In my previous articles, I always offered airdrop campaigns as an option while addressing web3 marketing strategies. Today I decided to present you a comprehensive guide on how to run an airdrop campaign. 

Airdrops can be used for various purposes. These purposes are usually to reward loyal community members and increase recognition in the general crypto community as a marketing method.

Before moving on to how an airdrop campaign is run, it is useful to take a look at the different types of airdrops.

Types of Airdrops

1-NFT Airdrops

I wanted to put NFT airdrops first as they are so popular these days. Here, some NFT projects airdrop through token distribution to reward their NFT holding users. Also, some projects airdrop through NFT distribution to their token holding users. The both is possible.

2-Social Media Airdrops

Projects distribute small airdrops to promote on social media and reward their communities there. These distributions are made as a result of small games and sweepstakes.

3-Loyalty Airdrops

Projects make special airdorp for their users who show their loyalty by taking a place in the community for a long time, using the platform or reaching high volume on testnets.

Running an Airdrop Campaign

I divided the airdrop types into some categories myself. Now I will give my ideas on how to run an airdrop campaign.

Step 1: Planning
The planning stage is one that should be taken very seriously as it is in every campaign. I tried to gather the things that need to be thought about under certain headings.

Set Goals for the Campaign
Perhaps the most important thing here is to define the target audience. A specific community can be targeted. You can also set a target audience based on the type of your project. For example, if you’re a gaming project, focus on esports communities.

In addition, think about the main objectives of the airdrop campaign. There may be various purposes here.

• Increasing the number of holders.

• Strengthening your social media accounts

• Strengthening your existing community

• Increasing crypto awareness.

Several purposes can be achieved here, and you should plan different processes for each. As a result, you should prepare comprehensive action plans for your goals and keep these action plans up-to-date.

Prepare an Action Plan
After determining the goals, what needs to be done is to prepare an action plan suitable for these goals. This action plan will determine your roadmap. Make this action plan as detailed as possible.

Let’s continue with the example I just gave. Let’s say you are a game project. In this case, reaching e-sports communities is among the appropriate goals. In this case, what should be included in the action plan will be as follows.

• Scan e-sports communities

• Reach admins to communicate with e-sports communities

• Make a list of those who charge and do not charge for the promotion of this campaign.

• Get the list of e-sports players.

• Contact these players directly or through their managers.

• Make a list of those who demand and do not charge for the announcement of the campaign.

• Reach influencers in the gaming industry, make the same list for them.

• You have a market information in your hand. Now take the step for partnership agreements that fit your marketing budget.

…

And the action plan continues like this. My purpose here was to show you the elaboration.

Try to Predict Every Detail
One of the most important details is to determine the prize pool per participant. In addition, predetermine which participants can benefit from the airdrop campaign. You will use these terms during the campaign promotion with the word of mouth marketing method.

Prepare for Campaign Promotion
First of all, all of the previous steps will help us right now. Communities and influencers we connect with, social media accounts and more… What you need to do here is to make an announcement step by step.
First, experience the word of mouth marketing method. Get them to spread the word that an airdrop campaign can be launched with the community admins you’ve agreed with in the background. Build a hype. Get the community excited by sending hidden messages.

Step 2: Technical Implementation

Now is the time to plan the technical implementation. In Step 1, we had made all the planning for this. Now let’s move on to the technical part of the process. What we will do here is about how we will technically distribute the airdrop campaign.

Choose a Smart Contract
You can choose a smart contract to perform the airdrop distribution. This is the work of programmers, I know there are various tools on this subject. However, I don’t know how they work. I guess they work with the classic smart contract mechanism. What you need to do is to choose a tool for yourself and implement this smart contract in your project.

Create a Smart Contract
You can also work with your own programmers on this subject. What your programmers have to do is to create a software that selects users according to the rules you have defined before. Then you will define your airdrop and send it to the users who comply with these rules.

Distrubute Manually
Let’s put it all aside and assume you’re not good enough for either of the two options above. Now you have to distrubute manually. Here you have to create a list. You must manually distribute again to the users in this list that you will create manually. This requires labor and time. You must make the correct calculation of the cost here.

Step 3: Finalizing

You are now ready to launch your airdrop campaign. If you have followed the steps so far, all you need to do is prepare a promotional message and run the smart contract, unless you choose to distrubute manually.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in this post I tried to wrap up running an airdrop campaign in 3 steps. Airdrop campaigns are an important component of web3 marketing. In this case, keep airdrop distribution in mind as an option when planning your project’s marketing campaigns. You have already learned how to do it. :)