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The 5 P's of Marketing – Product, Price, Promotion, Place and People – are key marketing elements used to position a business strategically. Most of us, whilst still understanding what makes an NFT valuable, have forgotten that these are also the key elements for an NFT project to succeed. The industry is filled with people who are focusing on short-term hypes and price pumps. This is more obvious when the market is bullish; all kinds of projects get a price push upwards no matter what you launch and draw.
The NFT global sales figures for September are at $507 million. January sales figures were at their peak, at $4.7 billion. This is the 8th consecutive month of dips and almost a 90% dip from its peak. Having said so, the basics of marketing come in handy and timely. We will dive into the basics, 5Ps and an additional 5 more tailored to the NFT markets to make this a perfect 10.
Product
In the NFT era, tales say that you only need to make a nice profile picture, and you will sell them like hot cakes. Well, a nice picture would surely draw some form of attention to what you are offering, but it is not enough. You need to have a product and a theme behind what you are trying to do. If today, your NFT offering is a high-end membership, then apart from using the NFT to identify yourself, you need to offer maybe a members club venue at a high-end location to make it attractive. This is part of your product offering, and you need to fulfil it.
Take another example for discussion purposes. You are an NFT yield product, and you promise all your holders that they can get a 30% yield per annual. Then the bare minimum thing you need to do is honour your product offering. It may sound simple to many of you right now, but in these current bearish times, many of such offerings cannot be fulfilled anymore.
Price
The price element refers to setting prices for your NFTs and their services. Forget about selling your NFTs at 100 ETH at the current market conditions. You should know who your people are, and how much they are willing to pay for your NFTs. I would at times suggest putting up a survey to get your community to determine the price and not pure guessing.
Bybit NFT Marketplace launched its GrabPic programme, and it has received positive feedback from its users. They have good projects at a low starting price, attracting new users and aspiring projects together on their marketplace to grow with them. So far, all those who have listed on to their new program are all sold out. I have seen projects offering 5,000 to 10,000 pieces of NFTs, and all sold out. My book "NFT: From Zero to Hero" was the first to be launched on that program. The price point of $2.99 that was determined by Bybit works perfectly because they know their users. The secondary markets look healthy too with a total trading volume of $187,460. Therefore, I recommend to all price their NFTs according to your people instead of just looking at the market.
Place
Both place and placement are used to talk about this P. If you are a crypto native, your target audiences are mainly residing in your community. If you are a traditional brand going into the NFT space, you may be targeting a particular geographic area, the population of the area, the buying power of the area, and the spending patterns of people in the area. The most important question is, are those people willing to convert their money to cryptocurrency to buy it? Do they know how to use a decentralised wallet?
Again, using the above example again on the second P. I launched my NFT book on a centralised exchange as my followers and community members are mainly crypto natives, and they understand the process of buying an NFT using cryptocurrencies like USDT, BNB, ETH etc. Those not in the crypto space but keen to experience what an NFT book is like can register an account with the exchange using a user id and password. It is easy for them to navigate.
Promotion
After you know where to promote your product, it's time to turn ideas into action. NFTs are used in marketing strategies as advertising tools, PR strategies, events promotions and more. The promotion covers every strategy you use to sell your product, and it is what connects to revenue. Inbound marketing, direct sales, press launches, everything comes in the promotion.
Suppose you are a small-budget project, just like me. Focus your promotion around the community partners that you are familiar with. This is a win-win situation, especially in bearish times where everyone is trying their best to promote themselves. Coming together and staying united is an excellent way to create more buzz for everyone. Having said so, I know projects which are still spending hundreds of thousands on Twitter advertisement placements and promotions. If your target audiences are there and you get back good revenue, why not?
People
To truly stand out, NFTS must make customers and their long-term satisfaction the heart of everything they do. By winning the hearts of your community, you will grow better. People are one of the hardest to manage. You need to know their characteristics, behaviour, preferences and when to do the things that bring everyone together. I had good friends, but some of them are no longer friends, frankly. The typical failure for most of them is that they spent a lot of time talking- AMA, Twitter Spaces and 1-1 calls. There are a lot of big talks, but no actions. Community members are not dumb, and they can sense your sincerity.
The people factor is also amplified in the crypto space, where everything is 24/7 and global. Community expectations go higher than product features. They expect to be treated well, and available constantly, and they expect you to be listening to them if you are positioned as a 'community-owned project'. Lastly, the synergy within your team. You must take into account your staff and their roles. It is very sad to see projects led by volunteer investors who are mostly not professionals, and they take time off and go MIA from time to time. Such a structure will not work in the long run and is not sustainable.
In some cases, the developers are anonymous. They used KYC documents of their community members, who are technically not the owners of the project. The problem will arise when the developers go AWOL, or the project goes south, and the person who did the KYC will be responsible for any wrongdoings. This is a significant risk for everyone. My sincere advice is- Do it right.
Apart from the traditional 5Ps that we know, I would like to add 5 more.
Patience
The most expensive and most popular NFT art, then Beeple's piece titled 'Everydays – The First 5000 Days'. This collage masterpiece took 13 years to make, and more than 5,000 digital images are on it. It was sold for $69.3 million. He took 13 years to make the sale, which is reasonable, but in today's NFT world, everyone is pampered, and they expect to flip them in days.
Positioning
Positioning is very important. This is a term used to describe how a brand is seen by consumers, how it stands out from rivals' products, and how it differs from the idea of brand awareness. A small-time author like myself needs to position my NFTs and relate to my community. A big-time exchange needs to position itself in many ways. NFT Exchanges, in particular, need to position themselves in the most strategic manner. NFT exchanges are the rising stars in the crypto market. It is the bridge for non-crypto users to us. In time to come, centralised NFT exchanges will be walking down the path of exclusivity. AAA games that will eventually get into the crypto space will decide which centralised exchange they will use exclusively to sell their gaming assets. I mentioned the word centralised a few times in this short paragraph because processing is faster, responsibility and customer satisfaction are stronger, the fees are lower, and there is no need to go on-chain for all the assets in the short term. Hence I will expect NFT marketplaces to grow very swiftly in the years to come.
Packaging
After you have positioned yourself, you need to start packaging. To me, the packaging is the action item for your positioning and branding. If you are a project that is positioned to be a Green and Charitable NFT project. Then you need to pack yourself with all the related marketing, events and PR that link back to your brand.
Participation
This is closely related to the People element. There are many cases where there are 50,000 community members, but you cannot even sell 5 of their NFTs to them. This kind of outcome to me is zero participation. Your NFT may not be what they want, or maybe you have not done enough marketing to convince them that this NFT is worthy. The other wayside to this is over-participation. I have seen projects which promised the sky to their community, and their community works very hard to spread the word. The NFT sold well, with 1000% participation, but the fulfilment part is bad. Their game is not launched on time, or the NFT does not work in the game. Overall, over-participation is still a good thing.
Pacing
NFT projects have got to pace themselves in these current market conditions. Let's say you have a good concept and the NFTs are all ready. You need to pace yourself with the market to get the best outcome for your project. If you choose to do it when the market is bad, you have to look into the 5Ps more carefully, and pricing is a sensitive one. Once you have already launched your NFT project; you should pace yourself to introduce new utilities and developments and not show all your hand at the start and do nothing after. Pacing is an art.
Pumped
This is the best-case scenario. If you have done the above in the right place, right timing, good product and so forth. Your NFT project is all pumped up in price, and your community is all-time active.
You need to maintain your lead and good results. Therefore, it is time for you to revisit all the 10 Ps again and go back to the basics.
Anndy Lian is the author of the book "NFT: From Zero to Hero"