2022 NFT Marketing Guide with Examples

NFTs are pushing traditional advertising boundaries and swiftly becoming a new means to increase brand awareness, expand user experiences and provide new revenue streams.

Whatever your reason is, you need to understand the intricacies of how to win in this new market. Because without the right marketing strategy an NFT project can fall as flat as a “Live for Now Moments anthem.” 

For the past year, we have been up to our lense in the crypto industry. Paying close attention to successful Brand NFT drops to reverse engineer their strategy and approach to entrance.

We took everything we learned and compiled this ultimate NFT marketing guide with examples. Read on to find out how to correctly present your NFT collection to the world. Let’s go!

NFT Mints

The first wave of revenue for NFT projects is the mint, aka the first sale of an NFT. With large marketing budgets on the line, you need to promote your drop to the largest audience possible. 

The ultimate goal pre-mint is to sell out. Selling out drives hype to the project by creating scarcity and a fear of missing out (FOMO) thus skyrocketing the price.

NFT Marketplaces 

Following the mint, projects can continue to profit by earning a commission from ongoing sales on a secondary marketplace. NFT marketplaces like OpenSea allow project owners (you!) to set a secondary sale fee. 

At this stage, your goal is to encourage liquidity. Profitable quick sales of the digital asset will attract attention from flippers, increasing your following and generating even more hype. 

NFT Marketing Tools

There are many channels to market a product, but for NFTs at this current point in history, generating hype is the name of the game. There are three main marketing strategies leveraged by all successful NFTs to generate hype:

Community engagement

In the NFT community, Twitter is Main street. Every NFT project has a Twitter account. Start following the #NFT feed closely. Pay attention to what information your audience is interested in and any emerging players. 

While exploring Twitter you will notice that many of the crypto communities have discord links. Another level of the NFT community lives within these discord servers. 

Discord is a VoIP, instant messaging and digital distribution platform where users communicate in private chats or as a community called a “server.” Discord is where the majority of conversations take place, events are live streamed and new projects take shape.

While interacting on Twitter and Discord you’re going to see the term, “shill your NFT.” Shilling an NFT means to drop a link to your NFT. 

Community members tend to be suspicious of NFT shilling nowadays. So, if you are using a social media manager to promote NFTs, be sure to contribute to the community. Liking, commenting and reposting goes a long way. 

Remember, collectors are lurking everywhere. Becoming a legitimate part of the community will go a lot farther than just spamming links everywhere. 

Influencers

There are influencers who are more than the Average Joe shilling NFTs. They regularly engage, educate, and post about the current NFT market. If a big-name influencer buys or recommends an NFT, the project scores serious street cred.

Brett Malinowski is a great example of an NFT influencer. Malinowski shares analyses of projects and recommends NFT projects to his 58.6k followers on Twitter, 61.5k subscribers on Youtube.

Gmoney, “a futurist, disruptor ape,” may arguably be the most prominent NFT influencer. He is a Puerto Rican-based investor known for his orange beanie and advocacy for a more equitable future.

Advertising

As NFTs continue to move from a niche concept to a mainstream form of art, projects will need to cut through the noise in order to gain some attention.  NFT marketers should consider advertising via OTT video or digital media placement. 

Read our full OTT Advertising Guide 

NFT Marketing Examples

How Brands market their NFT campaign is the lifeline for how successful the project will be. It needs the perfect blend of entertaining and informative without coming across as “salesy.”

Hundreds of ads are shown to your audience daily, very few manage to stop the scroll and even less become memorable. So what types of marketing generates hype in the NFT community?

To best answer this question we’ve put together this list of three NFT marketing examples.

Top Shot by the NBA

Top Shot is an online marketplace where people can buy and sell NFT video highlights of their favorite basketball players as if they were trading cards.

Since launch, more than 350k people have bought a NBA Top Shot with a total of 10.5 million transactions resulting in almost $750 million in sales. 

NFT influencers even got involved. At the beginning of 2021 a group including @AdamLefkoe and @YoDough bought LeBron’s poster dunk highlight from 2019 for a record $208K. 

Key Takeaways

• FOMO
• Famous Athletes
• Influencers Endorsements
• Twitter
• Outsourced to a media company to continue building the brand

More Than Gamers 

Attracting 50k Twitter followers and 27k discord members in just 3 days, NFTMTG gave away 50 whitelist spots to fans who followed the page, liked, reshared and tagged 5 friends. 

The project called More Than Gamers began marketing on Twitter December 13 with a 60-second video trailer, which as of publication have more than 614k views. 

The short-form video advertises a competition of 10,000 gamers for metaverse supremacy. 

Key Takeaways

• Social Media Marketing
• Short-form video trailer
• eSports gaming community
• MAYC NFT Giveaways
• Influencers: partnerships with TFG, Director at Ape Kids Club

Adidas Mint: Partnership with MAYC

Adidas partnered with NFT pioneers gmoney, PUNKS Comic and Bored Ape Yacht Club to create a limited edition digital collectible offering holders exclusive collaborative physical merchandise and ongoing digital applications. 

The “Into the Metaverse” collection includes 30,000 NFTs. 20,000 of which are reserved for early access. The early access drop went live 17 December 2021 with a 13-second product video announcement by Adidas on twitter.

 
Adidas will be posting a verified secondary marketplace link to their Twitter and Discord pages for users who miss out on the drop. 

Key Takeaways

• Partnership with Influencers
• Last Minute Stealth Launch
• Short-Form Product Video
• Pairing NFT with Physical Merch
• Encouraging Liquidity

Final Thoughts

Big money-making opportunities exist for Brands ready to explore the world of crypto and NFTs. Naturally, every big brand wants a slice of the pie. 

But you can not jump into the shuttle blindfolded and expect to land on the moon. To successfully tap into this new form of cash flow - you need a deep understanding of who NFT buyers are and what motivates them to buy.

When you are ready to get your own NFT off the ground, hit that pink chat box in the bottom right corner and speak with a Colormatics team member.

Learn more about crypto advertising and how to target cryptocurrency users.