The Full Guide to Strategic Fundraising with KOLs in the Crypto Space

The Best Marketing Budget for NFT projects

8 min read
Dec 1, 2022

NFTs are still a Massive Opportunity

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, have rocketed into the hearts and minds of thousands of crypto investors.

It may be hard to believe that life-changing profits have been made overnight. As an example, those who bought into the BAYC NFT collection at under $250, now own a six-figure digital asset.

The Bored Apes are still a resounding success - and an exclusive community showcasing what an NFT project can do

Every week, tons of new NFT projects are being launched - and a few are finding some measure of success.

There’s a secret behind these projects though… even the best projects won’t make it without this one thing in place.

To be successful, your project needs to be discovered by your ideal audience.

Finding your Audience

So what is the secret to finding your target audience? An effective NFT marketing strategy is what makes it possible.

NFT Marketing takes skill, time, a little innovation, and some capital.

If you’re ready to launch your NFT project you may be asking the question: What is the best marketing budget for an NFT project?

We’ll take a look at some available marketing strategies and the budgets needed to reach your ideal NFT community - but first, let’s double-check if your foundations are in place.

Foundations of an NFT Launch

The best marketing budget for your NFT project starts at the foundation

First: Deliver Value

We’re going to assume your NFT project has good fundamentals in place and has some value to add to your ideal community. For some tips, listen to this Podcast about creating the best NFT projects.

Second: Build Community

In Web3 and the NFT space - interest and community drive success. I’m sure you’ll have seen that a project with a lot of hype and popularity can become an overnight success.

The key here is building a community quickly - by addressing some of their needs or interests.

If your project can build both hype and community - you’ll be off to a roaring start - and have a foundation for a long future.

NFT Marketing Strategies & Costs

NFT marketing teams have many options to choose from when it comes to promoting a new project. Some of these are expensive, and some cost only time and effort.

The Best Marketing Budget for NFT projects

In this section, we’ll explore some of the marketing tools you can use. These will apply if you’re in pre-mint or if you’ve already launched your own NFT projects.

Cut the learning curve

Well, we have to put this out there right? If you are looking for a huge learning curve and a few missed opportunities - you can launch your NFT on your own.

But if time-saving and results are what you’re after - it will be worth your while partnering with a specialist NFT marketing agency.

Why work with an NFT agency? Well, to launch your NFT project - you will need to focus on pushing your brand and project onto the right platforms, using the perfect medium.

You’ll need to understand who your project caters to and where those ideal users are.

You must learn how to find and navigate the different spaces and platforms - and know which actions will lead to the best results.

If you want to use influencers or guest posts - you’ll need to build relationships with their managers and agencies.

All of this may just distract you from running your project. It's the number one reason to let an excellent NFT agency do the hard work around creating and implementing an NFT marketing strategy while you focus on building!

Here's a quick explainer video from our own team:

Now on to those strategies:

  1. Chats & Community Connections - Discord & Telegram

In keeping with the crypto communities’ need for privacy, Telegram and Discord have emerged as the most used messaging services and consequently advertising platforms for crypto users.

The Best Marketing Budget for NFT projects

These platforms are filled with dedicated crypto investors looking for the next best project.

The Task

The Budget

  1. A powered-up Discord server costs $9.99 and marketing for Discord will be anything from $100-$1000 a month. Some of this will be PPC fees to drive users to your channel.
  2. Hosting a chat on Telegram is free, but needs consistent maintenance.
  3. Management fees can cost you anything from $1000 to $5,000 - depending on how big a team you need and what other services you’re needing - and the level of management you require.
  4. Celebrities & Influencer Posts

A prime source of growth in the crypto community, celebrity endorsements and influencer shares are a key part of launching an NFT project successfully.

Dedicated Crypto influencers or simply celebrities can all move the needle with their fan bases.

The Best Marketing Budget for NFT projects

The Task

  • It’s great if you have a personal relationship with a high-profile individual - but apart from that, you can generally reach out through their agents or social profiles.
  • First, you need to find somebody who influences your ideal community. Getting their interest, and then negotiating their level of engagement can be complicated, but it is an important part of seeking endorsement.

The Budget

  • A smaller influencer with a few thousand followers may charge $350-$750 per YouTube video, but if you want to get into the big leagues (500k-1mil followers) you can expect to spend anything from $50,000 to $100,000 (plus) to engage the big accounts.
  • For a medium-sized influencer marketing campaign, we would estimate a spend of about $50,000 spread over a couple of months and several smaller micro-influencers. These figures are of course subject to your preferences and time scale.
  • Twitter is of course the haven for influencer sponsorships - so let’s take a look at Crypto Twitter before discussing those fees:

  1. Crypto Twitter

Twitter is home to a massive user base of Crypto investors ready to invest. Pairing seamlessly with Crypto influencers, Twitter is filled with NFT projects attempting to gain a user base and is the perfect place to cement your brand image in the community.

The Task

  • Build out your Twitter profile and start connecting and attracting followers. There are some key steps to building out Twitter, and organic growth takes time.
  • Get your Blue Tick (It costs $8) after your account is 90 days old. Once you have a profile and some followers - Twitter’s paid campaigns are a powerful way to reach ideal users.
  • Get your TwitterAds account up and running and launch your first campaigns
  • Make sure you’re engaging on Twitter with relevant users and communities

The Budget

  • Once your account is old enough - “it’ll cost $8 a month”.
  • We recommend appointing an agency to take the role of your community manager and moderator.
  • On Twitter, smaller influencers will tweet your project out for anywhere from $50. Larger influencers will consider $500-$2500, but on average we estimate somewhere between $250 and $500 per tweet.
  • For Paid campaigns, we'll include Twitter below, with the other PPC estimates:

  1. Pay Per Click Campaigns

GoogleAds, Facebook, and Twitter are the go-to platforms for Pay Per Click campaigns. Pay-per-click marketing is the digital marketing campaign manager’s sweet spot when used properly.

The Best Marketing Budget for NFT projects

Audience building is all about the data, and an effective campaign delivers tons of valuable information which can inform your whole marketing strategy - as well as confirm where your users are actually coming from.

With these platforms, the focus must be continuous optimization and goal-based ad delivery.

The Task

The Budget

  • Remember that your campaigns are creating the data to help you scale, the more you spend - the quicker you can learn and maximize results.
  • We recommend a $500-750 monthly budget per campaign and would normally prefer to run campaigns on the three major platforms at the same time.
  • Add three remarketing campaigns and you have a CPC Budget requirement of $3000 to $4500 a month for ad spending.
  • You may need to build in some account management fees as well when partnering with an NFT marketing agency.

5. Your Content marketing strategy

Your content marketing in Web3 is one of the most important parts of getting your project out into the world and attracting users to your community.

The Best Marketing Budget for NFT projects

The Task

  • Plan, write and distribute great content.
  • This content must be focused on your clients' needs.
  • Check out this Panel with Tim from Lunar Strategy discussing Content in Web3:

The Budget

  • If you're a content creator - you can probably build one excellent piece of content a day, which will be shared to multiple platforms.
  • Your NFT marketing agency will have a team of content creators who can expedite a bank of valuable content to contribute to your audience.
  • These content creation fees vary dramatically from agency to agency and will depend on the type, length, and medium of content required.

So What Is The Best Marketing Budget for an NFT Project Launch?

The numbers above are really limited to a very generalized idea. What you're prepared to spend will need to be informed by your NFT marketing strategy, your existing social media community, the rate and size to which you want to scale, and many other personalized factors.

comic strip

The most common answer to "How much should I budget?" - "How long is a piece of string?".

We've tried to give you a reasonable answer - but of course, these guidelines are highly influenced by your objectives and available resources.

How The Big Players Roll

Established NFT creators can easily spend upwards of $150,000+ monthly on their NFT marketing to constantly reach out to new investors. We've handled million-dollar campaigns, and entry-level ones with budgets much lower than our estimates above.

What You Should Focus On

The key is to find where the NFT buyers are, build a community around your NFT collection and deliver buyers to your NFT marketplace. You need to understand your NFT market and focus on building NFT marketing campaigns that reach your ideal audience.

Mixing up Your NFT Marketing Strategy

When planning your campaign also take time to consider how else you can market your launch or boost your audience.

Some top NFT marketing strategies in the industry include NFT Drops, limited edition NFT collectibles, advertising directly through NFT marketplaces, using social media platforms to build hype, and approaching your NFT marketplace to showcase unique digital assets.

Digital marketing campaigns directed at your target audience on their social media platform of choice are always effective, and even in crypto marketing, our audiences are often still on traditional social networks.

If you are launching a digital artwork NFT, you may do well to consider SuperRare - the #1 space for digital art non-fungible tokens.

Your Total Expenses

the nft budget

Your start-up NFT marketing strategy should plan for a spend of between $15,000 and $30,000 to really get good exposure for your project.

Most specialist NFT marketing agencies will charge between $10-25,000 for an extensive campaign, so it’s important to allocate funds appropriately.

When you're raising funds for your NFT Project, don't forget to look to have at least three months of marketing expenses covered before embarking on your campaign, as positive cash flow may not be expected right away.

Let Us Help You

If you feel more confused than when you started, don’t worry. Here at Lunar Strategy, we excel at pushing Crypto and NFT projects forward with our strategic marketing efforts. We'll use the NFT marketing funnel that fits your unique project.

Our expert team has a deep understanding of the Crypto landscape and will build out your perfect NFT marketing strategy within your scope and in record time.

We're not just a digital marketing firm - we have experience and expertise in all of the above strategies and are Web3 specialists. We have experience on all the top NFT marketplaces and community platforms and our services are even sold using blockchain technology.

Lunar has a digital office at OnCyber

Grab your digital wallet and head over to our digital office to try out our NFT marketplace.

If you are interested in learning more before you take the next step - grab a copy of our very own E-Book which will guide you every step of the way.

Already convinced? Book a discovery call with us and we’ll get you moving in the right direction, it’s free!

Tim Haldorsson
CEO
CEO of crypto and Web3 marketing agency Lunar Strategy, involved in the crypto scene since 2017. Provides forward-thinking Web3 marketing insight as a contributor to Cointelegraph, Rolling Stone, Daily Coin, NFT Plazas, and Finance Magnates.
Jack Haldorsson
CMO
CMO at Lunar Strategy. Been in the crypto space since 2017. Jack leverages his know-how of the blockchain ecosystems and strong KOL relationships to execute result-focused strategies that amplify brand storytelling, drive awareness and grow the project sustainably with the help of Influencer relations.
Adam Westerén
Head of Sales
Adam's passion is to create self-sustainable communities in the Web3 world. He enjoys when you create a Web3 community that can grow by itself. This is what he does in his current role as Head of sales.
William Rejström
COO
As a Community Manager at Lunar Strategy, I'm passionate about finding new ways to connect people, add value and build strong community relationships.
Shann Holmberg
COO
As head of growth at Lunar Strategy, I understand the significant shift away from traditional marketing strategies that Web3 projects require.
Nick Ballanutsa
Crypto Content Creator
Crypto Content Creator, Nick is creating engaging Twitter threads & posts for leading crypto & NFT companies.
Vide Haldorsson
Influencer Manager
Influencer Manager at Lunar Strategy.
Johnny Pedro
Head of Partnerships
Head of Partnerships at Lunar Strategy, creating win-win solutions for Web3 companies. You might have heard his music on Tomorrowland from his previous ventures in the music industry.
Jarrod Frankel
Head of Community
Jarrod is responsible for the teams that provide both engaging social media content and enticing and informative articles for our clients.
Tayler McCracken
Editor at Coin Bureau
Tayler McCracken is the Editor-in-Chief of the Coin Bureau, a leading publication that provides cryptocurrency education.
Vineet Nair
Writer
As a web3 storyteller, Vineet brings a wealth of experience in content, journalism, and management, with hands-on knowledge of metaverses, NFTs, AI, and finance.
Hassan Shafiq
Lunar Strategy
Lunar Strategy.
Mairead Finlay
Writer
British writer specialising in NFTs, luxury lifestyle & travel based in Portugal. Previous publications include Business Insider, LoveEXPLORING, The Guardian and My French Country Home Magazine. Previously the SEO Editor of tech & startup website TechRound.
Sandra Vukovic
Content & Marketing Specialist
Content & Marketing Specialist at Lunar Strategy.
David Kevin Jeppesen
Lunar Strategy
Raised in the spring of technology, solving problems and finding simple digital solutions is part of my nature. I’m a teachable individual who is always eager to learn and develop as a person.
Julieta Ose
Crypto Content Creator
Crypto Content Creator at Lunar Strategy.
Gino De Graaf
Google Ads Specialist
Google Ads Specialist at Lunar Strategy.
Sam Runge
Media Manager
Lunar Strategy.
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