If you sell physical or digital products online, and want to experiment with selling NFTs, the first thing you need to realize is that in the NFT space, things are a bit different.

Marketing is more effective when you approach an NFT launch as a community project. You’re not simply uploading a hundred different art pieces, randomly assigning prices, and hoping a lot of folks buy into the hype.

You want people who buy your collection to truly support it. That will drive the price up and keep the demand high in the future.

How do you get their support? Start with an effective launch strategy. To help you, here are ten tips to save your NFT launch from a total flop.

1.Crank up organic marketing on social media

Social media is the best space to gather an audience willing to buy your NFT collection. This is especially true if you’re a solo artist, content creator, or entrepreneur.

Here are some effective ways to market your NFT collection through socials.

• Build a community. It’s one thing to inform your audience that you’re launching a project. It’s another thing to interact with them personally and let them engage with each other.
• Don’t limit yourself to one social platform. Discord and Telegram are the ones most commonly used by Web3 communities for coordinating teams and discussing projects, but others like Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook are used to promote and attract members to your community.
• Be authentic on Tiktok videos and Youtube shorts. Crypto, NFTs, DAOs, and other aspects of Web3 thrive in a decentralized culture, which frowns upon social hierarchies. Creating a sense of equality and bridging the gap between you and your audience will increase their trust in you and your project.
• Be active in other communities. To attract attention to your own project, engage with different communities in the Web3 space, especially those with similar or complementary projects. If no one knows you, no one will notice the NFT collection you plan to launch.
• Collaborate with founders of other projects. Engage with others, and chances are, they’ll engage with you, too. Web3 is built on the concept of communities, and to be successful, you need to cross-promote each other’s projects. One strategy is to host podcasts or Ask-me-Anything sessions. Invite other founders, discuss your individual Web3 projects, and use the chance to get their supporters to rally behind your own NFT project.

2.Prepare a clear roadmap.

A roadmap is a detailed explanation of the NFT project, including benefits for its users and plans for the project in years to come.

One misconception is that NFTs are merely collectible digital photos with a huge price tag attached. But unless you’re selling NFT art purely for the art itself, ideally, what you want to create and launch is an NFT project with utilities built into every NFT in the collection. You’ll then build a community around it, launch the NFT collection, and encourage your members to keep supporting the project long after the sale.

If you don’t do that, many will join the project just to mint NFTs at the lowest price possible. Then they’ll flip them when demand rises and earn by trading or auctioning off the NFTs they bought. Before long, you’ll run out of supporters for the project and the value of the NFTs in the collection will plummet.

To encourage people to mint and hodl your NFTs, you need to communicate the following:

• The purpose of the project and the people behind it
• Utilities, such as access to private communities, games, and events; the ability to vote for future project developments; discounts, freebies, crypto rewards and future airdrops
• Tokenomics, or how the NFT will function in the community and what benefits hodlers will receive by continuing to hold on to their NFTs instead of flipping them right after minting

3.Introduce the community to the team behind the project.

People in the Web3 space may choose to be doxxed (with their real names and faces made public) or undoxxed (anonymous). With the number of scams and cash grabs frequenting the Web3 space, if you truly want to build confidence in your project, a good practice is to publicly reveal the real identities of your team’s core members. If it’s a solo project, then allow them to find you on Linkedin.

Remember that NFT holders want a guarantee that you will not commit a rugpull, or abandon a project the moment they hand over their crypto. They also want to be sure that the project truly has the potential to succeed, and that you have enough experience credibility, connections, and resources to back up your claims and sustain it in the years to come.

4.Start marketing long before the launch.

Let your audience browse your collection on the marketplace even before the launch date. Inform them if they will be allowed to choose the NFT they want, or if it will be randomly assigned to them.

Make them aware of the blockchain network the project will be built on, so they can prepare the crypto tokens they need in advance. Thoroughly explain the benefits and features of your NFTs on socials so when the launch date arrives, you won’t have potential buyers still confused by how the mechanics work.

5.Choose the right influencers.

Having famous celebrities or social media personalities onboard may contribute to a successful launch, but this is often not enough.

Look for those who have clout in the NFT space, and who have been involved in successful projects before. Avoid those known for rugpulls in the past. Get members of your community to genuinely promote your project for you.

6.For a large-scale project, get a solid marketing team.

Don’t rely on one person alone to shill, or aggressively promote your project, anywhere and everywhere without a carefully-planned strategy.

The person actively engaging the community on Discord and creating threads on Twitter shouldn’t be the same person editing Tiktok videos and Instagram reels. Having different people with varied areas of expertise allows each aspect of the project to get the attention it deserves.

7.Educate your audience.

The main thing every potential buyer needs to know is how you plan to launch your NFT collection and how it can benefit them.

If they’re already into collecting NFTs, then they already understand the general mechanics. But if they’re newbies to the space who simply want to support your project, they need to be educated on basic things, including:

• Different wallet types and how to open one to buy and store NFTs
• How to connect a wallet to a marketplace like Shopify
• Which wallets and blockchain networks are compatible with the marketplace of your choice
• How to buy the right kind of crypto needed to mint and trade NFTs from your collection
• How to avoid high gas fees and gas wars when minting NFTs
• How to use the utilities included with your NFTs

Use blogs, Twitter threads, podcasts, or reels to drip feed explanations during the months leading up to the launch. This keeps the community updated, builds awareness around the project, and increases the chance that your NFT launch will be a resounding success.

8.Prepare everything ahead of time.

If this is your first project on an open marketplace, you’ll need to settle initialization fees and other necessary fees before you can even launch your collection.

This is especially important if you’re creating a collection on the Ethereum blockchain, where gas fees there are notoriously high and each transaction can last hours when the blockchain is congested.

Giving yourself extra leeway allows you to pick a time when gas fees are low instead of having to bid higher to make the transaction push through on time. The worst-case scenario would be to miss your own launch date because you were unable to initialize the project in time for the launch.

9.Pick the right blockchain network for launching your project.

Ethereum is the most established blockchain for minting NFTs, but the downside is that gas fees are much higher. Alternative blockchains like Solana, Layer 2 scaling solutions (such as blockchains built on top of the main blockchain), and sidechains like Polygon process transactions faster and cheaper.

Your choice of blockchain affects your choice of marketplace. The popular marketplace OpenSea, for instance, does not support either Tezos or Cardano.

Ideally, you want to pick a blockchain with the following characteristics:

• Compatibility with popular wallets like Metamask
• Low gas fees
• Fast transaction processing speed
• Environmentally-friendly consensus mechanisms, like Proof-of-Stake (POS)

10.Do a presale.

To sell out collections with hundreds or thousands of individual NFTs, creators build hype by offering early access at a cheaper floor price and with more perks and bonuses.

Doing a limited presale improves your overall marketing strategy. It’s a good way to test for errors and get constructive feedback before the collection is fully open to the public.

And people bragging on social media can get more eyes on your project, raking in more potential buyers anticipating your launch date.

Some tactics used in presales include:

• Contests and raffles within the community
• Whitelisting to avoid scams, flipping, and gas wars
• Giveaways and airdrops
• Rewarding the most active members

If you have a thriving eCom store and want to bring your brand to the forefront of Web3, RectangleNFT has the solution for you.

If you want to start selling on Web3 but find it too complicated to get started, Rectangle AI has the solution for you.

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