As STOs go on gaining momentum, the question about the right marketing campaign has become acute. How can you attract investors? What makes your project stand out among other offerings? What are the vital tools to use as a part of your marketing strategy?
Get ready beforehand
Let’s think globally first. In order to succeed launching an STO, your project has to be trustworthy and visible. While marketing mostly deals with the “visibility” part, your initial preparation is what makes your project trusted. You need to build a solid ground for an STO by thoroughly thinking through your business idea, gathering a credible team, and dealing with all the legislation and documentation required for a Security Token Offering.
Of course, Rome wasn’t built in a day. That’s why if you want to achieve great results at fundraising, it may take you quite a while to prepare a background for an STO. But as long as you have enough patience and determination, you will be able to get ready to the next step — the marketing campaign that will ensure your project visibility, attract and retain investors.
This doesn’t mean that you cannot start a marketing campaign before finishing all the preparation work. In fact, the sooner you launch marketing activities, the better outcomes you may get.
The importance of marketing
Some projects underestimate the power of marketing and, as a result, fail to fulfill their potential. What’s the point of launching an exceptional STO if no one will find out about it? To find investors, you need to steadily increase the visibility of your project with various marketing tools.
It is important to remember that STOs have a dual nature being at the same time securities and crypto-assets. Marketing tools for both may be useful for your project as they can be targeted to different audiences. Currently, there are four types of investors on the market.
- Modern millennial investors. These people goals differ from the ones of an older generation. Millenials are digital natives who are always interested in innovative instruments and technologies. As for the investments, they are already thinking about the future, looking for better returns thank various bank deposits in order to retire in 40, not 65.
- Crypto investors. This audience consists of the ones who got disappointed in ICOs and are currently considering STOs as a more reliable alternative.
- Impact investors.The main goal of such people and, thus, their driver when it comes to investing is making the world a better place. They mostly consider social projects that may impact not only their wallet but the future of all humanity.
- Traditional institutional investors. These include banks, various funds, and even insurance companies. The key problem of this target audience is the liquidity of alternative investments. That’s why STOs may be a good option for them when there are more developed secondary markets for security tokens.
Depending on the target audience you choose, you may focus on different marketing tools and build your strategy accordingly.
Essential marketing tools
Obviously, there is a wide variety of marketing tools. To name a few, these may include press releases, social media marketing, roadshows, email campaigns, etc. When building a marketing strategy, you should consider your project goals and the target audience, tailoring all marketing tools to fit them.
We are going to dwell upon all essential marketing tools, the way you may use them, and the audience you may target with each of them.
Press releases
WHAT: A press release is a brief official statement announcing important updates of the project. It is usually written by a public relations expert and distributed among influential financial media. Press releases are an integral part of any STO as they pass the word about your project and bring traffic to your website.
WHEN: pre-STO, STO.
WHO: institutional investors, impact investors, crypto investors.
PROS: A wisely chosen media may bring you a lot of traffic, increase your project visibility and credibility.
CONS: It is quite hard and expensive to get your press release published in a leading media, while small ones won’t bring the desired result.
Social media marketing
WHAT: This marketing tool involves regular activity in such social media as Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, Bitcointalk, etc. This includes creating new content (both textual and visual), sharing industry news and related information, answering comments, launching ads. In most of the cases, efficient social media marketing requires a dedicated SMM expert and/or a community manager.
WHEN: pre-STO, STO, post-STO.
WHO: modern investors, crypto investors, impact investors.
PROS: This marketing tool allows your target audience to understand that the STO is alive and running. Besides, people get to know more about the team, their values and goals, which makes the project less faceless.
CONS: SMM requires patience and dedication as new content should be posted daily or weekly depending on the channels you choose. Besides, some social media channels have restrictions regarding STO marketing, which is why you need to be especially careful.
Roadshows
WHAT: Roadshow is a series of meetings with potential investors in the key cities and regions. The aim of such events is mostly networking and spreading the word about your STO.
WHEN: pre-STO.
WHO: institutional investors, crypto investors.
PROS: Roadshow is a powerful tool that allows you to draw investors’ attention to your project. It may even give the possibility to raise funds in the closed round.
CONS: You need to be very well-prepared to go on a roadshow. Arrange a presentation, legislation issues, and documentation, and be ready to answer a lot of tricky questions.
Email marketing
WHAT: As you build an email database with loyal potential investors, you may start direct communication with them by means of newsletters, special offers, and STO promotion.
WHEN: pre-STO, STO.
WHO: modern investors, crypto investors, impact investors.
PROS: You communicate with the investor directly, one-to-one, which enables better personalization and higher engagement.
CONS: Enlarging your email database may be hard due to current legislation such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Other tools
Apart from the major most commonly used marketing tools, there are other ones that may also benefit your campaign outcomes.
Conclusion
Among all the diversity of marketing tools, it is essential to choose the ones that will work best for your project and target audience. That’s why we highly recommend you to turn to trusted professionals who will be able to build a successful marketing strategy and take care of its execution.
- Blog articles, especially SEO optimized, have the potential to bring more traffic to your website and move your project higher in Google ranking.
- Bounty campaign implies awarding users with tokens for certain activity promoting an STO. However, this tool may not be quite reasonable when it comes to STO marketing as you will basically give away valuable assets and not simply utility tokens.
- AMA (Ask Me Anything session) is a live video stream with the audience of potential investors during which they may ask your team any STO-related questions.
- Advisors and influencers’ engagement is another great way to promote your STO. For a certain amount of money or tokens, you may hire a crypto influencer to make a review of your project and advise it to their audience.
Stobox is currently developing another effective tool that will allow running an on-platform campaign among the target audience. We will gather a database of potential investors that are easily reachable as they have already expressed their interest in investing in digital securities. The information about their preferences will ensure higher campaign efficiency due to better targeting.
