NFT Marketing As Brand Visibility Strategy
How the hottest trend in blockchain can help your brand stand out
In 2021, NFTs became one of the hottest trends in many sectors. From digital art being sold for eight figures at renowned auction houses to fashion brands selling clothes in the metaverse, the crypto-space is revolutionizing the way we create value.
Still Confused about NFTs?
You may have noticed some jpegs or GIFs being sold for an absurdly high price. To understand why NFTs are so popular, we must first unpack them a bit.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are special cryptocurrencies executed through smart contracts that are often associated with an asset, either digital or physical. As they are on a blockchain, NFTs are easily authenticated and traceable, making them nearly impossible to recreate and forge.
The shifting landscape of NFTs
NFT markets are growing and changing rapidly. The market tracker DappRadar analyzed the NFT over the course of 2021 and recorded a staggering $23 billion in sales.
Other data providers have correlated this positive trend in the market, with CryptoSlam finding $18.3 billion in sales across multiple blockchains and NonFungible.com tracking sales of $15.7 billion on the Ethereum blockchain alone. These figures become even more impressive when compared to 2020 when only $94.9 million worth of NFTs were traded.
But the growth of NFTs should not just be measured in numbers — it’s also important to consider the variety of applications using this technology.
Digital Art
The most famous use-case of NFTs is digital art, sold through digital collectibles platforms which allow users to both collect and exchange the artwork easily. The creation of digital art has also been embraced by major brands, including Coca-Cola, RayBan and Gucci, as a form of engaging advertisement.
Fashion World
Within the fashion world, brands have also used NFTs to sell their clothes through metaverse or Play-to-Earn (P2E) platforms. Thanks to a collaboration with Epic Games, Balenciaga launched a virtual clothing line on Fortnite, allowing players to buy and wear digital outfits. The uniqueness of NFTs also expanded to the physical world with Nike’s first pair of tokenized sneakers, which can be authenticated and dematerialized through a QR code.
At Adaverse, we aim to facilitate the growth of NFT projects developed on Cardano’s third-generation environmentally sustainable blockchain. The NFT space is an exciting place to be, we’re laying the right foundation and enthusiastic about its growth in the coming years.
Using NFT to create brand visibility and reward consumer loyalty
The properties of NFTs make them a dynamic and innovative tool for digital marketing. NFTs present an incredible opportunity for businesses to enhance their product and marketing at every stage of their business development, and to foster customer loyalty in ways previously unimaginable.
1. Building brand value
There are different ways in which NFTs can contribute positively to the growth of a brand’s value. The opportunities that they offer are varied and they can be customized depending on the marketing strategy. Among the main ones, NFTs offer the possibility to rethink branding in newer digital crypto spaces, allowing a direct connection with wider audiences and stronger fanbases.
Through the tokenization of products on blockchain, brands can also create a sense of exclusivity and rareness of their offer. This often leads buyers to become more engaged and attached to the brand.
Tokens can further be used in a dynamic context, where the digital products can be transformed into loyalty programs and rewards for the users. As an example, the beauty brand Clinique launched a competition to win 3 NFTs representing the brand’s heritage. The NFT holders were then eligible for “smart rewards”, which included both physical products and invitations to events.
Finding the best strategy to build brand value, however, requires careful study. At Adaverse we can help your business to identify which NFTs properties best suit your Marketing Strategy and how to implement them on the Cardano blockchain.
2. Reaching a bigger audience
The launch of an NFT can be a thrilling opportunity for brands that want to reach larger audiences. The “trendiness” of the digital asset, alongside its accessibility, make it an ideal tool for brand visibility. Nonetheless, to actually find new audiences it is still important to use more traditional marketing techniques, such as SEO, Social Media Campaigns and Community Management.
By analyzing trending keywords and sharing on social media, brands can build online communities and give them a special membership status through NFTs. As an example, the Bored Ape Yacht club has managed to gather a large audience through chat rooms and social events, to the point that subcategories of users have emerged.
By taking pride in the membership of a specific community, users are also driven to generate brand-related content and share it through their own platforms. This creates a loop where the user-generated data and users’ loyalty to the brand fuel each other, increasing the value of the NFTs and the brand itself.
3. Reaching the right marketplace
While good community management is key to reaching a wider and more loyal audience, the NFTs also need to be easily accessible to the users. The creation of NFTs can require a large amount of time and resources if done independently. Today, multiple NFT marketplaces have grown enough to allow users to share their own art and encrypt it without requiring any coding skills.
The most renowned marketplace as of 2022 is OpenSea. As the first Ethereum-based marketplace, it allows users to create and trade NFTs across its platform. This has resulted in nearly $5 billion worth of transactions in January 2022 alone.
Another hugely popular platform is Binance. Thanks to its centralization and verification of content, it has managed to grow rapidly in a short amount of time. However, this centralization is a double-edged sword — listing on Binance is all but impossible for anyone other than those with the money or connections to do so.
The largest marketplace for Cardano Non-Fungible Tokens CNFT.io is where users can buy and trade NFTs with ADA tokens. As an open marketplace much like OpenSea, CNFT users can trade just about any Cardano-based NFT with low fees and fast settlement. Launched in July 2021, CNFT.io is rapidly exploding with the latest unique creations from across the world with rapid growth potential.
Launch your NFTs with Adaverse
Adaverse is a Cardano ecosystem accelerator committed to helping the next generation of African entrepreneurs and crypto artists. Through our expertise in NFT marketing and brand visibility, we aim to help all our projects take advantage of this sector’s exciting opportunities.
Our accelerator program is open to applications all year round from African-based startups with a crypto-native edge and a proven concept. Apply here.
