NFT Marketing Guide: How to Generate Buzz to Your Project

Last Updated on March 29, 2024

Blockchain technology’s popularity is on the rise. It has disrupted several industries in the past few years. From finance to automotive to healthcare to government consumers to telecommunication and beyond, blockchain is everywhere. The technology is used in different ways and forms and is evolving rapidly. Non-fungible token (NFT) is one of the recently exploding functions of blockchain technology.

An NFT is a unique cryptographic asset that isn’t interchangeable and you exclusively own it. This property makes NFTs quite popular in several industries like art, music, licensing, fashion, etc., where you need to verify and validate the authenticity of the asset. Brands like Nike, Visa, Adidas, Coca-Cola, and several others have already joined the NFT bandwagon.

As there are a lot of new NFT projects hitting the market on a daily basis across several industries, it is essential to have a robust NFT marketing strategy to make your project stand out from the crowd. If you don’t market your NFT actively, it might get lost in the hype.

This guide will help you create a sustainable NFT marketing strategy for exponential growth and sales.

What is NFT Marketing?

NFT marketing refers to promoting your non-fungible tokens.

Since you need to launch and promote your NFT to a different audience (not your typical end-users) on a digital NFT platform where it will be traded, therefore, you need an NFT marketing plan.

Simply launching your NFT on a leading platform isn’t enough. Instead, your token might get lost on the platform in the absence of marketing. A proper NFT marketing game plan helps you with so many different things including generating awareness, driving sales, building a community, customer engagement, and more.

NFT Marketing Strategy Guide

The success of your NFT project depends on how actively you promote it. And this requires an NFT marketing strategy that will help you hit the market with the right plan.

In the absence of a proper plan, you might feel lost, won’t be able to measure performance (and success), and you’ll not be in a position to figure out what works best (and what doesn’t work). This is why creating an NFT marketing strategy is essential that lays the foundation of your marketing and what techniques you’ll use to generate sales.

1. Set Clear Objectives

The first logical step in creating an NFT marketing strategy is to set clear goals. Ask yourself this simple question: What do you want to achieve with your NFT project?

Do you want to increase sales? Do you want to build brand awareness? Are you interested in building a community?

Most NFT projects underperform because they try to achieve everything in a single go with unclear marketing objectives. You need to be specific and focused. And this can be achieved when you have a clear marketing objective.

The best way to set goals for your marketing strategy is to use the SMART goals technique. A SMART goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound:

Your marketing goal must have these 5 characteristics if you want to achieve it.

Here is a conventional marketing goal: To generate maximum sales from an NFT drop.

Now here is the same goal converted into a SMART goal: To generate 5,000 sales in 7 days after launch.

This is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to business success, and has a time limit attached to it. Creating this type of goal for your NFT marketing strategy is the first step towards success. 

2. Identify Marketing Channels

Pick the market channels you plan to use to promote your NFTs. Here is a list of the top marketing channels you should look into:

1. A branded website (e.g., Azuki)
2. An NFT marketplace (like OpenSea or Rarible) 
3. Influencer marketing
4. Paid advertising
5. Social media marketing (Discord, Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram)
6. Content marketing (press releases, news coverage and sponsored content).

Ideally, you need to use multiple marketing channels to reach as many people as possible to generate sales fast. The quicker you sell your NFTs, the better (duh).

Social media platforms work best to create initial buzz around your NFT and generate sales. Azuki, for example, showcases all its new arts on their Twitter account:

!ikz 🛹 pic.twitter.com/m9hwDVgOUZ

— Azuki (@AzukiZen) January 23, 2022

This contributes to buzz and excitement.

3. Create Hype

Between us? It all comes down to content that creates the #FOMO hype.

No matter what marketing channel you use to promote your NFT project, you’ll need content that creates hype.

Whether it is text, video, audio, graphics, user-generated, interactive, ads, or in any other form, your content must stand out from the crowd.

Azuki, again, does a great job of creating hype with “it’s coming” teasers:

Trust the process ⛩️ pic.twitter.com/o9bWBtdy2P

— Azuki (@AzukiZen) January 25, 2022

or by welcoming new buyers with a retweet on their official account:

Reddit and other social networking platforms have dedicated marketplaces where you can list and promote your NFTs. For example, there is a marketplace on Reddit for NFTs that has 195K members:

This is a nice place for NFT drops and generating initial buzz for your project. You might want to check out the best NFT subreddits, you can find more relevant subs. 

Beyond social media, press releases and news coverage are great ways to create brand awareness and credibility, and generate sales for your NFT project. Take Pizza Hut for example, they rolled out with a press release for its first ever NFT pizza. The official press release was issued via Newswire and the news was covered by all the leading news sites, why? well – it’s Pizza Hut after all, a well-known brand, but it worked. It also used social media to spread the news:

The digital Mona Pizza is upon us. Pizza Hut presents 1 Byte Favourites, a highly exclusive NFT minting run of 1 byte pizzas, each for the cost of 1 bite of pizza. Available for an extremely limited time, but will last forever. https://t.co/f4831jybLc pic.twitter.com/yhUbxfs7YG

— Pizza Hut Canada (@PizzaHutCanada) March 17, 2021

Don’t Miss Community

No matter what marketing technique you use, it must have two features:

1. Hype
2. Community.

If you can’t do it, your NFT collection probably won’t kick off as expected. 

Hype and buzz alone won’t be useful if you don’t have a community that gives wings to your NFT project. The golden rule is: Build community first and sell art second.

If you don’t have people ready to buy your NFT, you’ll not be able to generate the sales you have dreamed of. And once you have a community, a little hype and buzz will do wonders.

Check out this article to find out how to create and grow an NFT community.

4. Analyze and Tweak

Finally, constantly monitoring your NFT marketing strategy is crucial. The real-time analysis will help you make adjustments right on time.

For instance, if a social media platform isn’t doing well for your campaign, stop investing money on it or maybe come up with another angle (a.k.a A/B testing).

The idea is to see what works and what doesn’t work so you can tweak your NFT marketing strategy and campaigns on time. The best way to measure performance is by identifying the right metrics and KPIs relevant to your strategy and objective.

If your objective was to generate 5,000 sales in 7 days after launch through social media, you will need to use metrics like engagement rate, number of shares/retweets, conversion rate, number of sales generated, new followers, etc.

Using the right metrics to track marketing performance right after launch helps you identify top NFT marketing techniques and channels. You can then channelize your budget and marketing efforts to what’s working.

Tracking marketing performance and tweaking your NFT marketing strategy at the right time is critical for success.

Best NFT Marketing Agencies

If you aren’t sure how to create and execute your NFT marketing strategy or don’t have the time to do it yourself, you can always seek help from crypto marketing agencies. A crypto marketing agency specializes in the blockchain industry and has media connections and marketing techniques, and can be handy if you have the budget to spend.

Here are the top 3 NFT marketing agencies to consider:

1. Chainstory

Chainstory is a leading blockchain marketing firm based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It is a performance-based agency that offers several services to blockchain ventures including SEO, content marketing, PR, online reputation management, strategic messaging, and thought leadership.

2. CrowdCreate

CrowdCreate is a California-based blockchain PR agency that serves a wide range of blockchain and crypto industries. It focuses on connecting you with investors, influencers, and your target audience, so it is a blockchain PR firm.

The key marketing services include crowdfunding, PR, content marketing, media publication, and investor outreach.

3. Coinbound

Coinbound is a crypto marketing agency from California. It specializes in helping crypto brands reach their target audience. The key marketing services include NFT marketing, paid media, influencer marketing, PPC, and SEO.

Conclusion

NFT marketing isn’t difficult but it is different. You need to have a clear understanding of the rules that govern the blockchain ecosystem. Generating sales and buzz for your NFT project requires a robust NFT marketing strategy with clearly defined objectives, marketing channels, and hype and community. Monitoring and tweaking your marketing strategy continuously for improvement is the key to success.

If you can do it yourself, great – go ahead.

Else, seek help from a marketing agency that specializes in NFT and crypto marketing.

Frequently Asked Questions