Why is Crypto Marketing So Difficult?
Recently I came across an article with an intriguing title “Why is Crypto Marketing So Difficult?”, written by Jowella and Yusoff Kim for chaindebrief.com. After giving it a thought, the write-up itself left me with a reminiscence. When I had been taking my first steps in copywriting, I had the privilege of working for a Web3 development company. Apart from the fact the job influenced me to become keen on the crypto industry, it has also revealed the true complexity of marketing in this realm. I can remember myself being extremely daunted by the technicalities of crypto promotion as well as a striking difference in overall approach to the marketing compared to other commercial spheres.
Four years have since passed, during which the crypto industry has been showing its eminent boost. The competition became fiercer, resulting in more exciting opportunities of the market, and vice-versa. Consequently, the crypto marketing evolved while not only implementing new means of promotion but causing more and more puzzling for the marketers. Hence, the question remains — why is marketing in the crypto industry so complicated?
Bits and pieces of crypto marketing
At first glance, the promotion of crypto services seems to consist of basic marketing elements, including building a brand, PR, Social Media Marketing (SMM), web marketing etc. However, crypto marketing is in fact a challenge requiring a distinct approach in coining a strategy. Such state-of-things is caused by two main features of the target audience of web3 services — it is online-based and it tends to gather in communities.
Case in point of good community-building content by Kraken Exchange.
Apparently, community-building is a foremost aim of crypto marketing. It can be assumed from crypto services’ focus on Social Media and Influence Marketing, carrying out airdrops and bounties and spurring overall media activity. Significantly, such pillars of crypto marketing demonstrate decent outcomes. And further, it is no secret that social media and community marketing strategies that a vast majority of crypto businesses elaborates are top-notch.
Good example of situational content by Kraken Exchange.
Example of bad social media content, speculating on scams without strong direct justification.
SEO and internet-marketing are obviously also among the leading vectors of crypto-marketing. Their efficiency is indicated within achieving pretty satisfactory KPIs. Excluding the ability to precisely target online-based audiences, such ways of marketing unlock the most possibly precise segmentation of communities’ interests, accurate analytics and effective lead generation, which is certainly an advantage.
Nevertheless, crypto marketing is not confined fully to the online environment. The fact is, web3 businesses are really fond of creating loud campaigns and stimulating crowds to buzz around them. The most recent case in point: WhiteBIT exchange becoming the official crypto partner of Football Club Barcelona. By the way, that remarkably echoes with a guiding principle of crypto marketing as football is massively led by its community — just like the crypto industry is.
And still, what makes crypto marketing difficult?
Although crypto marketing strategies are pretty resourceful, there is still a great deal of heated debate over its effectiveness, and such contradictions totally have the right to exist. The main concern about crypto promotion, which is also saliently defined in the article by chaindebrief.com, is the issues with acquiring valid customer data required for more detailed targeting. Despite the transparency of blockchain-based and decentralized technologies, there are still obstacles with proper tracking of conversions, revenue optimisations and analysis of the metrics that cause obscurity in targeting the right audience principally from the technical point of view. The demand for new marketing technologies is indicated by the martech industry’s gross value of $344.5 billion and the expectation of the sphere to carry on growing rapidly.
Another difficulty crypto marketers are facing is the complicity of blockchain technologies to an average consumer, although this trend seems to decrease due to a rising popularity of cryptocurrencies, web3 and decentralization as a technology. Besides, it would be really wrong to deny that information strategies aimed at reaching higher crypto awareness among the users are truly effective as more and more people are getting familiar with the topic.
Closing remarks
From what has been stated above, one might conclude that crypto marketing is a realm requiring not solely ingenuity but also integration of upscale technologies for metrics’ analysis and tracking. Accordingly, that would allow crypto marketers to define target audiences more precisely while facing less expenses, making martech an effective yet cost-competitive element of promotion.
