How do you market NFTs so they sell out quick? Our top 5 lessons  

Andre Kempe, Founder at Admiral Media, offers advice on marketing NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens).

NFTs are digital goods such as paintings, collectibles, or even limited edition sneakers, and are seen by some as the future of ownership. They can be traded and sold for profit, however, they exist purely digitally. In a recent ruling in the UK, NFTs have been recognized as legal property, which in a case of theft gives victims more options to defend themselves, e.g., by having stolen assets frozen. This marks another step into the mainstream, and owning an NFT will be on par with owning real-world items, such as a rare shoe or a watch.

Their digital nature gives NFTs key advantages over physical items, such as:

  • Global availability: assets tokenized into an NFT can be easily and efficiently transferred across the world
  • No imitations or fakes: NFTs are truly unique items, secured and verified by a blockchain
  • Transparency: ownership is more transparent than traditional art, so anyone can show off their NFTs, if they so choose, e.g. as a verified Twitter profile picture

The unique characteristics of NFTs also introduce different marketing challenges. You can’t just approach an NFT strategy in the same way you would for an eCommerce or travel app. There are some main differences that we found in our work on this frontier.

Recently, NFT maker AlphaSkullz approached Admiral Media to create a campaign for its NFT collection launch. We identified potential marketing channels and helped AlphaSkullz with all tracking implementation of pixels, conversion events, and more.

Once we started advertising, we quickly recognized Twitter as our primary channel. It was a global campaign, with the decision to select the geographies resting with us. At this point, we were tasked with generating leads for the upcoming launch, and were successful in generating over 2,000 wallet connections within two weeks when the NFT was announced. After the launch, we helped the client with conversion campaigns to sell NFTs via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Quora, Reddit and other channels.

Here’s what we learned about marketing NFTs:

#1. Community building is everything
First and foremost: community is everything. To successfully launch digital goods, there needs to be an audience that is aware and interested in the product.

If there’s an existing audience for your brand this is much easier, but even so, they still need to be primed that a launch is coming. Generate followers, and engagement on social media and channels such as Discord to look appealing to NFT buyers on a global scale.

You want to avoid producing NFTs that don’t sell out on day one. That’s why you need to create awareness, anticipation and FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s a hit-driven economy, and you have to be able to build hype with the help of a very active community around your product, which introduces challenges such as content moderation and keeping the users engaged.

Community growth in our NFT campaign for AlphaSkullz

#2. There’s still a LOT of education needed 
Just because NFTs are all over the news doesn’t assume people understand what youre selling and will know how to purchase them. NFTs require some technical setup and knowledge that is still not straightforward – creating and connecting a wallet, allocating funds to it, and more. Be prepared to release a lot of educational content leading up to the launch, so your audience is ready to buy when your NFT hits the market. 

#3. Build trust
Successfully navigating the NFT market can be extremely tricky. Technical difficulties, scammers, and other unforeseen complications are unfortunately common. It’s rough out there, and everyone has heard horror stories about scams and fraud in this space. That’s why it’s all the more important to work with trusted partners, platforms, and influencers to show the community that you and your NFTs are legitimate.

Trust-building elements are certainly a consistent Discord and Telegram activity, accessibility to the creators, potential roadmap, and a bigger vision behind the NFT collection.

#4. Identify your target geos
Not every design aspect works well with every audience. Although NFTs are a global phenomenon, there will be some regions that will be a better fit for your audience than others. Apart from design aspects, you should also know how to measure your sales and revenue – as sales are anonymous. You won’t be able to get any information about the origin of your buyers, so you will need some knowledge and industry expertise to really understand your campaigns and make decisions when and where to spend your money.

#5 Know your target audience
NFTs are not a mass market yet – the billions of dollars invested are still coming from quite a few users, which means a broad marketing campaign will not lead to success. Ask your friends: do they own a wallet, have they ever bought an NFT? Now think of people outside your daily tech bubble: there are not many who would even know what Metamask is. Targeting the right type of audience is even more critical than usually in marketing.

Admiral Media campaign results for AlphaSkullz NFT launch

Conclusion
We devised a strategy with which we are able to successfully promote NFTs collection and generated a great ROAS for our client. Within a month, we were successful in selling 100 per cent of the NFTs worth over $1 million. Targeting the geos and audiences with the right creatives, we were able to leverage Twitter and Discord as the most efficient channels.

Will NFTs be the future of ownership or a short-lived hype? We don’t know what the future will bring, but we think it’s a wise move as a brand to learn how to approach them and have a solid go-to-market strategy when launching NFTs. Consumers are clearly ready and eager to adopt them. The similarities to mobile apps 10 years ago are apparent – yes, it may be early, but the opportunities of utilizing NFTs for your brand are too exciting to let them pass unexplored.