How to promote your ICO in three steps?

How to promote your ICO in three steps?

An Initial Coin Offering, or ICO, is a tool to attract investments that is increasingly popular among companies. The ICO market is actively developing; According to Coindesk's June report, in the early summer of 2017 Blockchain projects had attracted $ 327 million with the help of ICO, which was more than the amount invested by venture capitalists ($ 295 million in the same period).
However, authorities in many countries have not yet determined their attitude towards this element, and some important states have already begun to ban ICO (China, South Korea). All this means that those who are considering the implementation of ICO are better without delaying the publication of the tokens. We will tell you how to draw attention to this process through content marketing.

Step one: ads in the popular ICO calendars

The first step that all ICO organizers must follow is placing information about the next launch of tokens in special places on the calendar. There are many resources where you can post a planned ICO schedule and you can search for them. Also, if you use a popular blockchain technology (such as Ethereum) for ICO, you should google the calendars that mark the projects that run on it.
Here is just a short list of this type of ICO calendars:

• Coinschedule.com
• CoinGecko.com
• Cyber ​​Fund
• ICOCrowd.com
• ICOCountdown.com
• ICO-List.com
• Tokenmarket.net
• TokenSaleCalendar.com

If you take a look at other popular calendars, you will see that many projects place information about themselves wherever possible. And this is the right approach, because journalists and technology bloggers often create their own lists of "N major next ICO for investors" based on calendar data (here's an example of that article).

Step two: Publications in professional communities

ICO calendars are great, but publications about these resources do not provide immediate feedback to the audience and do not help explain how interesting the project can be for people. Therefore, the second logical step in the promotion of ICO should be the publication of announcements and links in social networks and communities.
It is not necessary to get involved in unwanted emails, a much more effective approach is to publish in thematic communities.
Here are just some:

• Specialized forums . The most famous is Bitcointalk, where practically all ICO projects are executed.
• Thematic sub-dits: / r / ethtrader / (~ 84,000 subscribers), / r / icocrypto (~ 9 500 subscribers), / r / Bancor / (~ 2 600 readers), etc.
• Quora Discussions : There are many discussions here about different ICOs, specific cryptocurrencies and blockchains, in which you can actively participate.
• Professional LinkedIn groups: there are many groups, for all tastes, with thousands of players, and here are a few: one, two, three, four, five.
• Facebook groups: ICO problems, cryptocurrencies and blockchains are also discussed on Facebook (for example, ICO, Funding, Angels, Seeds, Investors, Startups).

In many of the groups and communities listed, there are rules that must be followed. But these resources cover hundreds of thousands of people, which opens the door to action (including guerrilla marketing).

Third step: native advertising, general thematic media and blogs

After the ads have been posted on calendar sites, thematic forums and social networks, it's time to work with online media. There are some different options available. First, you will need a blog to post news, press releases and details about your business. Normally, the Media platform is selected for this purpose.

On the one hand, sending press releases to the media is not a bad idea. On the other hand, the number of new blockchain and ICO startups is growing at such a pace that, in our experience, you should not expect to have a free publication on such resources (or it will happen so late that it is likely that the ICO has ended up so).

Therefore, if you are working with media in the cryptocurrency topic, you must also prepare a budget for the promotion of the content. In foreign popular media, prices can reach tens of thousands of dollars. For example, an editorial committee of one of our clients' projects required $ 15,000 for an ICO article. This is one of the main drawbacks of native advertising.

Given this fact, and the fact that blockchains use not only cryptostartups, but also projects from more familiar commercial areas (for example, digital advertising and food-retail), in many cases the costs of promotion in online media in the segment of Cryptocurrencies turn out to be meaningless. Instead, it is possible to write columns in relevant online media, including online business, especially because the latter are quite interested in the subject and can accept not only the article but also expert comments.