Change the channel: PR vs. advertising for crypto projects | Majinx.io

Both crypto PR and advertising are crucial for any project in this sphere. A successful and well-thought marketing campaign can become a game changer for a business if planned correctly. It helps to gain the trust of an audience and make a project successful and profitable. 

However, crypto advertising is a paid promo for a project indirectly asking you to buy something whereas PR is an earned one. It is focused on building trust between an audience and a crypto project.

But it wouldn’t be fair to present PR and advertisement as good and bad police respectively. 

In this article, we’ll describe the benefits of PR and advertising in the crypto sphere and decide if there’s a winner in terms of benefiting a crypto project.  

What is PR

PR is a strategy of brand communication aimed to build trustful and beneficial relationships between a company and its public.

PR is all about maintaining reputation management by creating a positive image of a project to meet the established goals.

Main instruments:

• Press releases
• Business events
• Partnerships
• Sponsorships

What is advertising

Advertising is considered to be a subset of marketing aimed at drawing the audience’s attention through paid announcements. 

The marketing machine promotes a business by collecting data about the main audience and generating interest and desire by choosing the appropriate online/offline sources and placing paid ads in them.

Main instruments:

• PPC ads
• Ad networks
• Print advertising
• TV 
• Radio

Crypto PR techniques

How P2E transforms the crypto PR

There’s no way to boost your public image better than holding a super cool crypto PR buzz. It’s a two-way communication process where you get as much as you invest emotionally.

Building a reputation and showing the company’s values through different media channels demands the goodwill of the team and great knowledge of the product and its audience.

A good PR is one that causes empathy. Here’s the story behind one famous P2E project.

The residents of a small Filipino village are in despair. They lost their jobs due to the pandemic and now they don’t have any livelihoods. Suddenly they find out there’s a cool online game allowing them to earn virtual currency and earn more than the average local salary. This saved them from poverty.

This story is nothing but an Axie Infinity bio. The project had a qualitatively new goal of spreading the word about the game and blockchain as a whole to people from economically disadvantaged areas. The team learned its audience and the main ways to reach it, and it worked!

In fact, the principal instruments the Axie Infinity team used to achieve their goals are the most effective in the whole crypto PR industry to date.

1. Community management engagement 

The brand storytelling needs to be heard, and community managers are the postmen who send the letters with main project ideas to an audience.

It’s crucial to choose the most relevant social media platforms for your crypto marketing plan. Blockchain addicts usually choose the following ones.

• Discord

This platform is especially loved by P2E and NFT spheres. All new collections and games create a strong community in Discord and often reward the most active users with pleasant bonuses.

• Telegram

Hot discussions, contests, and the latest project news is a must for any PR campaign on Telegram. 

• Reddit 

There are thousands of subreddits on blockchain. An unobtrusive discussion where you and your colleagues can share the benefits of the project is a simple way to reach your audience.

• Twitter

The alma mater of crypto project marketing. A place where 1 person can make a coin raise in price by around 216%.It’s essential to use correct hashtags and interact with other similar projects to get mutual PR here.

2. Checking the SEO сonstituent

Choosing the keywords correctly makes your PR content 10 times more effective. If someone is searching you on the web, just make the path shorter.

If you’re searching for ‘crypto exchange’, Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase will certainly be in the top 10 results on the first page. It’s imperative to make the content 100% optimized.

3. Launching airdrops

This method not only helps to increase the loyalty of an audience but also to attract new users. And while P2E projects hand out gaming NFTs generously, crypto projects use airdrops to neutralize negative discussions.

One of the most famous airdrops is Uniswap distribution of UNI for everyone who made at least 1 transaction on the platform. This was made to raise the price of the token after the scandalous Sushiswap fund transfer.

Crypto advertising techniques

Cutting ads: a bearish sign for the crypto market?

The recent Bloomberg report stated that TV crypto ads hit the lowest mark this year. It may seem strange after the sensational Crypto.com, FTX US, and Coinbase ads during the U.S. Superbowl period.

This can be explained by the bear market tendency in 2022. However, this is just a temporary decline as every crypto project still needs proper advertising. Brands will adjust.

1. Creating crypto ad networks

Ad networks are crucial for crypto advertising. They don’t differ much from traditional ones. There are native and banner ads available there. But first, you have to learn about your audience and understand its attributes (age, demand value, tech savviness) before the launch.

Here are the top-notch ad networks to use:

• Bitmedia.io 

Device, timing, and geo-targeting options are available.

• Ad Dragon

Has a P2P model.

• CoinZilla 

CPC, CPM methods on board.

• AdEx Network

No withdrawal limits.

• Coinverti

In-feed, banner ads are available.

2. Creating social media ads

The paid-for placements are cornerstones of all social media platforms. No matter how hard Facebook tried to prohibit crypto ads a couple of years ago, the huge demand for crypto did its job.

Each social media platform has different rules concerning crypto ads. One needs to know all the pitfalls to tap into the target audience. 

For instance, YouTube will very much likely block your ad if it has a poor ‘appearance’. 

It’s essential to present your business with a bright idea, a cool slogan, etc.

The eToro ads ‘HODL’ (Featuring Kristian Nairn) used the famous ‘Hodor’ rephrasing from the ‘Game of Thrones’ uttered by the same actor. The message crypto pr agency created is clear and memorable.

If a business shows a human approach and creativity, paid ads can also become a great path to success.

3. Participating in podcasts 

Podcasts gained a lot of popularity recently and are especially popular among busy men who don’t have time both to watch and listen to something simultaneously. Thus, one can listen to a conversation or a story and keep on running in the park at the same time. 

That’s why podcast ads are one of the most modern ways of reaching people. You can not only pay for a sponsored ad here but also participate in the episode or sponsor it. 

In fact, any paid ads will do if they are created with a talented mind and the message is simple and clear. 

Conclusion

To date, both PR and advertising are effective instruments of crypto promotion. PR is more often used due to the higher trust level among crypto users. However, paid ads still occupy a niche where a direct message/slogan/naming can attract users’ attention and make them take action at the same second.

Crypto marketing history proves that a great story combined with a lingering promo message is always a killer combination.