Guide to building a Web3 Go-to-Market Strategy

Creating a solid go-to-market strategy is crucial for Web3 projects to gain visibility and attract users. This involves identifying your target audience, crafting compelling messaging, selecting distribution channels, and leveraging community, partnerships, and specific campaigns to establish brand presence and achieve your goals. Even the best product will not attract users on its own.

For new app-chains, one of the most common mistakes founders make in the interchain ecosystem is expecting that the superior tech of your new Layer 1 will succeed on its own. Our aim is to guide you through this process by providing fundamental insights on how to go to market and drive user adoption.

First of all, you need a comprehensive framework that takes into account the unique characteristics of the Web3 ecosystem. We outline the steps of a GTM strategy during three phases:

i. Pre-launch: focused on creating awareness and building credibility by crafting your value proposition, segmenting your audience, creating a content strategy and building partnerships.

ii. Launch: focused on a successful product launch and user acquisition by leveraging momentum and key campaigns.

iii. Post-launch: focused on maximizing reach and impact by optimizing campaigns and Going-To-Market with new features.

I. Pre-Launch Phase:

During the Pre-Launch phase, the primary goal is to create awareness and build credibility. The pre-launch phase is divided into five components: (1) market intelligence (2) market segmentation, (3) product positioning, (4) content distribution, and (5) partnerships.

Market intelligence:

The first step in introducing your product to the market is to thoroughly comprehend the characteristics of the market you are entering. Ask yourself the following questions:

• “Who is your target customer?”
• “What are their pain points?”
• “What makes your product unique?”

Identify your key value proposition

Define your value proposition and align it with the core action you want users to take. Examples of core actions include borrowing, lending, providing liquidity, staking, and bridging assets. Conduct comprehensive market research and document your observations of the competitive landscape. Ask yourself:

• “What problem does my product solve?”
• “How do my competitors address this problem, and at what cost?”
• “How is my solution superior, more cost-effective, or faster?”

The answers to these questions will shape your value proposition, which is the core of your messaging strategy. A compelling value proposition is key to designing an effective message that highlights how your product stands out. Competitive differentiation will be the magnet attracting both users and investors.

Craft a message that clearly communicates your value proposition. This message should communicate the unique value that your product offers to targeted users, highlighting how your offering distinguishes itself to convince customers to choose it. Craft a message that resonates with your target audience and maintain a consistent and distinguishable tone across all marketing channels to reinforce your brand identity.

Different target segments require tailored messages that resonate with their unique pain points. For example, a P2P lending platform may target the following two segments:

1. Borrowers:

a. Pain point: Lack of access to capital

b. Tailored message: “Borrow against your existing assets to invest in new opportunities, without having to sell.”

2. Lenders:

a. Pain point: Looking for secure and high-yield investment opportunities

b. Tailored message: “Lend your assets to borrowers who have been vetted and approved by our team.”

Market segmentation

Before being able to approach potential users and build a strong community, you must have a deep understanding of your target market.

While conducting market research, you should be able to identify:

• ‘who’ has the problem you are solving
• ‘who’ is willing to pay to solve it

This ‘who’ becomes your first segment, often referred to as the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). However, it’s important to recognize that there are likely different personas who qualify as potential users of your product, each with distinct motivations and needs. Understanding these segments will enable you to tailor your messages and designs to appeal to them effectively. The more you know about these segments, the better you can craft messages that resonate and increase your chances of success. Your goal is to describe an ICP specifically. For example, an ICP is not merely a “DeFi user”; rather, your ICP can be “a user that has staked ATOM and is not yet using their stATOM in any way.” This level of detail ensures that your marketing efforts are finely tuned to connect with the right audience.

Identify competitors

Identify lookalikes and competitors to benchmark your product, assess market saturation, and find areas of opportunity. Studying competitors helps you fine-tune your value proposition and marketing strategies while identifying lookalike audiences expands your reach. Stay informed about the competitive landscape in Web3 to make strategic decisions.

Content distribution

Since you now know who your target audience is, you need to figure out how to reach them.

• Where do they hang out?
• What channels do they use?
• Where do they get their questions answered?

These questions are hard to answer, so when it comes to content distribution, diversity is the name of the game. Consider a multifaceted approach encompassing blog posts, infographics, videos, social media posts on different platforms, and email newsletters. Tailor your content to the preferences of your target audience to maximize engagement.

Educational blogs

It’s important to emphasize the storytelling and education surrounding your project. As part of your community-building efforts, start your educational journey at least six months prior to your project’s launch with blog posts on Medium. This timeline allows you to build interest and anticipation while gradually revealing and explaining your tech, your project’s token economics, and distribution strategies. Sharing these details openly and transparently is crucial to building trust within the community. Users want to understand how the project works, how incentives are structured, how tokens are distributed, and how they can actively participate. Make sure your users grasp the essence of your project and make them part of the story from the early stages. This lays the foundation for an engaged and informed community that will stand by your side as your project takes flight.

Content Design

Your project’s visual identity is crucial to building trust and connecting with your audience. Make sure that your design aligns with your mission and target audience. If you’re in the NFT space, consider using playful and imaginative elements to catch the eye and foster a sense of community among enthusiasts. Alternatively, if your focus is on DeFi, opt for a professional and reliable design that instills confidence in the security and stability of your financial services. Regardless of your approach, your design should convey the essence of your project and show your commitment to delivering value that meets your audience’s expectations.

To maximize reach, identify distribution venues and partnerships that can provide you access to the right audience.

Partnerships & Multipliers

Strategic partnerships are a key lever for growth and community building. By partnering with other companies, you can increase your audience, showcase your product from a new angle, and benefit from technological synergies, shared marketing efforts, and a broader user base.

Time after time, we have seen how launching alongside a killer app that interests people and drives users and liquidity toward your network is key to early success. GMX on Arbitrum is a good example of this.

When choosing partners, look for entities with complementary goals, values, or target audiences. Integration partnerships can be particularly beneficial, allowing you to improve the experience of your users and attract new customers.

Multipliers, such as high-profile individuals, organizations, and platforms, can amplify your message and increase visibility. Referral programs can also be effective, incentivizing existing users to refer new users and drive user acquisition.

Collect Feedback

Getting early adopters who actively participate in testing and providing invaluable feedback on your product is a key predictor of success. Consistently share content across social media platforms to organically grow your audience and get as much feedback as possible.

Pay special attention to User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) insights. Implementation of this feedback is crucial, as it demonstrates your commitment to improving the user experience for present and future users.

Metrics and Measurement

To guide your GTM Strategy, define key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge effectiveness, facilitating data-driven decisions. Measure only what’s relevant for you and what may be relevant for investors. To do so, identify the core action you want users to complete. Simply tracking total users is not insightful enough. Track users that complete the core action. Then compare these two. The goal is to get people to perform the core action which should be correlated with retention on activities such as borrowing, lending or tweeting. The rest of the features that you build should exist to support and increase the chances of people performing the core action.

Once you have the first users the next step to think about is how to retain them. The most important thing for this is the user experience, the UI, and essentially how easy it is to use. As the user adds data, use that data to improve their experience and increase user retention.

To keep it simple, the specific KPIs aligned with user retention goals are:

1. Number of monthly users performing core action.

2. Percentage of users performing core action (Users performing core action/total users).

These two KPIs represent Growth, Engagement, and when measured over time, Retention.

II. Launch Phase:

For this outline, we define the launch phase as starting 3 weeks prior to going live and lasts for around 6 weeks, focusing on driving broader user adoption. Here is a checklist of essential tasks for capturing attention during this crucial phase:

1. Create a calendar that balances celebrating achieved milestones and cultivating anticipation for the next ahead
2. Strategically announce partnerships
3. Announce the launch across all organic channels
4. Amplify your reach through paid advertising (or influencers), prioritizing messages with proven high-performing interaction metrics
5. Consistently demonstrate your project’s ongoing progress and development
6. Leverage affiliate/referral programs to incentivize existing users to refer new users

Engagement Campaigns

There are some specific campaigns utilized to drive engagement and connect your project with its community. Here are some examples of how to attempt to retain your recently acquired users.

Airdrops

Airdrops are the most powerful user acquisition strategy. It can revolutionize engagement, accomplish token distribution, and enhance decentralization.

• Incentives: Airdrops encourage users to participate in testnets and share information, expanding your reach and generating excitement.
• Token distribution and decentralization: Airdrops deposit tokens directly into users’ wallets, boosting token distribution and governance participation. They can also help you achieve sufficient decentralization to avoid being flagged as a security.

Quests and challenges

Leveraging existing social platforms such as Zealy (formerly Crew3) can allow you to engage with your users. These quests can take various forms, from incentivizing with rewards to User-Generated Content (UGC) such as blog posts, and X (formerly Twitter) threads. These quests can offer financial incentives, XP, NFTs, tokens, or early or exclusive access that can spark some excitement and participation. Granting early access or exclusive privileges to your products in exchange for UGC or feedback is a compelling way to foster a sense of anticipation and engagement. It offers community members a sneak peek and makes them feel valued and a part of your project’s journey.

III. Post-launch Phase:

The goal of post-launch marketing is to maximize reach and impact. Leverage data-driven insights to scale and optimize your marketing channels. Identify underperforming channels and scale them down, while allocating more resources to the high-performing ones.

Post-launch, you will likely be working on deploying new features. For each of these features, develop a go-to-market strategy. This includes defining pre-launch, launch, and post-launch phases and exploring key partnerships, multipliers, and campaigns to achieve maximum impact.

Data Analytics

Leverage on-chain data analytics to analyze user behavior and optimize user flow. These data points can be used to find user pain points, build new features and double down on existing functionalities. Use a mix of Web2 user tracking and Web3 tools such as Numia.

Grants program

Grants offer a powerful way to nurture innovation and growth on the product side. By extending financial support to developers within your ecosystem, you incentivize active participation and fuel the launch of groundbreaking applications. Grants also enhance trust and credibility for your product, demonstrating a commitment to making an impact and a long-term horizon. Consider launching a grants program three to six months after your product’s launch to drive momentum.

DevRel campaign

If you have a developer-oriented product, consider running a Developer Relations (DevRel) campaign, such as a hackathon or educational webinar. This is a great way to engage and empower developers to learn about and use your product. The primary mission of a hackathon is to cultivate a symbiotic relationship between your product and the developer community, which will drive the adoption of your technology and the creation of new apps and products that benefit your ecosystem. Offering grants during a hackathon can provide the essential resources to drive the evolution of your developer-oriented product.

Conclusion

On the product side, continuously gather feedback from existing users and community members to drive product development. This may include enhancing existing features or creating complementary products to meet emerging demands.

A go-to-market strategy must be adaptable, as customer preferences and market conditions are constantly evolving in Web3. Stay responsive and be prepared to pivot to sustain success. Leverage data to make decisions, optimize your channels and scale effectively. Foster participation and empower users as owners and advocates to facilitate organic growth and differentiation. By strategically navigating the pre-launch, launch, and post-launch phases, businesses can drive the widespread adoption of any Web3 product.

Disclaimer: the information presented here is made available solely for general information purposes and is not investment advice, nor a legal or financial recommendation of any sort. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of this information. Any reliance you place on such information is strictly at your own risk. We disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by you or any other reader, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.

By mentioning any specific project, business or other organization in this information, the Interchain Foundation does not express endorsement unless explicitly stated.