An IDO’s success depends on a combination of a clear strategy, omnichannel promotion, and the competence of a crypto consulting agency. Since 2017, the BDC Consulting team has held dozens of IDOs (and earlier ICOs). This case contains an actual set of approaches and actions that led our client to a whitelist for 5,000 users. Even more impressive? The client achieved this without the help of any Tier-1 funds.

Objective: To deliver the client's product to IDO, reaching the largest possible audience

In this case, the client needed to deliver their product to IDO, while having the widest possible coverage and collecting a number of those wishing to become IDO participants much higher than the number of available places. The user journey consisted of multiple funnel stages, including waitlist, whitelist, and actual IDO participation across two platforms, including DaoMaker.

The IDO page and typeform were landing pages in most cases. There, the user received more detailed information and could register in Waitlist at later stages - go to the service for passing the CUS or to the DAO to find out the sale details. Traffic to the landing pages came from various paid channels - targeting, SMM, placement with opinion leaders, and CPA networks. 

We permanently tracked the following metrics to assess the campaign’s effectiveness:  

• The number of unique visitors to the IDO page.
• The number of unique visitors from paid channels (IDO page and typeform).
• Total registrations in Waitlist for the entire period of work on two platforms.
• The total number of registrations in the Whitelist.

 The whole process of the advertising campaign consisted of the following directions:

 Start of work:

1. Creating and updating a promotion plan, tasks and required results at each stage. The team used the document throughout the project when interacting with contractors and bloggers, which simplified the drafting of technical specifications, texts, and posts. Key messages were adjusted depending on the IDO stage.
2. Creating and updating descriptions for Coinmarketcap and Cryptorank. Popular crypto aggregators have their own sales calendars and help get additional traffic and increase the project’s credibility.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Email-marketing

We regularly published posts that our team prepared according to the content plan to attract an audience. The IDO post subject calendar was updated monthly. So, the number of published posts for the last month for our client was 86. There were 8 publications in Medium during this period. The announcement of strategic partners and step-by-step instructions for participating in IDO were most popular. In earlier sprints, we tried to stick to daily posting, thus posting about 20-25 posts per month.

In addition, 3 videos were posted on the client's YouTube channel:

a. Description of the company's products.

b. An intrigue stirrer a few days before the announcement of token sales dates.

c. Welcome speech from the CEO.

We accompanied the videos with contests, which contributed to more audience engagement.

On the path to the IDO, in 2 months, we held 3 big competitions:

1. Creativity challenge: memes, gifs on Twitter. Conditions: subscription to social networks + fill in the form on typeform. Prize: whitelist slots + $300 to the winner.

1 round and 250+ participants, 10 winners, and 1 Grand Prix.

The citation of the project during the competition due to activities: 200+ mentions on Twitter during the competition (memes and gifs, project hashtags and token ticker, profile marks, tweets, and threads about the project).

In addition to the citation, the number of subscribers on Telegram and Twitter also increased (150+ on Twitter, 100 + Telegram). Subscription was a condition of participation.

2. YouTube Review Challenge: review the project in YouTube video format. Conditions: subscribing to social networks and filling out a form on a typeform. Prize: $100, $200, and $500 + whitelist slot.

Result: 50+ applications, 25-30 relevant applications, 10 high-quality videos, 3 winners.

In addition to the citation, the number of subscribers to Telegram, Twitter, YouTube also increased (200+ on Twitter, 50+ YouTube, 100+ Telegram).

3. SpacePort Contest: infographics, memes, Twitter threads, Medium articles, YouTube reviews, TikToks. Conditions: subscribing to social networks and filling out a form on typeform. 150 prizes with $ 15,000 in prize money (in project tokens). 

Result: 2 rounds with 200+ participants in 1st round, 350+ participants in 2nd round. 50/100 winners in 1st, 60/100 winners in 2nd.

The citation of the project during the competition due to activities: 1000+ mentions on Twitter, 50+ articles on Medium, 10+ YouTube videos, 10+ TikTok videos.

In addition to the citation, the number of subscribers to Telegram, Twitter, YouTube has also increased (800+ on Twitter, 150+ YouTube, 300+ Telegram).

PaidAd

In terms of paid traffic, we chose to work in two directions: we tested ads on Facebook and native networks.

Facebook

Advertising campaigns were launched to:

1. Remarketing.
2. Conversions.
3. Coverage.
4. Traffic growth.

These campaigns used multiple audience segments. First, we carried out remarketing among the site visitors and the client and IDO. Secondly, an audience was identified similar to the Waitlist participants: we worked with 5 different multilingual local communities.

Also, Facebook launched advertising campaigns for IDO announcements with project partners and promo contests.

Ad networks

Our team prepared plans for working directly on partner sites, as well as a schedule for placement through programmatic platforms. New, previously unused platforms were tested.

Spain and Turkey worked the most efficiently from the programmatic platforms; the main part with the purchase by RTB; from Paid Search - the leader of FB with CPM optimization with the same GEO.

Design and installation

To create a unified image, creatives were developed, which were widely used in an advertising campaign. The scope of work included:

• Preparing visuals for streams.
• Video screensavers.
• Design of pictures for articles.

The total amount of design materials for the month for the client was more than 50 different types of layouts: 2 designs for articles, 41 pictures for announcements and contests, 8 banners, 2 intros, 2 production videos.

Email newsletters

Email mailings with customer segmentation were carried out. The total number for the sprint period was 17 letters. Separate trigger chains were drawn up for both IDO participants and those who passed KYC. In addition, two forms for participation in competitions were created.

Influencers

Intensive work was carried out with publications: articles, posts on Telegram and Twitter, gifs (free distributions) on Telegram and Twitter, integration into YouTube and AMA sessions.

As a result:

1. Organized and conducted 4 AMA sessions.
2. 100+ integrations (Twitter / Telegram / YouTube / Instagram).
3. 1 live stream was held at the time of launch - the CEO of the project and the top blogger were broadcasting before and during the final sale. 

PR

Standard press releases were placed through media distribution services in the UK, Spain, Indonesia, Turkey, and India. In total, 106 publications were made, which collected more than 145,000 views from the target audience.

4 publications were made through pitching in media (including Yahoo Money and Yahoo news). We also made 6 placements in Tier-1 (CT, Forklog, Finance Magnates).

Overall IDO results across two sites during the sprint:

• Unique visitors (only on the IDO and typeform page) - 18,038. It should be noted that in the last month of operation, the KYC form on the platform was the landing page for traffic, so it was not possible to track the exact traffic figures.
• Total registrations in the waitlist - about 13,500 
• The total number of registrations in the Whitelist is about 3,000. At the same time, a significant part of the audience did not go through the KYC procedure.
• The total number of registered users on DAO was more than 5,000 people (the second result on the platform). The number of people who came to the IDO is 200 people. 

Within the framework of this case, we tried to show as much as possible the amount of work that is required for marketing IDO within one sprint. 

The scale of the tasks and the need for high-level specialists in all areas of marketing leads most IDOs to partnerships with experienced crypto-consulting companies. BDC Consulting helps to develop an IDO strategy and conduct promotional campaigns for various crypto products.