NFT Marketing: How to Make an NFT Drop Successful | Ep. 34

Ty Smith0:07

Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. I'm Ty Smith. Today we are going to discuss NFTs. Unless you're living under a rock, you're probably talking about NFTs, your mom is probably talking about NFTs, your dog is probably talking about NFTs, CNBC is talking about NFTs. It's just everywhere right now. So we are going to go over the top marketplaces to sell NFTs, as well as cover marketing strategies and some tips and tools that we've found for our NFT clients to work well.

Ty Smith0:27

So first let's go into marketplaces. So the number one largest marketplace to sell NFTs is OpenSea. OpenSea was started about three years ago. They've been kind of quietly building for a long time and now that NFTs are hot, they're basically blowing up, raising millions of dollars and getting super popular. OpenSea can kind of be considered the eBay or Amazon of NFTs. What I mean by that is that basically anyone can list on OpenSea. They make it super easy to mint the NFT, to work in your royalties, to update metadata. They basically make it super easy to list something on OpenSea.

Ty Smith1:17

That said, there are some downsides to that. If you go on OpenSea, you'll see basically all types of NFTs, really premium content as well as stuff that's just total kind of garbage. Like I said, anyone can make an NFT on OpenSea, and some people are just kind of uploading random pictures. So if you have content that you don't want to be shown next to some random JPEG of, I don't know, some guy's dog or whatever, OpenSea might not be the best fit for you.

Ty Smith1:37

But if you're looking for an easy solution to kind of get something up and running on Ethereum blockchain, and you don't necessarily want to code your own smart contracts and all of that, OpenSea could be a great place for you. Another cool thing about OpenSea is that OpenSea, not only do they have the marketplace and the minting service, they actually have a whole kind of behind-the-scenes white-label solution that people can use. So using OpenSea's API, they also have an SDK, you can basically create your own standalone website that's using the backend infrastructure of OpenSea. So you can have your own site, create your own NFTs, have it on your site that looks sort of like an e-commerce store that people can use MetaMask and all that good stuff to buy your NFTs, and then it also has all the functionality of OpenSea, meaning that they can take it onto the secondary market and then sell it there. So that's a pretty cool feature of OpenSea that basically no other marketplace has.

Ty Smith2:40

Next most popular marketplace is Rarible. So Rarible is very similar to OpenSea in the sense that basically anyone can mint on it. It's very simple to upload a picture, upload all the information that you want about the NFT, and then get it out easily. Something to know about Rarible though is that it's very much art-focused. So while on OpenSea you might see things like crypto domains and just like random things like audio, visual stuff, Rarible is really, really focused on art. So you'll see a lot of art-type content on there.

Ty Smith3:32

SuperRare is another one. SuperRare works quite differently from the other two we spoke about, OpenSea and Rarible. SuperRare is art-focused as well, but it's really only premium art content NFTs. So unlike the other two, you can't just sign up for SuperRare and make an NFT. You have to be a pre-approved artist. The process to be a pre-approved artist is a little bit lengthy as far as the information you have to provide, and it's taking many weeks for people to get approved. So if you're trying to get something done quickly and you don't already have an audience, you're not already like an artist that has a passionate community around it, SuperRare might be a tough gig. But if you can get on SuperRare, it's great because they have a really passionate community of people that are into art NFTs.

Ty Smith4:30

Next platform is Foundation. Foundation is another mostly art marketplace. They are also really well known for memes. So if you're familiar with the Nyan Cat meme, the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme, both of those were sold on Foundation. I think both of them went for about $500,000 too, which is kind of cool. So Foundation is another one of those that you have to be a pre-approved artist to list on there. So a lot of the kind of things I said to look out for for SuperRare also apply for Foundation.

Ty Smith5:18

Next one is Origin Protocol. So Origin Protocol isn't really a marketplace in that you're going to go on their website and buy NFTs, like a lot of different NFTs. It's really more of a behind-the-scenes kind of system. So Blau, the DJ, if you didn't hear already, recently sold about $12 million worth of NFTs from his website. So his website, if you actually go to it, I think it's nft.blau.com, you scroll down to the bottom, you'll see powered by Origin. So Origin is basically working on sort of a Shopify for NFTs kind of solution. It's not live yet. They've done it with Blau, they've done it with Paris Hilton. I don't know if they've done it with anyone else, but basically they're only offering it to celebrities that they know are going to make a ton of money with these things. But look out for that in the future because that'll be pretty cool if anyone can just easily spin up their own website and sell their NFTs that way.

Ty Smith6:23

Next one is Crypto.com. So Crypto.com, which most people in the crypto space probably know, have a really popular credit card where you earn crypto back for spending money. They recently got into NFTs and have an NFT marketplace. It's another one of those platforms that you can't just mint on Crypto.com's NFT platform. You have to be a celebrity. They basically do the minting, they do the marketing, they kind of do all that stuff, but you have to be a well-known person to be on Crypto.com.

Ty Smith6:46

One thing to know about a lot of these platforms, so all the ones that are built on Ethereum, which is most of them, like especially Rarible and OpenSea, you can buy or mint on one of those, try selling it, and if it's not selling, you can port it over to another marketplace. So like I've made things on Rarible, I've minted on Rarible, and then I could very easily go onto OpenSea, as long as I'm signed in with the same MetaMask account, I can immediately see all the NFTs that I've either owned or purchased or minted. I can see them all there. So you do have flexibility with a lot of these things as far as trying different marketplaces, because if you mint on Rarible but you find the audience isn't really meshing with that, then you can move it over to OpenSea and hopefully have more luck.

Ty Smith7:43

Another thing about OpenSea to go back to that is Rob Gronkowski's NFTs were on OpenSea. But he actually used what I had mentioned before with building his own website, gronknft.com, that looked just like his own website, but you can buy the NFTs, and the whole thing is being powered by OpenSea. So if you're looking to sell NFTs, that's an option for sure.

Ty Smith8:25

So let's now go into some marketing strategies for NFTs. So Coinbound does marketing for all different crypto companies. We have for years. NFTs are the latest thing, so we're getting obviously a ton of interest from NFT companies that are trying to grow. And here are some kind of shortcuts and tips and strategies that we're seeing to be extra effective for NFTs. Influencer marketing, which if you're in crypto, you kind of have to be doing influencer marketing in some shape or form. It's just such a social community that to get your name being promoted by a well-known, well-respected name in the space is going to help you be much more successful than not. That's one option. So Gods Unchained was one of the clients that we had that we did some influencer marketing for, and they were super happy with the results. With them, we stuck mostly to YouTube content.

Ty Smith9:21

Twitter is another thing to pay close attention to. The community of, I mean, so Twitter is the lifeblood of the crypto community, like for sure. NFTs are sort of a crossover between the art space and the crypto space, but still, the art space is another community that has a ton of community on Twitter. So both those things together is making Twitter a fantastic place to be spending some time and resources in growing out your presence, because people, NFT artists are being discovered on Twitter all the time. If you can make cool stuff, you definitely should be sharing it on Twitter.

Ty Smith9:48

Clubhouse is another great one. If you haven't spent time on Clubhouse because you think it's like exclusive or anything like that, it's really easy to get on now. If you need an invite, just shoot me an email or something. I've got a ton of them to give out. Clubhouse is working really well for NFT companies and just NFT artists because there's as big of a crypto community as there is on Clubhouse, there's an even larger NFT community. And these people are buying up NFTs like crazy. They're so interested by it. They love talking about NFTs. Even if it's not for a monetary incentive of going to sell on Clubhouse, like just go and listen in on some of these NFT rooms. They're really, they're really awesome.

Ty Smith10:42

So that's a strategy that's being used a lot actually by Crypto.com. So Crypto.com works on like a drop basis, rather than like a whole open marketplace where you just browse things and buy, they do drops. So one of the more popular drops they did recently was Snoop Dogg's drop, and they marketed that very, very heavily on Clubhouse. I don't know what the exact number is that they made selling Snoop Dogg's NFTs, but it was definitely in the millions, and Clubhouse was a huge component of that.

Ty Smith11:01

Another thing that Crypto.com did really well was email marketing. So you need to have a site that is selling often and enough to kind of attract a lot of people to your site and buying things, and then collect email addresses however you possibly can, and you can use that for upcoming drops. If you're an artist and you're going to be doing multiple collections and series, it's a cool place to just re-engage with people. And it's so, I've spoken on previous episodes that it's so inexpensive to set up an email marketing system. And then you can kind of count on a lot of people seeing what the next upcoming drop is if you have a way to contact them via email.

Ty Smith11:49

Another cool thing to know about Clubhouse, just so there's now this like subsection of moderators on Clubhouse that are becoming like famous NFT moderators. So just hop in any of these popular NFT rooms and you'll kind of like learn who they are. One person who's been really involved with the Crypto.com drops has been this guy named Farokh. I can't remember his last name. Just something to keep in mind to make a drop on Clubhouse more successful is use a name, use an account, I should say a person really, that has a large following of NFT people already, and then they'll get notified when that person starts a room or is moderating a room, and that's a great way to get a lot of eyeballs on your drop.

Ty Smith12:46

Another place to look to market NFTs is these curation communities. So there's communities that are budding. Most of them are pretty small at this point and kind of underground, but there are definitely a lot of these NFT curation communities that are basically just like a bunch of people that are constantly like sharing what NFTs just dropped that they think are cool, that they're buying. It's basically like large friend groups. I don't know too many of them by name. Like I said, they're pretty underground, but I do know a lot of them exist. One that I am familiar with is GrowYourBase. So you can find them on Twitter and they have a website, and they're actually doing a Damian Lillard drop, NFT drop soon, which is pretty cool.

Ty Smith13:35

SEO, if you listen to this podcast a lot, you know I love SEO. SEO is awesome for NFTs, and I'm definitely recommending it to people. But just like I always say, SEO is a super long-term kind of strategy. So if you're trying to capitalize on something like immediately while everything in NFTs is as hot as it is now, it might not be a great fit. But still, if you're really in it for the long game, I would look there.

Ty Smith13:51

A cool thing that's kind of developing with this proliferation of NFTs is from a marketing, from a crypto marketing perspective, is pay-per-click advertising, like paid ads on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Those are all things that were for years, and I know this well, really difficult to not to do and not get banned. All these platforms are not having a problem advertising paid ads on even Instagram, which historically has been the most difficult, for NFTs. And Crypto.com is doing a ton, a ton of paid advertising on Instagram for their NFT drops. So if you spend some time and really want to get some awareness around an NFT drop or collection, whatever kind of event it is, give it a shot. And also if you do get banned, this stuff is so new, if you do get banned, shoot me an email also or Telegram, because I'm trying to learn this stuff as well. It's definitely like a developing industry.

Ty Smith14:56

If you are going to build your own website for your NFT drops, definitely definitely understand like what an NFT is, in the sense that if you're selling an art NFT, like have your website be sort of an artistic work. It should definitely be like a aesthetically pleasing website. Use something like Webflow maybe is a great way to easily spin up a website that looks awesome, that's also functional. So give that a shot.

Ty Smith15:40

As this whole NFT business is blowing up basically, one thing we notice is there's very few media companies that are really providing like great, great content about what's going on in the NFT space. Like what are the latest drops? What's the latest news going on with NFTs? What are the top sales? And my team is just so into this NFT stuff, as am I lately, that we just launched a new newsletter called nftlately.com that will once a week send out all that good stuff regarding the top news, the top releases, the top drops, upcoming events, upcoming drops, basically everything you need to know about like this week in NFTs in a very short, easy-to-read, digestible email. So check that out, nftlately.com. And that is going to wrap up this episode. If you have got value out of this, be sure to rate, review, and recommend this podcast. It definitely helps us a lot as far as knowing what type of content to continue producing, and helps us share the word. Also, follow me on Twitter @TyDanielSmith, and then chat with me. I'm responsive to DMs. We can discuss NFT marketing or just crypto marketing in general. And that will be it. Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon.