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Launching and selling your NFT art collections are not easy. Avoid basic marketing mistakes with these tips for how to launch and sell your NFT art on web 3.0.
1. Think like a start-up
NFT art collections are not all about the art. The NFT art world is over-saturated at the moment, and successful projects need to have an edge to attract buyers and prevent quick flips. This means NFT collections should increasingly offer utility, social gatherings (e.g. networking, parties) and other physical assets (e.g. merchandise) to buyers to be successful. NFT collections need an elevator pitch to sell the short and long term benefits for buying into the project. NFT collections need to approach their launch like a start-up by having concise answers to the following questions:
What makes your NFT collection unique?
What are other NFT collections doing that you're doing differently?
What is the problem that you are solving for your NFT community?
What do buyers gain in the short-term for investing in the project?
What to buyers gain in the long-term for investing in the project?
How will you sustain excitement and interest in the project over the next 1 month? 3 months? 6 months?
Who else is investing in your project (celebrities, whales)?
2. Use social media to your advantage
Social media is a powerful tool, and can be used by NFT art collections to grow both organically and with advertisements. The NFT collection necessities start with at least two social media platforms where NFT buyers and sellers are already engaging: Discord and Twitter. Discord servers are almost a requirement for building NFT communities, raising hype about a project, engaging with potential investors, sharing official links, and ultimately selling your NFTs. Twitter is a space for quick conversations, sharing links for sales, and reaching a larger target audience that is not yet on Discord.
However, other platforms are starting to explode in the NFT space. With over 1 billion users, TikTok has proven to be a platform where small creators can go viral overnight. Instagram has recently announced that it is actively exploring the NFT space, even hosting panels of NFT creators earlier this year. Pinterest is an unexplored NFT territory, especially with more and more women interested in the NFT community (Pinterest users are over 77% women), but not enough NFTs geared towards women. All of these platforms have great potential in the NFT space. Unless you have a budget for a big social media team, we suggest that you pick one of these new platforms to focus on for advertising in addition to Twitter and Discord though, and once you start engaging your audience and growing, you can expand to other platforms.
Make sure you take advantage of the advertising opportunities on all of these social media platforms, especially if you want to grow quickly. On the other hand, if you have a smaller marketing budget, leave plenty of time for planning your social media campaigns before any launch. It takes time to organically grow and cultivate an audience, but you can do it for free with the right content. Focus on entertaining content that makes your NFT unique, and start experimenting with marketing on social media 1-2 months before your presale.
3. Find your target audience
One of the biggest marketing mistakes is not finding or understanding your target audience. It is easy to give into the quick wins of NFT marketing, such as invitation competitions on Discord, that grow your followers exponentially. However, if you're looking for long-term investors that will grow your collection's value, this is not going to be the crux of your success. You need to find the right audience, not just a bunch of followers.
To find your audience, you first need to determine your price point. If you're looking to sell your NFTs for $50-$100, then we suggest that you market to a younger generation that are looking to 2x-5x their money in a few months. We also suggest you consider that gas fees can eat into profit, so using Polygon or Solana marketplaces might be an optimal way to make your NFT attractive to your buyers.
However, if you have a higher price point ($500-$2000), you need to look more towards serious investors. This audience has a dispensable income that they're willing to risk for more significant profits, but their money is hard-earned, so they will not be convinced easily. This means you need to take extra care to follow up on your promises, communicate regularly and effectively, and not rely on gimmicks to get them on board. You will need to explain your advantages and be prepared to answer hard questions.
Finally, and most importantly, do your market research! Most social media advertising tools already provide information on likes and dislikes of certain communities. Use these statistics to your advantage. Use free resources like Google Trends and Answer the Public to find out what questions people are asking. Social media tools like Hootsuite can help you monitor your brand and be on top of trending topics and searches. Use the tools that exist, don't reinvent the wheel!
4. Timing is everything
One of the biggest mistakes NFT marketers make is on the timing of their drop. Timing matters in a few ways. First, the status of the crypto market matters, especially on the blockchain where your NFT will reside. If the coin of choice is in a bear market, you may take advantage of this in your marketing because it can be a selling point for the future value of your NFT. Alternatively, if a bull market, you may want to consider lowering your price to meet the expectations of your potential buyers for what they can afford.
Second, timing during the year and during the week matters. Holidays can be particularly difficult, especially in keeping the momentum. I saw several collections flop between the weeks of Christmas and New Year's 2021-2022 because there was not enough excitement for people to buy. Potential investors were taking a break from NFTs and spending time with their families and friends. You should also consider school breaks and weekends, again all depending on your chosen target audience. What are their habits? What days are they most active in the community? What days are they paid, and when will they have cash and cryptocurrency available?
Third, the exact timing of a mint launch is important for how you set your expectations. If you want to sell out quick, you may want to consider dropping your collection in phases (presale, public mint). You may also need to think about the time zone and where most of your customers are. If you're minting on the ETH network, choose a time when gas fees are low, or don't expect your collection to sell quickly during high gas times.
5. Tokenomics and scarcity matter
Ultimately, NFTs are an investment, and basic economics of supply and demand are increasingly important. As previously mentioned, the NFT art space is saturated. This means there is high supply and not enough demand. Successful NFT collections will need to increasingly tap into new markets and attract new investors that did not know they were interested in the NFT community.
To reduce supply, think carefully about how many NFTs you want in your project. There seems to be an industry standard around 10,000 NFTs in a collection, but remember that's 10,000 buyers you need to convince to purchase. Reducing the supply to 4,000-5,000 NFTs is more manageable, and allows you time to make connections with your potential buyers. If you're purely focused on the artistic side of NFTs (not utility), less is definitely more, because the fewer the NFTs, the more rare they are and therefore more likely to be cherished.
To help create more demand, you can branch out into new markets. There is a growing interest in the web 3.0 and cryptocurrency space. Take the time to educate this potential market about your NFT. Use the roadmap and sell your strengths. Find the underrepresented groups (e.g. women, gen X, boomers) in the NFT space and make your product attractive to them.
Like what you see? Contact us at createurnft@gmail.com for marketing services or subscribe to our blog to stay informed of the latest NFT information.
At createurnft, we are on a journey to create, mint, sell and buy NFTs and are sharing what we learn along the way. This is not financial advice, please take the time to verify our information before making any financial decisions.