1. No clear idea of who their ideal target audience or market is.

Knowing your ideal target customer is the key to a successful business and an even more successful ICO marketing strategy. Most marketers think marketing personas just internalize the ideal target market, however, they can help you clarify your ideal customer profile.

Personas allow you to check how well your assumptions match with existing customers and social followers. Evaluating the fit of your personas and the current market can result in a clarified ideal customer profile for your company to work with.

2. Not leveraging your existing digital assets.

Too often companies preparing to market their ICO overlook the wealth of information and data they are already holding.

Building an audience has been a long-term task, resulting in large amounts of customer files, email databases and social profiles.This presents you with a very valuable data mining and target marketing opportunity. By looking at customer information you can use everything from their characteristics to their interests to build custom audiences. Custom audiences can then be leveraged across different channels to expand your ICO’s overall audience.

Building a brand, on the other hand, has created a great deal of content, much of which has ended up in the archives. With some tweaking and recycling your company can consistently distribute high quality content to engage with your audiences.

3. Not having a clear and strong unique selling proposition.

USP (unique selling proposition) is a fundamental marketing concept and should form the foundation of any campaign you run. Understanding what differentiates you from other companies and makes you unique will give make your company stand out. Make your elevator pitch and sales presentations memorable by tapping into this. Although you will usually represent 3–4 different marketing personas when marketing an ICO, your USP must act as a common thread. It should be concise, with a strong call to action and show value to everyone in your target market.

4. Analysis Paralysis.

It is easy to get overwhelmed launching a new ICO campaign or executing on your ICO marketing plan when the checklist of items to do is never-ending: social media, analytics, content calendars, influencer outreach, community management, reward programs and so on. Often, founders and executive teams look at everything that should be done and become paralyzed by the long lists because they don’t know where to start. Everything seems important.

The key to overcoming analysis paralysis is to embrace imperfection and get started. Don’t worry about the best order or going deep with each task. Instead, circle back as each process is started and defined. Don’t expect to conquer every item completely before you move on to the next. Online tools are interdependent and tend to grow as a unit. Social media will grow as you write more content and share it. Your SEO campaigns will do better as you gain authority from referral links, community management becomes easier when you have a list of FAQs, Audience Development improves when you begin to see an active audience and identify influencers by channel.

It’s better to start imperfectly, improve and build than to wait for a perfect plan. Perfection is not as important as getting started.

5. Not leveraging communities, groups, forums and social media effectively.

All too often we hear about multi-channel marketing but don’t implement it. As we continue to grow with the evolution of the digital world, one thing is certain: we must understand how all available and emerging platforms are used and the difference between them. This ability will separate the mediocre ICOs from the rewarding ICOs.

Every platform serves a unique role in your digital marketing strategy, whether it be traffic, awareness, amplification, impressions or engagement. Knowing how to use each platform purposefully and effectively will elevate your marketing plan and build your ICO audience.

6. Relying on just PR to do all the heavy lifting.

Running a successful ICO marketing campaign requires all hands on deck, so don’t leave it to just your PR professional.

Remember marketing seeks to reach potential and current customers, inspires them to think about the company and gets them to take direct, sales-focused actions. PR, on the other hand, focuses on generating positive reputations of, and relationships with, the brand through customers, media, stakeholders and shareholders. While PR releases important statements, marketing is responsible for the dripping of ongoing information to the community — and without that communication dries out.

7. Chasing competitors.

Know your competitors but don’t become like them. Your brand and ICO will be very different to another’s, similar to how your USP is unique to just you. Use that difference and make it your competitive advantage — find your own voice and content to drive meaningful results. ICOs don’t operate in a one size fits all manner.

8. Giving everyone a marketing voice.

Collaboration is key in developing your marketing voice and good teamwork will show. Make it a priority to coordinate efforts between your internal marketing team, PR team and social media team to create one strong and unified voice.

9. Failing to measure and track results.

Measuring everything from conception to execution will give you consistent opportunities to improve. Building metrics and taking time out to understand and analyze them will help you see what works and what doesn’t. This will result in you optimizing channels, creative and create specific goals for KPIs — driving what will be a successful ICO.

10. Doing the “shotgun” approach.

Have a clear target in every component of your marketing plan with specific and measurable KPIs attached to it. Throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks doesn’t work. With the growth of digital marketing, the most significant and important change is transitioning from mass marketing to highly targeted marketing. This means that the voice, positioning, content, and distribution of all ICO-related marketing activities in your company should have a goal.

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