How To Promote Your NFT Project (12 Proven Strategies)

Last updated on April 11th, 2024 at 08:26 pm

So you’ve created your art and smart contract and are ready to mint and debut your NFT project to the world. Congrats! But before you eagerly race ahead to share your project on the internet, hoping folks will buy it, you need to take a step back and craft a marketing strategy.

Hype, credibility, momentum, exclusivity, and community are the ingredients on how to sell your NFT art. Keeping these principles in mind, we’re breaking down 12 ways you can promote your NFT project. Most are free, some require a financial investment, but all are effective. So read on and find which methods are best for you.

1. Tailor your messaging to a web 3.0 audience

When promoting your NFT art, it’s essential to understand the difference between a web 2.0 and web 3.0 audience.

A web 2.0 audience is typically more concerned with the aesthetics of your project. Conversely, a web 3.0 audience is more interested in its potential profitability. So you need to create campaigns that appeal to both groups.

Another factor is the market size of web 3.0. With small (but growing) interest, going broad and targeting the entire audience is more effective than targeting a specific subgroup. In 2021, over 2.5 million crypto wallets belonged to people who either hold or trade tokens, based on Nonfungible.com’s research.

Also, move quickly when promoting your NFT project, as the market for these assets is highly dynamic. Interest in an NFT can evaporate overnight, so you need to be ready to adapt your promotional strategy on the fly.

Finally, the goal is to sell without selling. Concentrate on generating interest instead of hard-selling potential investors. If you can do this, you’ll have success in NFTs.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when trying to understand your audience:

• What are their motivations for buying NFTs?
• What kind of NFT collections do they typically invest in?
• How much money are they willing to spend on an NFT?
• Where do they like to hang out online?

Answering these questions will help you better understand your community and how to appeal to them.

2. Write a compelling description for your NFT project

A great NFT project description is concise and to the point. It tells buyers what makes your collection unique and why they should bother investing. This can be accomplished by telling stories, communicating your vision, or including credibility signals. 

So if you’re selling an NFT art collection, tell a story about how you created the pieces or what inspired you. 

If you’re promoting NFTs of blockchain-based gaming assets, communicate your vision for how the industry will develop. 

And if you’re offering an NFT collection of celebrity photos, add social proof like verified purchases or positive reviews from other buyers.

For example, Women Rise NFT is focused on advancing women’s rights and girls’ education through NFTs and Web 3.0. Their ultimate goal is to build the first school in the metaverse for the 258 million children worldwide without access to education. 129 million of them are girls. 

The commitment to women’s rights and girls’ education makes them unique and differentiates them from other NFT projects.

3. Architect your NFT sales machine

A well-defined marketing funnel is essential for selling your NFTs. The steps in the funnel should be designed to attract buyers and convince them to take action. Let’s break this down.

• Phase 1 – Awareness: potential supporters are made aware of the project’s existence and purpose. This is where you can post your NFT on directories and share it on social media and forums.
• Phase 2 – Interest: users learn more about your project and offers. Create blog posts, videos, and podcasts explaining your NFT in more detail.
• Phase 3 – Excitement: people begin to get excited about the prospect of participating in the project. This is where you can tease your NFTs using a countdown timer on your website, run competitions, release teaser content or send exclusive emails. 
• Phase 4 – Action: where your community takes steps to support the project, such as purchasing tokens or sharing content with their networks. Make it as easy as possible for people to participate by making your project available on various marketplaces with multiple currencies with clear instructions. 

It’s a common mistake to focus on awareness and action while neglecting interest and excitement. However, the latter two phases are critically important, especially for the web 3.0 audience, who are highly motivated by the fear of missing out on the next great investment.

Once you’ve mapped out your NFT sales machine, you have a template that you can tweak and improve with each release.

4. Add your NFT artwork to an open marketplace

Open marketplaces are an excellent way to get your NFT collection in front of a new audience. There are different marketplaces to choose from, so selecting the ones most relevant to your project is crucial.

You might want to list your artwork on SuperRare or Foundation if you’re selling digital art. If you’re promoting crypto collectibles, you could list them on OpenSea or Rarible.

You can use the marketplace’s built-in tools to promote your project. For example, SuperRare and Foundation offer featured artist programs that allow you to reach a wider audience.

Getting on marketplaces is a good starting point, but you won’t be the only one selling on the platform. You’ll need to do more than just list your artwork to stand out from the crowd. Here are a few tips:

• Make sure your profile is complete and includes links to your project’s website and social media accounts
• Upload high-quality images of your artwork
• Describe each piece of art in great detail, including the artist, medium, and inspiration (see point 2 above)
• Use keywords and tags to help potential buyers find your listings
• Offer discounts or promotions to encourage sales
• Participate in the community by leaving comments on other people’s listings and engaging in forums and chats

5. Develop a social media strategy

It’s standard web 2.0 marketing advice to pick one or two social media platforms and master them. Posting on social media is free, so competition is fierce—so you need to intimately understand each platform to stand out. 

However, as the web 3.0 audience is so small, the opposite is true. You should get on every platform for maximum visibility. This may sound overwhelming, but it’s doable, providing you have a sound content plan. 

You can save time by having themed days where you post content about a specific topic. For example, you could have “Media Monday” where you share videos and images related to your project, “Testimonial Tuesday,” where you post user reviews, “Wallet Wednesday,” where you share instructions on how to use a wallet with your NFTs, and so on. 

You can also use social media to drive traffic to your website or marketplace listings. Link to your SuperRare profile in your Twitter bio or share a link to your latest blog post on Instagram. 

Read more: How To Promote Your NFT on Twitter in 5 Steps

Finally, don’t forget to use hashtags. Hashtags are essential for helping people find your content. Here are some strategies for using hashtags: 

• Do your research to find the most popular and relevant hashtags for your project
• Use a mix of general and specific hashtags, e.g., #nftart #cryptoart #blockchain; better yet, copy the hashtags similar NFT artists are using
• Include hashtags in your post captions as well as in the comments
• Change your hashtags regularly to ensure you’re attracting new NFT buyers 

Each social media platform has its own unique culture and etiquette. For instance, Twitter is known for being fast-paced and news-focused, while TikTok is about entertaining content and trends. So familiarize yourself with each platform before posting to ensure you provide the most value.

Using a tool like SweepWidget allows you to run contests and giveaways to increase your reach across 30+ social media platforms. We’ll jump into how to do this in the next section.

6. Run timely giveaways

Giveaways are a proven strategy to engage your audience at each stage of your marketing funnel but require planning to get the best results. For example, NFT artist, Gachi runs regular giveaways offering free minting as a prize for contestants. 

Participants must take multiple actions to enter the draw, including connecting their wallet and signing up, following Gachi’s account on Twitter, retweeting the post, and so forth. 

In just seven hours, this campaign attracted over 5,000 retweets and 6,000 likes on the post, which generated a lot of interest in the project. To achieve results like Gachi: 

• Clearly state the rules of entry 
• Choose a prize that’s relevant to your target NFT buyer
• Set a realistic timeframe for the campaign (24 hrs is a typical length for NFTs contests)
• Upload quality media to showcase your artwork. Experiment with photos and video to see which one performs best
• Promote your giveaway across all channels 
• Create engaging captions and tag relevant accounts to increase the reach 

Using a giveaway tool like SweepWidget will help you to automate your giveaway and boost the viral reach of your campaign. You can choose to run a social media contest where users have to follow you on Instagram and Discord to enter or a referral contest where entrants have to share your giveaway with their friends (this is a great way to get organic reach – for free). 

To take things up a level, SweepWidget has built-in gamification features that allow you to add a leaderboard, progress bar, and social actions to your contest. Doing so will make your giveaway more engaging and encourage people to take action across all platforms. 

SweepWidget has recently added an NFT giveaway template where participants can add art to their wallets and interact on the most popular platforms for NFT investments.

By running regular giveaways, you’ll not only increase engagement with your project but you’ll also be able to collect valuable data about your target audience. This will be handy when planning your marketing strategy and deciding which channels to focus on.

7. Partner with influencers

Working with influencers can help you reach a new audience, and they can provide an endorsement that carries more weight than a paid advertisement. Choose influencers who are a good fit for your brand and create quality content that aligns with your values.

Once you’ve identified influencers, reach out to them and see if they’re interested in promoting your project. Agree on a price and provide them with the content (prizes, images, videos, description) they need to promote your project.

Back to the previous strategy, partnering with influencers through a contest or giveaway is incredibly effective. You could offer a free NFT as a prize for the best Instagram post (here’s an example) about your project. This will promote your project and give you great user-generated content (UGC) to share with your followers for extra credibility.

NFT creator, Phases is a fantastic example of influencer marketing. Phases is an NFT project that creates digital art, and they partnered with Agresivoo, an NFT investor and influencer, for a giveaway. 

Agresivoo offered ten whitelist spots of Phases NFT to the winner, and participants needed to engage with both accounts for a chance to win. This collaboration was successful, increasing interest for both Agresivoo and Phases.

8. Get active in Discord servers

Discord is a popular chat app for gamers but can be used for much more than gaming. There are Discord servers for all sorts of topics, and you can use them to promote your NFT art.

To get started, check out Influencer Marketing Hubs’ list of the Top 20 NFT Discord Groups and Servers to join as a creator. 

Once you’ve found a few relevant servers, join them and start interacting with other members. Share updates about your project, and be sure to answer any questions that people have. And after you establish a community, you can start dropping your latest releases and run exclusive discord competitions to build buzz around your project.

SweepWidget’s Discord giveaway tool has a built-in function to increase your Discord server followers.

9. Promote your NFT on Telegram Channels

With over 700 million active users, many of which are web 3.0, Telegram offers a unique opportunity to promote your NFT collection—providing you have a good strategy.

Start by identifying which Telegram groups are most relevant to your project. Then, post engaging content that will generate interest and discussion.

It’s also worth creating a dedicated Telegram channel for your project, where you can post announcements and updates. 

Lastly, be active in the Telegram community, participating in conversations and providing valuable insights. Like any community, consistency is vital.

Read more: How To Boost Your Telegram Subscribers (10 Proven Strategies)

10. Join the conversation on Reddit

Reddit is one of the most popular websites and an excellent place to promote your NFT project. To find relevant Reddit communities, search for keywords related to your project on Google. If you’re promoting NFT artwork, you could search for “art Reddit.” A natural place to start is in the NFT subreddit. 

Once you’ve found a few relevant communities, join them and start sharing updates about your project. As with Discord and Telegram, be genuine and helpful to others.

You can also start a thread on Reddit as a way to promote your NFT project. To do this, create a post in the subreddits and include all the information about your project that you think people would find interesting. Just be mindful not to overdo it, as the Reddit community doesn’t tolerate self-promotion—so lead with value and earn their trust first.

You can boost your Reddit community growth using SweepWidget’s Reddit giveaway tool to drive traffic to your Reddit posts / comments and your custom subreddit.

11. Invest in paid advertising

As the world of digital advertising continues to evolve, so too do the opportunities for promoting NFT projects. While traditional online advertising methods such as banner ads and Google Ads can still be effective, there are many creative ways to get your project in front of potential buyers.

Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter offer various targeting options that allow you to reach a highly targeted audience. You can also use native advertising to place your ads directly on relevant websites and blogs. And with platforms like Reddit increasingly embracing NFTs, there’s an opportunity to reach a whole new audience by running ads on popular forums.

Paid advertising can be expensive, so consider your budget and goals before investing in any campaigns.

12. Streamline your NFT promotions with repurposing and scheduling

It can quickly get overwhelming with so many different channels and platforms to promote your NFT project. Streamline your marketing by repurposing content across multiple channels. For example, if you create a blog post about your project, you can cut it up and recreate it for social media, Discord and Telegram channels, and Reddit.

To learn more about repurposing content, check out Gary Vaynerchuk’s slide deck on how you can make 64 pieces of content daily.

Another way to manage your NFT promotions is to use a scheduling tool like Buffer or Hootsuite. These tools allow you to queue up posts in advance and schedule them to go live later. This can be helpful if you want to ensure your project is being promoted regularly without having to post daily.

How to promote your NFT: final words

NFTs are hot, and there’s a lot of potential for projects that can capitalize on this new technology. But with any emerging market, competition follows.

Using the strategies in this post, you’ll get your project in front of the people interested in it. And with some planning and hustle, you can build a community of passionate supporters who are excited about every NFT drop.