Putting crypto marketing into perspective

Crypto space is a fast developing environment that demands complete focus from individuals and teams. We like to say that one month in blockchain is like 1 year in the real world. This means the adoption period to new circumstances is really short.

If I compare today’s circumstances to the time when we at SunContract did the token sale or even one year ago, the rules of the game changed completely. The first ICOs took a step into this new economy of fundraising. In 2017, the ICO wave emerged and crypto fundraising started to get a clearer shape. The first ICOs paved the way and the next generation of projects benchmarked the strategy to raise needed funds. It is truly remarkable to watch and analyze this process because it is literally evolving in front of our eyes.

What is even more remarkable is the fact that the industrial standard for a good ICO changed so dramatically that one cannot compare today’s campaign with the one SunContract had 6 months ago. To put it into perspective: in the real world of marketing 6 years just passed, but here in crypto it all happened just in the blink of an eye.

How did we do it?

Many people ask me questions like: When does the marketing start? The question that raises usually is: what is marketing for you? I would like to hear your comments below.

Our token sale strategy was quite straightforward: find the community and gain their trust. Pretty simple, right?

Huh, well, it wasn’t. To gain the trust in the crypto community you really need to show something. You need to show credibility, skills, strength, futurism and more. Then you need to start making a strategy to go into the fundraising campaign (and if you are smart enough, make foundations for the product — orientated marketing). This is the time when the team decides what the goals of the campaign are. Lately, I see a lot of teams entering crypto space with the strategy “let’s raise as much as we can”. But do you really need so much money? How will you justify that? How will your users benefit from this strategy?

At SunContract, we lowered the minimum and maximum cap 3 times before the token sale started. The price of ether surged so much we did not want to be greedy and fixed the threshold on USD. We achieved it easily. One could ask himself: “Well if I take a look onto other crypto projects this is pretty unsuccessful.” But is it?

Build a product or build hype?

This question is really among the most important ones when you decide how to run your project. We decided to stay strong on our feet and raise funds that we need for the development of the main product: A Peer-to-Peer decentralised energy-trading platform. Otherwise, we could expose ourselves to unrealistic expectations, high pressure on the team, hackers, phishers etc.

The most important perspective here is to gain a higher trust. When you have the trust of the community then it is easier to create a healthy relationship between members and the team. This is something we cherish and nurture while our community grows slowly but surely. Now we have people that follow us, discuss different ideas, help us spread the word of SunContract, and are in general a great community. We are really looking forward to meeting you guys in the future!

A project is not successful if it raises millions and millions of funds. Actually, a big sum of raised money just means the focus was on creating hype that would generate a greater demand during the crowdsale campaign, nothing else! It does not mean price of the token will go to the moon and the project will be the next Facebook or Amazon in the future.

I would choose a product-orientated strategy every time!

Over the 5 months since the end of our token sale, we managed to achieve several really remarkable achievements. Things are going great (even though the team is sometimes burned out and vacations are the commodity we are not familiar with lately). The platform is on the track and the first version was introduced at the beginning of December. We also promised the first version of the P2P trading at 1.1.2018. All of these things were achieved ahead of the schedule, which is not very common in the world of IT.

Moreover, we showed more than we promised. A special partnership with PV investment company was introduced and made a completely new use case that was never seen before in the world of cryptocurrencies. More is coming in the future! So the strategy was and remains: a healthy community and delivering more than promised.

Now that we have your trust and a community that knows we are transparent, we will do everything in our power to make the best possible product and stay on track with the development. This is very important for the team because it gives us fresh motivation for the future.

During the token sale, our main focus was on two different marketing medias: Facebook for the general public and Coinmarketcap for crypto orientated supporters. Of course, that means you need to invest a lot of funds to gain attention. This strategy was very successful as we gained a lot of public awareness in a short time. The downside of this effort was high expenses that drained our account balance. On the other hand, it brought us to the point where the campaign became successful and the minimum cap was reached very fast.

Now you cannot keep spending money on a debt, right? This is a totally mainstream strategy but we are not in the world of cryptocurrencies to keep on going with old habits, are we?

Our strategy had to be refurbished

We took a lot of time to evaluate our situation and rethink our marketing strategy. We had many, many meetings with different people and marketing agencies. We did not settle just for one that could do basics, we wanted the best!

We found the one that just might be elite. Since November, we are working together and changes are obvious. The new blog on Medium became famous, public presentations on important events are professional and a clear success, the new webpage is live, product development and marketing goes hand in hand. Some of those things are not yet visible to the public and big things are coming after the New Year!

A good marketing strategy takes time and you have to take a step by step approach. The creative part needs time, preparing the platform — launch has to be perfect, and targeting the right audience is a long learning process.

However, we do not sleep. Since August, we focused on improving our skills in organic marketing. Organic marketing is free but very tough indeed. Main mediums for organic growth of awareness are Twitter, Telegram groups, Medium blog, and Reddit forum. We have many new followers on Twitter and our Telegram group increased 300% in only two weeks’ time. Our Medium blog has a lot of readers just after one month while Reddit is now one of the most popular channels for people to discuss SunContract matters. We attracted many new followers just from organic marketing, and with a help of our great community, we are now established project in the world of blockchain.

What’s next?

The work from now on will be upgraded with profi — style paid content. We will keep working on relevant content and spread it around the crypto community. Strong content is crucial for project’s public presentation. People need to understand your strategy, your thoughts if you want them to trust you. We feel we are on the right track with this and we will continue improving. Your suggestions are always welcome.

The most important aspect of the platform’s success are CUSTOMERS. With every move, we need to make sure our strategy goes towards the direction of attracting new customers to the platform. They are the key to the revenue that will power the platform’s future development and success of our business.

So now, all of our paid marketing is concentrated on channels that will support the above-mentioned cause. This means the focus of the marketing will shift from crypto related channels to Medias that are more traditional. Moreover, it is important to encourage new companies such as SONCE to give more use cases to our common currency SNC.

We will not forget about the crypto community. Our creative marketing team will push on producing new video presentations, designs, content etc. The community is very important and this is why we decided to create a Social Award Bonus Program (SABP). However, this is not the last thing from us. Keep following our struggle on Telegram where you can talk with the team and our great community. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Medium as well. Also, check out the healthy and stable growth of the SNC token.

If you are experiencing any problems or bugs please do not hesitate to contact us on support@suncontract.org.