Have you ever noticed an unexpected increase in your cryptocurrency wallet and didn’t know where the free coins came from? That, my friend, is most likely the result of an airdrop. Hoorah for free money!
Airdrops can be delivered in a variety of ways, including forks (e.g. Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Diamond), ICO purchases (e.g.Raiden Network), and freebies (e.g. Binance gifting customers with 500 free TRX). Sometimes an airdrop will occur if a team behind the blockchain project decides to give away “free” tokens to the cryptocurrency community.
One of the most well-known examples of an airdrop is when a hard fork of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, gave current Bitcoin holders an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Cash. At the time of the airdrop, if you were holding 0.4 Bitcoin, you were one of the many lucky receivers of 0.4 Bitcoin Cash. With Bitcoin Cash currently valued at $700USD, that sounds like a pretty sweet deal!
Why do Airdrops Occur?
However, a big question still remains. Why does this happen, and why would a team decide to give away valuable tokens? Think about it this way. When you’re walking down the aisle of your favorite grocery store and employees are offering you samples of food to try, you may take a quick peek to analyze what the food is to decide if you want to try it.
You take a bite, and it sure is delicious.
The employee offering you the free sample then says “if you like it, you can find it in aisle 5 on the left-hand side”. From that single nibble, you may just go and buy the product.
In marketing, awareness is often one of the initial steps in a buyer’s journey. As with the grocery store example, psychology plays a crucial role in the aspects of an airdrop, as a buyer is much more likely to purchase a product they are familiar with than a product they know nothing about.
Therefore, those in charge of distributing the tokens see an airdrop as a key opportunity to give you a taste of their tokens. Compared to alternate forms of costly advertising (such as Facebook Ads), airdrops are often a more effective approach to showcasing coins
