NFT Buyers Unlocked: Building a Persona |☄|
and Crypto Whales + how to find your tribe on Twitter
GM. 🫶
This is Web3 Espresso ☕-your weekly cup of everything Web3 designed to educate, entertain, and inform.
If this is your first newsletter, I recommend you read this post where I explain what is Web3 and why it’s changing the internet. ✨
This week, I look into a favourite topic of mine: finding your audience.
Spending time thinking about your audience and what defines them is crucial to identifying your ideal customer and successfully communicating and marketing your product, service, or, in some cases, your art.
People that are currently buying NFTs have their own specific attributes and include a rainbow of people that are either actively invested or passionate about the space. 🌈
Enjoy!
What’s in store today:
NFT Buyers Unlocked: Building a Persona
⚙ Breaking down the process
📈 Key Demographics
☄ Understanding buyer motivation
🔭 The NFT Buyer Persona
🐳 How and Why monitor Crypto Whales
13 Twitter Accounts to follow to get you started
Learn. » NFT Buyers Unlocked
I have been looking at NFTs and going over all facets of developing, minting, selling, and marketing your NFT.
In case you missed last week’s newsletter, you can read it here
If you're a creative or an artist wishing to learn how to make and sell your NFTs, this is an excellent place to start.
This week I take a deep dive into:
NFT Buyers Unlocked: Building a Persona
I’ll introduce this segment by saying that the NFT Party is well and truly over. It has never been more difficult to sell NFTs. The graph below shows the search volumes for the keyword “NFT” over time.
It really speaks for itself.
This also means that it’s more important than ever to invest time and effort in creating your buyer’s persona.
Why?
The biggest mistake I see over and over again (both in Web2 and Web3) are people trying to promote whatever they’re selling to everyone, everywhere possible. This often leads to an enormous waste of time and resources since it’s impossible to target multiple audiences for a single product at once. I mean, does it make sense to direct ads for dog clothes to someone who doesn’t own a dog?
Power charge your marketing efforts and stop wasting money in the process.
So before you start promoting your service or your art define your buyer personas. This will help you craft a marketing message that resonates and addresses the wants or pain points of your ideal customer.
Identify your target audience, segment it and fine-tune your marketing campaign.
Given the niche that is Web3, your personas will be fairly limited but they will have strong unique characteristics, which I explore below.
⚙ Breaking down the process
Persona building can be broken down into the following step-by-step process:
Step 1: Do your research
This can be web-based, interview based or using your web analytics.
Step 2: Segment your audience
Example of segmentation strategies include needs, behaviours, basic demographics, attitudes, price sensitivity, geographic area, values, and lifestyles.
Step 3: Set demographic information
This includes basic demographics (age, gender, income, location, buying habits, education level, family etc ).
Step 4: Describe a persona’s background and their habits.
This phase helps get a fuller picture of your persona. Look at attributes like how they find information or what social media channels they use.
Step 5: Define the persona’s motivations and frustrations
These can be very different in the Web3 space as the reasons for getting involved can be as varied as supporting an artist, to making a financial return or even changing the world.
📈 A NFT Buyer’s Key Demographics
Personas based on demographics are key when implementing targeted social media advertising, whereas personas based on behaviour give you useful information on how to enhance both your product or service and the consumer experience.
Key demographic information about NFTs buyers
The US remains the leader in terms of both sales volume and the number of users interested in NFTs, most probably because the largest marketplaces and artists are US-based.
According to Google Trends, the United States ranked in 11th place out of 65 regions in terms of the volume of keyword searches for NFT and “non-fungible token topics. Overall, I would say that geo-targeting is inconclusive. Given the niche nature of the industry I would target countries with the highest disposable income per capita.
According to a March 2021 survey by Morning Consult, Millennials are the most likely age group to collect NFTs. Gen Xers were the next most likely generation to acquire NFT. Based on the survey, 8% of them collect NFT (vs. 23% for Millennials).
Money becomes interesting. A study reveals that lower-income individuals (earning less than $25,000 per year) invest in NFTs at a rate comparable to that of individuals making more than $150,000 per year (upper-income). The respondents with middle incomes ($25,000–$150,000) had the least interest in non-fungible tokens, with up to 94% expressing no interest at all.
☄ Understanding buyer motivation
The reasons that motivate people to invest in crypto art can be complex as there is little tangible reason that the NFT purchase will increase in value. It’s pure supply and demand and the demand is unpredictable at best.
Collecting NFT art is more than just buying and selling artwork.
Someone may want to support their favorite artists; an early adopter might get a kick out of legally owning digital art; perhaps it’s the idea of belonging to the community or the freedom to express themselves online; or it could simply be that they adore the artwork on display.
Combined with the data available, we can say that NFT buyers will most likely:
live in a tech-friendly environment,
be relatively young (18-34 years old),
have a disposable income of over $150,000,
be either a creative / designer
have a strong interest / understanding of cryptocurrency and
either be a collector or an investor
🔭 Creating your NFT Buyer Persona
By combining demographic and behavioural characteristics and applying this to the Web3 landscape I have outlined 5 possible NFT Buyer Personas:
The Creators and Early Adopters
The introduction of NFTs has opened a gate for many artists and creators. The majority of the earliest adopters were millennials who identified as "crypto artists". This has created a community of designers, illustrators, and video game artists who will support other artists and the art that they produce.
The Fans and Collectors
Collectors buy with their heart. The purchase of an NFT is not a financial decision but the opportunity to own something unique that they value. A little like owning the first superman comic book, their decision-making is based on emotional connection, uniqueness and loyalty.
The Speculators
NFT speculators are financially driven. Also known as the NFT flipper they will try to purchase one of the limited items and then turn around and sell it for a higher price.
The Whales
Many of today’s whales are “crypto millionaires” and their intention is not necessarily to make more money; it can be to support creators, push a message or a way to give back.
Big Brands / Celebrities
Celebrity NFTs are either created, promoted or owned by celebrities. They have entered the space to create a deeper connection with their fans (Snoop Dogg) or used NFTs as a medium to raise funds for a charity such as Shaquille O’Neal, Ellen DeGeneres or Paris Hilton.
What is a whale?
Whale is the term used to describe the biggest NFT owners. To qualify you must hold $1 Million worth of NFTs.
🐳 Why and How to monitor whales
Moonstream, an open source blockchain analysis company, released a report in October 2021 and found that about 17% of addresses control more than 80% of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. They are the whales. 🐳
This means that the market for NFTs is very concentrated. One interesting strategy would be to fine tune your buyer persona characteristics by monitoring the online behaviour of “Whales”. As an NFT artist this can help you understand what types of projects are being bought the market movers and if you are more financially focused, this gives you the opportunity to follow the trend.
As always, do your own research.
The following sites show Crypto Whale transactions and information:
NFTGo - provides a list of whales and what they’re buying
Crypto.com/whalewatch - tracks whales on ethereum
NFT Whale Watchers - a twitter account to track whale purchases
Find your tribe on Twitter
The Web3 space is all about communities and the industry is still quite small. If you are a complete newbie in this space, the best place to start is Twitter as it is home to some of the most well-known influencers in the Web3 space.
For general NFT art news and releases, I personally follow NFT Lately, NFTCollectorList and AOI.
I also follow a lot of accounts to keep up to date with the general trends, opinions and releases. To help get you started, here is a list of some of the NFT Twitter accounts I follow:
BSY (29.5K Followers)
CollinNFT (11.3K Followers)
Bharat Krymo (109.5K Followers)
Coco_Bear (50.6K Followers)
SeedPhrase (194K Followers)
Matty (224K Followers)
LG Doucet (21K Followers)
Anorak.eth (13.8K Followers)
Noobie (13.5K Followers)
Sera (20K Followers)
Wades (17K Followers)
StephSutto.eth (19.9K Followers)
Jennifer Sutto (36K Followers)
3 tips to help you find your Web3 Tribe on Twitter:
By spending a little time on Twitter you can quickly find common characteristics to help you find potential NFT collectors.
A lot of users that are active in the crypto space will use the .eth or .xyz in their handle.
Search for keywords “NFT Collector”, “NFTs”, “NFT Trader”, “Crypto Enthusiast” or “Web3”.
The Web3 space is still small. Build your community, interact with other accounts, see who’s following who.
That’s all for this week… 🫶
Before you go - let me know how I’m doing.
Please note that I do not recommend or endorse the companies and organisations mentioned in this newsletter. This content is purely informative and not a recommendation. Always be mindful of where you connect your wallet. Always do your own research. 💛