Best practices of NFT marketing from the most successful Web3 brands
Epic Web3 Weekly Newsletter
Heyo, Web3 enthusiasts 👋
This is the Epic Web3 Newsletter — a weekly dose of best practices & insights from the top industry experts to help you dive into Web3 and boost Web3 products.
In this week’s deep-dive, we’re gonna to:
Bring you a brand-new bunch of Web3 Growth Summit speakers;
Explore how to promote NFT projects like the best brands in the world;
Share the hottest deals and news from the Web3 space.
👀 Say what?! Another rockstar speakers added to the Web3 Growth Summit lineup
We’re only one week away from the event and brand-new awesome speakers continue to appear. So why don't you meet them?
Look, we've got experts from Polygon, Oasis Foundation, Safary, Aragon, Kryptomon & others to help you grow in the Web3 space.
Just to give you extra details, we’re ready to unveil more of our agenda. Here’s what you gonna learn:
“How to move fast without breaking things: DAO governance experimentation strategies,” — Samantha Marin, Communications at Aragon.
“Why confidential NFTs are the future of Web3,” — Gasper Parte, DevRel Lead at Oasis Foundation.
“Web3 growth: Virality, vangelism, and Ecosystem,” — Quinn Campbell, VP of User Acquisition at Axie infinity.
“Bringing metaverse to enterprises: lessons from the field,” — Arpit Sharma, VP at Polygon.
“Growth hacks and strategies for start-ups in Web3,” — Mansoor Madhavji, Partner at Blockchain Founders Fund and LP at Loyal VC & Draper Goren Holm.
🔥 Exciting, huh? And we’re still holding it at a low price.
So don’t miss your chance to learn from these professionals — join the Web3 Growth Summit.
🧑💻 Don’t fall prey to common NFT marketing mistakes. Community Insights on how to promote Web3 projects like the most successful brands in the space.
Though Web3 may be a new form of the internet, succeeding in marketing doesn’t require 3rd generation principles. Despite what so-called Twitter experts may say, core marketing principles haven't changed — we just have more tools.
We asked Ipalibo Da-Wariboko (experienced global brand marketer, community builder, and host of ‘Meet Web3’ Twitter Spaces) to share what NFT marketers do wrong and how to avoid their mistakes.
Let’s take a look at the core marketing principles:
1️⃣ Select your audience.
A lot of amateur Web3 marketers ignore this step, assuming that their project will resonate with everyone — but this is never the case. So how do you pick an audience for your project? Ipalibo recommends two ways:
1) Start with people with shared interest, if you are building a passion-driven project
2) Start with people who have a shared problem, if you are focused on a utility-driven project.
For example, Star Atlas is for people who love MMORPG space exploration games (shared interest). While, World of Women is for people who want to see more women representation and diversity in the web3 space (shared problem).
2️⃣ Define your unique value proposition (UVP).
It’s important to evaluate the landscape to see if you’re the first, and if you’re not, you need to define why you are different to your audience.
For example, Boss Beauties seeks to educate and empower the next generation of women and girls by using their treasury to fund mentorships, scholarships, and creative collaborations for women and girls. Then there is Cool Cats NFT, which positions itself as a community-driven and owner-centric project - returning 20% of all ETH raised to the our community through contests, raffles, etc. and using the rest to build Cooltopia, a gamified ecosystem built on interactivity and utility, community rewards and growth.
3️⃣ Bring your UVP to life in a creative way that’s unique to your project.
This is known as your brand identity. This is a critical aspect of marketing that some projects fail to understand. These projects, in pursuit of achieving the success of more popular peers, copy them in look, feel and tone. This is a terrible mistake and they quickly suffer for it.
For example, there are copy cats of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Bored Wukong (a collection of NFT avatars based on the Monkey King, which has been facing accusations of plagiarism). Then there’s Desperate ApeWives, a collection of 10,000 NFTs of female apes inspired by influential trends. This project hit a peak average floor price of 2.69 ETH in December 2021 and today has a floor price of .25 ETH.
Then take a look at Goblintown (goblintown.wtf), which uses its own language, made of up weird words and sounds, like “ₐₐₐₐₐₐₐᵤᵤᵤᵤᵤGGGₕₕₕₕₕ” on its Twitter feed and Spaces. The NFTs themselves look like nothing else on the market. Further the project actively avoids sharing a roadmap or promising any utility. There’s a clear identity to Goblintown that is uniquely theirs. Anyone who tries to follow in their footsteps will be dismissed as a copycat.
4️⃣ Share your message widely with the world.
Too many projects take a one track approach to promoting themselves. They rely too much on one approach or channel, e.g., flooding Twitter DMs and Mentions.
Research, from the world renowned Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, has proven that using multiple channels and tactics increases the impact of any marketing program. So share your message through Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, get on podcasts and in the press. Write long form content, create short and long videos, and make GIFs. Use influencers, solicit content from your early followers and share.
For example, Doodles has made use of Twitter and Instagram, created graffiti and displayed billboards in New York City, hosted events at SXSW and NFT NYC, and partnered with influencers, bringing on Pharrell as their CBO. Many of their activations have happened in 2022, taking their average floor price from 7.8 ETH at the end of 2021 to 13.39 ETH as of July 16, 2022.
5️⃣ Make it easy for people to join and buy into your projects.
A common mistake projects make is they introduce hurdles, such as requiring people to share a tweet or refer a friend, before people can join their community.
Hurdles that are designed to protect the integrity of your project or community, such as an application, are valid, they can even improve the perception of your brands.
But hurdles that aim to turn your potential community members into advocates, even before they have a chance to experience what your project or community is about, are a mistake. Let people experience what you have to offer and then encourage and support their efforts of advocacy. Some of the best projects in the NFT space, like Cryptopunks and Goblintown, started out as free to mint and relied on secondary sales to fill up their treasury. They recognized the power of genuine community advocacy and secondary sale royalty.
So there you have it, make sure your project follows the five steps and you will be approaching marketing like the best brands in the world.
P.S. If you want to learn more about NFTs marketing strategies, don’t miss the Web3 Growth Summit. We’ve planned a separate day dedicated to this very topic.
Web3 is a fast-changing industry, that’s why we can’t leave you without up-to-date news. Here are the juiciest ones to share this week:
1/ Multicoin Capital raises a $430M crypto fund. The fund will focus on the crypto ecosystem, including Web3 infrastructure and DeFi, and invest in early-stage projects & later-stage companies. While the crypto market stays falling, the capital keeps flowing.
2/ Farfetch partners with Outlier Ventures to fund Web3 startups through the new accelerator, focused on supporting projects in digital fashion, immersive experiences, tokenized loyalty and the creator economy.
3/ Animoca Brands raises $75M in funding. The blockchain game company will use the funds to invest in more games and advance the vision for the “open metaverse.”
4/ Lightspeed receives over $7B from four funds, bringing its total assets under management to $18B. Called Lightspeed Faction, the fund will focus on early-stage blockchain infrastructure projects and support exceptional entrepreneurs globally.
Wrapping up here! Hope you found this dose insightful and wish you a great week ahead 👋
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Cheers,
The Epic Web3 team