An estimated 3 ICO campaigns closed daily in 2017. This year, we can expect a surge in ICO marketing, with greater funding being channelled to this sector.
How Much Money Is Going into ICO Marketing Campaigns?
The cost of creating successful ICOs will vary from one company to the next. An ICO begins with a Whitepaper. This is the company’s blueprint for success; it includes the vision, and mission statement of its founders, and it must be checked for accuracy by the crypto experts. Fortunately, this component of your ICO campaign needn’t cost a cent. It is possible to put the proverbial pen to paper and create the perfect Whitepaper at zero cost.
Beyond the theoretical roadmap of what the ICO hopes to achieve, and how it plans to get there, there are real costs to contend with. The first major investment is the company’s website. The question of how much to invest in a website is rather nebulous – it could range from as little as $5,000, to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the quality of the website SEM, SEO, design and development teams. Beyond the basics, the costs of these campaigns can rise pretty quickly. According to Hackernoon, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the average cost of outsourcing ICO marketing can run in the region of $300,000!
Why Are Mobile Websites Important for ICO Marketing Strategies?
ICO companies operate on the cutting edge of technology. It is somewhat surprising then that these companies have not invested sufficiently in optimizing their websites for pre-launch or post-launch activity. Optimized ICO websites must be designed for high rates of conversion. This means they must be SEO ready.
Search engine optimization is one of the most rudimentary concepts in website design. It is built into the very fabric of every homepage, landing page and is found on inbound and outbound links across the board. Search phrases, terms, images, multimedia, tags, titles and descriptions should all be optimized for search engines like Google.
Today, the majority of customers are using mobile devices – Android and iOS – to scour the web for information. ICO companies must be mobile compliant in every sense of the word. Since Google will soon be ranking websites based on mobile parameters, ICO marketing strategies must factor this into the broader scheme of things. Google crawlers are switching over from PC to mobile, and this will dramatically affect the ranking system on the world’s premier search engine. ICO marketing experts need to pay attention to trends among search engine giants like Google. Things like responsive design and SEO for mobile functionality are of paramount importance.
A Glut of Cryptocurrencies Can Cloud Investor Judgment
Here’s another truism that ICO marketing experts need to contend with: There are currently 1,519 cryptocurrencies across 8,708 markets. For all the ICOs that are preparing to launch, and all the cryptocurrencies that currently exist, it’s heavily populated, highly congested, and deeply confusing for everyday investors.
Without a fully optimized ICO-ready website, a company has very little to offer the broader user base. Press releases, marketing campaigns, mentions, and experts’ advice about an upcoming ICO will fall on deaf ears if there is no central hub for all of this information to point back to. That’s why it is imperative that an ICO-ready website is up and running long before the expected launch on the markets.
There are multiple approaches for ICO marketing experts vis-à-vis cryptocurrency websites and token sales. Sometimes, companies prefer to create all the necessary hype for an ICO launch with an ICO-ready website that becomes redundant after the launch. Then, there are cryptocurrency websites that extol the virtues of the current blockchain technology, or smart contract system etc. in a way that has longevity.
This enduring presence can positively impact an investor’s perception of the company and its product offering. Incentivised initial coin offerings are a marketing ploy used by several companies to get the crypto community buzzing about the upcoming ICO. Remember: ICO’s are unregulated ways of raising money for new ventures. Several countries have proscribed ICO launches, including China and Bangladesh, and countries like India have taken a similar position.
Activity-Laden Social Media Pages, Blogs and Updated Content
It’s important to understand that an ICO happens while the company is putting its plans into practice. Investors are buying into the theoretical concept and are fully prepared to fund the initiative because they believe the company has good corporate governance and a strategic vision for success. Prior to the ICO, the company’s website could provide valuable information about how early-stage investors can get their hands on digital currency which is limited by its very nature.
As such, the marketing action should be geared towards creating an effective ICO page structure with headers, countdown timers to the ICO, updates post ICO, and effective calls to action. As with all other converting websites, the ICO website must have social media connectivity on active social media hubs like Facebook, G +, and Twitter. Investors are easily turned off by clicking on social media icons that lead to inactive pages. These are but a few of the many ICO marketing tips, tricks and strategies that successful ICO campaigns use daily.
