Are you really prepared, in good time, to launch your spectacular new ICO or blockchain startup? Creating a road map of planned milestones is a great idea for potential investors, to show your timelines and be as transparent as you possibly can be, but have you created a timeline for your marketing too? You are SO busy building your product and concentrating on your programming, but there are an awful lot of other, less technical things, you could overlook. Don’t let your marketing slip when it could be the difference between launching like a rocket, and fizzling out like a damp squib!
PPPPP: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.
You need to think about this well in advance, posting about your amazing product on Twitter a week before you launch is reasonably pointless if you only have 100 followers on your shiny new Twitter account. Ditto for all the other social networks too. The same goes for building your website, getting your web copy correct, writing your whitepaper, building a PR buzz and getting some professional content out there.
Here’s a handy countdown for you, starting a year in advance of your planned launch.
6 months to 1 year pre-launch:
Website: Do you have a website set up and ready to go? If not now’s the time. I know it’s hard to keep all the balls in the air when you’re working on your product but getting started nice and early means you’re ahead of the game.
Branding: Alongside your website, you need to establish your brand. Have your logo designed by an expert, if you don’t have one on your team. Choose your colours and use them on your social network headers and posts. Create a strong brand and stick with it.
Social networks: Start building your networks now. It’s never too early and you don’t need to make announcements just yet regarding your product, just establish yourself as an authority in your field by sharing good quality content, both your own and from other reliable sources.
Creative Content: You need a good amount of content on your website so you don’t look brand new. Start putting some informative, educational and interesting articles on your site both to fill it up, and for something to share on social.
Get ready to Telegram: In this industry you’re going to need a Telegram channel, it’s just the way it is. It’s a great way to communicate with your fans and customers, to create a community where people can ask questions. Start your channel now if you don’t already have one, put your link on your website and social channels, share it on social and even write an article about it. Starting now will get you ahead and let you begin your great community.
6 months pre-launch:
PR: Send out a press release to people in the industry, if you haven’t grabbed their attention by your social and content efforts, then this is the way to do it. Have a professionally written press release sent to all the right people to prepare them for what’s to come. Getting the news about your product into national and international publications is the goal.
Content: More content please. By now you should have a fairly well-established blog, full of interesting and beautifully written articles. That’s great, but don’t sit back and think ‘my work here is done’, it isn’t, not by a long way. Keep writing, keep adding to your portfolio, you need excellent content to establish yourselves as a voice, but also to make announcements and give your audience news about what you’re doing, remember it’s important to be transparent in crypto.
Bounty program: These aren’t a fit for every product or service, but a Bounty reward scheme can work really well for some. If you don’t know what this is, you basically pay people in crypto, tokens, shares etc to share your stuff on social media. It’s a way to fast track your efforts, to reach a wider audience, but only really works if you have something to give away as a reward to them. This isn’t something to do long-term, it’s a way to pack a punch when you launch. If you’re going down this road, you need to work out your rules and regulations for this about now.
3 months pre-launch:
More PR: Get another press release sent out; by now you should have a solid roadmap for your product, what will happen when. Let the press know about this, keep them informed, the more exposure you get at this point the better.
Start the social buzz: Start making announcements on social about your product, as well as sharing your wonderful content, as you should have been doing for a while now, you can make snappy social media posts, to match your brand of course, about what you’re doing and what’s coming next.
Contact influencers: There are a great number of influencers out there who will share social posts, do reviews and videos about your product, for a fee obviously. Set yourself a budget and some information about what your goals are, and then begin to contact influencers in the crypto industry, on social media and especially YouTube.
Get your community managers on board: So we spoke about Telegram earlier. Now your channel should be getting busy, while it’s important for you and your team to be present in your Telegram community, you can’t be active in there 24 hours a day, unless your team is huge! The way to combat this is to employ community managers who are admin on your channel, working in shifts so there’s always someone there to answer questions and block the scammers. People do get a bit tetchy if their questions aren’t answered in 30 seconds flat, particularly if it’s to do with money.
1 week pre-launch:
Ramp up the buzz with more PR: You can’t have too many press releases so get more out there and let the world know what’s happening, being clear and concise about your product, your timeline and anything else your potential customers and the world press might need to know.
Get your Bounty people prepared: If you’re doing a Bounty reward scheme then now’s the time to get it moving. Announce it, share it, get all your links and spreadsheets ready and start your program. You’ll see your social numbers sky rocket which can only help your cause even if it’s only during your launch.
Get your networks hyped up: Your social networks should be buzzing by now; if you started early enough you should have well established networks with good numbers of fans and followers already. If you’re doing a Bounty these numbers will rise rapidly, but do be warned as soon as your programme finishes your numbers will drop again, that’s why it’s important to build up an organic, focused network of followers well in advance of your launch.
Launch day:
Get the word out on all your networks: Make sure everyone on your team, your developers, your social media managers, your community managers and your Bounty team are on the ball, the bigger the impact the more likely you are to be successful.
Have launch day content ready to go: Have an article ready to publish on your blog all about what you’re doing and what you want to achieve. Push it out there in every place you can, shout it from the rooftops.
Send out another press release: Don’t forget your loyal journalist friends, sending out a launch day press release is so important, the buzz around your product will be at its highest levels today, take advantage of that by telling anyone who’ll listen about what you’re up to.
Post-launch:
Keep up your posts about your products on social media: Let your audiences know what you’re doing by keeping them up to date, depending on your product you’ll need to create more content all about you than you normally would. This means you’re paying your Bounty team to share YOUR posts, rather than someone else’s, plus you’re getting all your news out there every day.
Be present in your Telegram channel: If you can, if your team is big enough, try to have at least one of you present in your Telegram channel. If you’re selling something, and people are buying, there will occasionally be problems or simply lots of questions about how, why, when, what etc. Having a member of the management team present to answer things gives people so much more confidence in you as a company.
Keep the content flowing: And yet more content please, your audience, particularly your investors, will want to know exactly what’s happening at every stage of your launch, letting them know via well-written articles is the best way to do this, you’ll find with a never ending stream of questions from your customers, you’ll have a never ending source of things to write about.
Prepare press releases for milestones: Just because you’ve launched, doesn’t mean you’ve finished telling the world press about it. Send out a press release every time you reach a milestone in your campaign, getting yourselves into other publications can only be a good thing.
You need to be able to concentrate on your field of expertise, of course you do. But don’t let that all be for nothing because you have let your marketing efforts to fall by the wayside, or you’ve left it too late to make an effective impact on your target audience.
If you’re way too busy working on your product to worry about all of that above, you should get in touch with the BlockSparks team and let us handle it for you.
