3 Must-Have Strategies To Get Started With Crypto Marketing
From a decade of media experience to crypto marketing!
As a marketing professional with 18 years of experience, I have been trained to equip myself with a broad knowledge of both traditional and digital strategies to become an unshakable marketer — regardless of the industry that I work in.
There are two key success factors that I’ve learned across the years to thrive.
First, always be resilient when the tides of change come (and to adapt quickly!). The agility for the marketer to grasp and understand new changes taking place daily is paramount to staying ahead.
Second, the hunger to learn and keep up (regardless of age) is another integral factor. Defining your career’s success is your hunger to learn continuously for both the success of your company and self.
Three years ago, being deeply interested in the crypto space, I took a leap of faith and entered the crypto industry! I quickly learned that this sector never slumbers nor ever registers a dull moment for the robust marketer!
So, I have decided to write a marketing piece to help and share my experiences with newbies who are thinking of dipping their toes into this crypto sphere.
There is a sea of marketing strategies that one can deploy when it comes to crypto marketing however for the purpose of this article, I will be concentrating on 3 key marketing strategies.
Let’s get the ball rolling on what is crypto marketing.
Marketing for crypto is unlike any other! Crypto is also known as cryptocurrency and when I first explored the industry, crypto appeared to be a large-scaled, unstructured network built on a so-called blockchain system. It was a network shared with everybody, where anyone and anything can connect to crypto! It is like holding your financial system in your own hands!
NO middle man. NO banks. NO financial institutions.
Marketing in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry is non-traditional marketing. There are many unconventional tools that crypto marketers need to arm themselves with to bring their messages out.
Key crypto factors like high market volatility, new and groundbreaking technology, and a highly sceptical community who were burnt in 2018 when the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) bubble popped, means marketers are tasked with heavier responsibilities to overcome these challenges and make their brand go viral.
For the newbies entering the crypto space, let’s start with low hanging fruits or tools first:
Strategy 1: Crypto content marketing 101.
Content marketing is important because it answers your audience’s burning questions. With good quality content, you can build trust with your audience, engage your audience, and generate leads. Additionally, in today’s crypto age, your audience expects high-quality, thought-leadership content and consistent story-telling from the brands they follow.
It is important for crypto marketers to find a reliable blogging platform to publish their content supported by social media promotions. Crypto content marketing blogs go beyond the good and faithful WordPress!
There are so many options for marketers to choose and I have highlighted some simple tools for marketers to use here - based on my experience.
i) Steemit:
Steemit is a blockchain-based blogging and social media website, which rewards its users with the cryptocurrency STEEM for publishing and curating content, owned by Steemit Inc. Steemit is great for drawing in new readers to your content but poor in SEO.
ii) Medium:
Medium is an online publishing platform. This platform is an example of social journalism, showcasing the work of both amateur and professional writers. Medium is a popular blog format for many crypto companies and is regularly regarded as a blog host.
iii) Ghost.org:
Ghost is a simple to use platform that is open source. Ghost is great for creating an online blog or publication and is SEO friendly. This is the blogging platform that I use to spread my company’s news and content marketing.
Strategy 2: Crypto social media marketing goes beyond Facebook marketing.
Today, with the COVID-19 pandemic hitting us, most brands need to use digital adoption and social media to reach their audience.
This rings especially true for blockchain and crypto companies. Crypto audiences are diverse and international. Relying purely on Facebook is not sufficient for any brand, so here are some must-have social media accounts for crypto marketers to arm themselves with.
i) Telegram:
Telegram allows the creation of public channels and is used by almost anyone who embarks on the crypto journey. Telegram’s advantage is that it allows media compression and gives users the choice if they want to compress the image/video. The latest version of telegram now comes with voice calls making this channel a clear winner amongst many of its competitors.
ii) Twitter:
Twitter is a powerful tool that promotes virality and has an incredible ability to capture the cryptocurrency community’s attention. Twitter has been adopted by the majority of the crypto community and is often used as a source of daily news. Twitter analytics is a great tool for you to measure the success of your campaign.
iii) Reddit:
According to Alexa, the Reddit site is ranked #17th in global internet engagement. Reddit is an easy to use forum that aids crypto marketers to communicate succinctly and quickly to their audiences.
Some popular Reddit channels that crypto audiences flock to are as follows:
- r/cryptocurrency
- r/bitcoin
- r/btc
- r/ethereum
iv) Instagram:
Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms engaging 18 to 34-year-olds.
Instagram posts keep your brand alive and its focus is on visual impact with minimal text, it keeps the audience glued to the screen, and with a simple scroll, the brand story is simply communicated across this platform. Instagram stories are a quick way to showcase new updates of your company’s brand and product.
v) BitcoinTalk:
BitcoinTalk is an online forum hosting large Bitcoin communities for digital currency and asset discussion.
This channel is used by the majority of ICO companies to introduce their tokens or projects and to update audiences on developments and upcoming events.
vi) YouTube:
The majority of popular crypto influencers aka KOL (Key Opinion Leaders), use YouTube as a platform to strategically offer educational or engaging content to communicate universally and remotely to their audiences.
YouTube creates longevity for the brand and is able to host long content that explains your brand and product in a digestible manner via visual representation in video format.
That is actually what I embarked on to launch a series of five videos called Overbit Sketches through humour and to educate audiences about cryptocurrency. Check out the first video clip on Sketches here and watch the Behind The Scenes video to understand the strategy behind video marketing to crypto traders.
Strategy 3: Crypto measurement is fundamental for the health check of your campaign.
Measuring the success or failure of a campaign is essential for any marketer. A marketer needs to set-up a system to evaluate and predict the success of a campaign before and after the launch of a brand or a campaign.
This is a great step for campaign post-evaluation and to avoid making the same mistakes again. Marketers now have a reference point to learn from their mistakes and to come up with better future campaigns.
Always start with SMART Goals when setting up a crypto campaign.
* SMART = (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-specific)
Do note that the below list is not exhaustive but here are some tools which I am currently using to market the Overbit brand and measure its campaign success with minimal cost.
i) Google Analytics:
This is an important and free tool marketers use to measure if what they are doing is pointing them in the right direction.
Google Analytics provides all the information you’ll need to analyse your website’s traffic, where it’s coming from, who is visiting your site, the frequency of visits, duration, and more!
ii) SEO ranking:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is significant for the brand because it pushes the website’s visibility, which translates into more traffic and wider opportunities to convert prospects into users.
SEO is a topic all by itself but for the purpose of this article, I will only concentrate on key SEO roles. SEO is not just about search engines but the implementation of good SEO practices to improve the users’ experience and the implementation of quality backlinks to your content.
Users often trust search engines with higher top-ranking positions based on their keyword search compared to sites with lower-ranking profiles.
iii) Social media engagement:
Social media is used by all crypto organisations to reach it masses and it is important for the marketer to audit the engagement levels of its social media execution.
Social media engagement reflects the total number of interactions made on any given social media post and is often used by marketers as a measurement tool. This could cover:
- Clicks
- Shares
- Likes
- Retweets
- Comments
- Content recycling or repurposing
Crypto marketing is not for the faint-hearted.
I hope that crypto marketing has created some curiosity in your mind. The crypto market is an exciting journey because it has the potential to be the fastest, most accessible, and universal way to transact value in the digital space, simply by just activating your smartphone and the internet connection.
Yes, challenges never seem to end but wins can be ever fulfilling! I agree that crypto marketing is not for the faint-hearted. Today, crypto-marketers also have to be more technical, analytical and steeped in behavioural economics than non-crypto marketers of today or yesterday.
Regardless, take one step at a time as you navigate through this sphere with both product knowledge and soft skills. Focus on achieving great things and also enjoy doing your job. Keep learning and be open to challenges and you will see the window of endless marketing opportunities for all who are willing to try!
Till then, my fellow marketing advocates, stay strong and safe as we continue to spread our marketing passion in all that we do! :)
“Find your spirit, and no challenge will keep you from achieving your goals.”
— Christopher Penn
Biography
Junice Liew is the Head of Marketing at Overbit.com and is an experienced marketer with demonstrated working history in the media, private education, blockchain, and crypto industry.
Passionate about marketing, she is skilled in digital strategy and communications. Junice holds a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) Honors — First Class, from Charles Sturt University in Australia.
In her free time, she is committed to doing social work in the community and has a deep love for animals — both big and small.
Follow her on LinkedIn or on Twitter and you can read more of Junice’s articles here.
