Marketing strategy for crypto exchange

In the world of the 2017 post-cryptocurrency rally, business needs to maintain a client base even despite a significant deviation from the historical all-time highs.

The situation is getting complicated as the regulatory pressure is tightening the screws every year for the emergence of new crypto-related business and pushes the development of the existing one into a rigid bureaucratic framework.

According to the FATF recommendations, cryptocurrency service providers must strictly comply with the “Know Your Client” (KYC) requirements as cryptocurrencies “have certain characteristics that can make them more vulnerable to abuse by criminals, money launderers, terrorist financiers and other illegal subjects.”

This includes checking customers for any amount above $1,000 or €1,000.

But how to increase the number of users on the service if the regulating rules for the cryptocurrency market are still not clearly defined, or the business is just starting its development path?

Focus On Target Audience

The first thing we do at ICODA is to analyze the main indicator of traffic on the website of the nearest competitors: total traffic, the average duration on the website, the percentage by source, request, the position of competing brands in the minds of the target audience (TA and so on.

In the current realities, the user is less concerned with the question of how to buy bitcoin, rather than how to pass KYC verification and not drown in the bureaucracy of following the recommendations of KYC/AML.

Having identified key points from the analysis of competitors, we determine the potential TA, identify its features, ways to reach it.

The Catch-22 here is that each service the segment of the TA is totally different. If it is a p2p exchange, then the primary audience is miners, arbitrageurs, while over-the-counter (OTC) trading, then the primary audience can be traders with a large stock of capital.

This step is important as an incorrect definition of the TA can damage the business perspectives at an early stage of business development.

Know What Your Customers Want Before They Do

The methods of determination vary from time to time and depend on many factors.

Consider identifying a TA based on its needs. Need to securely exchange assets? Then you should be sure that your business is confirmed by good reviews, a demonstration of real transactions, an escrow system, and implementing N-degrees of protection.

But what if clients want to make an exchange for a sizeable amount of cryptocurrency without going through KYC and AML? Well, in this case, it makes sense to think about creating the OTC functionality.

If the business already exists, we at ICODA conduct a SWOT analysis: we determine the strengths and weaknesses of the business opportunities, external factors and, threats.

Quite often customers pay attention to which team is behind the project, which professional background it has. How unique is the offer, the number of functions and trading instruments also play a role in attracting new customers.

Market Positioning

Having learned as much as possible about competitors and our customers, we are pursuing a positioning strategy.

The key task is to consolidate the brand on the market, which will differ from the brands of competing businesses.

It is necessary to define goals and objectives. Goals can be quantitative (like increasing traffic to a website up to 50,000 users per month or provide 10% website conversion) and qualitative (increasing brand awareness or creating a convenient interface).

Based on the goals, we determine which marketing activities to focus more on PPC management, SEO promotion, referral program, promotion using opinion leaders, advertising in social networks, writing articles about the project, e-mail marketing, and other promotion methods.

It is necessary to ensure the following standards at the level of major competitors or higher to successfully attract traders: you have a high-quality website, intuitive UI, fast loading, API for integration with brokerage programs.

This is just a glimpse of how a small part of how a complex-structured business blueprint looks like.

Emerging markets always generate a great demand and seek for the best supply offer. Make sure your business meet these requirements with ICODA.