You don’t want drill bits. You also don’t want blockchain technology

What you want are holes. And what blockchain technology can give you.

Do you remember the old marketing adage that “people don’t want quarter-inch drill bits, they want quarter-inch holes”? And many others like it (you don’t buy a razor, you buy a smooth chin)?

Well. The reality is that they are actually true. Nobody buys the technology, the hardware, the machine. They buy the solution, the usage, the joy it provides.

Blockchains are no different. In my previous article I extended a bit about what Blockchain Gaming is and what blockchains are.

In this one, I want to talk about the marketing approach blockchains should take. And how this should be part of their strategy to further develop their ecosystem and to generate mass adoption.

Blockchains are not B2C

This may sound strange and unnatural. But a blockchain is the pure definition of B2B.

A blockchain does not generate adoption by having a cool website that generates conversion. Their conversion comes from other businesses that build on top of them.

Although in recent years the difference between how a B2B company and a B2C company attracts customers has become smaller (mostly due to social media and influencers), that difference it’s still there and it's still meaningful.

A B2B company is about educating their customers, being efficient and generating strong interpersonal relationships with long-term goals.

B2C is more about entertainment and convenience, transactions and short-term goals.

So far, we’ve seen most blockchains focus their marketing efforts as a B2C company. The main tell is their logo. They invest to showcase their logo. To generate brand awareness. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But that should be the tip of the iceberg… a very small tip.

The big part of a blockchain’s marketing effort should go towards B2B relationships. More specifically, towards enticing companies to actually build upon their chain and help those companies to market it out. This is a classic pull marketing strategy.

Blockchain Gaming — The big B

As demonstrated in my previous article, gaming is by far the most promising of all entertainment industries.

From a B2B standpoint, investing in blockchain gaming companies actually developing in that blockchain is a no-brainer strategy. That’s the big “B” on B2B that blockchains should put the efforts into: Gaming.

The numbers are in the previous article. But in short, gaming has a 1000X potential over DeFi (the currently most marketed use for blockchains).

Moreover, gaming is a key onboarding tool. Which means it's the entry door for millions of users into the network.

What should blockchains be investing into?

Ok. Let’s get down to some specifics to clear any doubts about my point of view.

A blockchain should spend very little marketing effort on their own logo. Most of the marketing effort should go towards the ecosystem building upon it.

The general player doesn’t care if a game was developed using the Unity engine or the Unreal engine. They either like or dislike the game.

For the blockchain gaming industry (the industry I’m in and know enough to assert this), this means investing into:

• Growth (of the whole ecosystem): achieved by bringing more (new and traditional) video game developers into their blockchain ecosystem
• Brand awareness (of video games): by providing local and regional event participation through sponsorships in retail events
• Networking (of video game studios): by providing bursary to have in-person presence in major industry events
• Community: by providing reach through PR, MSM and influencers the chain may have connections with
• Marketing: by providing marketing aid for strategy, campaigns and ads

Don’t seek wallets. Seek adoption.

Wallets are the commodity of the blockchain world. Even more so as they become multi-chain. Blockchains should generate adoption. And adoption is achieved by:

• Communicating a clear end goal: this is another clear case of how blockchains are B2B vs B2C. A blockchain’s end goal may not suit the consumer directly.
• Low barrier of entry: by making it easy to use. Blockchain gaming is the perfect example. There are over 3 billion people that are already gamers, know what a game is, how to download and use it. Explaining what a blockchain is and how it’s used is much harder.
• Make it part of our daily lives: turning the technology into something essential is one of the most powerful ways to generate adoption. Again, blockchains can achieve this by adding meaningful content and entertainment. You don’t have to sell the Internet. It is so essential that a device without it is almost useless nowadays.

Empowering the native token

One of the most overlooked aspect to generate adoption is the usage of the native token of the blockchain.

As a blockchain, you want your projects to use your token, and not to create theirs. Especially if such blockchain has low-fees (which, eventually, all will have).

From a business perspective, you want your end-users to need to buy and hold your tokens. Allowing them to buy a single token to keep the wallet active, and that suits them for life as they use a project's own coin is not a good practice. Is like a subscription for life or all you can eat. It never ends well.

Is better for the blockchains to entice projects providing grants and investing into them with the requirement and commitment that they will not issue their own token, but rather use the chain's native one.

Using the native token not only benefits the blockchain, but also the end-users as they are more protected from scams. It's also less prone to price manipulation. And on some blockchains, such as in Algorand, they have the advantage they can participate in governance with their $ALGO.

And then there were three…

Almost everyone in the ecosystem agrees that not a lot of blockchains will survive. It’s the opposite: just a few.

Those that survive will be because they’ve generated massive adoption. And the only way to achieve that is by making the blockchain essential.

Out of the few ways you have to make a technology essential, providing meaningful content is the best, because it benefits from the network effect.

And from all the meaningful content a blockchain can have, blockchain gaming is the most powerful of them all. Not only in size, but in the end result.

With entertainment everybody wins. It’s about having a moment of joy and making new friends. After all, that’s how life is better lived.

By Nicolas Varchavsky (twitter: @NicoVarcha)
CEO of Indelve, Inc