Have you ever tried to market something that’s really hard to market?

What about something you can’t use Facebook or Google for?

Without paid traffic option… it’s hard. REALLY hard.

Web Profits, a digital marketing company, started a project a couple months ago for a blockchain company. Soon after practically everyone prohibited any blockchain advertising. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bing, Adroll, Criteo. Everybody.

Here’s what they did to still achieve great results:

1) Email capture

Without being able to use the major ad platforms, you can’t actually retarget anyone with ads. So the #1 goal of the website is to capture emails so you can follow up with email marketing.

2) PR

What you probably don’t realize is just HOW effective Facebook Ads are for getting a message out in front of millions of people. So what they did instead is to use an aggressive PR strategy that integrates press releases, PR Newswire, email distribution lists, and one-to-one outreach… and they focused on it every single day.

3) Influencers

They used influencers to get the message out at scale, especially because they aren’t bound by any advertising policies because their content is distributed organically.

4) Podcasts

They organized interviews on industry podcasts, which often get tens of thousands of people tuning in to each episode. They also ran ads on podcasts as well.

5) Industry-specific ad networks

They used industry-specific ad networks. With blockchain, for example, there are ad networks that specialize in blockchain advertising. So if your industry has a lot of news sites and blogs, there will likely be a way to advertise on them, either through a direct ad buy or through a niche ad network.

6) Organic social

They use social media platforms where they’re guaranteed organic reach so that anything they post is seen by our audience. For them, that meant Twitter and Telegram.

Conclusion

What most people don’t realize, is just how good we have it being able to put a message in front of pretty much anyone using Facebook and Google.

And when you don’t have that option, you really start to see just how hard marketing can be.

The good news is that if you’re prepared to do the work, this stuff really works.

How to market stuff that’s hard to market

PS. Needless to say, for all of this to work, you need to have a real, quality product. If you don’t, I can’t help you.