICO resources at the end of the article:
http://www.stuart-hall.com/2017/08/30/ico-marketing-guide-updated/

pretty good article. Do you provide some marketing services yourself? pls pm if you do

Thanks I have pm'd you my services.

Interesting post on Startup Management blog about 'Safe ICO Practices' includes a short section on marketing:

Bad practice: Too much promotion and advertising. Statements that are forward-looking without concrete base of evidence or metrics.
Good practice: Organic spread of awareness about your ICO, backed by evidence of community and ecosystem support.

http://startupmanagement.org/2017/09/11/safe-ico-practices-sip/

[pey]

The best marketing instrument is team itself, if you have a very good team you don't need even any marketing to make a good ico otherwise I think the best one bitcointalk

[oreits11]

1. Classic PR - press releases, interviews, Q&A
2. Banner advertising - display ads for extensive reach

the different schemes as telemarketer to work as displacing message on deliverance to reach the wider public of audience as

to occupy use of online media or more as distributing the higher stages on level of displacement

to gains with the work as collecting signs as following with the different choice on selection as

displacing more to improves the chance as closing with the minimum on terms as begins as entering exchange.

[themystick]

Swarm.fund! They are doing great work to develop new investement founding. I believe they will be succesfull. You can check them their thread. Mark my words....

[hpmp]

Swarm.fund! They are doing great work to develop new investement founding. I believe they will be succesfull. You can check them their thread. Mark my words....

how it is about marketing? don't spam pls

[NoiseBoy]

Honestly, if you want an ICO to succeed (and we're assuming here that you can pass some basic vetting and have a viable product), the best possible boost you can get from a pre-ICO marketing standpoint is to get on board with cofound.it. Every single ICO they've promoted on their platform has sold out thus far. Simply being associated with CFI guarantees access to 1) a huge pool of eager, sophisticated investors, 2) a professional team of experienced industry experts who have done this many, many times.

[Lena_Storifier]

Thank you guys! This is helpful!

[Svyaznoy]

What I learned from Kickico marketing.

1. Build trust among community.
Investors want to see how team works, if CEO is alive, what company writes in social media and blogs.

2. Asian markets are different.
Classical instruments are worthless. They have WeChat, Kakao etc. Find a middleman - for a local representation.

3. Create useful content.
Videos, to do lists or valuable information. People love to receive added value.

4. Invest in marketing.
Don't dream that once you started your projects - money will pour on your shoulders.

[stuartgh]

What I learned from Kickico marketing.

1. Build trust among community.
Investors want to see how team works, if CEO is alive, what company writes in social media and blogs.

2. Asian markets are different.
Classical instruments are worthless. They have WeChat, Kakao etc. Find a middleman - for a local representation.

3. Create useful content.
Videos, to do lists or valuable information. People love to receive added value.

4. Invest in marketing.
Don't dream that once you started your projects - money will pour on your shoulders.

Thanks for sharing the learning from the Kickico marketing Svyaznoy. On your first point about building trust among the community that makes a lot of sense.

I had an example of this when talking with a developer at the first EOS London meetup last night, who admitted he could have invested in EOS but got "put off". But he couldn't say why exactly, and obviously was kicking himself after such as successful ICO.

This reminded me of my days at eBay in e-commerce, and learning that online consumers don't make purchasing decisions by reading available info, but rather “tend to ignore most information available and instead ‘slice off’ a few relevant information or behavioral cues that are often social to make intuitive decisions".

When running ICO Marketing it's important to track the success of campaigns with metrics that show many people from any given channel such as social media invested in the ICO with conversion funnels.

But it's also valuable to understand why people don't invest and why. As what could be something small to the often technically-minded ICO team, in contrast to a community member that the same issue could act as a disincentive.

Sometimes having conversion funnels set up can spot that hidden 'blocker' like a difficult to use purchasing agreement form.

 

[DariaPT]

What I learned from Kickico marketing.

1. Build trust among community.
Investors want to see how team works, if CEO is alive, what company writes in social media and blogs.

2. Asian markets are different.
Classical instruments are worthless. They have WeChat, Kakao etc. Find a middleman - for a local representation.

3. Create useful content.
Videos, to do lists or valuable information. People love to receive added value.

4. Invest in marketing.
Don't dream that once you started your projects - money will pour on your shoulders.

Thank you for sharing - all valuable insights.
and  the first point seems to be the most important - without that part well addressed the rest sounds useless 

[DariaPT]

I wonder if somebody here can share any experience for promoting project via direct publications by bloggers/opinion leaders. etc.? I am sure that most of the opinion leader overwhelmed with such kind of request for projects support? or is that mainly works when attracting people via Bounty campaign?

[dragon695]

I start to do pre-ICO marketing & find out that it's quite hard: prices very, narrow expertise in agencies, no proper KPI's to be set etc. So I decided at least to collect all reasonable marketing (ok, including PR) instruments that will help to get the best results for ICO. Let's say one stop for ICO marketing:

1. Classic PR - press releases, interviews, Q&A
2. Banner advertising - display ads for extensive reach
3. Influential marketing - connect with opinion leaders.
4. Social media - connect with audience & opinion leaders.
5. YouTube - statements from founders, project introduction.
6. Bounty campaigns - referrals showtime.
7. Placements in blogs - native advertising.
8. Viral media - videos or pictures.
9. Community marketing - you know, Bitcointalk.
10. Events - meetups, conferences etc.
 
Contribute yours! Add instruments to this list.

nice list but if u doing this alone just focus on the way u da best. or u need a team

[DariaPT]

I still wonder can someone share some clear ideas about how to approach the industry opinion leaders and how to get their support and which kind of support that can be? Will they post something in the blogs about your project? Or would they become advisers? Or something else ? And what is the most valuable contribution from the opinion leaders' side?

I also agree that ICO trackers/publish is a good tool to utilize here, as they also may offer additional promotion opportunities such as press-releases publishing or featured articles.