Marketing for Blockchain & Web 3 Startups

Here are the top tactics for marketing blockchain and Web 3 Startups:-

1. BOUNTY CAMPAIGNS

Bounty campaigns are incentives that are offered to multiple participants for various activities associated with an ICO. Generally, they give out rewards or tokens for people that have completed specific tasks that help promote a company’s ICO. Participants are spread across different stages of an ICO, ranging from investors to ICO promoters and developers. The campaign incentives can be in the form of cash rewards, which is still pretty rare, or free/discounted tokens that can be cashed in in the future when the tokens are listed on an exchange.

Since the ICO process is divided into two stages, bounty programs/campaigns can incentivize developers to find bugs or provide feedback on other design elements. The people who test and find a flaw in the blockchain are given rewards that are also known as bug bounties. After an ICO is launched, the priority is to fine-tune the released blockchain. In that case, bounty rewards can also be offered to translators who help ensure that the blockchain has a global reach by translating documents associated with development and marketing.

Bounty campaigns are not something that all projects rely on but can be quite beneficial on multiple levels. While it is generally used as a cryptocurrency promotion strategy, it can be much more than.

2. AIRDROPS

Airdrops are still very common and effective in the cryptocurrency industry. If you’re new in the market, then sending free coins or tokens to people’s wallet addresses can help you promote your new currency.

Ultimately, airdrops are hugely popular with investors and a great way to get people interested in the project. Needless to say, the more free tokens you provide, the higher the chance that your community will grow.

Thanks to many airdrop scams, airdrops are not as popular as they used to be. Nonetheless, airdrops still create the most buzz.

During airdrops, you distribute free crypto tokens to those who register for them. As this distribution is free, it attracts more people, thereby increasing your reach. Not only wide reach, but airdrops also bring liquidity for your crypto project.

Similar to ICOs, there are airdrop calendars too. Push your airdrop alert into sites like AirdropsAlert or Airdrops and see the hype.

Check out Top agencies to help you with marketing.

3. TELEGRAM

Setting up a Telegram profile can help you reach a wider audience with your crypto project. Telegram has recently gained popularity in the crypto space – and with good reason. But we’re not recommending that you go the Telegram route just because everyone else is doing it. Rather, we’re recommending Telegram because it offers tangible benefits for a crypto brand.

For starters, unlike other social media networks, Telegram allows crypto advertisements. Additionally, the platform’s end-to-end encryption offers traders a higher level of privacy. The app also generates popularity for your crypo project by populating your groups with bots. These bots create the illusion of a popular project, thus attracting real people to your groups.

By using Telegram wisely, you can win more people to your brand and build an engaged community online.

Aside from the above, the people behind ICOs and cryptocurrency projects should make every effort to keep up to date and maintain an active presence in the community. Do everything you can to boost your project – attend conferences, take phone calls, answer questions and make connections. There is never one magical solution that will drive your project to success; it’s the will to persevere that counts.

4. PRODUCT MARKETING

Product marketing is the process of promoting and selling a product to an audience. This includes deciding on the product’s positioning and key messaging ahead of launch, and ensuring that customers – and your sales team – understand the product. It aims to drive demand and generate adoption and use of the product.

Great product marketing comes down to understanding your customers and their needs – and how your product aligns with those needs.

Startups in crypto and blockchain promise everything that has ever been built in the industry to users. They list out their functionalities and features in every article and document, rarely ever touching upon how users can benefit from these functionalities. They tend to assume that the reader already knows. In reality, the reader may not have a clue.

Focus on generating clear value, as opposed to explaining to the reader how the technology works. Businesses often focus on trying to educate users on how their blockchain-based solution works instead of how it can work for them. This is where the importance of knowing your audience comes into play. They are not interested in how it works; they want to know how it delivers tangible value and ROI. Tell your readers what your project offers—faster processing times, better security, lower costs, passive income.? These are the points to focus on.

As much as you should promote your functionalities, you should tweak your content marketing strategies to explain to users how to use your products and services. So, instead of going on and on about the technology that works behind your project, you can start talking about why the reader should try your product and how it will benefit them.

It is also a great idea to create basic informative content on a variety of topics in the industry and share it in the community. For example, you can talk about Bitcoin mining and how that works. Then, you can talk about how your ecosystem provides an eco-friendly alternative to proof-of-work consensus. This way, you help the reader get a clear understanding of the industry and, over time, your project.

5. GITHUB

Whether your company is building a suite of powerful APIs like Blocknative, or creating an entirely new blockchain, developer documentation and a well-organized Github repository are incredibly persuasive marketing tools.

If we recall from our previous blog, blockchain marketing communication tools, value tends to accrual as a project’s community, network effect, and ecosystem expands.

In this highly competitive space, one way to keep an edge is creating the best documentation for your developer community so they can build quickly, find answers to common questions, and most importantly refer you to other builders in their network who will integrate your solution into their product.

Like tracking community size in Discord or Reddit, investors, builders, and users also look at your GitHub profile (e.g. repos, saved repositories, etc.) to evaluate the strength and activity of your project.

GitHub tracking platforms like Crypto Miso help people see how active your developer community is by tracking the number of commits (saved changes).

Yearn Finance's GitBook Documentation

While GitHub is primarily for hosting codebases, platforms like GitBook offer teams a simple tool for organizing developer documentation.

Yearn Finance is one of Ethereum’s blue chip DeFi protocols. Known as a yield aggregator, Yearn automatically allocates its user's funds across different yield farms to maximize the interest accrued on their investments.

While Yearn Finance might be difficult to understand from a financial or technical point of view, the clarity, organization, and simplicity of their GitBook documentation make it easy for developers to build, and users to participate in one of the most exciting decentralized finance projects in today's market."

6. YIELD FARMING

Since we're on the topic of yield aggregators, let's talk about yield farming.

Yield farming on decentralized exchanges (DEX) is probably the most well-known and sought-after marketing strategy for token-based crypto startups.

That’s a mouthful, so let's break it down in two sentences.

A decentralized exchange allows investors to trade digital assets against a giant pool of tokens where prices are based on a mathematical formula (e.g. a constant product function that can be found in Automated Market Makers), which eliminates the need for a centralized entity to match orders between market participants.

Yield farming is when investors who own a project’s token earns interest by providing liquidity (i.e. adding their tokens to the giant pool) so traders around the world can buy and sell freely.

Because yield farming enables investors to earn interest (sometimes greater than 100% APY), it attracts lots of investors to buy, hold, and earn a yield on the project’s token. "

7. HACKATHONS

If you’re launching a layer 1 blockchain, L2 solution for Ethereum, or blockchain infrastructure like an oracle, you need developers to build with your code.

One reason why Ethereum is the number one smart contract platform in the world, despite its cost, speed, and scalability challenges, is because of the decentralized applications (dApps) running on the network.

Ethereum ecosystem projects like Aave, Compound, and Uniswap drive massive value to the underlying blockchain and Ethereum infrastructure providers.

Hackathons with attractive prize pools are an excellent way to encourage enthusiastic blockchain developers to build with your tools, raise brand awareness in new geographic hotspots, and accrue value to your project.

For participants, Hackathons offer attractive prize money, incredible opportunities to gain experience and make industry connections, and if they're successful, even win startup funding after the Hackathon ends.

Solana's Hackathon Grows 1,000% in 7 Months

Solana’s inaugural hackathon in November 2020, attracted over 1,000 registrants.

Solana's DeFi hackathon in partnership with Serum, a decentralized central limit order book (i.e. decentralized Nasdaq), attracted 3,000 registrants and $400,000 in prizes.

Their third hackathon, Solana SZN, which ended in June 2021 attracted over 10,000 builders and $1,000,000 in prizes across 6 continents.

In seven months, the Solana ecosystem has blossomed into a worthy competitor to Ethereum, with a rapidly growing network of Rust developers building DeFi protocols, blockchain tools, infrastructure projects, dashboards, and so much more.

Successful Solana Hackathon Projects

Hackathon winners aren’t just flash-in-the-pan projects; some have had incredible success after the hackathon and raised additional funding.

Here are some of the top hackathon alums:

Mango Markets - Decentralized cross-margin trading platform.

Psyops - An American-style options platform.

Synthetify - A decentralized protocol for synthetic assets.

Solrise Finance - A decentralized P2P asset management and trading protocol.

StableSwap - An efficient token swap platform for stablecoins and highly correlated tokens.

8. COMPETITIONS

Like hackathons that incentivize developers to build using your software or APIs, sponsored competitions among content creators and traders can activate your startup's user base to build out your content library and attract new users.

We've seen a lot of competitions and sponsored content in crypto. Here are a few:

Memes

9. LIMITED EDITION NFTS

One of the most creative and bizarre examples of crypto marketing is using limited edition merchandise to promote a crypto protocol.

Unisocks Sell for over $50,000

Unisocks are 500 pairs of limited edition, dynamically priced socks that are represented on the Ethereum blockchain as redeemable ERC20 tokens.

Each time a token is redeemed for a pair of socks the price increases along a bonding curve. For example, the first few pairs of $SOCKS sold for $12, $13, $14, $16, $17, $19, $21, and with only 21 pairs left, the current price is a staggering $53,698 USD.

The pure absurdity of this marketing tactic created massive buzz on crypto Twitter, and has inspired new protocols to follow suit like Mango Markets who started selling dynamically priced Caps.

On the more traditional side of branded clothing, Solana opened up a merch store to sell physical goods like sweatshirts, shirts, and socks.

Crypto fans, like sports and music enthusiasts, like to rep their favorite teams. Branded merch store is a great way to give your die-hard fans ways to show their loyalty, start conversations with their IRL networks, and earn publicity through street marketing.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are provably unique tokens used by creators like Beeple to sell digital art, artists like RAC to sell exclusive music, metaverse games like Decentraland to sell virtual real estate, and so much more.

Because of their collectible appeal, NFTs are a popular option for startups looking to engage their fans, give them a piece of history, and raise money.

Star Atlas Auctions Blockchain Video Game Art

Blockchain video games can take a long time and lots of money to develop.

When you're building a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) like Star Atlas, it will take years to bring their open-world game to market.

With new editions being released each Saturday starting on April 24th, Star Atlas is auctioning off 14, limited edition NFTs inspired by their in-game designs to raise money and more importantly keep their fans excited.

If your company is in a position to mint non-fungible tokens, creating a limited run of NFTs related to your project could be a fun way to give your users a way to add you to their library of digital collectibles.

10. INTEGRATIONS

What do software tools like Zapier, Slack, and HubSpot have in common?

They offer a TON of integrations.

Because we're an Elite HubSpot Solutions Partner, let's use HubSpot as an example.

HubSpot integrations with other SaaS platforms not only afford their users more ways to use their marketing technology platform, but it also increases the value of their tool, earns backlinks from their integration partners, and expands their base of users.

Here is another example:

When your favorite sports player gets traded to a new team, do you warm up to their new team, or do you revolt against your favorite player?

For many of us, warming up to another team is the route.

The same is true in crypto.

Ethereum x Solana Ecosystem Integrations

When protocol improvement proposals are submitted on governance websites like Snapshot to build Sushi pools using Raydium’s backend under the code name “Bonsai,” what do you think all of the Solana fans do?

Answer: they look into buying $SUSHI because now it’s part of the family.

Same can be said about the LidoDAO proposal by Chorus One to bring liquid staking to Solana, or when Sam Bankman-Fried courted the team from REN (the Republic Network), to join Alameda and bridge Ethereum and Solana.

The beautiful thing about DeFi is code composability, or the ability to assemble code in many different ways, to create novel, integrable protocols.

This composability - like SaaS integrations - opens up one project's network and fans to another’s when they join forces.

11. INVITE-ONLY DAPPS

If you've heard Michael Saylor or the Winklevoss twins talk about Bitcoin, you've probably heard that Bitcoin is scarce (only 21 million will ever exist), and it's this scarcity and soundness that makes it an attractive investment like gold.

Similarly, when you're launching a new dApp, pairing sneak-peek videos of what you're building with scarcity can skyrocket demand for your tool.

Phantom Wallet Gives Invite-only Access to Partners

Phantom is a new browser-based cryptocurrency wallet that operates on Solana.

Unlike their predecessor Sollet which has an unimpressive user interface and user experience, Phantom is 100% focused on making a web3 wallet that is easy to use.

Getting people to migrate their funds from one wallet to another is a big ask.

From the loss of funds to wallet security and remembering another seed phrase, getting users to switch from one Solana wallet to another is a tough sell.

Here are a few ways Phantom has increased demand for access to their wallet:

Created a beta access sign up form

Invited crypto Twitter influencers to access the wallet early

Gave followers access who switched from their old Twitter handle to their new one

Sent ""invite-only"" codes to ecosystem projects

12. BITCOIN COMMUNITIES

Including the official bitcoin community, there are a number of other communities where you can further promote your new coin offering.

First of all, you need to find the relevant community websites and join them.

Before you start talking about your own currency, you first need to build trust by participating in ongoing discussions.

Bitcoin Communities

Then, you can officially introduce your coin, its history, benefits, future, and other details to the community users.

If they are interested, they will ask questions for which you can provide answers accordingly.

Marketing, Marketing & Sales, Web 3Francesca Tabor5 January 2022