You should expect the worst to happen and prepare exactly for that. Because if the worst happens and you are not ready, it will cost you everything.
Here’s an idea for a game you can play: Think about all the bad things that could happen with your NFT project. Focus on specific details only. Then, try to find solutions for each bad thing. Write everything down, and you’ll have your very own crisis prevention plan.
How about a few thousand followers? Who said you need hundreds of thousands to influence, right? Of course. Just be sure to learn about each influencer’s preferences by analyzing their content and also check the reactions of their followers. This way, you can strategically focus on those influencers who are closer to the values of your brand.
Enough of this blah-blah. I will tell you what you wanted to know. There is a way to make it and keep the budget low. There really is, and there always was, a solution for those who don’t want to pay a fortune for promotion.
Your magical wand is called storytelling. You need to hire a creative marketer and/or storyteller. One/two person(s) working full-time on your lore, universe, characters, main plot, side stories, etc., will help you accomplish so much that you will never again underestimate the incredible power of stories.
The Web3 space is still in its infancy. Only here can you get scammed, hired, fired, and not get paid in a single week. There are many people here who push standards up, which is the right way, of course. But there are also many who have no standards, at best. As a founder or team leader, you will need very good HR skills. Do all you can to learn HR. It will save you headaches and a lot of money.
I’ve talked to many charlatans asking for a job and pretending they know what they’re doing. They did not. They just thought it would be really cool to have a job in crypto. No, it’s not cool. It’s difficult. Rewarding, but difficult.
Don’t fall for the hopium. The odds are currently against you. After all, you Googled whether you can promote an NFT collection without a budget. Do not rely on some magic wand of the Twitter/X.com algorithm. It won’t save your day. Organic growth has always been, and will always be, limited, hard to predict, hard to leverage, and definitely will not help sell out larger collections (2K+ items) within a reasonable time.
Did you really think you could make it without a budget? You know, NFTs are not a get-rich-quick scheme anymore. Similar to what happened with ICOs, the NFT market has matured, as have traders and collectors. If you think you can easily cash out $100K or more, you’re in for a big wake-up call. This is not how it works anymore. Anywhere.
Monitor tweets relevant to your niche and NFTs in general and create a table of profiles of small and medium KOLs and influencers.
For monitoring, I recommend Tweetdeck (now part of X.com premium), which allows you to set multiple tabs in the same window with different topics, profiles, search results, etc.
Just look for anyone who talks about NFTs and has fewer than 5K followers. Find all these recently active KOLs and influencers with fewer than 5K followers. Before you write down a new candidate, check their reach. That means how many impressions their recent tweets have. If it is below 500, move on to the next candidate.Make sure they have open DMs.
After you create a list of 100 candidates, prepare two short messages for A/B testing. Remember: you have 3-4 seconds. If you don’t make it in that time, you lost them.
Explain your product and brand as simply and quickly as possible. Include a sneak peek of the art.
Offer them an ambassador role in exchange for a guaranteed whitelist spot or even a freemint spot (if you have any). Consider other rewards. In some cases, consider crypto cash rewards if they have really good reach and you have the budget.
Your goal is to build a network of these ambassadors.
Remember, it’s really not about the numbers. If you allocate 500 spots to a community full of paperhands who will sell you out on the secondary market for a $10 profit , then it’s obvious that the collab managers did a poor job, right?
But if you allocate 100 spots to a community of diamond hands who believe in your product, love your brand, and will hold your NFTs for year or even years, your collab managers did a great job, right?
How to achieve this? Make sure your CMs do an amazing job marketing you at all times and under any circumstances. You want to gain access to selected, premium, top-notch communities where the allocation of spots means success and only success.
But it’s not so easy.
These so-called blue-chip projects (super premium) do not respond to typical collab requests. You need connections to get there.
It pays big time if your collab manager has these connections. Always try to have at least one such CM in your team. Be ready to pay a much higher weekly fee for him/her.
Point No. 2 deserves extra attention. It defines all the actions participants in the given raffle (whitelist giveaway) must take in order to qualify for the raffle.
From the very beginning of your collabs, you will include the instruction to follow your Twitter profile @xyz, which tells participants to follow your Twitter. However, what is even more important is the following raid instruction:
Like & retweet this tweet: https://twitter.com/brand/status/XXXX.
Here, you are telling participants to engage with the tweet, which will increase reach (impressions) and potentially attract more new followers.
Make sure to update the raid instruction target in your template at least once each week.
The collab template is a very important part of your marketing material. It’s how you communicate your brand and product to potential customers.
Communities from other projects will encounter your brand through this template first. It might also be the last impression if you make mistakes, so don’t.
Any mistake in the template means the growth will not be as good as you thought it would be. But don’t worry, templates can be changed often.
Just make sure CMs always have the latest updated version.