ColdChain Agency

Web3 Growth & Digital Marketing Agency

Web3 Marketing: 2021 vs 2024

With Bitcoin price pumped by ETF approval, new ecosystems popping up, airdrops being sent left and right and halving around the corner, we are finally jumping into the new bull run. 

This means not only new investment gains but also increased demand for marketing among the rising competition and new audiences. 

Heading towards my 4 years in Web3 marketing, I’m noticing that there’s nothing new under the sun and marketing trends are simply evolving from one cycle to another. Let’s compare the marketing landscape of 2021 vs 2024 and see where we are at.

Toss: Let people figure out how your product works

Take: Focus on product marketing and explainers

Thanks to increased competition and lack of budgets in the bear market, great user experience, clean interface and navigating community through your product via on-page info popups, explainer videos, threads, KOL collabs and other methods are more important than ever.

Cool product setup can also help you boost engagement. Various gamification techniques, leaderboards, social media sharing cards and other fun ways help to merge your product marketing with growth.

Toss: One-time shills

Take: Long-form engagement with KOLs

2021 marketing practices equated KOLs to shillers because the number of followers was the leading decision-making factor for most projects. As a result, most projects overspent on content that did not fit the bill and did not bring any ROI, as well as got associated with shady influencers and attracted the wrong crowd. 

Bear market taught us to be wise in who we work with and what we spend on. Essentially, KOLs are an extension of your team. You don’t do one-time stunts with your team members, you sign a long-term contract instead, right? Think of working with KOLs in the same way and swap shill posts for co-authored newsletters, co-hosted podcasts and spaces, trading/gaming streams and other forms of collaboration. 

Toss: Giveaways

Take: Reward community members organically

2021 was all about post-a-meme-and-get-$100 or like & retweet giveaways to boost community size and engagement. Most projects did not have a working product so growing the community through this kind of rewards was the only way to get more attention. 

The bear market brought to life lots of interesting products that need real users bringing liquidity in. Hence, marketers’ task is to find a way to attract them. 

2023 was all about quests on Galxe and platforms alike. 2024 started with a boom on points-based systems for incentivising communities. The best things about points are that you can reward on-chain and off-chain interactions, have more variation of tasks and have more control over the outcome incentivising both product use and community participation. Plus it’s a new fun activity for your community that feels more organic and genuine than brand ambassadors programs. 

Toss: Random content

Take: Content & SEO Strategy

In 2021 fighting with the founders about the importance of a well-structured website and a good content strategy was an unfortunate reality.

Bear market drained our marketing budgets and we came back to good old organic basics. Content that tackles a 360-degree view of your project, product features, roadmap and announcements is an absolute must. 

SEO which is bread and butter in Web2 is the new kid on the block for Web3. It takes time and investment in the right specialists, but it’s a real game changer, especially in crypto niches that are not oversaturated by competition.

Toss: Fight with your competitors

Take: Collaborate to compete

In 2021 we got aggressive towards our competitors and shouted that we’re the best on every corner. In 2024 it’s a faux pas. We’ve all survived a long bear market and need to be respectful towards each other after all at least for that reason. 

There are 2 topics to mention here: collaborating with direct competitors and co-marketing with projects from complementary niches.

The best phrase I heard in Web3: “We need to grow the pie first to share it later’. Web3 is still a tiny industry. If we focus on particular niches, for example, hot and trendy restaking or good old derivatives, it becomes obvious that the user base is very limited. Being aggressive and tanking competitors does not make much sense as you’re fighting for a handful of users only. 

Collaboration always goes a long way, especially if your niche is relatively unexplored by the crypto crowd yet. Think of educating communities about your niche and discussing particular problems & solutions in co-marketing efforts with your competitors. Almost no one does it, however, it is a great free way of getting more attention from your target audience. 

Regarding co-marketing with projects outside your niche: trend is your friend. Usual techniques always work, but also think beyond promotional marketing and ride the wave integrating certain things into your protocol if you can. Let’s say, you have a DeFi protocol and token $XYZ is trending. Opening a vault or staking for this token will instantly boost your marketing as there’s high demand for the product. 

Toss: Sprinkle some money and wait

Take: Use analytics to make informed decisions 

I’m happy to see that some marketing practices from traditional tech are finally coming to crypto. Focus on analytics and making data-driven decisions is definitely one of them. 

Instead of deploying huge budgets and hoping for the best as we did in 2021, marketers of 2024 can do real growth marketing by analysing community and user actions, testing hypotheses and pivoting or scaling them depending on the results.

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