OK Google, please search “unoriginal futuristic background”

About a month ago I became a moderator of /r/icocrypto which is the largest ICO-related community on Reddit. This, along with advising and working with around a dozen ICOs this year, has given me incredible insight into the state of ICOs and their marketing which mostly all suck.

The biggest issues from startups and their agencies include:

No originality: Everyone is copying a model that mostly stopped working in 2018. Not only did that model stop working, but it only worked to begin with because any and every ICO used to moon. It was never good.

Everyone is copying a model that mostly stopped working in 2018. Not only did that model stop working, but it only worked to begin with because any and every ICO used to moon. It was never good. No sincerity: The entrepreneurs’ underlying motivators, vapid token offers, solutions they’re after, and agencies they work with may say things that sound good — and even have good intentions — but have conveniently deluded themselves similar to a wide-eyed first-time Silicon Valley startup. If you have a forced use case, lack some brilliant tech, don’t understand who is in crypto to begin with or otherwise haven’t taken the time to get acquainted with the realities of the industry — you’re already dead.

I have never seen the actual entrepreneur behind their project write an insightful, passionate, thought-provoking or otherwise well-written post on /r/icocrpyto. Most of what I see is spam created by lazy agencies taking entrepreneurs’ money. Copy/paste that sentence for basically every channel you may pay an agency or inexperienced employee to go do.

Lack of proactive outreach: You shouldn’t just post on your own Facebook page — that won’t go anywhere. You should be actively using features that let you to contact others or put a link/post in front of a group. Every social media platform you decide to use in your strategy should be looking to find and create opportunities. Put a budget towards this, create interesting campaigns/content and explore.

You shouldn’t just post on your own Facebook page — that won’t go anywhere. You should be actively using features that let you to contact others or put a link/post in front of a group. Every social media platform you decide to use in your strategy should be looking to find and create opportunities. Put a budget towards this, create interesting campaigns/content and explore. Poor focus, effort: Once you have decided to raise an ICO, you are now committed to marketing beast mode. Raising ICO investment should be seen as an absolute hustle to show why your idea/team/service has merit and will succeed, not just a checklist for you to go through. This is the time to get comfortable streaming video and writing because the internet isn’t filled with mind readers. If you aren’t a strong enough leader to convince your developers why they need to now explain what they’re doing to the public — you’re already dead. Your entire team needs to engage with the internet to show your progress and ideas until you close round.

Once you have decided to raise an ICO, you are now committed to marketing beast mode. Raising ICO investment should be seen as an absolute hustle to show why your idea/team/service has merit and will succeed, not just a checklist for you to go through. This is the time to get comfortable streaming video and writing because the internet isn’t filled with mind readers. If you aren’t a strong enough leader to convince your developers why they need to now explain what they’re doing to the public — you’re already dead. Your entire team needs to engage with the internet to show your progress and ideas until you close round. Lack of surprise: Successful marketing is a series of incredibly interesting experiments to inform and catch people’s attention, maximize conversions, and otherwise figure out how you will succeed. There are very few advisers or agencies that can help you understand this — mostly because they’ve never created a multi-million dollar company themselves. You need to cover the basics of marketing AND do incredible campaigns.

This is why the CEO of AskFM died on the top of Mt. Everest trying to market his ICO. It’s the sort of stupid you resort to when your idea is bad but he understood what it takes to market yourself.

Your marketing should be as much, if not more, interesting and innovative than your products. Pay attention to how bizarre commercials are next time you’re on YouTube.

Overall, ICOs are an incredible addition to the cryptocurrency world. They play a vital role in funding the ideas which will eventually take market share from countless bloated centralized industries. Reasons I am actively trying to help ICOs succeed.

The market is still very young with its doors wide open if your approach is genuine and you manage to build the right mix of hype, professionalism, innovation, and community. Think more long-term because time goes by fast and this industry isn’t going anywhere.

My greatest advice to entrepreneurs entering the ring is to think for yourself. If you don’t understand something — research and ask questions. Worthwhile success is built from a series of personal discoveries.