According to Binance, more than 80,300 NFT collections are launched on the Ethereum blockchain solely. And although the once-booming NFT market has been down bad for almost a year now, numerous NFT projects (Valhalla, Goblin Town, y00ts, and so on) still managed to sell out during this bear market.
No matter if you want to launch a pure PFP or utility-based collection (NFT tools, gaming NFTs, etc) in these market conditions, you must know how to differentiate your offer in this crowded space. Competition is fierce and big brands are dipping their toes in the NFT world.
Can you do all of this without hiring an NFT marketing agency and splashing hundreds of thousands of dollars on their services? You bet!
Here are the 5 top NFT marketing examples that can get you inspired and guide you on how to generate buzz and demand around your project.
1. Giveaways
Everybody loves free stuff, NFT peeps included. Whitelist giveaways are immensely popular among NFT buyers since, without whitelist spots, they can’t get their hands on an NFT at the cheapest price.
Budda Bears used this NFT marketing strategy heavily to create hype around their project (see below).
Not only did they give away whitelists on every third post on average, but they also used appropriate, trending hashtags among the NFT community, such as #NFT, #NFTs, #NFTgiveaway, and similar.
However, when you are just starting out with social media marketing, the best way to gain exposure and get more eyes on your collection is to partner with other projects in the making or established collections and offer whitelist spots to their community.
The choice of the launchpad you intend to use for the mint or an NFT marketplace where you’re going to list your NFTs post-mint (provided you want to organize the mint on your own NFT minting website) make a super important part of NFT marketing campaigns, too!
OpenSea, Rarible, MagicEden, and SolSea are on the list of the most popular NFT marketplaces and launchpads built on Ethereum and Solana blockchains.
Using either of these can boost awareness of your NFT drop, especially if you manage to get your project featured on their NFT calendar page and make them publish a post about your NFTs.
Even when you sell out your collection, you should keep doing the same – raffling whitelist spots for upcoming NFT projects to holders of your NFTs and your followers.
Giving away free NFTs after the mint day, especially if the mint was successful, can do wonders, too!
https://twitter.com/MooncatzNFT/status/1602334829034586112?s=20&t=7qQmjERZ7GVXVyb26kbU2A
However, keep in mind that you should also do your best to consistently share valuable and engaging content and interact with other NFT creators and builders in order to gather a strong, organic community.
Doing giveaways and nothing besides them all the time can attract low-quality audiences and hinder the success of your project.
2. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the surefire strategies to deploy if you want to sell out within minutes.
Ideally, projects should collaborate with more than one influencer (or promoter) to tap into different audiences and implement various NFT marketing strategies simultaneously to reach as many people as possible.
Influencers can really save up a lot of your time and effort when it comes to selling out the collection, but also help you drive more NFT sales on the secondary market as well (see below).
3. Discord Marketing
Twitter is the place to increase brand awareness, yet, Discord holds more weight when it comes to community building.
Discord servers offer plenty of ways to build strong bonds with people interested in minting your project. These include game, movie and poker nights, as well as AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) sessions, where everyone interested in investing in your NFT collection can get answers to any questions they have.
Discord also allows you to come up with many more interesting ways to engage the community and ask them to help you spread the word about your project.
https://twitter.com/CardanoProxies/status/1602720889006886912/photo/1
Oftentimes, projects organize community raffles and art/meme/sticker competitions on Discord, and reward the most active and creative members with whitelists or free NFTs.
Telegram and Clubhouse make the other two popular community-building social media platforms that can give you exposure to other kinds of audiences, yet, offer far fewer features than Discord.
4. Twitter Spaces
Now that we’ve mentioned Discord AMAs, we’ll also mention Twitter Spaces as one of the ways to market an NFT project.
Since held on Discord, AMAs help build connections with people on your server only, while Twitter Spaces, on the other hand, can drive much more interest. Anyone, including people who are not your followers, can participate on Twitter Spaces.
You can also co-host Twitter Spaces with other influential people in the space and/or other projects to merge communities and get a chance to promote your project.
Giving away whitelists, NFTs, or crypto can incentivize NFT enthusiasts to join your Spaces, too!
5. DAOs and Alpha Groups
DAOs and alpha groups are closed communities that can really help with making your collection known, provided that their people fall into the category of your target audience: NFT artists, gamers, and so on.
Here’s an example of Rainbow Alpha (alpha group of one of the OG NFT collections, Doodles), that’s holding Twitter Spaces to promote the Exceed Funds project:
DAOs and alpha groups can also give away whitelist spots on their Discord servers and Twitter accounts:
However, since these groups are closed, they typically share the most important project information with their members only, in either Twitter chats or on Discord servers.
Also, you should be aware that some of these DAO and alpha groups can easily manipulate the NFT market with the so-called “pump and dump” techniques. To prevent this, never give away a significant number of whitelist spots to either of them.
Summary
We’ve summed up just a few examples of marketing NFT projects that you can include in your strategy so as to attract more eyeballs and investors in your community.
The choice of the blockchain on which your collection will be launched, promoting your project via email or popular newsletters, and running hard-core PR campaigns can help with increasing the likelihood of succeeding in the NFT space.
