One of the best methods for promoting a company’s early-stage cryptocurrency assets is bounty marketing. Numerous cryptocurrency projects have used this campaign strategy to raise awareness of their offerings. However, many companies fail to benefit from crypto bounty programs due to a lack of a crypto marketing strategy. Therefore, businesses need to develop a plan before entering the market.
This article will examine the numerous procedures project developers should follow while implementing their cryptocurrency bounty programs. Before we do that, let us talk about what bounty campaigns are and why they are so useful
What are Bounties/Bounty Campaigns?
What are Bounties?
In cryptocurrencies, coin developers employ bounty programs to generate publicity before the initial coin offering (ICO).
An initial coin offering (ICO) is used to raise money and is the digital version of an initial public offering (IPO). However, it is unlike an IPO, where purchasing shares always results in stock ownership in the issuing company. An ICO does not always result in equity ownership. Instead, a bounty program essentially pays people incentives or tokens for performing specific tasks to advertise the ICO.
Social media influencers, bloggers, and digital marketers advertise the ICO on their platforms during the pre-ICO phase in exchange for payment based on audience engagement. In the meantime, developers frequently receive rewards in the form of tokens for their contribution to the project’s development.
Bounties reward programmers in the post-ICO period for finding bugs and providing input on other problems. These are called “bug bounties” since programmers are awarded for explicitly testing system weaknesses.
How do Bounty Campaigns Work?
Bounty campaigns are rewards provided to a wide range of participants for a variety of actions related to an initial coin offering (ICO). An ICO is essentially the first public offering in the cryptocurrency world. ICO are popularly used by businesses seeking to develop new coins, applications, or virtual currency services. Participants in a bounty program receive incentives or tokens for performing tasks that promote the ICO.
Bounty programs have their roots in the realm of online video games. Gamers who assist with game development, specifically those who find flaws in the game, usually receive a variety of benefits.
Participants in the bounty program are dispersed throughout the several phases of an ICO, from investors to ICO promoters and engineers. The incentives can be in the form of free or reduced tokens that can be redeemed later after the tokens are listed on an exchange, although this is uncommon.
Pre-ICO and post-ICO stage
The offering is promoted to potential investors and those ready to carry out duties to increase the profitability of the ICO during the first stage, commonly referred to as the pre-ICO stage. As mentioned, computer programmers, social media influencers, bloggers, marketers, and other interested parties all work to raise awareness about the project and the impending ICO. Bounty programs typically concentrate their efforts on social media platforms at this point.
Developers are compensated with a sizable amount of tokens for their involvement in the project’s code. When the tokens are posted on an exchange, they can be exchanged for fiat money. For instance, there were sizable bounty campaigns for blockchain developers for Zcash and Ethereum, respectively.
Influential bloggers and social media users create videos, articles, and other content to promote the ICO on well-known platforms. They get compensated depending on how well the audience responds to their content.
After the ICO, developers might be encouraged to uncover flaws or provide input on other design issues through bounty programs. A sort of compensation known as a bug bounty is paid to programmers who test and find blockchain issues.
After an ICO, the released blockchain needs to be adjusted. For example, translators who translate papers related to development and marketing contribute to the blockchain’s worldwide reach. They may also receive bounty awards.
Types of Bounty Marketing Campaigns
Pre-ICO Bounty Campaigns
These bounties take place before the ICO’s official debut. Their primary goal is to raise awareness of a business’s cryptocurrency endeavor. These incentives are also essential for raising awareness because they encourage word-of-mouth advertising. At this point, marketers use a variety of social media platforms to increase market penetration. The main pre-ICO Bounty marketing strategies are listed below.
Social Media Campaign
This includes benefits that members receive in exchange for promoting the cryptocurrency project on their social media profiles. The participant will win or lose depending on the degree of engagement their actions generate. This kind of bounty campaign can cover a variety of activities like retweets, shares, and comments. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are popular social media bounty campaign platforms.
As businesses would expect, social media bounty campaigns can benefit blockchain projects that hold token sales. These campaigns help create a community around a project and allow community members to serve as “cheerleaders” in exchange for small amounts of the recently released digital tokens.
Generally, the likelihood of an ICO reaching its financial goal increases with the media attention it receives. Therefore, the project’s reach will grow as more users are attracted to promote the project’s advantages on social media. Professionally managed token sales frequently emphasize their social media bounty campaigns because they have grown to be an essential component of an effective ICO marketing plan.
Drawbacks of Social Media Bounty Campaigns
While an efficiently run bounty campaign might do wonders for an ICO’s success, the terrible truth is that many individuals participating in the social media bounty program are merely there to make quick cash. Unfortunately, this can result in the bounty hunters performing less than optimally. This is because people frequently end up spamming Facebook groups or the BitcoinTalk Forum to collect as many bounty payouts as possible.
That not only abuses the system but also costs the business money for little to no advantages. At the same time, it can damage an ICO’s credibility because the crypto developers may be perceived as running an unprofessional marketing campaign. Therefore, to ensure that their reward campaigns will result in a profit for the project, entrepreneurs planning to conduct a token sale need to contact knowledgeable professionals.
Article Writing
Bloggers with a sizable audience might take part in this cryptocurrency marketing strategy. These bloggers can create feature articles regarding the initial coin offering on their platforms. The compensation bloggers receive is based on how much engagement their posts get.
The success of a bounty campaign depends on how much awareness project developers are able to raise. Blogging is one way to spread awareness. Many businesses manage blogs, and this is an excellent avenue for them to connect with their target market and community. Blogging gives them an opportunity to explore themes and ideas relevant to their sector and engage with their audience . Companies can also advertise their expertise, which will increase the credibility of their blog because more people will visit their site for guidance. Content that is optimised with the right keywords and written well can boost their search engine rankings.
Website traffic and organic rankings can be increased through blogging. Many project developers appreciate the frequent benefits that blogging can offer to their campaigns through raising awareness and boosting online visibility. Most of the leading search engines benefit from regularly updated, educational information. When a company starts a blog, it primarily does so to give search engines like Google new content to index. This means that if a person were to perform a Google search in the topic of a recently published blog post and something pertinent is contained in the blog post, it would appear in the list of results from their search, giving the audience of a business a choice.
Signature Bounties
These types of bounties can be found in the Bitcointalk forum. A signature with a code is introduced as part of the ICO project, and participants are free to post it. In addition, awards are given to program participants following their placement. The majority of ICOs allow participants at the junior level and higher.
Post-ICO Bounty Campaigns
After the ICO is over, post-ICO rewards are implemented to improve the project’s performance based on community feedback. The following are the main kinds of post-ICO rewards:
Transcription Campaigns
These rewards are offered to those who translate documents for users of the ICO. When they complete the assignment, translators of many languages, including German, Dutch, and Japanese, can earn coins or tokens. For example, as a translator, you can translate the whitepaper and the cryptocurrency website, for example.
Bug Bounties
Websites and organizations that offer bug bounty programs encourage coders to find and report defects, especially those connected to security flaws.
These bounty programs are designed to detect problems and fix them before the general public notices them and to stop widespread hacking abuse. In addition, many well-known technology companies, including Meta, Google, Apple, AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Reddit, offer bug bounties.
The US Department of Defense and Wall Street companies like Goldman Sachs have established bug bounty programs.
Through bug bounty programs, companies can use a vast community of hackers and programmers.
Best Practices for Running a Successful Bounty Marketing Campaign
Now that we have a better understanding of bounties and bounty programs let us look at some of the best practices companies have used to run a successful bounty marketing campaign.
1) Begin the Campaign on Time
Businesses should begin a pre-ICO bounty at least 20–30 days before the launch of an ICO project. Some projects introduce their pre-ICO programs simultaneously with their initial coin offerings (ICOs). However, it’s a good idea to initiate a bounty before an ICO debut. This way, participants will have adequate time to start the promotion efforts and increase their support network.
2) Collect Enough Coins For a Bounty Campaign
Most profitable projects that employ a bounty marketing strategy will reserve 1.5% to 3% of their total coin supply for bounty schemes. However, certain projects alter these percentages to suit their particular demands for crypto marketing.
3) Make Sure the Amount of Rewards Given Out Corresponds to the Platform’s Popularity
The entire bounty kit is broken down into several stakes for distinct mini-campaigns. Therefore, an adept manager of an ICO reward campaign should ensure that each stake’s part is proportional to the platform’s popularity. For example, a sizable portion of the prize stake should be targeted to well-known platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram.
4) Conduct Cross-channel Promotion
It is crucial to make steps to encourage significant participation while launching a bounty campaign. Companies must therefore execute their campaign through a variety of messaging platforms. By running their campaign across several platforms, they will generate a lot of attention for their ICO. They have many alternatives, including tweets on Twitter, Medium posts, and ANNs on Bitcointalk.
5) Hire an Educated Bounty Administrator
An ICO bounty campaign manager must help with the problematic practice of articulating a bounty campaign plan. When the campaign begins, there will be a lot to keep an eye on. Fortunately, the expert should know what to do to deliver an effective campaign.
6) Maintain Records of Each Participant
Businesses must keep track of participants’ performance after assigning them tasks. This enables them to distribute their prizes to each participant fairly. The easiest way to track each person’s performance is via an Excel worksheet.
Conclusion
The bounty campaign model has proven to be one of the most effective strategies for promoting a cryptocurrency company. By running through the steps outlined above, you can ensure that your bounty campaign is a success.