The 5 Most Effective Marketing Trends Used By Crypto Brands In 2022

The crypto winter is in full swing, and that means that marketing strategies that worked before for crypto startups must adapt.No more big budget campaigns and hundreds of thousands spent on influencers. The name of the game now is to stay nimble, offer a valuable product, and position yourself for the next big crypto cycle.With that in mind, here are some of the most successful examples of marketing strategies for crypto brands in 2022.

1. Mass PR strategy

PR remains one of the most effective ways to grow your brand, generate social proof, and attract users. It combines several benefits in one: direct traffic, trust and search engine visibility.

One example of such a usage is CEEK, a metaverse platform aimed at artists and celebrities. It had a quite successful land sale in July and amassed a large community of 220k+ Twitter followers and tens of thousands dedicated community members in their chats.

Part of that success can be attributed to their PR strategy, which explained in simple terms the value proposition.

In their case, their strength was from signing very well known celebrities like Lady Gaga and getting shows of support from Silicon Valley giants like Draper University and Meta.

The challenge here was to get people to believe it was for real, and the PR strategy succeeded in doing that. Many publications including Coingape published about the project. 

To reach the mass distribution required to create this kind of buzz, many brands go to newswires to publish a press release about their story. In many cases, press release disitrubtion is a sure-fire way to spread news and create buzz.

However, in our little crypto space, there’s a problem – as most newswires simply don’t syndicate news to crypto-specific outlets, such as CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, CryptoNews etc.

A few crypto newswire services sprung up to make it easier for crypto projects to spread their message to relevant news publications.

One of the leading pioneers in this field is Chainwire, a crypto press release distribution service built by 5+ year crypto PR experts.

The service offers guaranteed placement of your press releases in leading crypto publications, provided they pass basic quality checks. It is definitely a worthwhile, and simple option to consider for PR.

2. Testnet/whitelist growth hacking

The favorite strategy of NFT projects in 2021 — growth hacking through giveaways, whitelists (or allowlists) and incentivized testnet rewards — still works in 2022.

Simply launching a giveaway of a few whitelist or incentivized testnet spots, including a call-to-action like retweeting, does wonders to multiply your audience. 

The initiatives often get wide organic coverage by various twitter accounts, telegram channels and word of mouth. 

A good example here is Firefly, who obtained monstrous engagement numbers and tens of thousands of beta users despite being a relatively niche product.

Final Firefly Testnet! We are excited to offer the final chance to become an early Firefly friend. Be ready to also try out one of the first ever DeFi trading apps on mobile! The signup form will close in 7 days, join here 👇https://t.co/Abk8DFYlfR pic.twitter.com/8A69vTLYzo

— Firefly Exchange (@fireflyprotocol) February 22, 2022

https://twitter.com/fireflyprotocol/status/1496122651156303874?s=20&t=J5cw1gpPpHyqFLEs2sRwfQ

Beware though that this method often brings relatively low quality audiences — many of them might just be looking for a quick opportunity to get free tokens. In the end all marketing stratagems have fairly low conversion rates, and this one isn’t an exception. Still, it’s an easy way to bootstrap your audience.

3. Getting listed on aggregators

While listing on aggregators isn’t a marketing strategy per se, it’s something that few projects use to its full potential.

You have your basic listing on CoinGecko/CoinMarketCap for token projects. But did you know that these aggregators have many additional features?

CoinMarketCap has a dedicated airdrop section that lists “partner” projects. It has a community-curated news section to get your posts out, and a Diamond Rewards system where you could potentially list your project or event.

CoinGecko has a few similar initiatives such as the GeckoTerminal, or its articles section.

There’s many other aggregators for different niches: Defillama is a must for DeFi projects (including its yields section), NFTBank, Gem.xyz are great for NFT fans, and DappRadar also offers many opportunities for listing projects.

4. Engaging with tightly knit communities

A good tactic to quickly penetrate a particular niche is to leverage all of their communities.

Many L1 ecosystems will have tight community groups or DAOs — often behind closed doors. They will have group chats on Telegram, Discord and other channels.

An example is the Moonbeam ecosystem, which has several community groups like TakeFlight Alpha, Downtown Moonbeam, or ChaosDAO (this one more Polkadot than Moonbeam).

Usually just strolling in and posting some spam about your project isn’t a good idea.

What works better is securing AMAs, or engaging thoughtfully with the participants before slipping in a few clues about your project.

Engaging with the communities can be powerful, but requires a lot of preparatory work in mapping out all the communities and finding the ways to get in.

In most cases, it’s an avalanche: takes a while to get started, but word spreads quickly.

5. Using your partners to grow together

One of the most cost-effective ways to get the word out about your project is with partners.

Once you’ve established enough of a community base, you can start working together with other projects to reach your goals. Each time you make a partnership announcement, or integrate the partnership in production, both of your ecosystems grow by “cross-pollination”. Your project’s community discovers your partner, their community discovers yours. 

Axelar is a good example of a recent marketing strategy based on partnership announcements and many, many cross-AMAs and podcast appearances.

🗣️📢 #Suinami Warning!

Axelar is partnering with @Mysten_Labs to bring General Message Passing to the Sui Blockchain.

An enhanced, one-click Web3 experience for Sui developers using Move.

Read the full announcement below👇https://t.co/GNGJNeYKML pic.twitter.com/ZTZ1n3F6wI

— Axelar Network (@axelarcore) September 27, 2022

https://twitter.com/axelarcore/status/1574791413296148480?s=20&t=4EsOPDdiR9LRFVt_CfjO6Q 

And the strategy worked: their token, AXL, managed to launch at a $900 million fully diluted valuation — in this market!