A Guide to NFT Marketing: A Value-Upfront Approach

In April, Surge launched and sold out a collection of 5.000 Surge Passport NFTs. How did we do it?

We delivered value upfront, put our community first, and ensured all marketing efforts reflected our mission.

It worked! Our strategy shows that it’s possible to have a successful NFT project launch without creating FOMO, paying sponsored ads, or relying solely on influencers or alpha groups.

Want to find out exactly what we did? We got you covered. We believe in building in public and in this article, we share the marketing strategy that made the Surge launch successful.

TLDR

Figure out your core values. A clearly defined vision and mission will guide both your team and your community.
Build community with intention and care. Listen instead of preaching. Build in real-time and in line with the community feedback.
Educate and provide value wherever you can. If you decide to go the NFT route, some opportunities will be token-gated. However, if you want to build trust and truly advance your mission, make sure you’re providing value for the ecosystem as a whole.
Rely on community, partners, and mission-aligned orgs instead of FOMO tactics. Web3 is a collaborative space. Pick your partners wisely. They can be a huge boost to your project and can really amplify your voice.
Be innovative. A lot of projects follow the same NFT marketing playbook. Flip that model on its head and offer something no one else is offering. For example, we offered utility upfront, instead of teasing it and revealing post mint.
Build infrastructure for a smooth launch. From 1-on-1 Discord support to educating your community on minting, wallets, and OpenSea, we took the time to build a straightforward, pain-free minting experience.
Know what you want to build after the launch! Once your NFT is in the hands of the community, it’s time to double down on the mission and expand the ways in which you can add value.

The Fundamentals

If you build a great project with strong fundamentals, you will believe in it. Your team will believe in it. And the community will believe in it. From there, you will find it easy to market something you know will be valuable to so many people.

Define Your Mission First

Your mission is your North Star - everything you do, create, or build should be done with that mission in mind.

From visual branding and UX/UI to communications and community-building, your mission is the blueprint for every decision.

For example, our mission is to build a safe, empowering community focused on learning, educating, and securing women's place in Web3.

We execute that mission in three ways:

We built and are nurturing a community that welcomes newcomers and fosters a helpful atmosphere where women empower and support each other.
We’re creating free educational resources to explain Web3 technology in a jargon-free easy-to-read format.
We gave women skin in the game by introducing them to Web3 technology in an accessible way.

With these goals in mind, we know our brand has to be inclusive, accessible, and welcoming. The way we communicate both within the community and in our educational material needs to be supportive, clear, and friendly.

So, whenever we had to make a marketing decision, we asked ourselves:

Does this decision contribute to our mission? Is it reflective of our values? Is this something our community needs/wants?

Using a framework that puts value first will considerably simplify your decision-making and ensure your brand and marketing efforts are consistent and true to your mission.

Understand What Your Community Needs

You might be selling delicious oranges, but if your community wants apples… You’re probably going to end up with some rotten oranges on your hands.

A product/market fit is not a new concept in marketing. It basically means that you should ensure there’s a demand for your products or services.

In the case of Surge, we realized there were three problem areas in Web3 we wanted to solve:

Gender disparity in tech, and especially in Web3, is pretty big. We want to bridge that gap and see more women in the space.
Onboarding to Web3 is a challenge even for the tech-savvy. Our goal is to give women a simple and accessible way to join the action.
Language and culture in Web3 are rarely inclusive to beginners. From crypto slang to overly complicated, jargon-riddled articles, it’s a miracle anyone gets involved. We wanted to create a safe space to learn and provide free educational resources that simplified complex topics in a friendly way.

So, we had our list of problems to solve and some pretty good solutions to provide. We also realized Web3 is different: you don’t talk AT an audience, you talk WITH your community.

We put our ear to the ground, run surveys, asked questions, and provided support whenever needed. This approach allowed us to improve and iterate our plans to build value in response to our community’s real needs.

The 3 Phases of Our NFT Marketing Plan

We are strong believers in organic marketing… but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan. From preparing and educating our community to getting the word out and creating a seamless onboarding experience, this is the playbook we created to launch the Surge Passport NFT.

Phase 1: Educating and extending opportunities

At this point, we had our mission and goals defined. We also had a growing community of women and newcomers.

It was time to educate and share as much value as possible!

In the six months before we launched our NFT project, we:

Wrote and shared 10+ guides explaining how to use Discord, buy crypto, set up crypto wallets, mint NFTs, avoid NFT and Discord scams, etc.
Launched a Surge job board to connect amazing Surge talent with top Web3 organizations.
Shared scholarships, discounts, NFT giveaways, and other Web3 opportunities.

What did this accomplish?

We built trust in our community and the wider ecosystem. We proved we were building for the future. We demonstrated our dedication to delivering utility.

Providing utility so early in the project also made us excited about the possibility to build an extended value model for our community.

We realized the best way to execute that idea was to use NFT technology - not only would it work as a membership, but NFTs had the greatest mainstream recognition (which was important if we wanted to attract newcomers). So, we designed our NFT as a membership to an ecosystem of perks and opportunities extended by some of the top mission-aligned web3 organizations.

Most importantly, in terms of marketing, we provided resources to onboard newcomers to Web3. Having these guides helped us immensely during the launch - our community knew what to do because we gave them the tools to do so.

Phase 2: Spreading the word

Once we understood our value model and made sure that NFT technology was the best way to deliver it, we got busy connecting and collaborating with mission-aligned partners, friends, and communities.

Audience vs community

Because Web3 has different rules, we knew that the way we do marketing had to be different.

The first to go was the default mindset of regarding your audience as… well, audience, or clients, customers, users. Instead, we understood we were building for a community that had real needs. It was important to include the community and give them a stake in what we were building.

In Web3, your community is your superpower. From amplifying your message to providing valuable feedback, Web3 works better when we build together.

Competition vs collaboration

In Web2, companies that have a similar mission or share a target audience are often competitors fighting for the bigger piece of the cake. In Web3, that mindset is flipped on its head.

We knew we wanted to get the Surge Passport NFT into the hands of as many women as possible. So, we decided to extend opportunities and get to know other female-led and mission-aligned communities.

By and large, our communities already overlapped - so why not come together to deliver even more value? We partnered with BFF, HER DAO, and many other female-led or focused communities to spread the word, share our resources, and get opportunities for our community.

Giveaways

Giveaways are big in Web2 and this practice translated into Web3 as well. Often, giveaways are run as a way to increase the following and promote the project.

We couldn’t discard giveaways altogether, because they were useful in getting our project in front of people who would benefit from our perks, resources, and support. But, we also wanted to have giveaways that would be true to our mission.

So, we organized a giveaway where we called on our followers to tag women in Web3 who inspired them. The result? We promoted both our project and other amazing women working in the space.

Rethink everything you know about marketing in Web2. It’s time to center your mission, stick to your values, and adopt the Web3 ethos of collaboration, support, and mutual growth.

Twitter, Discord, and…?

Crypto-natives mostly gather on Discord and Twitter, but we also made it a point to include Instagram and a newsletter in our communication channels. After all, we knew that if we wanted to onboard newcomers, we had to meet them where they were.

Once you have people gathering, make sure to keep them engaged. Write Twitter threads, organize Twitter spaces or speak at others’, hang out in the Discord, create content… Whatever it takes for you to communicate and stay connected to your community.

In addition to community events and hangouts, make sure you’re building in public. There’s no going around it: when people buy into an NFT project, they want to know what the project is doing. Building in public not only ensures that your community stays in the loop, but also provides valuable insight for the wider Web3 community.

Phase 3: Accessibility and innovation

You have your values clear, your community is there, you’re collaborating and building together, you’re doing everything you can to spread the word… And now it’s time to launch the project!

For us, the launch consisted of three moving parts: the minting schedule and mechanics and marketing.

The minting schedule

We decided to have our mint happen in two phases: presale and public sale.

The presale list was first available to all community members who’ve been with us from the start. Then, we opened it to members of mission-aligned communities, targeting the type of members we were looking for. Lastly, the public sale was open to all.

We made sure to keep our community up-to-date as the mint approached. Additionally, we published articles that explained how to evaluate NFT projects, all details relevant to the NFT membership, the art style, etc.

We also decided to flip the NFT marketing model on its head when it came to our utility. Instead of teasing value or being vague about it, we announced all perks associated with the Passport well in advance. Our holders knew exactly what they were getting with their Surge NFT and were able to claim perks immediately upon minting.

Our minting window for the presale was set at 48 hours and the public sale was open until minted out. It was crucial to provide people enough time to mint at their own pace and avoid gas wars.

Taking these steps ensured the community was always up-to-date, supported during the entire minting process, and fully aware of what they were buying.

The minting mechanics

For us, having a seamless minting experience was a must. If we wanted to onboard women to Web3, we had to show them that minting an NFT can be fun and easy.

We designed our launch to fit the needs and the knowledge level of our community.

We provided specialized guides for minting NFTs, sent calendar reminders, and prepared our mod team with internal guides so they could answer all questions in real-time. We were present 24/7 in our Discord and provided support through 1-on-1 conversations with our mod team.

On the technical side, we provided several ways for people to mint:

Minting directly into your wallet.
Gift feature: minting directly into a friend’s wallet.
Buying the NFT with a credit card.

We wanted to ensure newcomers had options to choose from. We designed the Passport to be the perfect gift for someone entering the space, their golden ticket to Web3. The gift feature was a perfect reflection of that idea, as it grew into a network effect. We saw people use this feature in a couple of different ways:

Organizations gifted the Surge Passport to their employees.
People airdropped the Passport to their friends who were newcomers.
Many gifted the Passport to people who didn’t have funds but wanted an introduction to Web3.

In addition to different minting options, we ensured our contract was optimized for the lowest possible gas fees. In fact, the average gas fee for our mint was USD12.

In terms of marketing, we made sure to highlight and explain almost every choice we made during mint. Through our experience, we found that building in public and educating is much more powerful than paid marketing.

Marketing

In the days leading up to the launch, we intensified our marketing efforts. You have to build some hype, but you definitely don’t need to resort to FOMO techniques.

We did more Twitter Spaces with partners, published more content both on our website and on Twitter, and leaned into our community, partners, and mission-aligned projects to build organic hype.

The launch went smoothly because we spent months educating and building trust. We had a solid foundation to tap into and we knew our NFT was anticipated and needed.

We made sure to highlight and explain almost every choice we made during mint. Through our experience, we found that building in public and educating is much more powerful than paid marketing.

In Conclusion…

NFT marketing tactics change every week. If you’re coming from a Web2 background, make sure you’re staying up-to-date, so you can find ideas that work for you… or innovate and do something entirely different. Web3 invites creativity!

Your marketing will depend on your project and mission, but we recommend the organic marketing route. Being genuine goes a long way - people will immediately recognize any sort of posturing.

Finally… Work in public, work transparently, and give your community skin in the game. We’re here to build relationships of trust that allow us to grow together - make sure both your NFT project and your marketing strategy are reflective of that.

Good luck!

Have any questions? We’re happy to help! Hop into our Discord or Twitter DMs to start chatting.

If you need a 1-on-1 conversation… All we can say is keep an eye out! We have something very exciting coming.