Wanchain On the Move — New Hire & Brand New Marketing Strategy Revealed
Our Marketing Receives Massive Boost With Hiring This Crypto PR Veteran
Last Friday I had the pleasure of interviewing our new Marketing Manager Andrej Uličný. We had a nice fireside chat on our official Wanchain Telegram Chat. He revealed a fascinating marketing strategy that has the potential to bring thousands of new users for both the Wanchain Bridge and our Wanchain Blockchain.
Check out this intriguing AMA to find out:
- The one lucky coincidence that brought Andrej into crypto.
- How he was secretly working with Wanchain’s CEO Temujin Louie 2.5 years before joining.
- What is The Hot Air Balloon Business Model?
- A proven marketing strategy that generates tons of new customers and works wonders in Web2, that he’s bringing into Wanchain.
- And much more…
Without further ado let’s dive right in.
Liam:
A warm welcome to the Wanchain family Andrej! Can you tell us a little about yourself, your backstory, and give us some info on your experience in the crypto space?
Andrej:
Sure. My pleasure.
My name is Andrej Uličný. I’m originally from Slovakia. For the last 10 years I lived in Asia — 5 years in Singapore and now 5 years in Cambodia. I have been living and breathing marketing for the last 14 years of my professional career with a wide experience in both B2C and B2B marketing.
I’ve been enjoying my crypto journey for the last 3.5 years. I got into crypto by coincidence. I was promoting a project management software to my friend Shash. He’s the CEO of Altcoin Buzz, one of the Top 10 Crypto Media companies. He started it all the way back in 2017. So when I was pitching him the project management software, he turned the table on me and offered me a job as the Head of Sales & Marketing. So I guess he liked my sales pitch.
Liam:
What do you like about crypto space?
Andrej:
I love freedom. It’s one of the highest values that I hold very dearly. That being said, I deeply enjoy promoting everything that makes the individual more free and independent. To my pleasant surprise, I found these values and philosophy deeply ingrained in crypto space. We’re basically creating a brand new decentralized system for money, information, data storage, social media and much more.
Now if you look at history, what you can observe is this long-running conflict between the individual and the group. The group is usually a couple of people who control the group. Then they use it as PR to control the others. Back then it was high priests, kings, emperors and now it’s prime ministers — in essence you have a small group of deciders that control vast numbers of individuals. These deciders require centralization to make their agenda happen.
Crypto is promoting the opposite idea of decentralization. So the more of it we have, the more powerful we become as individuals. So you can say it’s us who are on the right side of history making freedom happen. That’s why I’m super excited to build and promote the crypto space. Because we as both the crypto and Wanchain community are giving millions of people more freedom with more decentralization.
Liam:
What are your thoughts on blockchain interoperability?
Andrej:
That’s a very good question. I think blockchain interoperability is the mission critical element if we want to see crypto space succeed in the long term. As most of you know, without crypto bridges all the blockchains can only exist as isolated islands. Luckily Wanchain was the first one to realize this problem and created the first crypto bridge back in 2017 to solve it.
At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, the battle between centralized and decentralized powers rages also in bridging space. That’s why I love Wanchain. Because it stands for decentralization and has the most decentralized bridges in crypto space. Yet again, if we’re not vigilant the crypto bridging space can centralize and degenerate into another SWIFT like system controlled by few. But not when Wanchain is on the watch.
Liam:
Could you give us some info on your marketing experience, and what makes you a great fit for this position?
Andrej:
Actually, most of you don’t know this, but I’ve been working together with Temujin Louie on Wanchain’s PR and branding ever since September 20th 2021. That’s when me and my team produced a first 13 minutes video about Wanchain for 300,000 subscribers at Altcoin Buzz YouTube channel. If you like a short trip down the memory lane, you can check this video.
This was waay long time back. Already back then Wanchain was changing everything. As I shared earlier, I worked 3.5 years with Altcoin Buzz. When I started, I doubled the revenue in the first 6 months after joining. For this I got promoted to the Head of Partnerships.
It was at this role where I first met with Temujin and Wanchain. Then for the next 2.5+ years I was responsible for creating super exciting content about Wanchain and other partners we had at Altcoin Buzz. So you can say I was working with Wanchain for 2.5 years already. Because they are the longest standing partner with Altcoin Buzz. When Tem told me that he’s looking for a Marketing Manager, it was a very natural and intuitive move for both of us. Because we have a great working relationship and I’ve done tons of great PR for Wanchain already.
Liam:
Given Wanchain’s current position in the crypto landscape, what vision do you have to market Wanchain to the masses? How do you plan on improving the current marketing situation?
Andrej:
Let’s get the big picture first — I believe Wanchain has the best decentralized crypto bridges in the whole industry. At the same time, very few people in crypto space know about this! As a marketer by nature I get this big itch every time I see an awesome product that’s under marketed. Doing Wanchain’s PR for 2.5 years I already have A LOT of ideas on how we can introduce Wanchain to the masses. Before I move into the new marketing plan, let me dispel some myths first. I think many of the people in crypto think they can avoid the fundamental business principles. We have the stock market guilty from this as well.
What is this looming issue? I call it The Hot Air Balloon Business Model. You’re basically flying in a balloon and selling hot air to stay afloat. The more hot air you sell, the higher you can fly. As a customer, when you buy hot air there’s nothing you can do with it. Other than sell it to other people in the hope of a profit. And guess what’s going to happen to you and your balloon when people stop buying the hot air…
Liam:
That’s a great analogy. I get that. But what does this have to do with Wanchain?
Andrej:
What is the fundamental of any business?
It’s a customer. He or she buys and uses a product to solve a problem they are facing. And this is at the heart of my new marketing plan.
It basically has only 2 rules:
Rule #1 — Get more customers.
Rule #2 — Always follow the Rule #1.
Liam:
Who are the Wanchain users then, how do they fit in?
Andrej:
Now we’re getting to the heart of the issue. What problem is Wanchain solving for the user?
The problem we’re solving is this — Let’s say I’m John Smith and I started my crypto journey on Ethereum. Recently, I started reading a lot about Cardano and I would like to do some stuff there — enjoy a higher yield, buy & sell some tokens, play a game, you name it. But how do I get my assets FROM Ethereum TO Cardano? I do my research and I find out that I need a crypto bridge.
So the problem Wanchain solves is this — Give John Smith a better crypto experience and access to more crypto opportunities. How does he get all these benefits? By using the Wanchain bridge.
So the Rule #1 becomes — Get more users for Wanchain Bridge.
Liam:
This makes a lot of sense. What is your strategy to get an ever increasing number of users?
Andrej:
Let me set the ground here first. In marketing there are 2 schools of thought:
- General marketing
- Direct marketing
With general marketing you’re paying tons of money to promote your brand. Sounds good, right? So what’s the problem? The problem is summarized in this old adage: “I know part of my marketing is working. I just don’t know which part it is.” So you end up with your focus and budget spread out all over the place, with little to show for it.
Direct marketing on the other hand treats marketing as science. Your task is to create a system that most efficiently converts a prospect to a user. Remember Rule #1, right? This system in direct marketing lingo is called a sales funnel. That leaves us with a very simple goal — create the best converting sales funnel for getting more and more users for Wanchain Bridge.
Liam:
That idea sounds very intriguing. At the same time what about the $WAN token and the entire Wanchain ecosystem. Won’t they be left behind?
Andrej:
That’s a very good question. I was thinking about this extensively. As you know Temujin’s new vision for Wanchain is that of Unification. So let me quickly show you how this is one of the best strategies to support this vision.
Remember John Smith and how happy he is now? Because he has access to all the opportunities that Cardano offers thanks to Wanchain Bridge? We all know that Wanchain is going to introduce bridge fees soon that will be converted to $WAN. So every time when John and other new users like him do a transaction, it creates more demand for $WAN.
In other words, this organic increase in demand for $WAN is driven by increased demand for our fantastic bridging service. I’m leveraging here the same principles that made Bitcoin and Ethereum what they are today. Meaning that they didn’t get there by selling hot air. They got to #1 and #2 in market cap, because millions of users use their blockchains on a daily basis. And that my friends is the only sure fire way to success. Just imagine what would happen to $WAN if tens of thousands more users start using Wanchain Bridge for all their cross-chain transactions.
Liam:
Wow. That all sounds super exciting. What else are you planning to do?
Andrej:
This is just the beginning. I have many more aces up my marketing sleeve.
Let me give you one more — when John Smith and other new users are super happy with Wanchain Bridge why just leave them there? Why don’t we tell them about all the other cool things in Wanchain ecosystem? Could an automated onboarding system for every new user be created?
One with the intimacy of two friends meeting over coffee and talking about Wanchain? I will leave it at that for the moment.
Liam:
Sounds like you have a lot of fresh ideas! We’re proud to have a very strong community that likes to discuss ideas and help build our project in many ways. Will you be actively participating in it?
Andrej:
100%!
I’m making it simple. At the same time creating this system is not an easy task. I will need all the help I can get. For starters I want to deeply understand HOW our individual community members discovered Wanchain and WHAT they experienced on their Wanchain journey.
I will be doing one-on-one interviews with community members next week. So please send a message on my Telegram @andrej_ulicny or e-mail andrej@wanchain.org, so I can talk to you.
The knowledge about your Wanchain journey will be mission critical for me. It will empower me to create a system that will onboard thousands of more users into Wanchain.
End of our conversation.
There you have it, friends. As you can see, we have many more exciting things lined up for you. And with the current bull market our timing is perfect to grow Wanchain and our solution to blockchain interoperability like never before.
More to come..
Link to AMA on Telegram: https://t.me/WanchainCHAT/1078513
About Wanchain
We are all connected — Wanchain, the Wide Area Network chain, is the world’s premier decentralised blockchain interoperability solution. Our mission is to drive blockchain adoption through interoperability by building fully decentralised bridges that connect the world’s many siloed blockchain networks. This cross-chain infrastructure empowers developers to build truly decentralised cross-chain applications to power the future of Web3.
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