WEB3 MARKETING: HOW BLOCKCHAIN FIRMS ARE DOING IT ALL WRONG
You agree with me that Web3 products and innovations built on the Web3 technology are attractive to blockchain-literate individuals and complex to those who aren’t… and that excluding GameFi, it still poses a challenge to Web3 companies/firms to drive mass adoption of their products.
I’ve excluded GameFi because, without marketing, games are things that people naturally enjoy and by extension would love to tell others about it.
The tech behind Web3 and all its emerging products and services might be fascinating but there is a gap between the deliverables on these products and the adoption or usage of it.
And that’s what this article aims to address…the Web3 deliverables-usage gap. I’ll explain:
- Web3 marketing.
- What wrong moves Blockchain firms are making.
- How to do it better.
WHAT IS WEB3 MARKETING?
In simple words, Web3 marketing covers the entire process or efforts directed at promoting, driving understanding, and building acceptance around web3 projects, products, and services.
Unlike Web2 which was championed by social platforms and applications; where users interacted with social apps to communicate, collaborate, and share user-generated content e.g pictures, videos, etc in a virtual community, Web3 is championed by innovative discoveries and possibilities, some of which might take some ‘getting used to’ for the ordinary person.
This makes its marketing angle different from Web2 marketing.
For Web2, people could easily send invites to others to begin using a particular platform e.g Facebook invites, Whatsapp invites, etc.
They could share experiences that attracted others to interact with the social apps.
They created groups and forums that could only be accessed through these social apps, you hear things like ‘Please send me Whatsapp so I can join the group’ or ‘The group chat is on Telegram, you have to download the app to take the course’, etc.
Web2, for me, didn’t need much introduction. Everyone, or almost everyone, uses social platforms, especially the likes of Facebook and Whatsapp. The marketing was different.
These social platforms didn’t need to spend so much time or effort marketing their applications.
It’s amusing that they had so much publicity, recognition, and awareness that in reverse, they started to allow others to advertise to us using their platforms. The irony! They had that much user capacity.
But Web3,… Web3 cannot do that right now.
WRONG MOVES BLOCKCHAIN FIRMS ARE MAKING WITH WEB3 MARKETING
Because Web3 is emerging and relatively new compared to Web2, its marketing angle should be more educational than informational.
Marketing in Web3 should teach users to look at things differently instead of just informing them(on the premise that they have prior adequate knowledge).
From personal observations, the only company actively using this approach is Binance.
Granted that they’ve been operational for five years, they’ve also improved marketing tactics and paid attention to what other blockchain firms have neglected: SEO and content marketing.
Through their blog (academy), Binance has built authority over time as the go-to platform to find crypto-related answers. Using the basic questions that users have to drive adoption, authority, and recognition to their organization.
Here are backend statistics of their academy performance in the last three months:
In the past three months, there has been a cumulative total of 12.6m visits to their website and a high percentage of this traffic came organically through search as seen below:
‘Search’ makes up for over 1.8 million of the total traffic to the Binance academy website.
One question to ask is, ‘What did they do differently from other blockchain firms?’
I’ll tell you.
They utilized SEO and content marketing. They ensured that when people started looking for answers to their crypto-related questions, they have answers to meet them and a platform to guide them to.
Recently I wondered, ‘there are several blockchain firms in Africa, and Nigeria, but what questions are they answering?’
Again, these companies may have real utilities for their products/services but who knows about these utilities, first locally, then beyond?
It might interest you to know that people are increasingly asking questions, that they can’t ask other people, to search engines?
A quick example: Some people do not trust crypto savings or investments and go to Google to know/find out if they should do so.
If you’re reading this, type ‘should I save in Crypto?’ into your search engine. The first page results you see are answers from organizations that don’t even do crypto.
Blockchain firms have ignored the need to answer simple questions that users are asking and, rather, promote their platforms/products instead.
It’s not all bad but it’s Web3 marketing, people need to learn then earn as we always say in the space.
Campus activations, meet-and-greets, and sponsorships are great but these are offline events, sometimes some of these events are attended by people who do not have the provision and capacity to start using your platforms yet.
But leveraging on SEO and content marketing allows you to meet interested people on the spot, people who are actively interested and can start on your platform.
DOING IT BETTER
SEO and content marketing are no quick fixes to the Web3 deliverables-usage gap but they are sustainable solutions to bridge the gap.
SEO takes about six months to start showing real changes but integrating it with content marketing (where you aim to bring value to the user first before promoting your product) would improve your short-term marketing results pending the 6-months wait time for SEO.
We all want to see mass adoption and quick adaptations to blockchain technology and to do so, we have to start at the grassroots level.
CONCLUSION
I didn’t intend to make this a 1000-words article but old habits die hard.
I guess it goes to show that I have a lot I’d like to change about Web3 marketing and our approach to it. We can do so much if we start by answering the right questions and offering valuable help/insights.
Learn about Algorand music NFTs and this free move-to-earn platform.
Here are my social handles:
Telegram: Web3odd
LinkedIn: Onyeka Ekwemozor
Please share your opinions and comments, I’ll like to hear yours.
