61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations, as compared to 38% who trust brand-produced content. Startups spend anywhere between 11% to 35% on marketing. But if that budget goes to other marketing streams, the outcome could fail to meet the expectations. Crypto Influencer Marketing is vital for emerging startups to meet business goals. Why? A recent survey reveals that brands received $11.38 in revenue for every $1.29 spent on influencer marketing. The ROI is too high for crypto startups to ignore.
Social media platforms like Twitter, Telegram, Instagram, Reddit, and Discord, have been the hotbed for impactful discussions since the emergence of the crypto industry. For crypto businesses, the strength of their community is proportional to the value they bring to the table. The primary goal of crypto businesses is to bring more individuals on board as investors or liquidity providers. Trust building is the key to onboarding more users and the fastest way to get there is through community building.
The Need For Crypto Influencer Marketing
The influencer marketing industry is close to $17 billion in terms of value. More than 85% of businesses agree to have received a better ROI through influencer marketing, as compared to traditional marketing. Crypto influencer marketing emerges as a differentiator for cryptocurrency startups due to its impact. The majority of investors rely on the available information on social media for investment decisions. Platforms like Twitter and Telegram are full of seasoned investors sharing calls and investment advice alongside educational content. These profiles have their own community of investors and crypto enthusiasts and this gives them the power to influence.
Now imagine paying a few thousand dollars to these investors to shill your project. You save the time otherwise spent in community building and get access to thousands of potential investors. Thanks to the magic of crypto influencer marketing. Leading exchanges and crypto businesses partner with numerous influencers and influence marketing agencies to fulfill certain goals. These goals may include brand building, community building, community management, or other promotional activities. All you need to do is to partner with the best crypto influencers and you are set to go.
How To Run A Successful Crypto Influencer Marketing Campaign?
Crypto influencer marketing may seem like the ‘low-hanging fruit’ but it is tricky to get results in a competitive market like this. Thousands of startups are working with crypto influencers to establish themselves as reputed name in the industry. With such cutthroat competition, you need to find answers to certain questions such as – how much funds you need to start an influencer marketing campaign, how many channels you need to cover, what should be the frequency of posts, etc.
Running an optimized campaign requires expertise, resources, and a well-defined plan. As a crypto startup founder, you must avoid complicating things. Here are 3 tips you should keep in mind while running a crypto influencer marketing campaign:
Know Your Audience
The audience is the biggest factor as far as the success of a crypto influencer marketing campaign is concerned. The characteristics of your target audience will determine the structure of your marketing campaign. Therefore, you must have organized data about your target audience to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign. Here are some of the things you must know before starting the campaign:
- Interest areas of your target audience
- Age groups of your target audience
- The geographic location of your target audience
- Online activities of your target audience (how they spend their time online)
You can utilize the analytics feature that comes with almost every social media platform nowadays. Once you know where your audience spends the majority of their time online, you can design platform-centric campaigns. The idea is to serve people what they are looking for on a platter.
Nearly 4.8 billion people worldwide use social media. Whereas, there are 420 crypto users globally. Now, your target audience is 10% of the social media users globally. Since you know where to go, you can convey the same to influencers working with you.
Avoid Micro-Management: Concerns are understandable when you are setting up a crypto venture for the first time. But crypto influencers have been doing what they do for years now. They know the industry and how it functions. Giving them the freedom to work is critical for the success of your crypto influencer marketing campaign.
You need to give a certain degree of freedom when working with content creators. Every creator is different and their approach toward approaching a campaign is different. Creativity comes at the expense of artistic freedom. Therefore, micro-managing content creation is one thing that you should consider avoiding.
Be Open To Seeking Professional Help: Influencer marketing is an unexplored territory for web3 builders. A visionary founder is one who keeps their ego aside and seeks professional help wherever necessary. Doing everything is impossible and adds to business costs. Even then, there’s no guarantee of success. Hire seasoned content creators, designers, and content marketers to anchor your crypto influencer marketing campaign. Remember, a captain is as good as his/her team.
There are many professional crypto influencer marketing agencies that help new startups get the required traction in the initial stages. A simple Google search will take you to the top crypto marketing agencies out there. This is the time to outsource everything other than development.
Types Of Crypto Influencers
How did you get to know about the tokens (except Bitcoin) that are in your portfolio right now? For the majority of investors, the answer would be social media, blogs, or Youtube. These are the platforms where crypto influencers shill crypto projects they are associated with, in an organic manner. Shilling is an art and crypto influencers have mastered it by now. These influencers can be further classified into several categories, depending on certain metrics:
Micro-crypto Influencers: Micro-crypto influencers are those with comparatively small followings but consistent activity. You might follow several accounts with a few thousand followers who share profitable calls and new tokens in their timelines. Such influencers can run the account by their name or anonymously. In both cases, you can reach out to them if you want to start crypto influencer marketing with a small budget.
Bloggers: Ever heard of platforms like HackerNoon and Medium? There are certain bloggers on these platforms whose primary source of income is blogging. These bloggers have a solid understanding of the industry and they simplify the complex concepts of crypto to make it understandable to a wider audience. Crypto startups often partner with such bloggers to put out a blog that promotes their projects. It could be a one-time thing or a long-term arrangement depending on your marketing goals. Unlike tweets and Instagram posts, blogs remain relevant for a longer period. Thanks to SEO. The kind of impact you can generate with a blog is entirely different from what you can expect through a tweet.
Youtubers: There are two types of crypto influencers on Youtube. Those who share educational content and those who share calls for traders. You can partner with either or both kinds, depending on your end goals. Video being the most impactful kind of content, you can expect a flurry of investors for your token.
Opinion Leaders: Opinion Leaders are at the helm when it comes to the influence over investors. Remember the crazy $DOGE rally after Elon Musk tweeted a dog emoji? That’s just a glimpse of the influence opinion leaders possess. Mark Cuban, Michael Saylor, Vitalin Buterin. There are endless names to fill up the sheet. The biggest benefit of having an opinion leader on board is the massive boost to your brand identity. The world knows that $DOGE is a memecoin with negligible fundamentals. But as long as Mr. Musk is behind it, everyone keeps investing in the token.
Best Platforms For Crypto Influencer Marketing
There are numerous social media platforms and you need a different marketing strategy for each one of them. However, you can do segmentation of efforts if you know the right platforms to target. Based on user activity and user volume, here are the best platforms to promote your crypto project through influencer marketing:
Twitter: Twitter is at the heart of all the impactful crypto conversations. Be it the FTX fiasco, the BNB chain breach or El Salvador adopting Bitcoin, the majority of crypto users came to know about these events through Twitter. You can find a crypto-related hashtag trending on Twitter every day. There are hundreds of big and small crypto influencers active on Twitter. It is an ideal platform to promote your ICO, attract new investors, or share the latest updates related to partnerships or product launches.
Telegram: As far as community building and community management are concerned, Telegram is one of the best platforms for crypto startups. Almost every crypto startup out there has an announcement channel on Telegram. Running a crypto influencer marketing campaign through Telegram helps you get early adopters and ambassadors of your program. It is one platform where you get enough space to initiate bi-directional conversations with your audience.
Youtube: Again a hotspot for crypto-related content, Youtube is another platform where you can direct your efforts and attention to bring traction to your project. Crypto influencers actively use Youtube to share educational content and build an audience. By partnering with those influencers, you can get substantial traction. One of the key aspects of brand building is communicating your value proposition to your target audience. Youtube is one of the best platforms to do that.
Key Metrics To Assess Your Crypto Influencer Marketing Efforts
The importance of tracking the outcome of your efforts is paramount. 18% of brands spend anywhere between $100,001 and $500,000 on influencer marketing. Obviously, they expect a return on investment (ROI) when they put their money into something. Therefore, you must review the performance metrics to assess the outcome of their efforts. Here are the top metrics that you need to assess:
Number of Followers/Subscribers: This applies to every social media platform. Measure the increase in the number of followers or subscribers on a weekly or monthly basis to assess the outcome of the content that you are pushing out. Identify the traffic source to delve deeper. It is critical to ascertain if your influencer marketing strategy is aligned with your goals.
Impressions: If you are pushing out blogs to educate the audience or attract new investors, you must keep a track of impressions on your blogs for measuring performance. You can use Google search console or other popular CRMs for measuring blog performance.
Social Media Engagement: Engagement on social media includes likes, comments, shares, and click-throughs. It is critical to measure the impact of the content that you push out on various social media platforms. Measuring social media engagement will help you understand if you are collaborating with the right influencers.
Final Word
Crypto influencer marketing might seem more expensive than paid marketing. But the results could be way better than traditional marketing campaigns if you follow the steps diligently. Make sure you follow the top-to-bottom approach and figure out your target audience before churning out content. Partnering with professional crypto influencer marketing agencies surely makes the job easier. As more and more people join social media platforms, the impact of influencer marketing is only going to increase.