NFT Designs + Marketing: Everything You Need To Know
NFT, NFT, NFT! Every platform, every chat group, and even some of your friends can’t stop talking about these three letters. And while you may have a vague idea of what an NFT is, you may also be thinking this is just another passing fad. Add to that, this seems to be coming out of the art world where you literally have no role.
But, lo and behold, you start hearing the same chatter in your small business peer groups and all of a sudden your marketing team is abuzz too. Now you have gone from mildly curious to completely intrigued. Can you, as a business owner, leverage the popularity of NFTs for your brand?
Trend hopping can be dangerous and are NFTs worth the risk? What can you achieve by investing your time and resources into this new trend on the internet? And most importantly, how do you create a digital asset that is worthy of being an NFT? What is a good NFT design?
This new addition to the crypto world has everyone scratching their heads.
But all that stops here. If you are looking for a simplified, no-nonsense, and a tell-all guide about NFTs for brands and marketing, you are in the right place.
Kimp brings you the lowdown on how brands can use NFTs to grow and become a part of the metaverse.
NFTs – what are they?
A quick recap on what NFTs are and why they have become an everyday topic on the Internet before we go any further. NFTs are digital assets that one can mint/add on a blockchain to function similar to Bitcoins, dogecoins, and more.
However, they are non-fungible as in no two NFTs or assets are exchangeable. You can exchange one bitcoin for the other, but that is not possible for NFTs. Each is unique in its respect and while they may have similar value, they cannot take each others’ place in the blockchain.
Owning digital art with a unique ID on the blockchain means having a collectible that no one can steal, duplicate, or destroy forever. Unless you forget its details, of course. But still safer than a piece of physical art that can fade over time.
NFTs currently are available only on the Ethereum blockchain but other systems are also quickly coming up with their own NFT regulations. Which means that the market is only going to expand more.
NFTs and brand building
Everything that we just told you defines something inherently valuable for creators, designers, artists, collectors, and investors. How do brands figure in the mix?
In the ever-evolving digital world, you cannot afford to miss out on any channel that provides an avenue to connect with your audience. It was blogs before, then came social media, and now the talk of metaverse is everywhere. Which means that the virtual world is becoming more and more real for your brand and customers too.
Brands scramble to create unique products and offerings for customers so that they develop a deeper affinity to the brand’s identity. You can consider NFTs to be a digital counterpart to this. The digital assets you create on the blockchain can take you several steps closer to your customers and interact with them on their own turf.
If this feels too far-fetched, you may be pleasantly surprised to know that digital versions of McDonalds’ burger, Pizza Huts’ pizza, and Pringles chips exist. Not only do they exist, they have some very proud owners in the crypto world.
With the right NFT design, you can:
Improve brand awareness
When the world is living online and everyone is trying to own a piece of it, just creating beautiful social media campaigns and packaging design is not going to improve brand awareness. You have to be where your target audience is, and that could be increasingly on the blockchain. Moreover, having an NFT can expose your brand to a new and varied audience, making you even more well-known.
Grow customer engagement
Giveaways, freebies, and limited edition products are usually customer engagement gold. Whenever there is a drought of movement, brands use these arrows in their quiver to bring customers to them. To make a presence in the digital world, what better than NFTs for your brand’s newest marketing campaign?
Create unique customer experiences
The metaverse involves creating spaces and assets that your customers can make use of in the virtual world. These assets must also give them the opportunity to experience unique offerings from you that sets them apart from other followers. NFTs in the form of videos, digital memorabilia, and games do exactly that and can make you a favorite brand in a jiffy.
Effective NFT Designs: An Overview
Now that we know what brands stand to gain by launching NFTs, we think it goes without saying that a lot of an NFT’s success comes from its design. But we’ll say it again for good measure – your NFT design will invariably play a role in its success. Irrespective of your marketing efforts, it will all boil down to this because NFTs usually make for substantial investments.
So what makes for an effective and attractive NFT design? What should you focus on?
Our previous blog addressed the concept of NFT design and its dominating features, but let’s check them out once again in the context of brands and brand building.
1) NFTs must be an extension of your brand’s visual identity
The first and most important function of NFTs for a brand is to spread the word around the internet to skyrocket brand awareness. For this to work, your NFT art’s design style, color, font, and the imagery must be as per your brand style guidelines. Anyone who looks at the art must recognize the brand and vice versa.
Customers are more likely to invest in art that has clear ties to a popular brand because of the affinity they have to the brand. It is their way of staying loyal to their favorite business.
2) Choose viral design formats
Since you cannot always rely only on your niche audience, it is best to aim at a larger NFT-friendly customer base. This means creating NFT designs that will appeal to everyone who likes to invest in such digital assets. Now, investors and collectors who are part of the NFT community gravitate towards some particular design styles and formats, so it is good to bet on those.
Popular design styles are modern graphic design, pop art, contemporary art, memes, and other topical styles. In terms of format videos, GIFs, and digital renditions of popular physical art reign supreme in this space.
3) Leverage your IP to create unique digital assets
Beyond creating NFT artwork that reflects your brand’s visual identity, the current trend is to create these digital assets using your IP itself. For example, Coca-Cola’s logo is their own, no one has the right to it. So minting an NFT that has this logo prominently is a way that the brand can leverage its IP.
Nike has already done this and created an NFT out of its first logo. For small businesses, their packaging design, digital version of products, and so on can work too. Your IP is your own and that ensures that the resulting NFT is unique and limited edition. Scarcity in a product always drives up the hype and subsequent demand.
4) Tap into nostalgia
Nostalgia is a big buzzword right now in the marketing industry. In fact this year’s Spotify Wrapped campaign showed us that the most streamed albums and songs fit into this sentiment. Even in art, vintage and Pop Art themes are making a huge comeback. So an NFT design that taps into this emotion is bound to fare well in the market.
As a brand, you have more avenues to explore within this theme than just creating art using nostalgic styles. If you are a brand that has been in the industry for sometime, how about digitizing your first product/advertising campaign/marketing design for your loyal customers?
Even if this is not up your alley, we recommend launching a product that is an extension of your brand values and ties into the nostalgia that’s trending right now. It need not be a physical product too, just a digital version will do.
Marketing Ideas for your brand’s NFT Designs
Most blogs begin with NFT descriptions and how-to’s after the creation process and jump straight into the minting/blockchain integration process. But there is a vital step between creating an NFT design and selling it successfully on the Internet. And that is, of course, marketing.
Marketing is the lifeline of any business process and the NFT world is no exception. In fact, it is even more important here. The market for NFTs is probably more challenging than for any other product. Just when the world begins to trust bitcoins and other crypto currencies, NFT is here to sow a new seed of doubt.
In the current scenario, most artwork (physical and digital) sells because of the creator’s reputation and the hype the design generates in the market. FOMO, scarcity, and pride are some of the most common drivers.
But how do you generate these emotions in the market, if not with marketing strategies? So, let’s move on to the many strategies you can adapt to sell and popularize your NFT designs.
We will learn from the most popular NFTs in the market and analyze what their brands did to reach that position.
Fasten your seatbelts, it is time to travel into the metaverse.
1) Generate FOMO
Call it a cliche or whatever you will, but FOMO is a hard to beat emotion. In fact, every major marketing campaign employs strategies that make customers feel this. Nothing sells products more than a limited stock notice. And when everything is uncertain in the crypto world, FOMO is the leading emotion at all times.
The regulars of the crypto and NFT world know that getting your hands on a special NFT can make you a millionaire if you play your cards right. And you have to make customers feel that it is your NFT that will be that asset.
Creating limited edition products and setting a deadline for the sale can help you become the next big thing in the NFT world. But how do you prove your worth in the virtual world?
Promote your brand to show how valuable the NFT will be.
Customers are buying a piece of your brand so create marketing content that speaks well of your brand. This can be customer testimonials, social proof of your audience reach, or a rundown of your most popular products.
Check out this pixelated Pizza from Pizza Hut Canada that came with a deadline for the audience. And true to nature, it sold out before anyone could look for the second slice.
2) Support a Charity
Younger generations of consumers prefer brands who support social causes and make valuable contributions to meaningful initiatives. And not to mention, if they can play a small role in it, that is cherry on top. So a great way to market your NFT designs is to associate them with a charity.
You can go a step ahead and launch these NFT designs during a Giving Tuesday event or a particular charity month so that it gets the maximum traction.
Of course, it goes without saying that the NFT design has to be an extension of your brand’s identity and create a sense of belonging for the customer with it. The charity has to be an added perk but not the focus.
Taco Bell combined the objective of helping others and furthering the brand’s intentions in the market by creating a limited edition (25) NFT collection. This was to mark the return of potatoes to the menu and was sold out in 30 minutes. Taco Bell then announced that the proceeds would go to the Live Mas Scholarship program.
3) Engage your Customers
Engagement is more than just a way of life when you enter the virtual world. It’s the crucial element that determines whether you succeed or fail. The more people interact and engage with your brand, the higher the hype will be around it. Unfortunately, in most cases, word of mouth becomes a phenomena on the Internet only when things begin to go viral. Just consider how the Netflix show Squid Game became the highest earning of all shows on the platform. All because people could not stop talking about it.
Some ways to increase engagement with your brand is to:
- Create gamified content on the NFT so that there is something in it for people who cannot buy the art. This audience group will bring you engagement that results in sales.
- NFT games are huge currently and if your design assets lend themselves to it, then we strongly suggest this method. The gaming industry is bigger than ever and people who usually are into gaming are also into NFTs.
Vodafone created a treasure hunt in Central London for customers to battle it out for their chance of getting an exclusive NFT. Combining the physical and digital world made this NFT one of the most talked about in recent times.
4) Build a community
The NFT art community is extremely close knit. But you cannot base your NFT’s success just on this close knit world. The best way to get a leg up is to create your own niche community so that they see value in your offerings.
GaryVee, a popular influencer and angel investor, with his own line of NFTs “Vee Friends” speaks of the value the community brings in NFT sales. He states in a podcast that people are more likely to buy an NFT based on the creator and brand’s reputation than the artwork itself.
Diego Borgo, an NFT and Metaverse Strategist & Advisor feels that one of the biggest reasons for brands to enter the NFT market is the potential of communities. In an interview on why NFTs are important for brands that are consumer driven, he says,
“NFT have the power of giving brands the possibility of tapping into new client bases that they won’t necessarily penetrate before. NFT can help you tap into existing communities where you can find a very clear group that you can interact with. Brands have the opportunity of co-creating and co-owning things with your consumer. Not possible before in a safe space or the methodology before.”
So if a design can help you create a community with NFTs, you must lean towards that more than anyone. As Mr. Borgo puts it, “The KPI for brands with NFTs must be to see how many people they can engage and build a community with, than immediate ROI. Communities bring longevity and long term returns better than any short-term campaign.”
5) Make it a value-add
What is the first thing you remember when we speak of NFTs? The news of simple digital assets selling for an exorbitant amount, correct? But the truth is those are anomalies and not the norm. You can choose the price of your NFT as per your marketing intent.
Let us consider the example of Gucci’s recent NFT. We all know that Gucci is a luxury line of apparel and lifestyle products that usually cost a lot and is available to a relatively small group of people who can afford it..
So, in complete contrast, Gucci released an NFT of AR shoes in the form of a smartphone filter that people can use for their photos. This is also available to a select few only and allows people to flaunt Gucci merchandise at a fractional cost of $12.
The idea is to extend their brand affinity to the audience group that is not buying currently but still associates closely with the label.
Create NFT Designs for your Brand with Kimp
NFTs are a simple but complex concept for many brands. And when day to day marketing campaigns and product launches take the bulk of the time, NFTs can seem like a luxury. But the smart thing is always to diversify your marketing so that you can experiment to see where you’ll get the most traction.
The beauty of NFTs is that you can iterate as much as you want, as all you need is for one attempt to go viral. NFT designs can also serve as a simple way of connecting with the crypto-savvy customer base.
But the design can still be a hurdle. So why not outsource it to multifaceted and talented designers like those at Kimp Graphics and Kimp Video? Our design subscriptions allow you to make unlimited design requests and get unlimited revisions across a ton of design categories. So you can get all of your marketing designs done and dabble with NFT designs too.
All at a flat monthly fee and no extra charges.
So why wait?
Sign up for the free trial now and enter the metaverse with branded NFT designs.