Here are the top 5 tips for promoting your ICO crowdsale, a rising tide lifts all ships.
0. Core Responsibilities
This is why you are doing a crypto project, remember this is decentralized software, you are building a network, it is very hard, but networks grow exponentially and there will be big winners. If you can’t even do these 1st basic steps, then stop and disband the project, this 0. step is such the bare minimum that it is laughable to anyone in crypto for the last few years if a project doesn’t have these.
- Bitcointalk.org or niche equivalent
– You should have 12 accounts by now and have talked about your project since you thought of it…if not, start right now figuring out how to participate in the announcement section and other niche sub boards. - r/Bitcoin (reddit bitcoin sub or /btc or /ethereum or /cryptocurrency )
– Massive influential audiences that you will need to announce progress of your project on. Pick 1 or 2 of these channels and pound them very hard. - Hangout/AMA and Explainer Video
– You’ll need to introduce yourself on video to prove you are real and to convince us why we should invest. Google Hangouts works well for video, otherwise do a Reddit AMA. An explainer video is also required and can’t be the $20 upgrade from Fiverr. It should include the people behind the project, personal interview style can work best. Don’t cheap out on production, your looking to raise serious money, spend it where it counts…and it really counts here. - Social Media Accounts
– You will need to have at least 2 or 3 of these and be VERY active on answering questions and moderating the spamming, trolling and other unpleasant behavior. Forget about supporting your investors and forget about making any money.
– In order of importance (Email/Form Contact,Telegram,Slack,Twitter,Steemit,Medium,Facebook,Linkedin,Youtube,Instagram,etc…)
1. ICO Ratings & Review List type sites
Get listed on these sites ASAP…the more positive and reputable places you can get at least a listing on will reinforce your brand as trustworthy. Remember ICO = trust building exercise, if all the review sites are mentioning your project, then you get more and bigger investments coming in from confident and greedy investors. You want to create demand and have your ICO be oversubscribed.
| cyber.fund/radar |
| ico-list.com |
| icoalert.com |
| icocluster.com |
| icohoo.com |
| icoranker.com |
| icorating.com |
| icotimeline.com |
| icotracker.net |
| icowatchlist.com |
2. Start Collecting Emails 5 minutes ago.
You must collect the email address of anyone remotely interested in your project. This needs to be front and center of your ICO landing page and really be the attractive thing to do once you hit the page. Email is extremely powerful as it is the lowest common denominator not requiring an account like twitter,telegram,slack,etc…and you control 100% of the message and the members of the list don’t know eachother, only you know them. Long term you will thank me for building your email list from the start as it will become the way you send out official information and give you a powerful voice to your investors. Your investors are everything, without hodler/users of your coin, you have nothing, always remember this. ABC = Always Be Collecting email addresses.
Use clever ways to entice folks to signup, once you have their email…it’s game over, it’s just a matter of time until you work your magic and get them more involved in your project at even some very basic level.
3. Use Bounty Programs Very Wisely
Bounty programs are being exploited by bots and scripts now. These are not the kinds of advocates or investors you want hodling your coin. Try and really limit these programs to real actionable items. For example, bounties for manual local language translations are usually very worth it. Beyond these many of the other social media sharing programs are infested with nasty bots that won’t add the viral value to your token. The secret is to figure out a way to get people to share your project and get them to do the content creation, marketing and promotional work. More here on how to run a successful bug bounty.
Check out this great spreadsheet for Bounty Programs here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vzJ4Ou59pdCjLWUC4TFrWjxiSDediTRgRXpFBTeKTvc/
4. Create a Pay Per Performance Model
Each investor needs to get a chance to spread a discount to his connections. Let the investor be in a secret club and they can get something for referring friends…and the friends get something too! This is called a double sided referral program. It’s a very powerful psychological tactic you can use with the right products and services. It’s not easy to master, but there are a ton of ways to integrate this into your ICO.
Example landing page for successful mainstream referral program (steal this idea for crypto)
These referral programs have made Multi-Billion USD companies like Dropbox, this is serious business.
Hope these help,
Phil Maher
