What can Blockchain & Crypto projects do to grow their digital real estate during the bear market?
As we a driven further into the bear market by record inflation, Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin’s freefall, proposed regulations, War and extreme fear (as of writing) we can look to garner the most utility from a digital, research and customer-focused perspective.
SEO in particular typically builds equity over time, it’s also most effective when mapped and indexed within tactical time frames for expected peaks and valleys within the market. As we move further into the bear market, we can build our brand, content, and be ready for the next halving and bull run.
1. Build Content: Content is Equity.
As SEO is a longer play, we can front-load valuable content across the bear market, it’s common to see with some blockchain and crypto projects that their content is naturally very fragmented across many channels.
This tends to create content that is dynamic and reactive, this is useful at times as the space moves fast, though it’s beneficial to have a strong base of content that your users can discover. This is especially true for your brand, and ‘money’ pages. Given there will be less demand for crypto, this means there will be less competition and more ability to gain ground, the well-established split of brand/generic maintains here. Taking a example of ‘algorithmic stablecoin’
While driven by a market event, this otherwise very low search term has now seen a huge spike in traffic – mostly aligned to UST of course. However, for those aware, DAI is also an algorithmic stablecoin issued by MarkerDAO.
Treating this as a mini bear-bull example, we can see that search terms will peak and fall, once the news of UST moves away, DAI could be well-placed to capture that new search and drive more awareness and visibility to their project. Looking at a Google search for ‘dai algorithmic stablecoin’, we actually see DAI’s blog in 2nd position. (Full disclosure: DAI state they are not an algorithmic coin as they are soft-pegged to the US Dollar, however many sites mention they are).
As an example though, we can see that information is difficult to share in this space, in DAI’s case being outranked by other websites with different messaging. We also have to consider the narrative-drive flux of search, were DAI to have created valuable, relevant content prior to this market shift, they could well of been better-placed and able to provide new users a consistent message.
2. Less Competition: Refine your Bidding Targets
With less search, we will see less competition and likely, less CPC (Cost Per Click), this allows bidding strategies to open up. Should your project wish to consider paid media, you can consider Brave Ads, Reddit and other spaces that will likely to continue to see Crypto enthusiasts remain engaged and active even during a less active market.
As a result, building your user base in a less competitive environment can drive greater cost savings, a more ‘evergreen’ audience and likely higher-qualified leads given that many would-be and likely new investors will leave the space during the downtrend.
3. Test, Learn & Grow: Inform your GTM Strategy
Less customers interacting with your site affords you time to test new tactics, layouts and collect data before the next run.
Using your current audience, testing and learning is crucial to success in search, A/B testing and other strategies provide data on what resonates with users, how to drive greater downloads of your valuable assets, and ultimately how to best position yourself when going to market.
As you develop your blockchain or project, you should develop your digital presence, providing engaging UX, delivering your mission statement succinctly, growing your brand and discovering new potential end users through keyword research.
4. Monitor Competitors: Crypto Moves Fast
Unfortunately, not all projects will survive the bear run, as a result your competitive set may well grow, or lessen. Once public interest and demand comes back to a peak, your project can inform its content and positioning with competitive intelligence.
What have your competitors bid on? Has their social presence grown? Do we share any common data points? Knowing this data helps to inform your GTM and content structure, do they have more pages than us on a given topic? and so on.
A popular topic in the space currently is Central Bank digital currencies (CBDCs), we are aware that banks perhaps are looking for a project to help build their CBDC, Ripple (XRP) did a fantastic job creating content around this with their CBDC Whitepaper for any institutions looking to work with a project, this speaks directly to them, creates data capture and well-positions Ripple as a project that can help. Ripple have also done well to navigate their ongoing issues with SEC without losing much ground.
Conclusion
The market will be hard for all projects, however, for those projects that want to refine themselves, build more equity and be ready for next take off, this provides a silver lining that can help your project maximise this bear market.
