If you are ready to execute your million dollar idea and want to learn how to promote ICO. Then you need this Ultimate ICO marketing strategy!
What stands between reaching your Hard Cap is a killer ICO strategy guide.
And this post is exactly that.
We will go through all the moving ICO marketing pieces in this article.
It’s up to you how you execute this ICO marketing plan you will be able to reach your hard-cap in a heart beat.
Here’s a proof that we know what we are talking about:
We did this by using the exact same ICO marketing strategy that’s outlined in this article.
So, without wasting your time – let’s dig in!
-> Get Ready to Sell Tokens <-
This post is a no BS step-by-step guide on how to market your ICO.
So from the get-go, you will have to get your hands dirty.
To start off here’s the list of things you need to have before you start your ICO marketing:
1. Create a legal entity
It’s really important that you create a company before starting the token sale.
Why?
It’s because if something goes wrong (and there are high chances it might) and if you don’t have a legal business you and all your assets will be liable to remedy the consequences.
So, using someone who has an experience in this field would be a good idea.
The good news is there are lawyers that specialize in ICOs. And here’s the best guy in the business.
But if you are on a budget, creating a company is actually really simple. Just Google: create a company in <your country>.
2. Whitepaper
This is really important when it comes to making an ICO.
Every investor who would ever consider buying your Token will want to have a look at your white-paper.
So, write a white paper explaining what you want to do:
- Info about the problem and solution
- Include the token economics
- Info about the ecosystem
- How you plan to sell the token
- Why people should buy it
- And how you will make this business sustainable.
There are ton of good examples – one thing I would suggest is reviewing your top 3 competitor’s White Papers for inspiration.
3. Explainer video
Create max 1-2 minute video explaining the problem and your solution.
Finding a freelancer is your best bet if you are on a tight schedule.
4. Develop a website
If you don’t have the experience in coding this might be the hardest part.
But the good news is on UpWork.com you can find good freelancers to help you with this.
Make a simple landing page, include –
- explanation of the problem
- your solution
- the roadmap
- add team section
- advisor section
- ideally also where you have been featured and/or some customer reviews
5. Create social media accounts
This is a really important step but also a part where most will make a mistake.
Don’t create more social media accounts than your team can handle.
Stick with the basics – remember, less is more:
- Facebook account
- YouTube account for the explainer video
- Telegram account
- Extra accounts – Discord, Reddit, Medium, etc. – create these only if you have a dedicated person on the team who can manage these.
6. Creating the Token
Well, yeah, this is crucial.
No Token – No ICO.
As simple as that.
The good news is – it’s rather simple.
Before you go ahead and deploy your token you want to decide on which blockchain you will create your token:
- Fork another blockchain – one option is to take for example Bitcoin and fork it – use the same properties bitcoin has and just create another cryptocurrency that isn’t special with anything.
- Forking another blockchain is quite simple and can be done with ForkGen.
- Create a ERC20 token – you can build on Ethereum network and create ERC20 token – 80% of the ICOs are using this. And the good news is – it’s simple:
- Here’s how to create a ERC20 token in 1 hour.
Without going into detail this exactly what you need to know to launch a successful ICO.
The best part is – you can find help with all of the above. There are a ton of awesome ICO marketing agencies to help with this.
Once this is ready, it’s time to make sure your website is ready for traffic.
-> Capture the Leads <-
With this ICO marketing strategy, you will bring a lot of people to your page.
Like a lot.
But the problem is – they will leave.
And so, it’s your responsibility to capture them and get them back to your page when it’s time to buy tokens.
Therefore, you need to know how to promote ICO.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Use Facebooks Re-targeting tool:
Have you noticed how you see ads of the websites you have just visited?
Showing ads to people who just visited your site is an effective way to convert them into your token buyers.
And to do that you need to install facebook pixel and create ads for specific audiences – here’s how.
2. Use AdWords Re-market:
AdWords also offers the same deal as Facebook – you can show ads to people who did a specific action on your page.
And to set-it-up, there are a couple of things you need to do:
- Create Google Analytics account – here’s the guide.
- Then you will need to create audiences and later the ads – and the guide is here.
3. Web Push Notifications:
Web push notifications are those little popups on your phone or browser. They are extremely good way to get immediate attention of your users and a must tool when you need your community to take immediate action.
The best news are – there is One Signal – a tool that offers completely free Web Push Notifications.
Honestly, I have no idea how they make money.
Go check it out, they are awesome.
4. Engage and convert your visitors
Once people land on your website they might have questions, right?
They go over yo buy Tokens section but for some reason cannot find buy button.
It would be a pity if you would lose this kind of a customer.
So, making it easy for people to interact with you is a must.
Here are the top tools to use:
- Intercom – best functionality
- HelpCrunch – bet price
So, now you can be sure that the people that you will convert into token buyers as many people as possible from the ones that land on your website.
To give you an idea, how good is this strategy – this is what we have been able to do by following exactly the same tips laid out in this strategy.
Pretty amazing, huh?
And in this post all this is yours completely for FREE.
-> ICO Marketing Strategy’s Checklist <-
Before we get our hands dirty, here’s a ICO marketing plan template on how to promote ICO and reach your hard-cap.
This 8 step ICO checklist is a cornerstone to make your Token a Success.
- Get your site indexed and SEO ready
- ICO bench – best FREE channel:
- Guide how to hack ICO bench – get more reviews and rank on top of the list
- Get your ICO reviewed by the top YouTubers and Crypto Podcasts
- This is the top channel – one YouTuber can sell out your whole ICO.
- Get a lot of PR
- Find the top crypto news-sites and mainstream media sites
- Reach out to the right people on Linkedin or contact them via email.
- Free list of Crypto Sites and Contact Info added lower.
- Create a list of platforms where to advertise and advertise on them
- forums
- social bookmark sites
- crypto news sites
- crypto blogs
- ICO lists
- Facebook groups
- Linkedin Groups
- Top Sub-Reddits
- Top telegram channels
- Use AdWords
- Mainly for re-marketing
- But also for acquiring new customers
- Exclude all the ICO, token, blockchain, etc. related keywords.
- Use Facebook Ads
- Facebook is still an amazing tool for re-targeting ads
- And also can be used for acquiring new people
- Note: you must exclude all the keywords related to blockchain, ICOs, etc.
- Email marketing – one of the top channels
- Buy other newsletters
- Scrape emails
- And create triggered email sequences
- Scraping email
-> Submit Your Site to Search Engines <-
This is something that most ICOs lack.
You Google their name and they are no-where to be found.
The truth is this is something that could boost your traffic by a lot.
When your brand name is on ICOlists, Youtubers are reviewing your page, Crypto sites talking about you – a lot of people will “Google you”.
(that’s exactly what will happen after you read this guide)
So, you need to make sure that you rank on Google’s 1st spot.
And we have THE guide to make it happen:
1. Prepare the Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml
Robots.txt file is the first thing that Google’s spiders check and it shows what they can crawl and what they cannot.
Also Robots.txt shows where your sitemap is located.
And Sitemap.xml is the map of your website – it shows spiders where everything is located.
So, this is super important if you want people to be able to find your page on Google.
So, here’s the to do list:
- Generate Robots.txt file – it’s free and can be done here
- Create Sitemap.xml – that can be done here
- Then upload these 2 files on your server on Root Directory. If you don’t know what it is – ask your developer ๐
2. Submit your site to Search Engines
This is actually possible with 2 simple steps.
And if you do it Google will know your site exist instantly.
Here’s how:
- Head over to – https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en&authuser=1
- Then add your website and click on Add Propery (1)
3. Then you need to head over to “Crawl” section (1) and click on “robots.txt Tester” (2) – then hit Submit the Robots file. Now Google knows where is your Sitemap.
4. Then it’s time to Submit your Sitemap.xml – all you have to do is head over to “Sitemap” section (2), enter sitemap’s location, and hit “Submit” (3).
That’s it now Google knows your site exist.
You will have to wait up to 2-5 days before some data starts to come in but this will help a lot people to find your website.
The same you can do for other search engines:
- Here’s a guide how to submit your site to Bing & Yahoo.
- And here’s a guide how to connect with
Done, now people will be able to find your site on the top search engines.
All these hacks were to get your site ready for traffic.
And make sure that as many people as possible convert and buy your traffic.
NOW! It’s time to learn how to get traffic to your site.
We will go through EVERY single channel that can get your ICO traffic and make sure you reach the Hard Cap.
-> Hack ICObench <-
Here it’s important to note that you can spend $0 and get more traffic than if you would spend $10k.
How?
By making sure you have the highest rating from Unpaid Listing.
And that’s actually easy.
Your rating consists of two parts:
- ICObench bot’s rating
- And expert rating
1. Benchy – The ICObench Bot
Benchy crawls the web and evaluates your website based on several criteria. If you make sure your ICO has all of the necessary criteria – you can get a 5-star rating.
And that’s actually simple.
- Head over to your ICOs listing and click on https://icobench.com/ico-analyzer
- Click on Rating Tab and see what you need to do to improve your rating.
Here are all the criteria:
-
- Number of team members
- ICO Information:
- Product Presentation
- Marketing and Social Media – You must be present on all of these channels
Once that’s taken care of – you can even futher boost your rating by inviting experts to leave a review.
2. Expert Rating
It’s important to note that you cannot buy ICObench Expert Reviews.
And if any of the Experts Request a payment for their review – You can and you should report them to ICObench.
So, how can you get a good rating from them?
It’s simple – by educating the experts.
- Head over to ICObench Expert tab – https://icobench.com/people
- Contact the Experts
- You can find them on Linkedin
- Or get their email on hunter.io
- And educate them about your project:
- Don’t be Salsy and don’t offer a payment
- Tell about your Vision and why your product is a Must
- Explain that you have the right Team for the job
- And how far are you with Product and when fully functional product will be released as well as how can it change the world & crypto space for the better.
And if you are lucky – you will get someone to leave a review.
The best part is – that’s FREE and if you follow these steps, you will get you a ton of traffic.
-> Get your ICO Reviewed by Crypto Podcasts and YouTubers <-
If you can find a great YouTuber to review your ICO this can potentially sell out your ICO.
This can be the biggest traffic boost.
Or the worst money ever spend.
There are a ton of sh*ty YouTubers that buy Likes, Followers and Comments – SO BE CAREFUL!
Take your time evaluating them – and here’s a list of The Best and the Worst Crypto YouTubers.
So, here’s a step-by-step guide how to get on a Podcast or get your ICO reviewed.
1. Make a List of best Crypto Podcasts and YouTubers
To get your site reviewed, first step is to find the best Crypto Podcasts and YouTubers.
The easiest way to do that is by – searching for your Competitors on Soundcloud, Apple podcasts, and on Youtube.
Then just pile up a list of all the podcasts you want to contact.
2. Evaluate who S*cks
This is really important – or else you will spend a lot of your marketing budget on YouTubers and Podcasts that don’t bring traffic.
So, here are tips on how to decide which YouTubers you want to avoid:
- Never work with a YouTuber who has disabled comments – that means they are hiding something
- Check the correlation between views, likes & dislikes, and comments.
- If they have a ton of views and no dislikes and comments – that means they buy views – avoid these YouTubers at all cost.
- Comments are the most important thing – engagement brings people to your website. So, YouTuber must have a lot of comments. If no, then look for a better one.
- Some YouTubers make people to comment their ETH or BTC addresses for Free give-aways – that’s how they fake engagement. Also, avoid these YouTubers.
How to avoid terrible Podcasts:
- Soundcloud shows really good and reliable stats on how popular are different podcasts – use different engagement metrics to evaluate Podcasts’ performance.
- Search for their names on www.kwfinder.com – that will help to see how popular or unpopular their Podcast is.
If we would have known this before – we would save a lot of our money.
So, please, use these tips – it will save a lot of your marketing budget.
3. Contact the Crypto YouTubers and Podcasts
Finding someone’s contacts in 21st century is SUPER EASY.
Here’s how!
Contacting Crypto YouTubers
1. Go to YouTuber’s channel
2. Locate their About Section (1) and message them directly (2) or find their email.
Contacting Crypto Podcasts
- Contact any Crypto Podcasts:
- Go to SounCloud
- Or Shopify Podcasts
- Or Apple Podcasts
- And to contact Podcasts look for the little “message” button
4. Create The Perfect Pitch
A great message to influencers can make or break your chances on getting your ICO reviewed.
So spend some time to write the perfect subject line – that will get your email opened. This is a crucial step to learning how to promote ICO, or any other business for that matter.
Then creating a catchy message – will get your ICO reviewed.
And of course, we got you covered. Here’s an un-used killer template that you can use to contact Crypto Podcasts or YouTubers.
Here’s the Crypto Template:
“Hello <You Awesome Beast>
I am a big fan of your channel for a very long time. And your video about <Say something personalized โ point out a video>
As you have always been honest with your community our values align perfectly.
The same as you โ we do ZZZZZ and we are here to fight <XYZYZYZ. <Company’s name> is XYC.
My name is <5 word intro>.
To do ZZZZZZZ we would love to schedule a live interview and share how <Company’s name> will <change the world>.
On Top of that, we have a special 9 step approach to share with your Awesome Followers to help them <offer a freebie>.
So far we have been able to attract YXC die-hard fans and with your help <the sky is the limit>.
Let me know if you are interested and I believe we can find a deal thatโs perfect for both of us.
Letโs make it happen?
Kind regards,
<Team Awesome>”
So, now you have what it takes.
You know the steps to take to sell out your ICO.
-> Get Crypto PR <-
Getting Press Releases is a crucial step in ICO marketing strategy. It’s something you must learn to fully know how to promote ICO.
But if the purpose of the PR is to get the traffic – that most likely won’t happen.
PR in the Crypto World is good for The Social Proof.
In other words, PR is important to show your ICO is relevant and it has a potential.
But if you are doing PR to get traffic it’s important to do a background research before committing to anything.
1. Check The Traffic on SimilarWeb.com
Imagine if you could see ICOs like EOS where and how they get traffic.
Well, now you can.
Visit SimilarWeb.com – there you will see from which sources the traffic comes.
So if 99Bitcoins are saying that their article about EOS brought the most traffic – you can check SimilarWeb to see that they are full of [insert word that suits your taste].
SimilarWeb will help you to asses any site’s traffic and see if the price that Crypto Site is asking is adequate.
This hack usually helps us to negotiate 50-90% lower price.
2. Check Articles traffic on SEMrush.com
What if NewsBTC sends you a proposal and they want 1 BTC for one article.
Is it worth it? How can you know?
It’s actually really simple.
- Head over to ICObench
- Find the Top-ICOs at the moment
- And Google – NewsBTC +ICO’s Name
- You will start to see all of articles written by NewsBTC about the top ICOs.
- Copy the URL
- And Paste it in SEMrush.com
This is what happened when we took Casper API Press Release that was published on NewsBTC and added it to SEMrush.
As you can see – this article was viewed by so few people that SEMrush is NOT able to report the traffic amount.
Within few minutes you will be able to see that the press release on NewsBTC is worth no more than $100-200 bucks.
Like this, you will be able to see that the Crypto News Sites won’t be able to generate any traffic. So, negotiating the price will be a lot easier.
In some cases, we have been able to negotiate all the way down to $0.
Amazing, huh?
3. Let’s get PR
Now you know how to negotiate. Let’s find sites that could write about us.
There is no better way than Spying on the Top ICOs.
Learn from other mistakes, improve, and get better results.
3.1. Spy on the Top ICOs
EOS.io is the ICO that raised more money than it will ever be able to spend.
It’s definitely worth to study their marketing.
This case we will use Linkody.com. Start by signing up and adding eos.io.
3.2. Filter all the top Sites
Then within seconds you will be able to see all the sites that have writtened about EOS (1) and you can sort them according to their traffic (Alexa rank) (2).
And the best part is – you will see quite a few sites where ANYONE can submit a URL.
The best part is – we created a list of the Top Crypto News sites and found their Contact Information. It’s HERE completely for FREE.
This is the Ultimate Guide on how to promote ICO and if you follow these steps – reaching hard cap will be a walk in the park.
And there is more!
We created this Extremely Detailed Guide on how to promote ICO and it’s all yours Completely Free!
Donwload it Now and come back to it whenever you want.
Now it’s your turn!
Now that you have learned how to promote ICO, you have everything you might need to make your ICO a success.
So, no excuses!
Go and execute.
We would love to hear your feedback – if there is anything you would like us to add to this How To Promote ICO guide- just let me know ๐
We want to create the most detailed ICO marketing guide on the Web.
And we want to make it FREE!
How to Promote ICO
Get a detailed ICO marketing tutorial NOW – hurry-up while it’s FREE.
Soon we might consider charging for it.
Excellent post. I definitely appreciate this site.
Continue the good work!
Excellent post. I used to be checking constantly this weblog and I’m impressed!
Extremely useful information particularly the ultimate section ๐ I deal with such info a lot.
I used to be seeking this particular info for a very
long time. Thank you and best of luck.