The Ultimate Marketing Guide to Promote Your NFT Project

Grow your brand on social media

Unless you’re stuck in the year 2000 and using AOL instant messenger, you should probably know that social media is a powerful tool for promotion. For those of you who are fully aware of the marketing utility that comes with social media platforms, your best bet to find quality engagement with NFT enthusiasts and crypto peeps is on Twitter and Discord. Of course, it’s never a good idea to put all your NFT eggs in one basket, so it’d be a solid move to create accounts on Medium, Youtube, Instagram, and Reddit.

Now, if you're thinking, "I don't know a thing about Twitter or Discord", well, it's time to start dipping your toes in the water and engaging with the communities who are actively participating on these platforms. Here's an easy way to get started:

• Follow other accounts that you like and study their tone, timing, and how they engage with their followers.
• Practice interacting! Even if your Tweets get no engagement, it's time to start working on your own style.
• Get in on the conversations, and see how people form their opinions on all things NFT.

Keeping that in mind, there’s one glaringly giant disclaimer that comes with all of this: DON’T SPAM THE NFT COMMUNITY. We’ll say it again in non-caps: Don’t spam the NFT community, please. Instead, focus on building a genuine relationship with people who follow different NFT projects.

Interested in more? Check out this interview on how Brigitte Cronje created an NFT collection for the first time.

Establish key partnerships

Partnering with established NFT projects is an excellent way to get your project out there. But make sure to be strategic about it. Reaching out to every project on the market will lower your chances of finding the right fit. Instead, do your own research (DYOR!) and find projects with a similar target audience to yours, or reach out because you love their art or thriving community.

For example, if your project is geared toward collectors who like art, then a community constantly obsessing around floor price talk might not be the best fit for a partnership.

Here’s how to reach out:

1. Don’t be spammy! Try to engage with their community first and then reach out to the right person—Don’t DM every team member. If they have a support system in Discord, create a ticket.
2. Tell them what makes your project unique and why you want to partner with them.
3. Share a preview of your art. (Remember: People are visual.)
4. Share more details about the collaboration you have in mind. For example, offering presale/allowlist spots to their community members.
5. If agreed, set a date to announce this collaboration and hype it up!

Use this outreach template as a starting point:

Hey [NAME], I wanted to reach out to your community to discuss a potential collab. We are seeking out a few very select communities that we respect highly for their community model and long-term focus to involve in our allowlist process.

We are building something that we believe stands to become [insert unique value proposition], and we want to align ourselves with other good communities. This would probably look like offering your community ~[amount] allowlist spots and then working on an art collab to tweet about it and welcome you in!
And of course, if we were to collab, then we would love to see your community retweet it, but our heart is mainly to invite you into our community with a special place because we value you.

Here are a few references of how other projects announce partnerships:

Keep in mind: If you’re building a long-term NFT project, don’t partner with any project your community wouldn’t vibe with.

Host fun contests

Everyone loves a good contest, and that’s why they should be part of your growth strategy.

While you’re building your project, why not host some fun contests and allow your community to win presale spots? Contests are a fun way to engage your potential holders and get some buzz going on.

What type of contests can you do?

• Derivative art contest: Invite your community to draw your art in their own style.
• Food contest: Your art on a cappuccino or cake? Why not!
• Meme contest: Everyone needs a good laugh. This option doesn’t require any artistic skills, only funny minds.

You can take the Robotos Art Contest guidelines as inspiration for your own contest rules.

But what about people who want to get an allowlist spot but don’t have any artistic skills or enough free time to invest in these activities? Luck-based giveaways are great for community members who are strapped for time since they take minimal effort. We’ll cover it up next!

Run luck-based giveaways

Discord and Twitter giveaways are some of the easiest and most common strategies to offer allowlist spots and grow your community.

To run giveaways on Discord, you can create a dedicated giveaway channel and install a bot to pick a random number of winners. You can check the “Giveaway Boat” or build your bot with Dyno.

Use this template for your Discord giveaway announcements and adjust as you need.

We partnered with [Project Name] to offer [Number of Spots] allowlist spots
How to enter:
1. React with the  🎉 emoji on the Giveaway Boat.
2. Have either the [Name of Role] role.
3. Join the [Project Name] Discord and say hi!
Rules:
- 1 entry per person, wallet, and Discord handle.
- Winners will receive an allowlist spot, but if you're already allowlisted, do not enter the raffle. We’ll re-roll a new winner.
Note: wallets are captured through our raffle and will be uploaded on their backend—no further action is required for winners.

It’s super easy to run giveaways on Twitter. Just make sure your rules are clear.

Use this template for your Twitter giveaways:

We’re excited to partner with [Project Twitter Username] to give away [Number of Spots] allowlist spots! ✨
To enter:
1️⃣ Like and RT,
2️⃣ Follow [Account 1] + [Account 2]
3️⃣ Tag 2 frens
Ends on [Date + Hour]

Join Twitter Spaces

Where are the ones likely to be interested in your project? Where are they hanging out? Twitter still is the strongest platform for the NFT talk and interactions. So you definitely want to be there. But being on Twitter is not only about retweets. Be helpful and friendly; answer questions; make yourself useful by providing links to relevant information about your NFT project; never make it about you. Remember that most people might not know who you are just yet. So you need to get the tone right.

Getting people to notice your project is only half the battle; you also need to get them excited about it. However, some strategies are easier to pull off than others.

If you're having trouble getting noticed, setting up AMA sessions or a live event lets you interact directly with others. It’ll create opportunities for you to talk with people who may not have heard of your project, but you can talk about it casually.

Here are two ways to start, you can join Twitter Spaces from other influencers on the space and discover what topics they talk about, participate and become a part of the active community. The best part of it, is that you can host your own Twitter Spaces as well.

These are some popular profiles you can follow:

1. Farokh
2. Lucas Bean
3. Pablo Stanley
4. Melissa Mimosa
5. Cave Guy
6. Ohhh Shiny
7. Matty
8. Nouns
9. BossLogic
10. Art chick

Pay homage to projects you admire

If you talk about other projects that you admire, it creates a natural flow that lets other people in on what you’re interested in, and they will be able to connect with you on a more personal level. This also shows that you’re paying attention to the community and trying to build relationships with others working in the same space.

There are plenty of talented artists and projects releasing incredible NFTs and creating awesome content. If your project aligns with another project you admire, you should definitely give a shoutout. You can share their content and explain why it inspires you to create your own work. You could also create a new piece of art inspired by something they made and ask them to share it with their followers.

Include 1-of-1s from other artists

Expand your own community by inviting artists from projects you admire to create a 1/1 of their own to be included in your upcoming NFT collection.

Just like CryptoBatz did! They partnered with 11 projects to create 1/1 cryptobatz by other artists like Pablo Stanley, Peaceful Groupies, Toadz, Deadfellaz, CryptoKongz, Alien Frens, and more.

Create a presale sign-up form or mailing list

You can divide your sale as early access presale, public presale, or public sale. With the presale form, you'll be able to collect information from people who most likely want to buy. You can also use the form to gauge interest.

Getting people signed up to the mailing list before launching will help during the launch. It gets people excited and invested in the project's success. If things are going well, people will help promote the project by telling their friends and spreading the word on social media when the time comes.

Your project is your product

The NFT represents what people are buying, but it doesn't represent the holders' relationship to it. If people are buying, they are not customers buying tokens; they are investors in the project.

Instead of waiting until after launch, it's up to you to make them feel like they are getting a bargain by paying you now.

Set up realistic expectations for your NFT project

Before you launch, you should consider how real it is to expect many people to be interested in it.

Once you start promoting your NFT project, you'll find that your potential audience is mainly composed of two types of people: those who are interested and want to help and those who are not interested and want to tell you why you're wrong.

There is nothing wrong with either type. If you're lucky, the former will outnumber the latter. If not, it doesn't matter. Wait until after you launch, then let the market decide what's good or bad.

For now, all you have to decide is which of the two possible responses to regard as more likely. Take into account how much work other people have put into similar efforts before, how much they have accomplished with their own resources, how many people they were able to attract in the past, whether their project is more or less similar to yours than it might seem at first glance.

You should try to be as genuine as possible when promoting your project. Don't over-sell it or make false claims about what it is or is not. There are plenty of projects out there already making those kinds of mistakes, and you'll just end up getting lost in the noise if you do the same thing.

You want people to love your project. You want them talking about it and spreading the word. But remember: There’s no need to ask them to be active all day to earn an allowlist spot.

You see, it’s not that people don’t want to fight for their favorite projects. It’s just that they have things to do in real life. So why do you need your community members to grind on your Discord server 24/7? In short, we strongly discourage grinding.

Be honest with people, and they will trust you, which will help you build up a community around your project.

Make sure that people know what you're up to

It can be challenging to promote a new NFT project right before launch. But the earlier you start creating content and building a community around your project, the better. You're joining the NFT space, so make it a bit of fun. Enjoy the process, and enjoy your everyday life too!

Don't forget to follow @buenonft on Twitter, as we'll be sharing our most recent articles on the blog, product updates, and more.

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