How to Promote Your ICO

This is a guide on how to promote your ICO for startups and individuals looking to do an ICO. ICOs, or Initial Coin Offerings, are all the rage at the moment, and there are many promising projects out there. However, good ICO projects tend to get drowned out in a lot of noise, which makes it hard for the crypto investors to take a serious look at your project.

Therefore, to stand out from the crowd and attract the crypto investor community, you need to know how to promote your ICO the right way. This guide will help you to learn how to do that and run a successful ICO campaign. The information comes from observing several scores of ICOs go through the process. We then distilled down the components of a successful raise versus an unsuccessful one, and figured out the key components of what makes an ICO successful. Here are the tips to help market your ICO to crypto investors.

Tip-1: Have a genuinely good value proposition for investors

This seems like a no-brainer, but you’ll be surprised by how many ICO teams don’t think about what’s in it for the investors. Remember, like any investing, the people are putting money into your idea and they may lose it all. The crypto investors know this all too well. However, as the creator of the ICO, it is your duty and responsibility to minimize the chances of failure, and provide investors a way to increase their chances of success. In case the product is successful, then the investors who put money into the ICO should be rewarded.

Don’t create unnecessarily large incentives for the team and advisers. You should aim to give away more than 50% and usually up to 80% of your tokens to the ICO investors because they are taking a huge risk. If you have inflation, make sure it makes sense and is used sensibly to improve chances of a successful product.

Make sure that if the protocol is successful, then the value flows to the ICO investors, i.e. they share in the project success.

Tip-2: Fill in the essentials: Whitepaper, Roadmap, and Team

Don’t skimp on this aspect. Think of what a venture capitalist would look at – team, vision, future of the industry and market dynamics, team dynamics, etc. These are all the elements that crypto investors look for as well. Therefore before you promote your ICO, you should get the basics right. Make sure your whitepaper is thorough. Whitepapers are not marketing documents. You need to provide all the technical details of the project in this document.

There needs to be a clear roadmap on where you see the product and protocol and how it evolves over time. This needs to be commensurate with your ask from investors, i.e. how much you’re looking to raise in the ICO. Make sure these are congruent and not ridiculous money grabs.

Finally, make sure the team is solid and that you have at least one serious blockchain developer. You also need members of your team to be proficient in your market/industry with experience. Highlight these experiences. Have a bio for each member of the team and what they bring to the table.

Tip-3: Use Bounties to Reach the Community to Help Promote Your ICO

Now let’s get into the strategic aspects of how to promote ICOs. You will need to reach the community, and one proven way is via bounties. This almost always happens on Bitcointalk forum’s bounty section. It is usually better to hire a bounty manager and pay him a decent amount to manage and run the bounty on your behalf.

Also, you need to structure the bounty correctly. You should allocate a minimum of 1%-2% for all the bounties. The most returns are obtained for Bitcointalk signature campaigns and articles/blog campaigns. After that come the social media campaigns like Twitter and Facebook. Pay more attention to Twitter than Facebook because that’s where the community really engages. Finally, have decent bounties for translations and community engagement in those threads.

If you’re new to the crypto world, bounty management can be very difficult to get right. This is because the crypto community is perhaps nothing like you’ve ever seen. If you think you run a successful startup and can just do a successful token, you’re going to be mistaken. If you’re an investment banker who has done a dozen road shows and think you can nail ICOs, you’re going to be sorely mistaken.

If you’re new to crypto, then go with someone more experienced. There are new consultancy companies that operate community/bounties for your ICO. We recommend checking out Amazix, an ICO agency that handles marketing, community management, paid advertising, bounty campaigns, influencer marketing, social media management, and project assessments. They are picky about working with only the best ICOs in the space, and have built a reputation around it, so if you have them listed for community management, it helps increase your ICO profile as well.

You can also use the Viral Exchange for running some social media part of ICO bounties.

Tip-4: Advertise on Authoritative Sources

Advertising is another way to reach the community. BitMedia is the most popular Pay Per Click (PPC) ad provider to the crypto community. They have a reach into many of the popular crypto news and information sources, and can deliver good amount of relevant traffic.

There are other PPC ad networks you can check out as well, such as  CoinURL and CoinTraffic.

If you are interested in PPM, i.e. paying per impression, then anonymous ads is by far the best option for you. It is one of the oldest advertising networks for the crypto investors and has been going strong for over half a decade. They are placed on the most prominent crypto sites, and can really help promote your ICO to the relevant communities.

You can check out more resources on how to advertise your ICO.

Tip-5: Engage with the Community

There’s no substitute for engaging with the community. Your best bet to promote your ICO to the crypto community is via Slack, Reddit, and Twitter. Focus on these three and other platforms like Facebook can take a back seat. You should reply to community questions and concerns promptly. Hire a crypto social media manager if you need to. If you do this, make sure the person is well versed in the crypto space. This is essential, as regular social media folks don’t tend to understand just how unique crypto communities are.

Photo Credit: mkfeeney