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30 October 2021

ICO/STO Marketing: Plan, Checklist, Strategy, Budget and Consulting

ICO or Initial coin offering era continues and marketing should be qualitatively prepared. Now STO (Security Token Offering) is also quite famous in this space. ICO, as well as STO, is an analog of IPO only in cryptocurrencies and tokens world. Another, perhaps more successful comparison is a fundraising campaign like Kickstarter, where users act as investors. By the way, there are rumors that Kickstarter is launching its platform to launch the ICO, but this is a topic for another article.

ICO appeared relatively recently and gained frenzied popularity both among investors and among organizers. To outline the marketing strategy and approach, let us first understand why users invest in ICO or STO and then marketing expenses.

Users = Investors


Perhaps, a few years ago all of us looked at investors as bureaucrats, businesspersons and just lazy people who receive dividends for their shares. The trade and stock shares look like a continuous stream for brokers. Remember the Wolf of Wall Street. Such foundation, human psychology, and money obsession have become a cornerstone of the ICO or STO success. They invest money in the project in order to get many times more. In the pre-ICO phase, the ratio is up to 100x! On crowd sale or ICO-phase, the ratio reaches 50x. With an investment of $100, you have a chanto ce get the $10,000 it seems phenomenal but everything is real in our world. The most successful companies place their tokens on popular cryptocurrency exchange platforms.

Audience


People scream at every corner of strategy and plan. However, they forget that the analysis of the industry and the audience should be the first point. If your project is focused only on the Danish market, forget about investors from the US and even more so from Asia. The richest investors are now from the US, China, Korea, Russia, and Japan. This is how the top 5 countries look. The whole strategy and plan should be maximally oriented towards these peoples. Otherwise, nothing will work. Additionally, new decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges are gaining popularity and ICO is a logical start for them. ICO and STO marketing in China is completely different, and if you are interested to know more just send us a message and our managers consult you.


White Paper


Industry analysis, the project idea and its future should be clearly shown in the white paper. The team should be involved and have a rich experience in this industry and niche. Education is also appropriate. But this is only the tip of the white paper's iceberg. The main essence is deeper and is an idea and a plan. Working in marketing for more than 7 years, we can safely say that white paper should be technically oriented and marketing-oriented. If the token is built upon Ethereum smart contract, you have to include this. Only mutual efforts can achieve success. The roadmap for the next six months should be carefully worked out. Marketing campaign success directly depends on the quality of the documents and your pitch. Use your resources if you can involve a graphic or UI designer.

ICO and STO Listings


One of the most effective ways to promote and advertise your ICO ideas. The top directory coinschedule.com has an about 50,000 daily users. The lion's share of which is in the United States. However, be prepared to pay flistinging your ICO/STO. The cost ranges from $200 to $3000 for each listing. Some of the sites present a free posting but it is worth the time for you. Usually takes 2-4 weeks to review your application.

Efficiency: average.
Cost: $15,000 +.
Tip. When choosing listings, pay attention to the target audience. If South Korea, or China, prevails there, but you do not have localization in these Asian languages, the result will be deplorable. Investors ICO become objectionable projects, so to succeed in your packaging; the information must be full, self-sufficient and self-promoting.

Ads


Despite Facebook has banned crypto-related ads they still appear there. Managers’ increase sophisticated in their content. For example, cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency trading phrases are banned, but C-Trading, C-Currency is still working. And the target audience easily understands its true message. Earlier the strategy with Bitc0in word worked perfectly.

Channels: Google, Facebook, Youtube.
Efficiency: high
Cost: $50,000 +

Forums, SMM


In our opinion, this is one of the most underestimated channels of promotion. The /r/cryptocurrency thread on Reddit has 650,000 users. Audience reach is going up to 4M users together with /r/bitcoin, /r/btc, /r/ethtrader and 2 more dozens of other threads.



Bitcointalk is the most popular forum for communicating with investors. Every ICO that had been ever held has its own thread there. The number of users and investors is enormous. There are sub-threads for other languages (Chinese, Thai, Russian, and Spanish). However, these channels have their weak side. Communication with the audience should be permanent; literally, 24/7 because of different time zones and requires a huge resource of managers.

Efficiency: medium
Channels:
• Reddit threads,
• Bitcointalk, cryptocurrencytalk.com, and other forums;
• Quora,
• Relevant LinkedIn groups
Cost: $ 10,000 +
Tip. Each ICO listing has their own rating ICO, one of the components of which is a social activity. The more active the team, the more effective for the channel itself, the more influence it has on the part of the listing.

Content Marketing and Outreach


Content marketing stays second in terms of price/quality after SMM and forums. Ideal for narrowly focused companies with a strong idea. To succeed and get the most from this, it is important:
1. Effective strategy;
2. Quality content targeted at users and the product;
3. Good writer. Do not be stingy, an effective writer costs $50 for 1000 chars;
4. Outreach manager;
5. Web publishers interested in the topic.

There are 2 types of content marketing. External and internal. The external is directed to outreach, PR; Internal aimed at revealing and enriching your internal blog. Promotion of internal content works somewhat differently than external. Daily news, interesting notes gather around themselves much more readers than the long read text describing the idea of your product.

Efficiency: medium
Cost: $5000 +
Tip. Include SEO in your content marketing strategy. Organic traffic has an avalanche effect. The result you will notice at each stage of the ICO, and after its end. This will play into your hand if you decide to place your tokens or currency on a top cryptocurrency exchange software.

Events and Conferences


Essentially, in itself, it is a rather weak channel and therefore deserves to stand in the last place. Nevertheless, with its invisible advantages, you can feel quite unexpectedly. As mentioned earlier, your product should be in a nice, pleasant and trustworthy package. If no one from your team was at a public event or conference it will play a cruel joke with you.

Efficiency: low
Cost: $2,000 +
Tip. Attend events like cryptocurrency oriented, but also your industry. Is your idea related to blockchain healthcare, logistics and supply chain? Visit such events; get feedback from potential investors and loyal fans.
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