Given the financial ramifications of the success or failure of an ICO, a growth marketer is someone who should be a part of the planning process from the start. You have to discuss the goals and deliverables of their position. On their part, marketers tend to struggle with the conceptualization of ideas because most of the entrepreneurs behind ICOs barely have the marketing knowledge. As a result, they might not be able to communicate effectively what they need from the growth marketer.
A lot of prospects fail because those who are involved scour the internet for some good samples, tweak them and push them to their clients, hoping that they will somehow succeed.
Don’t go through your ICO like a renegade. You have to plan accordingly. Think about what you really want the marketer to do, and the results you would expect from them if they were to succeed. It’s also wise to put timelines to this task. What do you want the growth marketer to achieve for your ICO in their first 4 months, 8 months or so into the project?
Are you looking for someone who can make good use of the current traffic you have for the ICO, or are you looking for someone who will generate some good buzz about it? More importantly, whatever the outcome you seek, you should make sure you have long-term growth aligned with your ICO marketing plans.
Given these considerations, there are two options available for you. You can choose a quick fix method, someone who will get you results very fast and help you impress your audience. Alternatively, you can get a growth marketer who will hold your hand for the ICO and walk with you into the future.
It’s important that you define clearly what you expect from the growth marketer. Understand what their role in your ICO will be, and where possible, their personality.
What type of person are you looking to work with? Do they fit into your objectives, work ethics, and company culture? These are things you must specify, given that technical skills are very easy to learn but personality traits and values barely ever change. The following are some of the profiles that you will encounter when looking for a growth marketer for your ICO.
Generalist vs. Specialist
In case this is your first time marketing an ICO, there are so many unknowns, and you would want to get things right from the start. As a result, the temptation to hire a specialist is real, especially if you want to push your ICO to audiences who might not even know about you yet. However, this is not such a good idea, and here’s why.
Scaling up for an ICO is not one of the easiest things. You are venturing into a new frontier. There are lots of unexpected things in this. A specialist might be very good, but they might also be over experienced for what you need so you will end up paying more for what you don’t need.
As you delve deep into the marketing agenda a few weeks or months in, you might come to realize that you need to reconsider a few things, tweak some strategies here and there. If this is needed, you wouldn’t want to consider searching for another marketer because the qualities of the one you have don’t meet the new model.
So how do you go about this? As you’re planning for your ICO, look for a generalist for growth marketing. This is someone who has a very good foundation in the basics of strategy, someone who can scale your operations up or down as required and is willing to try new ideas. Make sure the marketer you hire is also versatile enough to handle changes as and when they are needed to suit the objectives of your ICO. Until you achieve your ICO goals, you are better off working with a generalist in marketing.
Potential vs. Experience
When marketing an ICO, a lot of companies make the mistake of hiring a marketer who’s either too experienced or very green in the industry. If you get an expert marketer from some of the leading brands in the industry to come and assist with an ICO in an infant industry, their chances of failure are very high. These are people whose skills include leading and managing a very large team, hiring and setting strategies for them. Therefore, handling the needs of a relatively smaller ICO setup will be a challenge, especially because since they are exposed to an enormous infrastructure and resource allocation, they would struggle to fit in.
Besides, such marketers might not even have the motivation to push your ICO to the heights you desire. They might probably be here to pass the time while waiting for the next big thing.
Hire a junior marketer? Maybe, maybe not. A junior probably understands the theoretical concepts behind marketing an ICO but might never have really been in charge of setting and executing the perfect growth strategy for an ICO. Most of such marketers will be passionate, intelligent and will have a commendable work ethic. However, they might not be in a position to advise you on the best way to push your ICO owing to their inexperience.
Taking these into consideration, who should you bring on board as a growth marketer for this ICO?
Take your time and search for marketers who have achieved good results elsewhere, people who have too much potential for the position they are currently pinned down on. These are often people who should be primed for promotion given their track record but haven’t been able to get there yet for some reason.
In case this is your first attempt at marketing an ICO, find a growth marketer who has experience in pushing for growth in the relevant industries.
Why should you pay attention to experience?
Experience matters when it comes to identifying and setting priorities for growth opportunities. These are people who already know what’s going to work and what’s not, and they can easily set the ball rolling, which is an important thing given that you might not have a lot of resources at your disposal just yet.
By hiring an expert, you are also taking advantage of their network which gives you the added bonus of growth channels, PR, and successful content marketing, not mentioning the confidence that your potential investors will have in your ICO.
While the desire is to hire an experienced growth marketer, you also have to be very careful hiring someone who comes with a prearranged blueprint. You need someone who will delve into their armory of experience and find the right tools to create a definitive strategy unique for your ICO.
Creativity vs. Analytics
Growth marketing has a wide scope. Should you narrow down your choices to a creative marketer or an analytical marketer who bases all their stuff on data? You should find someone who has a blend of both.
For the ICO, you need a marketer who knows how to make use of the data at their disposal for strategy formulation. They should also be able to draw data from other relevant sources and use it without feeling handicapped.
Data is one of the most important resources in the world at the moment. You should steer clear of a marketer whose life and work are all about formulas and quantities. This would be someone who must test all possible options to determine what works. You may also end up using the same trends that everyone is using, and your ICO will never get the attention it deserves.
You should be looking for a problem solver, someone who’s not afraid to take risks, someone who can push through contemporary techniques to make sure you achieve your growth goals.
Other than these comparisons, the following are some of the other features that you should be looking for when choosing a successful growth marketer for your ICO.
Growth Driven
An effective marketer is one who’s all about learning and growth. This is an individual who analyzes and tests everything they come across. You, therefore, need to make sure that you get a marketer who likes to experiment and has a proven success record with that.
The marketer should also be decisive. They must be relentless in pushing for results. Look at their track record and see how they have performed concerning driving growth in different capacities. Growth is not something you earn overnight. It takes time, hard work, investment, consistency, patience, and discipline.
Basic Marketing Skills
The marketing dimension has grown so much that companies are now looking for specific marketers for specific needs. However, what you need is someone who has mastered the basics, the foundation of marketing. Getting a growth marketer who can integrate your API or run an SQL database might be impressive, but these are things that you can have another experts handle.
What’s more important for your ICO at this point is finding someone who understands the basics of growth marketing. Data is a key ingredient in marketing at the moment. However, never underestimate the importance of qualitative research, and more importantly, an innate understanding of consumer psychology.
Your growth marketer should be someone who has a good understanding of the motivations, needs, and ideas behind the ICO. This is how an effective growth strategy will succeed.
Can the growth marketer create an emotional connection with your prospects?
If they are unable to do this, you will struggle to scale your goals for the ICO. With a lot of people keen on data analysis at the moment, find a growth marketer whose emphasis is more on basic marketing than writing and analyzing code. They should also be good at CRO, A/B testing and have a proper understanding of the online and offline acquisition channels.
Inquisitive
There’s a lot to learn in growth marketing. The marketing tools, channels, and tactics keep evolving over time, and as a result, your growth marketer has to show you that they are inquisitive, have this passion for learning which enables him to deal with the challenges of your ICO. They should also be looking for a chance to grow professionally through this venture.
The marketer should be an intellectual who can push himself to master new skills, be passionate enough in their lives to realize when and where they need to delve deeper into a project, even if it’s not related to their work.
Grit
Grit is all about purpose and passion. This is what makes a growth marketer an achiever. They should be internally and externally motivated, persistent, and focus on their goals until the goal of the ICO is achieved.
Look for a marketer who’s passionate about your ICO, someone who’s willing to grow with you, and even forego a better offer elsewhere. Such passion often means someone who’s genuinely interested in your project. There’s a very high chance that this individual will excel at this task or stay on course to learn all they need until they can deliver the desired results for your ICO.
Values
The growth marketer you should be looking for has to be someone whose core values align with the values of your ICO. To be precise, these are the values that should be guiding your hiring process. Don’t overlook things like compassion, transparency, integrity and so forth if they matter to you. These are not valuing that can be taught. They are things that someone either has, or they don't. To understand what you are looking for in a growth marketer, you should, first of all, understand what you need.
Conclusion
Even when looking at their papers and performance record, it’s important to mention that the ideal candidate should be someone who meets certain thresholds like their energy and passion for the project, their work ethics and any other skills that you would expect anyone you hire to market your ICO to possess.
If possible, hire a growth marketer from your target audience. This would be very good for you given that they have a better understanding of the ICO, and how to interact with your audience. This is more than just a wish list. These are checkboxes that will determine whether your ICO will succeed or fail so don’t take them for granted.
