My sales lead Josh said to me the other day, “Man, all these ICOs always ask about budgets.”
“It’s either too little budget, they have no idea what to spend, or they need to be coaxed into boosting the most crucial part of their sale.”
While talking about marketing budgets isn’t the most exciting thing in the ICO space, it is required because ICO community.
At Crowdcreate, we find that many of our clients have no clue on what they should allocate for their ICO marketing strategy. It makes sense as this business is an incredibly young one.
However, if you don’t find out quick, you may find yourself going under by spending thousands of dollars on tools and ventures you don’t need.
What you need to focus on.
Before the dollar sign even comes up, we have to decide what type of growth and community you are looking for. At Crowdcreate we recommend slow, organic growth and often focus on clean methods when harnessing the power of the community.
This means you have to look at what type of marketing you want to do in the first place. Will you focus on influencers? Will Facebook advertisements make you the most ROI? Here are the top three strategies that you should consider with any budget.
1. YouTube Influencers
2. Community Engagement
3. Publications and Advertisements
YouTube Influencers
YouTube influencers are huge in the ICO market. Gathering the highest quality influencers and creating partnerships should be included in your ICO marketing strategy. There is a reason why lists like the Top 20 YouTube influencers are read so many times online.
Investors are looking for ICO recommendations by those that are trusted by international communities. On the otherhand, ICO marketing teams are looking to use influencers because they want to access their communities. This has created a self fulfilling prophecy of valuable YouTube content and it’s creators.
Collectivebias found that 60% of their test subjects took influencer opinion into consideration before making purchases. This is huge, especially for ICO communities as they are already online.
In another study, 40% of millennials surveyed claimed that they felt their favorite YouTuber understood them better than their friends. Millenials are one of the largest markets in the space. I think you understand why you need to allocate a large budget for your ICO influencer marketing.
Crowdcreate recommends you allocate at least 10 to 50 thousand dollars for your ICO YouTube influencer marketing. This allows flexibility to work with different types of YouTubers with different types of communities.
Some channels may be only in the couple thousands, but these thousands can be die hard investors. Some groups may have hundreds of thousands, but they may have been bought. Having a large budget allows you to test the waters and gives you ICO marketing shopping options.
Community Engagement
I write alot about community engagement and for good reason.
Community engagement is crucial for the success of your ICO
In the ICO marketing world, people always underestimate the power of the investor. I was once told by a participant that investors are like CIA agents. The good ones are always probing and prodding. These good investors are usually the ones willing to spend their hard-earned money.
These good investors like to be engaged.
Things like bounty programs, airdrops, and influencer videos can really boost your community’s engagement and allow you to make meaningful connections with your participants.
You also have to consider the health of your ICO chat room, like Telegram, and how you are planning your ICO community management. This requires hiring a professional team, like us, or hiring people from the community. Either way, you will have to end up paying them.
Your community needs engagement, and engagement costs money.
Crowdcreate recommends that you spend atleast 15,000 USD for your community engagement. Different firms charge different prices, but it is near impossible to get a team under that price.
Publications and Advertisements
I listed publications and advertisements under the same listing for a good reason.
Both markets are victim to ICO law restrictions and rising pressure from the SEC. This spells disaster for ICO marketing as it would for any billion dollar industry.
You need to be very careful about where you tread when it comes to both of these things. I had a client run Facebook ads in January 2018, only to find that Facebook banned his company group and restricted their emails from accessing any files on the platform. That’s a huge blow.
This means that publications and their affiliation businesses are increasing their prices. And for good reason. It’s getting riskier for these people to publish in the first place. Especially in foreign ICO markets, which dominates over half the space.
This is the same for advertisements. With Facebook, Twitter, and others following their lead on banning cryptocurrency, it seems like a huge marketing strategy has been cut off from the ICO world. This isn’t worrying the community too much, but it should.
Crowdcreate recommends that you have at least 20,000 USD for publications. Finding these people is time consuming. If it’s time consuming, people will charge you high prices for it. This is the state the market is currently in with publications and advertisements.
Note: Alternatively you can be Hacker Noon’s weekly sponsor for a bitcoin.
Any less than this amount and you run the risk of waiting time and resources in looking for PR. We have had clients who want the world in terms of PR without actually investing into it. PR is an investment like any other marketing venture.
Everyone Makes ICO Budget Mistakes
Even people like Neil Patel makes mistakes. He self proclaims that he’s spent millions of dollar on software he didn’t need or applying expensive growth tactics. Let me help you out with what I’ve learned along the way about budgeting in the cryptocurrency and ICO community. These are ICO marketing strategy points you must think about.
If you are unsure about budgeting, don’t be afraid to contact us at Crowdcreate. We are experts in community engagement and idea platform driven by influencers, investors, and enthusiasts. Our expertise in community management, definitely includes budgeting. Reach out to us and let us know what your ICO budget looks like.
Originally published at www.crowdcreate.us on April 16, 2018.