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In this case, we would like to share the experience of our marketing department that worked on the promotion of a cryptocurrency exchange.
Unfortunately, we cannot share many details, such as the amount of investment or advertising budgets. But we want to preserve this story and share our experience, as a lot of our efforts were invested in the project. Therefore, we write without details, names, and numbers.
NDA project is a cryptocurrency exchange.
The service is an outsourced marketing department: content creation, advertising on Telegram channels, cooperation with partners, and reputation management.
Project CMO — Serhii Soloviov
Navigating the case study:
- Our customer
- Stage one. Identification of needs
- Stage two. Research
- Our team
- Conducting ICO for a cryptocurrency exchange
- What did we need to achieve the results?
- Conclusions
The approximate time for reading the case is 18 minutes.
Our customer
In 2019, we were approached by a customer with a project — a cryptocurrency exchange. It was the first regulated exchange in the post-Soviet countries. A lot of effort was invested in legalizing the exchange.
For example, the exchange was audited by E&Y and had an authorized capital of $1,000,000. These were mandatory conditions for obtaining a license from the state registrar.
Stage one. Identification of needs
We consulted with the customer and identified the following project features:
№1: it is difficult for the customer to find a marketer who really understands the topic and understands the specifics of working with cryptocurrencies;
№2: the target audience is not used to the fact that cryptocurrencies can be worked with legally in the legal field. Therefore, it is necessary to convey to the market all the advantages of a regulated cryptocurrency exchange;
№3: cryptocurrency promotion is prohibited in most advertising tools, so standard methods will not work.
To address these issues, we proposed:
- create a marketing strategy that takes into account all the features of the project;
- immediately start working on content, reputation, and user engagement.
Stage two. Research
We always conduct research at the beginning of a project. This helps us to select a team of specialists and find answers to the following questions:
Thanks to the research, we learned:
- how our customer’s business works: what exactly we do and why it is important for the audience;
- how cryptocurrency exchanges work, who are the strongest competitors and what needs to be done to differentiate ourselves from them;
- what tools and promotion channels can be used, taking into account the limitations of traditional advertising platforms.
In 2019, the cryptocurrency market was divided between international and local exchanges. The launch of a new project required not only considerable effort but also considerable investment in marketing. However, at the final stage of the research, it turned out that there was no funding in the required amount 🙂.
95% of the project budget was spent on construction and legal support, so there was a serious problem.
Sometimes marketing requires much more money than anything else. It’s better to make a simple product and refine it in the process of development than to spend everything on the product and be left without advertising budgets.
Many projects failed to develop because the cost estimates were made without taking into account marketing costs or with incorrect calculations. Estimating an advertising budget is not difficult if you do it in advance.
Contact us for a consultation to find out what kind of advertising budget you need to promote your project in your field.
During a meeting with the customer at the final stages of the research, we were given a new task:
- to conduct an ICO to attract investment for the development of the platform.
Thus, we had a project within a project. But we’ll talk about it a little later.
Our team
Thanks to our research, we were able to build a team that could solve the tasks in a comprehensive and high-quality manner.
In addition, we needed to work with content translations into several languages. Therefore, we created a localization department consisting of translators.
Conducting an ICO for a cryptocurrency exchange
Initial coin offering or ІСО is a form of attracting investment by selling a fixed number of new cryptocurrency units to investors, which were obtained through a one-time or accelerated generation.
In 2019, when we started working on this project, the market was in the midst of a “crypto winter.”
Crypto winter is a prolonged period of decline in cryptocurrency asset prices compared to previous growth peaks.
Investors were in no hurry to enter new projects, remembering the ICO boom with a record number of startups that raised funds but did not launch. Unfortunately, our customer had no other way out of the situation. We also did not have a sufficient budget for ICO advertising, but we were enthusiastic and willing to help.
To be honest, we should have stopped working at this stage, but we didn’t give up and fought for the result to the end.
A little spoiler: it cost us no days off for two months and a debt to the team, which we had to cover at our own expense because the customer could not pay.
We managed to raise an insignificant amount for the project, which did not cover all expenses. An engaged consultant who had a deep understanding of ICO promotion said, “In 2017, you would have raised millions.” 🙂
As part of the ICO, we:
- conducted market research;
- developed an ICO strategy;
- wrote a White Paper — a document outlining the market problems and their solution with the help of the company’s product;
- set up the creation and distribution of content about the benefits of the project;
- started discussing the project at specialized forums, in the media, and in telegram channels;
- held a press conference.
As a result, we managed to conduct several ICO rounds and attracted investors.
What did we need to achieve these results?
1. Understanding of the topic
Fortunately, we already had experience in crypto before starting the project. We were engaged in mining and trading on exchanges and had been reading crypto forums and specialized media for years.
So we knew:
- what problems crypto exchange users face,
- what they value in their work,
- what needs need to be met to attract users and investments.
2. Non-standard methods
The usual methods of promotion will not work in the crypto industry, as platforms will simply not allow ads to be displayed. That is, setting up ads on Facebook and Google will not be possible.
We expected to work on this project for a long time, so we focused on creating and promoting high-quality content. We started working as a real content factory:
- We wrote posts for the exchange’s blog;
- creating articles for external specialized media;
- wrote and posted posts to specialized Telegram channels;
- filmed videos;
- participated in forums.
The goal of our “content factory” was to cover the following topics:
- what is a legal exchange;
- what are its advantages;
- whether it is safe to work with this exchange;
- how it differs from gray, illegal cryptocurrency exchanges;
- why it is important to work with official exchanges;
- what benefits this exchange will bring.
3. Tokensale advertising in Telegram channels
Tokensale is the sale of cryptocurrencies to early investors. The main difference is that those interested buy the currency directly from the owners. With the help of token sale, you can raise funding and build a loyal user base.
Telegram channels have proved to be the most effective tool for attracting new users of the service in the crypto sphere. To be honest, this is the only tool that worked well enough.
What we did:
- found Telegram channels that have a lot of organic subscribers and regular high-quality content;
- selected more than 100 crypto-related channels and entered them into a table for further analysis;
- analyzed the selected channels using Telemetr.me, a Telegram channel analytics service. We evaluated the quality of the channels and the potential result of advertising;
- negotiated with the channel owners and received discounts for placement.
Through negotiations, we managed to get a total discount of more than 142% of the budget for this area. A little advice: if you are planning to work with channels, you can safely bargain with them to negotiate better terms.
Telegram channels have shown high performance compared to other traffic sources.
But we were met with another surprise — a mandatory KYC procedure that every potential investor had to undergo.
The KYC procedure obliges the customer to undergo verification, with the provision of passport data and scans of documents. This is a requirement from the regulator to combat money laundering through financial instruments.
Very few people dared to leave scans of their documents, so the conversion rate from request to payment was very low. We guessed that most investors with large sums of money would not want to go through KYC, but this problem was very difficult to solve.
4. Work on reputation
Before investing in a project, you need to find all the available information about its reputation — this is textbook advice for crypto investors.
Our ORM department monitored mentions of the company and worked on feedback on forums and comments.
ORM — Online Reputation Management. This is a set of actions aimed at working with reviews and initiating project discussions. The result of the ORM department’s work is that when a user tries to find reviews about a company, they find more positive than negative ones. And if they do find negative feedback, it is processed by the team in a way that creates a pleasant attitude toward the brand.
We created discussions, answered questions, and formed a positive public opinion. Thanks to our work with the project, we learned how to work with powerful tools that scanned the media space and found all mentions of the brand in real-time.
5. Working with partners
Our cryptocurrency exchange was new, so almost no one was working on it. The project had to find a liquidity provider so that exchange users could count on fast order execution.
A liquidity provider is a market intermediary that connects a broker and a trader. That is, new exchanges attract other exchanges that already have buyers and sellers.
One of the top exchanges focused on the international market became a partner in our customer’s project. To support the partnership, we:
- provided full language localization of the partner exchange;
- translated all legal documents related to the partnership;
- conducted market research at the partner’s request to launch their product on the CIS market.
Thanks to these actions, our customers received more loyal conditions for cooperation and additional investments in the development of the project.
Our conclusions
Marketing is an integral part of business and its continuation. It does not exist on its own and does not solve all business problems. However, it can help build something that is really needed, highlight strengths, or find answers to important questions.
After work on this project, we can share some conclusions with you.
- You can’t do marketing with the last of your money. In competitive topics, the advertising budget can reach and even exceed the cost of project development.
- Even if you invest a lot of money in the creation and development of a project, it won’t guarantee success if your product is not user-friendly.
- If there are no buyers on the market due to global trends, you shouldn’t invest in marketing.
We managed to find tools that work. And an audience that was interested in our product. Perhaps in other conditions, we could have scaled it up.
In any case, it was a useful and instructive experience. And we will be happy to use it in our work with your crypto project! 🙂
