Oct 7, 2026 ยท Isaaq Sultan
Launching a token can take an afternoon. Getting people to care about it is the difficult part.
There are thousands of tokens, exchanges, wallets and Web3 products fighting for the same users. And most projects still follow roughly the same marketing playbook: post on X, hire a few influencers, grow a Telegram group, send out a press release, secure a listing and hope momentum follows.
That approach might create a short burst of attention, but attention alone is not a marketing strategy.
Crypto marketing in 2026 is more complicated than it was a few years ago. Google and Meta place strict requirements on crypto advertisers. Regulation affects how exchanges, tokens and financial products can be promoted. The EU’s MiCA framework has also changed the way crypto companies operating in Europe think about communication and compliance.
At the same time, the way people discover projects is changing. Google increasingly answers questions directly in search, while ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and other AI platforms are becoming part of the research process.
For crypto companies, that means marketing has to do more than generate impressions.
It has to build trust, create discovery, support research and eventually give the user a reason to take action.
After working on crypto campaigns from the agency side, exchange side and now the advertising-platform side, one mistake I still see regularly is projects spending money on traffic before thinking through what happens after someone clicks.
The campaign is only one part of the funnel.
Start With the Right Audience
“People interested in crypto” is not an audience.
A futures trader compares trading fees, leverage and liquidity.
A DeFi user wants to know whether a protocol has been audited before connecting a wallet.
A long-term investor may spend half an hour reading tokenomics, vesting schedules and team information.
A memecoin trader may look at a trending list, check liquidity and make a decision in a few minutes.
Those users should not necessarily receive the same campaign.
Trying to reach everybody usually means paying for a lot of people who were never likely to convert.
If an exchange is expanding into Nigeria, for example, millions of impressions from countries where users cannot complete KYC or open an account are not particularly useful.
Before spending anything on advertising, I would answer three questions:
Who exactly are we trying to reach?
What are they trying to do?
Where do they normally go when they research that decision?
That should determine the campaign, not the other way around.
Build Trust Before Buying Traffic
Advertising amplifies whatever is already there.
That can be a good thing or a very expensive problem.
If you send thousands of paid visitors to a confusing website, unclear product or empty community, you have simply paid to expose those weaknesses faster.
Crypto users are naturally skeptical. Before depositing money, connecting a wallet or buying a token, many will check several things first.
At minimum, they should be able to find:
- A fast, clear website with an obvious next step
- Plain-language documentation and tokenomics
- Security audits where relevant
- A visible team when the project structure allows it
- Exchange listings with meaningful liquidity
- Accurate profiles on major crypto data platforms
- An active community where real people answer questions
One of the most common mistakes I see is teams obsessing over banner design while the actual landing page still does not clearly explain what the product does.
Fix that first.
A better ad cannot rescue a weak destination.
Make Your Project Easy to Discover
Good discovery keeps working after the campaign ends.
A launch announcement might generate attention for a day or two.
A genuinely useful piece of content answering something people repeatedly search for can continue bringing users for months or even years.
For example, a cross-chain project could publish a strong guide explaining how cross-chain bridges work, what risks users should understand and how its approach differs.
That article has a much longer shelf life than another “We are excited to announce…” press release.
Discovery in crypto also happens away from project websites.
People research prices, market capitalization, trading volume, liquidity, exchanges and historical performance on crypto-data platforms every day.
That is why maintaining accurate profiles on platforms such as Coinranking matters even before you think about advertising.
A complete listing is not a marketing campaign by itself, but it gives users another place to verify that the project exists, understand the market and continue their research.
In crypto, those trust signals add up.
Use Crypto-Native Advertising
Mainstream advertising platforms are not completely closed to crypto, but they are heavily restricted.
Google requires certification and, for certain crypto products, appropriate licensing. Meta also places restrictions on cryptocurrency advertising and may require prior approval.
For many tokens, early-stage projects and DeFi products, qualifying for these platforms can be difficult.
This is where crypto-native advertising becomes useful.
Instead of buying traffic from a general audience and hoping some of those users are interested in crypto, you advertise where crypto users are already researching.
That distinction matters.
Someone reading a random news article might not have any intention of buying crypto today.
Someone checking Bitcoin prices, researching a token or comparing exchanges already has intent.
You are not trying to create that interest from zero. You are putting the project in front of someone while they are already making a crypto-related decision.
Coinranking is one example of that environment. More than one million users visit the platform each month to check cryptocurrency prices, token data, markets and exchange rankings, and campaigns can be targeted by geography and device.
For an advertiser, that context can be more valuable than simply buying the cheapest possible impressions.
Match Each Placement to a Goal
Not every advertising placement should be expected to do the same job.
This is something advertisers sometimes get wrong.
A large display banner may be excellent for visibility but should not necessarily be judged by the same CTR target as a button sitting next to a trading decision.
Different formats solve different problems.
For example:
- Top Leaderboard and Sticky Banner placements work well for broad awareness and repeated visibility.
- Side Banners can add frequency and support a larger display campaign.
- Trending and Top Coin placements are useful when the objective is token discovery.
- Top Exchange placements reach users who are actively comparing trading platforms.
- Trade, Buy or Play buttons sit much closer to the conversion stage.
- Sponsored articles and newsletters give you more room to explain a product that cannot be understood in a five-word banner.
The campaigns I generally prefer combine several parts of that journey.
For example, a new token may use display advertising for awareness, a Trending placement for discovery and a Trade button for the user who is ready to act.
An exchange may use Top Exchange visibility together with display and a CTA.
The important part is starting with the objective rather than starting with the available ad slot.
Use Influencers and PR as Amplifiers
Influencer marketing still works in crypto.
It just needs to be treated realistically.
A good KOL can put a project in front of a highly relevant audience very quickly. They can also provide social proof and start conversations that are difficult to generate through display advertising alone.
But influencer campaigns can also be expensive, difficult to attribute and extremely short-lived.
Fake engagement is another obvious problem.
I would rather work with a smaller creator whose audience genuinely matches the product than pay for a massive account where most followers are irrelevant.
Whenever possible, give creators unique tracking links and measure what happens after the post.
PR has a similar role.
It can strengthen credibility, create backlinks and give a project something authoritative to reference.
But most press coverage has a short lifespan.
PR and influencers work best as amplifiers.
They create the spike.
Your listings, advertising, content and community should be there to catch the people who become interested afterwards.
Optimize for AI Search, Not Just Google Rankings
SEO is changing quickly.
A Pew Research Center study found that Google users clicked traditional search results less often when an AI-generated summary appeared.
That matters because being number one on Google is no longer the only discovery goal.
People are increasingly asking ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity questions such as:
“What is the best exchange for…”
“Is this crypto project legitimate?”
“What does this token do?”
“Where can I buy this coin?”
Your project needs to be understandable to those systems as well.
That means publishing factual, well-structured content and keeping information consistent across your website, exchange listings, media coverage and crypto-data platforms.
Original research also helps.
If your company has proprietary trading data, user trends, market statistics or research, publish it.
Ten websites rewriting the same press release do not create much authority. Original information does.
It is also worth asking AI assistants about your own project every few weeks.
See what they say.
If they repeatedly misunderstand what the project does, get your token utility wrong or show outdated information, that can be a sign that the information available across the web is inconsistent or too thin.
Fix the source material.
Measure What Actually Matters
Impressions tell you that an advertisement was served.
They do not tell you whether the campaign succeeded.
The correct metric depends on the objective.
For brand campaigns, I would look at things such as:
- Reach
- Viewability
- Frequency
- Branded search growth
- Direct traffic
- Changes in awareness over time
For performance campaigns, the measurement becomes much closer to revenue:
- CTR
- Cost per signup
- Cost per deposit
- Wallet connections
- Cost per acquisition
- First trades
- Retention
- Lifetime value
Set up UTM parameters and conversion tracking before the campaign starts.
Trying to reconstruct attribution after the campaign is already running is much harder.
And do not judge every placement after 24 hours.
Crypto markets move quickly, traffic changes throughout the week and creative performance often needs enough volume before a pattern becomes clear.
A Simple 30-Day Crypto Marketing Plan
There is no universal 30-day launch plan.
A new exchange entering a country needs a completely different strategy from a memecoin, wallet or DeFi protocol.
But for a project starting almost from zero, I would roughly structure the first month like this.
Week 1
Get the foundation right.
Define the positioning, target audiences, landing pages, analytics and compliance requirements.
Prepare at least two creative variations so you have something meaningful to compare.
Week 2
Build the project’s discovery layer.
Complete crypto-data listings, publish useful explainers and prepare longer-form content such as a sponsored article if it supports the campaign.
Week 3
Start distribution.
Launch one display placement, one native placement and a conversion-focused CTA where appropriate.
Make sure the community team knows the campaign is running because new users may start asking questions.
Week 4
Look at what actually happened.
Compare CTR, conversion rate and cost per action across creative, placement, geography and device.
Then move budget toward the part of the funnel that needs the most help.
One principle I strongly believe in is this:
Smaller budgets should buy intent, not reach.
If a project has $3,000 to spend, I would rather see it dominate one relevant placement for long enough to learn something than scatter the same budget across six channels simply so the marketing plan looks busy.
Five tiny campaigns rarely beat one campaign with a clear objective.
Final Thoughts
Crypto users already deal with an enormous amount of noise.
You do not necessarily need to shout louder than everyone else.
You need to show up consistently in the places people use when deciding what to research, trust, buy or trade.
Start with the audience.
Make sure the project looks credible when people research it.
Create content that can continue being discovered after launch.
Use advertising where the audience already has crypto intent.
And measure the campaign based on the action you actually wanted the user to take.
A token launch might combine Trending, Top Coin and display advertising.
An exchange campaign might combine Top Exchange visibility, display and a strong CTA.
There is no universal advertising package that works for every crypto company.
The right campaign depends on the product, market, budget and objective.
If you are planning a token launch, exchange campaign or broader crypto marketing push, Coinranking’s advertising team can help structure a campaign around those factors rather than simply selling you an ad slot.
About the Author
Isaaq Sultan has spent more than nine years working across different sides of crypto marketing, from strategizing and running campaigns at a crypto marketing agency, to working on the business side of a centralized exchange, and now heading Ad Sales and Partnerships at Coinranking.
That experience has given him a practical view of what actually brings users into a crypto product and what simply burns through marketing budget.
Outside crypto, Isaaq builds PCs from scratch and enjoys chasing open roads on his motorcycle.Got a launch coming up? Book your campaign here!.
