Talking about the Web3 marketing ideas in the bear market: How should emerging projects allocate limited marketing resources?
Original author:Alex TopchishviliOriginal author:
, CoinList Marketing Director
Original compilation: Linda, Web3 MKT
Editor’s Note: In a bear market, projects’ marketing budgets are reduced, and users’ willingness to interact will be reduced. Many friends in the Web3 market have expressed the view that "it is difficult to do marketing in a bear market".
However, is this really the case?Bull market users are highly motivated, but the marketing competition they face will be greater.
The author of this issue will start from personal experience and specifically analyze how to do a good job in marketing in a bear market.
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The following is the compiled content:
In 2022, the encryption industry has long since ceased to have a market value of $2 trillion, and with it comes a lot of buzz around Web3.
Marketers (and their budgets) have been feeling the pinch for months as the crypto market froze.
Global Web3 projects are in a relatively low emotional state, and marketers are also waiting for the market to pick up to do more marketing.
But in my experience, this is a mistake.
Bear markets present a great marketing opportunity for three main reasons:
It's much more cost-effective
Much less noise to filter
Here's an investment that will generate outsized growth and returns during the next bull market
In this post, I introduce a growth framework for marketing in a bear market and discuss how emerging Web3 projects should allocate limited marketing resources.
1. Define your growth metricsThe bull market and concepts are not constant for a long time.Using terms like "Protocol" and "DAO" does not motivate users to use your product in the long run and reduces the workload of developers.
Therefore, before considering growth, it is particularly important to understand the specific indicators of growth for different projects.
While each project's definition of growth is unique, there are some common Web3 growth metrics that can be broken down into categories:L1/L2 protocols:
DeFi：Number of independent contributing developers, number of active wallets, number of interactions, number and size of transactions
Total Value Locked (TVL), Number of Active Wallets, Number of Interactionsgame:
Number of active players, transaction volume per user, number of guild partnersMarket/Exchange:
SaaS：Monthly active users, number of coins listed, number of transactions, total transaction volume
Revenue per customer, customer acquisition cost (CAC), churn rate
Defining measures of success, like achieving product-market fit, is a prerequisite before starting to explore growth strategies, develop strategies, and find tools.
2. Use existing resources to drive growthEven in the crypto winter when marketing budgets are being cut, many marketers in Web3 are neglecting one of the most important resources available to them:
Existing assets of the business.
Of the existing assets that all Web3 startups have, the following three are the most important:core team:
Your team is your most valuable asset in marketing. When you're launching a new product, acquiring new clients, or producing content, every team member should be on the front lines helping the team share and distribute project information appropriately across personal social networks—especially on Twitter.user:
SEO：One of the biggest problems for any Web3 marketer is the lack of case studies and customer successes. If you have satisfied customers, you can boost your marketing by crafting engaging storytelling that serves as effective testimonials for converting prospects into end customers.
Everyone has a website and a blog, but hardly enough Web3 marketers have invested in making their websites and apps search-friendly. To ensure the integrated effectiveness of any marketing campaign, optimize your website for proper indexing and user-friendliness. This will have a positive impact on your organic search traffic. Optimize your search targeting keywords during a competitive bear market and reap the rewards of the next bull market.
3. User Acquisition: Double down on Web3 native growth channels, kill the rest
User acquisition in Web3 is a bit of a mess, especially in a bear market.
Too many well-funded teams are burning VC dollars with strategies that neither reach their target audience nor deliver ROI - such as funding lavish conferences and dinners around the world, sponsoring celebrities, and investing in crypto influencers and Web2 Ad networks (FB, Google, Reddit, TikTok, Quora, etc.) overpay.
Return attribution is especially difficult for marketing methods such as crypto influencers and conferences, which may not be worth doing in a bear market without properly measuring ROI.
Here are two Web3 user acquisition strategies that, when done well, can be a great area to focus when the market is down.
1. Airdrop
A popular method of user acquisition in Web3 is token airdrops. Projects airdrop (or distribute) free tokens to crypto wallet addresses of users who have met certain prerequisites or completed certain tasks used by the protocol.
Assuming you carefully consider the token economics and potential utility of the token, and consider which users receive the airdrop, you can attract high-quality users from day one, and as a reward for users and the community, promote the project Have an active and united user base.
Although there have been many successful airdrops (such as Uniswap, ENS), airdrops also have their own flaws and risks. Since airdrops happen on-chain, projects have few reliable ways to assess a recipient's on-chain reputation.
So this creates two problems:
Airdrop to the pure maomao party, and get excess airdrop allocation by swiping orders
Without enough "buy-in" from token recipients or widespread trust in the protocol, tokens are often dumped immediately, causing prices to crash and damage the entire ecosystem. Examples of wrong airdrops includeOptimismandRibbon Finance。
and
For airdrops to work in a bear market, launching token airdrops needs to confirm users’ on-chain reputation and focus on users with a proven track record of contributing to the protocol, rather than airdropping to speculative users who dump tokens at the first opportunity .
2. Rewards and Vouchers
Another increasingly popular Web3-native user acquisition strategy is to launch incentive reward campaigns on bounty platforms. Reward them with cryptocurrency.
For new users, it's a way to earn cryptocurrency while learning and building credibility to become contributors to fledgling projects.
For Web3 projects, this is a way to identify and acquire quality contributors based on their attestation and value-adding activities.
Instead of paying Facebook or Google to capture whatever minimal search traffic is left in a bear market, you're paying active users who previously demonstrated value-adding activity or positive on-chain behavior, which is a crowd that's more likely to stay engaged and work for your Activities that contribute to the community. Some such bonus platforms include:
4. Invest in content → reduce competition and get more attention for your content
New narratives can scare users away. If an event elicits Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD), most people simply avoid it.
And the antidote to this fear is education.
As marketers in an industry plagued by various frauds and black histories, we have to help our users understand Web3 products and bring them real value through high-quality content and thought insights. There is no better and more effective time to educate this matter than the crypto winter.
Creating quality content relevant to your target audience in a bear market will help your project attract organic traffic, build trust, boost your SEO, and build brand equity.
In a bull market, it can be difficult for your content to be unique and stand out due to the sheer volume of content being produced and shared. But in a bear market, much less content is produced, making it easier to focus on your content and establish your project as the product of choice and thought leadership in your niche.please remember--Google considers the timeliness of content when deciding which search results to provide.
What was published during the last bull market may not be available again. No matter what happens in the industry, or how much value is wiped out, long-engaged crypto users still check Twitter and refresh their alerts a dozen times a day, which will also give your content plenty of exposure.
Investing in content during a bear market will pay huge dividends during the next bull market, as people will always remember which companies struggled during a bear market and which projects remained active and received the most attention. Web3 will likely never be smaller than it is today, and your competition will never be less than it is today.
5. Community is King: Build a community with a specific purpose
In Web2, the main target of go-to-market is your customers, usually they are acquired through sales and marketing efforts.
In Web3, marketing will target not only customers/users, but also developers, investors and partners. As Web3 projects are "community-owned" rather than just "community-led", the distinction between owners, shareholders and users is often blurred, making it even more important to define well-defined goals.Unlike Web2,In Web3, goals, communities, and products are key to leading a project's go-to-market.
Often, a project grows not because users flock to an existing product, but because of the ideas and perceptions its community embodies. The community helps define and shape the product.
Friends With BenefitsA few examples of this include:
Loot, a social DAO, which was originally just a Discord group with Token as an admission condition;
Smoothie, a game that starts with the content and then moves on to the gameplay;
, a discover-to-earn rewards platform, initially revolved around discovering content and communities for Web3 startups.
Some tips for building community in a bear market:Go to where the Web3 user is:
The Web3 community has already identified their platform of choice, so building a community means meeting users where they are. Twitter and Telegram are must-haves for making announcements and public group discussions, but Discord has become the main go-to platform for project leaders who want maximum flexibility in managing their communities.Be clear about your purpose and intent:
When new people arrive, they should be able to easily find and understand your organization's purpose (why you exist) by browsing pinned posts and channel titles. Include relevant links to your website, project documentation, or introductory blog posts or videos so people have the opportunity to learn as much as possible.Set clear boundaries:
Once a community agrees to a culture, it is difficult to change, so clear boundaries of acceptable behavior must be set from the outset. Know what actions may result in a ban, and address violations quickly and consistently.Cross-spread with other communities:
Build partnerships and collaborations that will help cross spread the Web3 community. In a bear market, there's very little good news surrounding partnerships, so every relatively positive announcement is magnified. When you do have an opportunity to cross-promote and leverage your partner's marketing clout, whether it's through a project collaboration, joint AMA, or joint content program, make sure to take advantage of it!Use your community to:
Whether expanding your content to reach a larger audience, providing reviews or feedback, testing new features before they go live, creating analytics tools, completing bounty programs - get the community involved and spread the word as much as possible, and the incentives should be as clear as possible.
I look forward to the various new growth models emerging in Web3 and the progress of projects using them.
