Key Marketing & Business Principles: the Essential Framework & Mindset

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Arvin: there's no reason why you should do 10 K if you don't have the budget, don't have the following yet. Start with something small.

[00:00:07] Arvin: let's say 500, then all you need to have in your discord is like 1500 to 2,500 people. that's a lot more manageable for a small operation right now. Once you've done that, you. You come out proud you've, have money from all these people who bought your NFTs.

[00:00:25] Arvin: Now you can do a larger one. You can do, let's say maybe 3k, 4k, and so on and so forth. And every time you do this, you're obviously going to deliver on your promises. People are going to get what they, they were promised and people just get excited because they know every time you do things, you promise something you deliver on it.

[00:00:44] Arvin: So on and so forth.

[00:00:47] Isotta: This is Art Is… a podcast for artists where we brainstormed the future of the art world and the creative industries today. I'm sharing part two of my conversation with Arvin. a globally recognized NFTE marketing. if you haven't listened to part one of our conversation, I recommend you go back to season three, episode 18, to hear it in that first half Arvin shares some key marketing and business principles from defining your value to identifying your target audience.

[00:01:16] Isotta: This is part of an essential framework and mindset. Arvin explains that all artists should be adopting in their creative business. Last episode, we took a more general look at the key marketing and business principles we as artists should be familiar with.

[00:01:30] Isotta: So today we zoom in to Arvin's current focus, marketing NFT projects. Arvin shares, many key metrics and details into how he sells out NFTs and provides very useful examples as a reference.

[00:01:43] Isotta: Everything from the role of promotion and price to collection size is covered in this conversation. This is also the final episode of art is a podcast for artists season three, which has focused on artists, leveraging tech.

[00:01:56] Isotta: And FTS have been a common thread throughout this season. So I hope you enjoy this practical and strategic guide to successfully launching one yourself. also, I would love it.

[00:02:06] Isotta: If you took a moment to reflect on who in your life might also benefit from listening to this pod. When you do, please share art is a podcast artists with them, so we can continue to grow the show organically and brainstorm the future of the art world together.

[00:02:22] Arvin: So I've, started marketing in 2012 and I started with small businesses and then all the way to public companies, fortune 500 companies. Doing their public, relationship, and then also invested relationship marketing. and when I noticed what's happening in the NFD world, obviously jumped in and, worked with, I would say 300 plus, NFD projects, a bunch of them, obviously sold out and, you know, very successful.

[00:02:49] Arvin: one of them in particular, top 40 in a, on open sea in the world and then hit number one, trending on IC tools. Number one, trending on open sea. a lot of great artists. I recently just working with, the consulting for a triple, a Hollywood celebrity. The progression is from, just general marketing all the way to now, like very focused into just investor relationship, marketing and NFTs.

[00:03:15] Isotta: I think it's the coolest thing. When you, as an artist will make something, and then a community, we'll just say, we all agree. This is the coolest art. and we're all just going to follow everything this artist does. and for, let's say four to six weeks, we're just going to follow every single updates that this artist has.

[00:03:34] Arvin: And then eventually we're going to buy this. at a pre-sale, and then we're going to find out what we got when they do the reveal. and then once it's revealed, then we're gonna, we're going to hold on to it because it's just so valuable for us to keep it, or maybe sell it and traded if they want to.

[00:03:49] Arvin: But Even if they do, you, as an artist is still get anywhere from three to 10% royalties, which is also a really cool thing. Cause I think, for artists in the past, you will sell your art. and then that was it. Like you, you got paid once versus now you sell your art once and then every time that's being sold, you get.

[00:04:11] Arvin: Some payments coming into your bank account. Plus let's say, if you're an artist, you sold me something, one of your artwork and the value of the artwork went up. Then you should be getting credit for this, but you wouldn't back in the day, but now because of NFTs now, you were still doing.

[00:04:29] Arvin: Just because you're still how you connected to that artwork. so that's, as far as like, why it's important for artists to even consider having their work in, the NFT work. now as far as building community, so I tell people there are three metrics they need to actually. So just like how, as an artist, maybe you have a, an Instagram and you think, okay, having a large social media following on Instagram, that would be good.

[00:04:53] Arvin: and it is, but like for NFT collections, what matters is not really Instagram yet. Instagram is rolling out some new features for NFT artists where you can actually promote your NFTs, but it hasn't happened yet. So until then, it's going to be all about. Weirdly enough. It's like a lot of artists they're like, what do we have to do with Twitter?

[00:05:14] Arvin: Twitter is for like politicians, but it's going to be Twitter. and it's going to be also a discord. So those are the two platforms. and for discord, just so people have a sense of okay. We need to build that following on, build that community on discord, but like how many people are we talking?

[00:05:31] Arvin: So in about four to six weeks, you want to have three to five times the number of your collection size. So let's say if your collection size is 10,000 NFTs, then you want to have 30 to 50,000 people minimum on your discord community. These are people that we're not talking about. An artist that already had a following.

[00:05:53] Arvin: You go from zero to 50,000 in four to six weeks. and I was telling you earlier, this is the strangest thing I'm observing myself because back in the day I was actually managing influencers and we will say, okay, in a year, maybe you had 30 K from zero to 30 K. Now we in six weeks we hit 50 K. and it's fascinating.

[00:06:16] Arvin: it's also the coolest thing to observe.people call it hype, but I think I say excitement. maybe there's some hype in that too, but people get excited about a specific project, specific utilities they has, for those people who don't know what you tell these are. So essentially, your artwork on his own is going to be valuable, but also there could be other utilities may be meeting with you as an artist, maybe having, like maybe The bucket of paint that you use, maybe someone wants it. And then maybe you just giving that away, like to some people, or I don't know, whatever that is that as a holder of your artwork, people also get, maybe it's just like an event where they come and just meet you and learn about like your history, your background, blah, blah, blah.

[00:06:55] Arvin: so all sorts of things that could be there in the uterus, or maybe they can make money with you or whatever that is. The utility of things is going to be, very, very attractive for people to hold onto your NFD, ours. so now going back to the building of communities, so there's discord that you want to have three to five times the number of your collection size.

[00:07:16] Arvin: There is Twitter, where you want to have about half of the size of your collection size. So meaningless, if it's a 10,000 collection, do you want to have some around five to 10 K people, in, in your Twitter? and then as far as the engagement, you want it to be a specific numbers. You want it to be minimum 0.5%, engagement on the.

[00:07:35] Arvin: this court, the ratio of people who are online versus people who are just in your discord, it has to be minimum 10%. So I'm giving these numbers. So people have a, like a true north, they know where they're heading. So they, haven't some ideas of okay, that's what they need to accomplish now, how they make it, how they actually create these communities.

[00:07:53] Arvin: so there obviously a lot of ways. To scan a cat, but what has been working for projects that I've been involved with is leveraging influencers, and, paid advertising now. So leveraging influencers, it looks like, let's say there's a. There is someone there's some influencer that they're interested in your artwork, and you either have your own arrangement with them or you just pay them.

[00:08:17] Arvin: and they will talk about your stuff online. and then. what happens is if you do that on good enough, people who are interested in your stuff, they're going to find you. and then they're going to join your discord. They're going to follow the discussions that are happening on the discord community.

[00:08:30] Arvin: and I guess for some people, maybe they, don't not, everyone knows what this court is. So this code is just think about, Just like WhatsApp or telegram if they're familiar with it. and, but then there are a lot more features on like managing the communities. it's, just like a software where you just connect with people.

[00:08:47] Arvin: It's like a social media thing, but it doesn't have any ads on its soul. So you find these influencers and obviously you want to make sure again, I think artists may be. Business background sometimes. So it's important to know, like you don't want to get scammed, right?

[00:09:01] Arvin: So you don't want people who are just like making claims off. Hey, like I'm a big influencer and maybe they do have like lots of followers, but maybe they're all fake. so there are software like follower audit, green.co things like that where people can use and then figure out, okay, is this influencer it's actually,Maybe promising the world, can they actually deliver anything?

[00:09:22] Arvin: so that's what, as the influencer side of things, and then there's paid ads. you can run, paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Cora, Reddit, all those platforms. And, obviously the execution of that matters, right? So it's not just like cranking up some ads and.

[00:09:40] Arvin: And whatever, It's important, like how you execute on it. but the methodology that works is literally that, so paid influencers and paid ads, and it's not one or the other. So sometimes people ask me that is both.

[00:09:52] Isotta: So I was wondering if perhaps, you know, you could tell us specifically, maybe about one of these NFD projects. Worked on that you were really happy with and maybe walk us through what the launch strategy was for that.

[00:10:05] Isotta: and if you could speak to any like adaptable launch strategies that could be used, for other kinds of creative projects as well, I think that would be really helpful.

[00:10:15] Arvin: I say there's typically four to six weeks. Right? first week is actually very important. So the goal of the first week is first. You want to figure out what the messaging of your marketing is. So let's say if you're, an artist and what you produce is all about maybe just bringing like.

[00:10:31] Arvin: Bringing some attention to what's happening to politics, or like maybe bringing some attention to what, like maybe women's values, or, rules of men in the society, whatever that is there's gotta be something, So there's always, and even if it's nothing, then just that's the messaging itself to be like, Hey, actually I'm just chilling and just doing art and this is it.

[00:10:50] Arvin: but whatever that is. Right. So,you're gonna come up with that messaging. And I just give you an example. For example, sandbag is casino club. the artwork is obviously it's in a casino background. Some someone's just sitting at a table of a casino. and,they have some objects close to them, maybe their car keys there, maybe some,what they're smoking or whatever.

[00:11:10] Arvin: So whatever you would have, like in a casino, and then. Now the messaging for this casino was, or with this casino brand was you can be the house. The house always wins. so everyone knows already the house always wins. Like people heard that. They know, even if you're not a gambler, you know what that means now.

[00:11:31] Arvin: We say, okay, you can be the house now, what really, we mean by that is, the YouTube. So it's actually referring to the utility of having this artwork. So if you're a holder of this artwork of sandbaggers casino club, and Ft, then every month they're going to distribute 50% of the profit of the casino,the online casino to the holders of the NFTs.

[00:11:55] Arvin: Which is why we actually told this story of, Hey, you can be the house to house always wins. So basically it's just very clear to them what they're getting. So that's very important at the very beginning. You just want to figure out, okay, what is it, what is so special about your brand?

[00:12:10] Arvin: it could be about your brand, your art. It could be your yourself, like maybe you've gone through so much pain and so many things to come up with the artwork that you have. who was the, like, how do potters, like I think,the author, she went through so much in her life and that was a big deal for creating this amazing piece of artwork.

[00:12:32] Arvin: That the books, It's important, just like the story behind things, like maybe that's the messaging. and then, so once you figured that out, then you're going to, you're going to actually create a plan to be able to hit the numbers that I was mentioning to you. So it depends on your collection size.

[00:12:44] Arvin: You want to figure out, okay, how many people do I need to have, my discord, how many people I need to have in my Twitter. and then also there's this thing called the white list spots. So white lists where people don't know what it is essentially. I think of it as if you know, what a crypto wallet is, where you can buy and sell things with it and buy NFTs and sells.

[00:13:04] Arvin: And if he's with you, you can have your crypto wallet address approved with a brand to buy their NFD at an earlier date. that's called white listing. and so if someone is whitelisted, they're going to be able to do. By the NFD of that brand at an earlier date, sometimes even cheaper. You also want to have a half of the size of your collection in wireless spots.

[00:13:29] Arvin: Meaning if it's a 10,000 collection size, then you want to have about 5,000 people in your white list. And these are your loyal people. They're going to buy your NFD. you already know that now there's a whole conversation. If you wanted to dig into that too, okay, how do you make that? Here's why this says I actually gonna buy, like, how do you pick them?

[00:13:48] Arvin: Like how many hoops they need to jump through so on and so forth. But, so you figured out that the messaging, you figured out the numbers you need to hit. Now, you need to actually contact all the influences that you need to, engage for the next four to six weeks. Now, the reason for that. Influences that are actually, doing good work.

[00:14:06] Arvin: It's just, again, artists too. if you're doing good stuff, you can't just come in into to an artist, be like, Hey, for tomorrow I need an artwork that just doesn't work like that. and so you can go into an influence and say, I need something posted. I need a video on YouTube or, a post on Twitter tomorrow.

[00:14:23] Arvin: You do contact them in advance. So you just do that. and sometimes depends on the project they take you on. Sometimes they don't take you on. For the influencers. Typically it takes about five to seven days to go through your project to figure out, okay, is this a good value for their listeners for their audience?

[00:14:42] Arvin: Or is it not now at the end of that, you get some influencers, they say, okay, we're going to do this. And then you're going to figure it out. you really want to have that preproduction with them and say, Hey, this is what I want you guys to, to communicate to your audience. This, these are the artworks that I want you guys to show, so on and so forth.

[00:14:58] Arvin: So you basically organize all of that. Then, you start your ads, and if you can get lots of influencers at the very beginning, to. Promote you, you're going to be able to get, let's say 10,000 people in your discord, for example, or on Twitter in a few days in your, literally your first week. And if you do that, you sit in the standard for your entire community that they know, okay, this is a very serious person.

[00:15:24] Arvin: Everyone's excited about it and I want to be part of it too. so you can do that if you want to. and actually some people may maybe thinking okay, how is it that like brands, some NFD brands, they just open up their discord and they already have 20,000 people in it. This is how you have influencers.

[00:15:39] Arvin: They talking about the project. so at the end of the first week, what they want to do, there's this section on the discord call, sever insights. They want to go into that service insights, and then see how many members they actually gained. and then based on that, they want to set a pace and just say, Let's see, I need to gain 20,000 members by the end of this month.

[00:16:00] Arvin: So that means I need to gain 5,000 every week. So did I gain 5,000 that week? If I did great. I want to be able to replicate it for next week and so on and so forth. If not, then obviously I need to course correct. See, figure out. Okay. What's not working optimize it now. halfway through the marketing, then you're going to have some people in your discourse.

[00:16:21] Arvin: You're going to have some people on your Twitter. They're going to be hopefully very engaged. They're so excited about your project. They can wait for the dates come and they buy your NFT. and then at that point you want to have a video. And literally you can just do it with your iPhone. You can just on this screen have like on your laptop, have the discord open, have Twitter open and just scroll through it. And with your phone, just record the engagement. Literally. That's what it is. So now mid market. You want to show that video to people and it makes it easy for an NFD buyer or NFD investor to say, okay, it's just basically checking all the boxes for them and saying, okay.

[00:16:58] Arvin: They have engagement on the discord. They have lots of people in the community. They have engagement on their Twitter and their artwork looks cool. And they're saying, join our committee now because Our mandate is coming up in two weeks and then a lot of people do. so that's how you run your marketing at the, in, toward the middle of it.

[00:17:14] Arvin: And then toward the end. and this is very important. So a lot of times. Artists founders. I've seen this unfortunately many times. very unfortunate, but people start coasting. So they say, okay, we were tired. We're exhausted. We build this following. Can they just buy it? we don't want to do any more work.

[00:17:32] Arvin: and then they stop. now the it's very important toward the Like basically five days before your meant date to start promoting very heavily again. if you have an influencer, if you have a celebrity that could talk about your project, this is the time to just pull that, You do a tease, like you say, Hey, five days left four days left, three days left, like everywhere on your social media.

[00:17:53] Arvin: and then, a day before your wireless day, you essentially tell people it'd be like, Hey, this is, like in a day it's going to come, Just basically hyping it up, just say, Hey, we're going to also like for the first a hundred people, we're also going to give them something if they buy the NFD.

[00:18:09] Arvin: So like you give them speeds. Right.so on and so forth. And then hopefully the wireless routers, they're going to wipe out 80 to 90% of your collection size. And if they do, and if you can record it, put it on video or just have some other influencer talk about it, then you can just promote that on the public cell.

[00:18:27] Arvin: And typically if you've done everything. the way described it, you already almost done with your sellout, so you open it to public. And we've had like, for example, brands that they sell out in seven minutes when they open it to public. So by that time you already done and then you open it to public and it's almost like a formality, like there's so many few left and they just come in and buy those.

[00:18:47] Arvin: and then you're done with that part of your NFT seller you by no means you're done, but, for you done with that part,

[00:18:56] Isotta: Amazing. And I just have one quick question about. collection size. how would you recommend, you know, deciding that and whether or not you're a team of one or a team of 50, should that come into play here? Like how do you see, individual creators versus like big brands, you know, operating here.

[00:19:13] Arvin: So there are three important things. One is your collection size, your pricing. and then also, when the men's day.

[00:19:21] Arvin: All those three, unless you're sure you don't want to declare it to anyone in the community. because the worst thing is you say, what price is this? And he keeps changing it actually with frog was we did that. I was terrified. It worked out still, fine. it's actually terrifying because then it may make people think you don't know what you're doing, Same thing with mint date. you don't want to just tell everyone, because this is the worst thing. A lot of times artists, founders, especially people who are newbies in the business, they excitement is what drives their actions. So they say. You know what, like in the next four weeks we're going to make it.

[00:19:57] Arvin: And even though they don't have the resources, they just declared it everywhere. And then people three weeks and they're like, wait, like this is not happening. And then they have to calm and tell people and be like, oh yeah, by the way, this happened, that happened. We can't do, you're going to have to, you don't have to declare anything until you've figured out your market.

[00:20:12] Arvin: So that's. Same thing with pricing too. you don't have to declare it until you're like, you sure, like what your pricing is going to be. I going back to a question, So as for the collection size, it matters, how many you have, because all those numbers that I said, as far as your community members that you need to gain, that's based on the collection size, which means how much marketing budget you have is also dependent on your collection size.

[00:20:35] Arvin: So if you don't have at least 60. do not go for a 10 K collection size. I don't know how else make it clear for people, but, it's the worst thing to do a project, and half acid, and then going in and just like the project didn't work. And then that community is disappointed and it's hard to come back.

[00:20:53] Arvin: there's no reason why you should do 10 K if you don't have the budget, don't have the following yet. Start with something small.

[00:21:00] Arvin: let's say 500, then all you need to have in your discord is like 1500 to 2,500 people. that's a lot more manageable for a small operation right now. Once you've done that, you. You come out proud you've, have money from all these people who bought your NFTs.

[00:21:17] Arvin: Now you can do a larger one. You can do, let's say maybe three K 4k, and so on and so forth. And every time you do this, you're obviously going to deliver on your promises. People are going to get what they, they were promised and people just get excited because they know every time you do things, you promise something you deliver on it.

[00:21:36] Arvin: So on and so forth. as opposed to just say. I want to do a 10,000 because everyone's doing 10,000. and then, but I don't have the resources for it, but I'm still going to do it. that makes no sense.

[00:21:47] Arvin: something to that goes into that. And so the idea of 10,000, for example, a frog is this guy made two, almost 3000 artwork handbooks. But the 10,000 odd book, they usually see, they're not hand-drawn they're computer driven. so computer generates those, right? So they're actually a website out there.

[00:22:04] Arvin: You can just come up with that original concept and then just the computer will just come up with all sorts of attributes. So I think some, someone who doesn't know, maybe they thinking how on earth is someone's going to make 10,000. That's how it's done.

[00:22:17] Isotta: I have a writer in my team that after a project is sold out, he goes on and without having me in the conversation who goes on actually takes, a,30 minutes to an hour with, the founders of that project, ask them lots of questions, like what worked, what didn't work.

[00:22:34] Arvin: and then I have my own idea of what worked, what didn't. So we add both, into a, what we call a case study. and then we publish it. So it's all on sold-out, nfts.io. So if someone wants to just read those cases and just say, okay, where did the budget go to? what did we use? What kind of platforms we were running ads, what did the ad look like?

[00:22:56] Arvin: what was the strategy? what happened at the beginning? What happened at the end? So on and so forth, like all the little details of. sellout project. If they want to just understand it for themselves, it's available on sold-out nfts.io, they can go check it out. and then if. Obviously someone wants to, also do, anything with their projects and they've, they, they need an advisor.

[00:23:20] Arvin: They need to a marketing officer. they can also reach out to me on Twitter as well. That's Arvin K NFD. so that's a R V I N K N F T. I'm on Twitter. That's where I'm most.

[00:23:33] Isotta: okay. So that's it for season three of Art Is… a podcast for artists. Thank you so much for listening and stay tuned for updates on season four. But in the meantime, I would love to connect with you. So please reach out and send me a note at listenatartistpodcast.com.