Many blockchain projects jump on the IEO bandwagon without carefully planning out their marketing strategy. So, they always end up blowing their budget on driving traffic through ads without first building a solid foundation—an active and engaged community.

It is necessary to master your IEO marketing strategy to get your project the traction it needs to succeed. IEO marketing is an ongoing objective that requires focus and staying updated about the trends in crypto marketing to maximize exposure for your project. 

In this guide, we outline the steps you should take to get your IEO marketing campaign off the ground. 

Build Highly Optimized, Mobile-Friendly Website

Your website is your first impression. You need to have a strong first impression to attract the attention of the crypto community. The website should also aim to exceed visitor expectations and clearly tell the story of why they should choose to back your project. It should be secure, have a clear structure, and works fast.

Here are three vitally important things any modern website needs: 

• Speed: Create a clear site structure so that people can quickly find what they need.  Pay extra attention to how users experience the speed, responsiveness and visual stability of your site’s pages.

• Mobile-Friendly: Mobile is no longer a growing trend, but the norm, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, don’t even think about going online.

In addition to the website, you also want a whitepaper that showcases all the details about your project, including technology, business plan, and token model, project team, and other relevant information. 

Social Media Marketing for IEO

Social media marketing is a great way to get your IEO marketing off the ground. Social media allows you to reach target investors with ease while engagement through social networks allows you to interact with investors across the globe. However, you need to focus on the most relevant social media platforms. 

In Bitcoin talk, for example, you could boost engagements by sharing your project through ANN post, interacting with community members, and then using those feedback to improve the project. You can carry out similar forum work on telegram by creating a public project group.

On Facebook and Twitter, informal communication is encouraged, while the professional network LinkedIn is ideal for investors, crypto evangelists, and specialists from the blockchain and crypto industry. Quora, judging by the bulk of articles on promoting crypto projects, is a must-have channel. Twitter is where you focus on increasing organically the number of your followers and level of engagement around the project.

Reddit is more of a PR platform than to gain followers—your account will look cool in front of a large audience of crypto fans. As for LinkedIn, the best options for placing ads on the site targeting a specific category of investors. 

With Quora, your strategy should be to find relevant topics on the platform (such as cryptocurrency, blockchain, money transfers, etc.) and answer questions from there. If you work carefully but without aggressive marketing in your responses, you will likely see a significant influx of traffic to your IEO page.  

Facebook has banned direct advertising of crypto projects on its site but you can gain Facebook followers in the form of organic traffic through an Airdrop / Bounty campaign that you conduct.

Public Relations for IEO

Having a relationship with journalists and reporters can also help with generating traditional PR in the press. Of course, paid press release services can also help create the awareness and visibility you need for your project.  A crypto marketing agency can also make a convincing case by developing and telling positive stories about your IEO and distributing content to media channels (both traditional and crypto media) and journalists. The technology is largely uniform across the blockchain industry, but the back story of the company, the trials, and tribulations, or the expectations of the founders are typically newsworthy. You don’t need to buy followers to build trust among the community.

The agency can also help with the SEO company aspects of your PR campaigns. By promoting the right keywords and producing both internal content, such as blog articles and external articles for other sites, your project will gain exposure more quickly and in more relevant places. The more places your project is mentioned, the better. With a sure-fire strategy combining multiple campaigns for promotion, including both SEO and PR, the more knowledge the public will have of your project before the IEO. Publicity is critical, and therefore working with a marketing agency that understands how to best promote your token is a no-brainer.

Moreover, the IEO launch should be neatly tied in with the PR campaign to ensure that maximum traction is gained from a well-timed, coordinated marketing effort. It is also a good idea to add your project to all available crypto trackers (e.g. icobench.com). Of course, many other factors need to be taken into consideration, such as budgetary constraints, free versus paid press coverage, and the type of relationship the IEO marketing agency has with top-tier media. If the general view of the media is that the IEO is worth covering, this is an added bonus for your project.

Influencer Marketing for IEO

Influencer marketing plays a big part in promoting the IEO launch and beyond. The crypto community is a niche group of well-connected individuals. By building successful relationships within this community, it is possible to determine where maximum engagement is possible. Careful execution of social media campaigns using the right influencers is the key to maximizing your IEO marketing efforts. 

For example, YouTube and TikTok videos are effective multimedia options for promoting Initial Exchange Offerings. Third-party videos have greater credibility with investors than videos created by the start-up. The Blockchain Investors Community is a valuable resource to consider. For TikTok videos, you can focus on creating casual, humorous, authentic connections by working with influencers who know how to use TikTok. The best TikTok ads are the ones that blend in well with the organic content, so that your TikTok ads receive comments, likes, and shares at the same rate as organic TikToks.

Sometimes, it may be beneficial to incentivize investors or users with tokens as a reward for promotional activities. Things like bounty campaigns for blog posts, contests, airdrops, and AMAs can be effective.

The more coverage you can generate through bounty campaigns, the further you cast your net into the community of potential investors. Many blockchain projects believe that a viral campaign is the best way to generate the publicity they seek. However, users must have a reason to share articles, guides, PRs, videos, etc. A company with a unique idea or technology that is beneficial to the end-user has a natural advantage over a generic startup with an IEO launch. 

Working with the right influencer can help you create an effective marketing campaign that feels organic to the users at first glance. The influencer will also measure the engagement the videos get to determine which users are showing the level of interest that warrants retargeting them with more promotional campaigns. Also, pay attention to campaign success data so you can track which influencers resonate most with your target investors. 

Choosing the right platform to hold an IEO is very important. It gives a project the best chance to achieve its fundraising goal. Some of the things to consider when selecting an IEO platform are: ease of use, safety and security, high liquidity, multi-coin support, and strong technology. Most exchanges ask for an upfront flat fee and a percentage of tokens or the funds raised to launch your IEO. The good news is that in most cases, terms are determined through private discussions rather than standardized procedures. 

Listing in Multiple Exchanges

It is important to target listing in top exchanges like Binance, Okex, Huobi — this will automatically demonstrate to the community that your project is trustworthy. However, to achieve success on these platforms you need to already have some funds to cover operating and marketing costs for your product, with the IEO serving as an option for additional funding, not the first funding step. 

Alternatively, you could try to raise starter funds through an IEO. You’ll then use these funds to execute your product creation and implement your marketing strategy. To execute this strategy, should approach Tier-2 exchanges that are willing to accept money to launch your IEO. Since Tier-2 platforms do not necessarily evaluate IEO projects, they are not particularly trusted by investors. So you will need to spend a lot of effort and time to build trust with the community to prove that your project is credible. This requires significant investment in marketing and community building. 

If your IEO marking budget is substantial enough, consider launching an IEO on several exchanges simultaneously to accelerate the fundraising process. 

TokenMinds: Premier IEO Marketing Agency

As a trusted IEO marketing agency, TokenMinds can help you create and implement a successful IEO marketing strategy for your project. We have a team of SEO, PPC, and crypto marketing experts who know how to amplify and promote your project to the crypto community. Contact us now to launch your IEO.