A Point of Entry to the ICO PR
Rushing into the PR with no plan or a vague list of things to do is a terrible idea. At best you'll end up spending money on no results. At worst, such lack of professional attitude will make your existing audience and investors to reject your project and leave.
"Look, your idea is great! But I don't think you have what it takes to get it done…" — don't be surprised with such break-up if you don't plan for your marketing.
A good first step would be to sit down with your team and figure out your PR strategy. It's often based on the general concept of the project, deadlines for its milestones, the personality of its main representative, etc. Then, depending on the nature of the ICO, you figure out the content-plan that contains potential topics, exemplary titles and target media for publications.
After you decide on your strategy comes its implementation. Your copywriter creates the planned texts, and you PR-manager sends them round the various media. Aside from that, you make good use of a Medium blog, follow you SMM strategy and turn to influencers for spotlight all steps of your development (if you don't know how to approach opinion leaders, we have
an influencer marketing manual for blockchain projects).
In addition, you should communicate with crypto-events' organizers for the future participation in conferences.
Things to Keep in Mind for PR Strategy
- During token sales your marketing should show how awesome your product is, how amazing your team is and (probably most importantly) prove that your ICO is not another scam. Each message is your PR campaign should at least one of those goals.
- Separate PR for your product and for your ICO, determining the target audience for each direction. ICO target audience should be based, among other things, on the latest data for its best regions. Product target audience should depend on the field's popularity in the regions and the number of potential customers.
- According to experts, the optimal balance of topics for publications is 70% buy signals and 30% technology.
- The optimal balance between the media is 30% business, 70% blockchain. Plus, around 10% of publications should be places in top tier media (Forbes, Cointelegraph, Business Insider and alike). It also would be a good idea to add professional (related to the specific field of your project) media to your wish list.
- PR strategy should include 2–3 creative news topics for media pitching in order to get free publications. It would also help if your strategy contained at least some of the prices in your content plan — for example, in those cases where the topic is strictly required (like "The ICO launches in a week").
Existing advertising channels:
- crypto, professional and business media;
- corporate blog (website-based, Medium, etc.);
- corporate social media (SMM);
- blockchain and professional conferences.
Types of Media Publications