Hypergrowth industries are certainly some of the most interesting spaces for marketers and entrepreneurs. With the right approach, they often come with huge opportunities that are fundamental for many highly profitable business models. However, making the wrong decisions could also put you under enormous financial pressure, which would inevitably force you out of business after a short period of time.

Consequently, choosing the right marketing tactics is perhaps the most significant task for entrepreneurs who are working in such environments. After we started working as a marketer in the blockchain industry almost two years ago, we threw many traditional marketing strategies overboard and concentrated our efforts on PR. Here is why:

First things first, what is a hypergrowth industry?

A hypergrowth industry can actually be spotted quite easily, it is generally a space that is flooded by thousands of entrepreneurs due to the massive opportunity it offers, which often results in an unbelievable amount of competition. For reference, you might want to look at the blockchain sector that was undoubtedly booming as never before during the past 2 years. Furthermore, the legal cannabis industry can be considered as another prime example of an industry with an exceptional growth rate, as recent reports suggest.

The world of advertising inheres countless ideas for promoting companies in many different industries. While many of these can be applied in hypergrowth industries, such as the blockchain or cannabis space, there are always several important aspects to bear in mind. A hypergrowth industry usually emerges as a completely new business opportunity that not many people were previously aware of. As a result, there usually is a huge demand for educational content which interested parties can use to inform themselves about the latest developments in the industry.

Moreover, higher chances of making a lot of money are also leading to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs flocking into the space in order to get their piece of the pie. Unfortunately, such business opportunities inevitably attract the attention of fraudsters and scammers as well. This creates a difficult situation to be in. On the one hand, you find yourself in a business field with virtually infinitely many opportunities. On the other hand, you most likely have just as many competitors, while, simultaneously, many investors and customers are acting a lot more cautious and are less likely to trust you.

Choosing the right instruments

Marketing in hypergrowth industries is undoubtedly a balancing act that needs to be formulated in an exceptional manner in order to cut through the incredibly loud noise. As we found out at PolyGrowth, running PPC ads often developed into a waste of resources for blockchain projects. Not only are traditional ads losing their effectiveness towards human beings in general, but in the blockchain space, for example, they are frequently connected to fraudulent companies that need to resort to buying the attention of consumers in order to promote their inconsistent products. As a result, several social media platforms, as well as Google, banned crypto advertisements on their platforms at the beginning of 2018. Although these restrictions might be different in more regulated sectors, hypergrowth industries often encounter obstacles with traditional banner advertising.

Acquiring sponsored content on publications, blogs and newsletters would certainly boost the general awareness about your project, but it will quickly dry out your marketing budget if you are not equipped with fairly deep pockets. Running a referral program or, heaven forbid, a multi-level marketing system could potentially spread the word about your project but it usually comes with a loss of your highly valuable reputation. In such confusing environments, where competitors are always waiting for a moment of weakness and potential customers couldn’t be more skeptical, reputation means everything.

Fortunately, there is an adequate and powerful approach that lays the foundation of every successful hypergrowth marketing campaign. It helps your company to be seen as a professional institution. It establishes trust with the members of the community and awards you with a greatly beneficial reputation. It brings organic traffic to your web presence. It connects you to experts, influencers, and entrepreneurs across the industry. In other words: It makes your idea shine brighter than those of your countless competitors. It’s called public relations.

Public friend number one

The constant exposure to aggressive marketing campaigns made us blind to most conventional marketing strategies, and in hypergrowth worlds, it’s even worse. With public relations, you will circumnavigate this issue by achieving third parties to say positive things about your brand or product. Additionally, as mentioned above, the communities of hypergrowth industries are always on the hunt for good educational content. Now it’s your turn to give them prey.

Before actually starting your PR campaign, you need to make sure that your online presence is up to the current standards. A clean and attractive website, a company blog and decent activity on social media are all urgent matters that you need to take care of. That being done, your next step is to learn all the promises and perils of the ecosystem you are acting in. Study the fundamentals, learn about your competitors and dive deep into the media landscape. Understanding who it is you are marketing to and what they want to hear is perhaps the most important element of crafting a strong PR message.

After you formed your personalized marketing plan, it’s time to put theory into practice. As most marketers already know, content marketing has proven to be an incredibly well-performing marketing tool. Make sure you provide high-quality and valuable educational content on your own blog to show potential customers that you actually know what you are talking about. It might take some time to get traffic and conversions, but in the end, it always pays off.

So you have an appealing website, a well-structured and informative blog, you maintain all your social media platforms and you still don’t have any press coverage. Now it’s time to kick-off the actual aggressive marketing campaign. Since you already invested a lot of time in becoming an expert, you should use this expertise to create exceptional pitches for a great variety of journalists. Find yourself some very unique story angles that are complex and yet easy to understand. Try to provide as much information as you can in as little text as possible. It will take a few weeks, but you will eventually find the pitches that work best for you.

A professional digital representation combined with a strong message and clever pitching is essentially the key to every successful PR strategy, and, therefore, also the base of a highly effective marketing campaign in any hypergrowth industry. If you take the steps above very seriously, I have no doubt that your marketing will be rewarded with great success.