How to market your NFT: Successfully

Article number four of a series of blog posts. As a heads up, I don’t claim to be an expert, I don’t have a Fidenza, nor a Bored Ape and at that I’m not a Cool Cat. I am a market participant who has been in a handful of discord servers, minted many cool NFTs, engaged with numerous artists, etc. At the end of the day, I identify as an artist, a designer, and somewhat of a marketer. 

It’s through these lenses that I intend to shine some light on artists, developers and creators to provide some insight or behind the scenes into how their journey has been so far. Through learning from each other, by trial and error, I believe we can create an even better space for years to come. 

The year 2021 brought us a load of new opportunities in the blockchain space. Nonetheless, the biggest of these were DeFi and NFTs. Both had a tremendous impact over the financial world and society alike. 

The ecosystem built for this new trend is incredible. People built tools to find rarity, coding libraries, they built blogs (like this one hey-hey), websites, YouTube channels, and the list goes on!  There are new drops every day, new collections with 100x potential every week.

Whether people are in for the “profile-pic-mania” or they want to sell their own art or just to flip NFTs, there is a place and type of NFT for everyone. 

Making your own NFT 

I can predict that NFTs are becoming more and more popular and slowly but surely get their roots into more and more industries. I really believe they will play a critical role in how people will interact with the online world in the future but who knows where the space is heading. 

There are 4 main components of your NFT Collection:

Art itself
Business model
Marketing
Community
Each one is critical, and each one of these is focused on adding value to holders and to the market, and even society for specific problems.

Marketing is Essential

When creating an NFT collection, marketing is critical. Usually, such projects are created around the hype that surrounds them and that is built until launch. 

Below I've written out a list of questions that will help you build your Marketing Strategy easier:

• How many NFTs are there in the collection? 
• Are there just a few hundreds? 10.000? Somewhere in between?
• What benefits do holders have?
• Do your holders get a percentage from each sale or just the creator? 
• Can they vote on the future endeavours of the project?
• What benefit do they have from buying, selling, and holding the NFT?

Think about these questions, because scarcity is a crucial factor of success in NFTs. 

You don’t need 10,000 as it’s commonly practised. I'm looking at you MAYC! This number appeared because it’s more or less the limit of the code used to generate these collections.

Marketing is the backbone of your project, along with the art itself. You need to think about your holders. Saying this, your project needs a purpose!

• What purpose does the collection have?
• What is the ecosystem built on?
• What is the long-term value?
• Is your collection “an entry” or is "one and done”?

The purpose is what drives people and communities towards the better. Society is built on a common purpose. Is it merely a Phase I towards something bigger? Get creative, liberate your mind, and find your purpose. Purpose is the starting point of greatness.

• Why do you create your NFT collection? 

Getting rich quickly is not the answer. 

• Do you have a proposition or cause?

You need to create long-term value to your holders or external parties that can benefit. Maybe you can donate to a cause linked to your purpose, maybe you can redistribute a percentage of sales back to holders, maybe you can give them various other freebies and benefits.

• Who else benefits from your NFT Collection?
• Is it a closed or open ecosystem?
• Will it be you and holders/sellers that benefit financially or there can be other parties involved in this?
• Will somebody else benefit? 
• Will you donate a percentage to the next scientists or doctors, orphanages, or climate change?

Finding the answer of these questions is a great starting point for generating intrinsic value. Even though the NFT collection is technically a digital product, it doesn’t mean that it cannot be more like an organization, community, or company. Linking the real world to the digital one is a great value generator. The more value you add, the more people will want your NFTs.

The Team

Who is the team? At what degree is the team anonymous? 

People need to be assured there is a team they can reach out to when in need. They need to know the project is built by real people who aren’t afraid to connect with their audience. 

You don’t need to share your real name or picture, but a discord username should be good enough. 

Asking THE Real Marketing Questions

• How will you market your project?
• Will you use paid advertising, Twitter, press releases?
• Will you build a community?
• What will your website look like? 
• What will you display there?

In order to build a community and for people to know about you, you need exposure. You need to find ways to be out there. You can use paid advertising techniques or just do it organically.

Whether you do it through Twitter, Reddit, advertising, or some other Guerrilla techniques, it’s your choice. But as a piece of advice, it’s better to do all of them.

Keep this in mind (and I cannot stress this enough): the core of your project is your community. The purpose is to grow your community and keep it engaged. You will also need Community Managers for this.

A Short Task List for your Marketing Activities:

1. Tweet very often. You need to create a Twitter profile for your NFT Collection and tweet multiple times a day. You need to join conversations about NFT and add value to the ecosystem for building a following.

2. Go to Reddit. Reddit is the front page of the internet. You can get ahead by getting exposure there.

3. Do lots of AMAs. The concept of AMA (Ask me Anything) is a great way to get people interested in your project. They will ask you lots of questions, and you’ll answer them. It will help them better understand the project and to get bonded with it.

4. Paid advertising. This is greatly helpful just because you will generate brand awareness. People will see you and know about you.
Build a community and engage with it often. Community is one of the most important aspects of your project. The community is the living blood of your NFT Collection. They can help you hype your product and generate more value, as well as generate more brand awareness.

5. User generated content is magnificent, and it’s free.

6. Press releases. These might be more expensive, but maybe you can find some deals, or even benefactors. Maybe you can negotiate a few press releases for an NFT. If placed on the right websites, you can get ahead and get lots of new members.

7. Your Website is The Face of your NFT Collection. Be sure it looks great.
If you’ve seen the websites of the most popular NFT Collections sites, you’ll understand. Their websites look incredible. Even though some are just one pagers, it’s enough.

8. Create a Story for your Community and Website visitors. Storytelling and more importantly, visual storytelling are maybe the most powerful tools ever created for imbuing the viewer with emotions, purpose, fulfilment, and to get his/her interest and admiration for your NFT Collection.

Closing Thoughts

NFTs are more than a space, it’s an industry. It is an industry that has great value and tremendous potential for growth. It could be one of the most important technologies ever created for our society. Only the future will tell. 

Personally, I believe that NFTs are the greatest thing that has happened to the Art industry since the invention of the iPad Pro or Procreate.

There are multiple things to take care of when creating an NFT Collection such as marketing, community etc. which I've talked about above. Are you trying to create your own NFT Collection?

I hope this helped. If you would like me to cover a specific topic or area as part of this personal challenge , please let me know. I think it would help others and, of course, I would love to link out to you!

If you’ve enjoyed this, feel free check out my website Prince of Cavan Creations or to follow me on the social medias, where I can be found under @princeofcavan. As always, let me know your thoughts!