How to Fix Your Web3 Company's Branding
I'm sorry, but most Web3 companies are terrible at branding. NFT collections are particularly guilty.
The metaverse is littered with companies that have:
Without those 5 elements, you have no brand. Traditional businesses understand this. Why don’t Web3 businesses?
It’s because we’re too focused on:
In other words, we are too far up our own asses.
As a result, we alienate our potential users/clients/advocates with our lack of clarity and surplus of arrogance and slipshod workmanship.
We’re so focused on creating a new space that we neglect the business tactics from the past that actually worked.
What’s the solution?
Bring Web2 branding into Web3 companies.
We can do that by using the most effective branding framework:
It’s called?StoryBrand, which is used by companies all over the world.
Let’s break down the framework, see where most companies make mistakes, and give examples on how you can clarify your messaging to gain more users and make more money.
The StoryBrand Framework
The StoryBrand framework is split into 7 parts, roughly following the hero’s journey template:
Let’s break it down step-by-step, using real-life examples with actionable tips to clarify your messaging.
1. The Character
Most web3 companies frame themselves as the hero. That’s wrong. Your customer/user/holder is the “hero,” not you and your company.
If you don’t clearly define your users, you’ll alienate everybody.
Imagine a 10,000 NFT collection saying, “This collection is NOT FOR…” on their homepage. Nobody does that. Why?
Because we’re scared.
“More buyers = more bags” we think. But we’re wrong. We just think we have to open the net to attract everybody because we haven’t seen any examples of companies actually niching down yet.
The first companies to concretely, specifically define their audiences will be the winners in this space.
If your audience is everybody, you’ll reach nobody.
Let’s say you run a DeFi company that acts as a point of sale replacement for Stripe. Whereas services like Stripe and Square charge merchants and small business owners 3% in transaction fees, your DeFi company allows merchants to accept payments in stablecoins and only charges 1% fees.
Small merchants and store owners.
To stop paying unnecessary transaction fees.
A strong example of a thriving small business taking on big business.
That final question is the one that can open doors in your messaging. Even devs who do define their users always fall short of clearly articulating their users’ aspirational identities.
Figuring out who your users and customers want to become, then hammering it repeatedly on your website and in your marketing materials is how you level up your company.
Note:
Lots of web3 "social status" collections get this part right. For example, Bored Ape Yacht Club is completely centered around selling an aspirational identity. It’s right there in the name! “Yacht Club”
It’s implied that if you buy these NFTs you’ll become the type of person who’s part of an exclusive digital club with celebrities and other web3 tastemakers.
Your Homework
Answer these three questions for your company:
2. The Problem
There are three levels of problems your users experience:
Most web3 companies sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems.?Understanding the philosophical problem supercharges it all.
People don’t care about you or your company.
They don’t.
They only care about you inasmuch as you can solve their problems and make their lives better.
Define the problems they’re facing, and articulate it to them better than they can articulate it themselves. Then repeat it back to them, over and over.
Your Homework
Define your customers’ external, internal, and philosophical problems.
3. The Guide
Your users want a guide to help them, not someone to take the spotlight. Remember: they’re the hero, not you.
You and your company are just the guide — you’re like Gandalf, or Yoda, or Dumbledore.
How do you position yourself as a trustworthy guide? By expressing empathy and demonstrating authority.
Your Homework
4. The Plan
Customers want you to have a clearly-defined plan before they give you their hard-earned money.
If they come to your website, minting page, or social media and you don’t communicate a clear plan, they’ll move it along saying, “This is too confusing,” or “I’ll wait until later.”
DeFi companies are the worst with this. Everything is so goddamn confusing.
Check out this example from a DeFi protocol I won’t name:
I live and work in this space and I have no idea what half that shit means. That’s what I’m talking about with the arrogance and insecurity of web3 inhibiting us:
We’re more concerned with showing off what we know than actually communicating clearly.
I once had a mentor who would get on my ass about being too pedantic with my writing.
“This is too confusing,” he’d say.
“But it’s right,” I’d say back.
“That’s true. But you can be right or you can be effective.”
What he meant:
领英推荐
I let the need to be technically correct get in the way of getting the proper point across.
I have no doubt that everything in that screenshot above is technically correct. But it’s not effective.
If you can’t explain something clearly enough that your grandma could understand it, then?you?don’t understand it .
The best way to clearly communicate is by breaking down your process into three simple, clear steps.
Your Homework
An example from the reduced-fee DeFi protocol:
The 1% Plan:
5. Call Them to Action
People don’t take action until they’re challenged to. Make your Calls to Action clear and repeat them all over your website and other marketing materials.
There are two types of calls to action:
Direct CTAs?are for people who are ready to buy/mint/work with you right now. This should be a brightly colored button, prominently placed on your website.
Examples of direct CTAs:
Transitional CTAs?are for people who are interested but not sure yet. These people represent a HUGE missed opportunity for most web3 companies.
This is where you offer a free goodie as an incentive to add them to an email list, Discord server, or something similar.
The Reverse Airdrop
Imagine a successful NFT collection mints out their 10,000 NFTs. Those NFTs are garnering value on the secondary market. People pay hundreds, even thousands of dollars for them.
Now imagine they create a second collection of 10,000 generative NFTs. They don’t sell any of them. They give them away for free, but only to people who show interest in their collection and don’t already have one of their primary collection NFTs.
It’s like a reverse-airdrop:
You give people an exclusive goodie for showing interest.
Web2 internet marketers do this right: they give away free ebooks if you sign up for their newsletter. You get a free webinar of you follow them on Twitter.
Create transitional CTAs with free goodies connected. Some examples:
Your Homework
Answer the following questions for your company:
6. Help Them Avoid Failure
People will do anything to avoid failure. Particularly in web3, where there are huge stakes involved. When people invest in a web3 company — whether they buy an NFT or sign up for your DeFi protocol — they are risking their:
You have to overcome those fears by clearly laying out what your users will lose if they don’t take action.
In the transaction fee DeFi protocol example, the potential customers stand to lose the extra 2% of their revenue they’re paying to Stripe/Square.
As such, they won’t be able to hire the help they need to scale and grow their business.
Your Homework
Answer the following questions for your company:
7. Help them Reach Success
People want you to cast a specific vision of how their life could look if they buy your NFT or work with you.
For example, here’s the vision Bored Ape Yacht Club creates for potential holders:
So I buy this $100,000 JPEG and the only thing I get in return is access to a digital graffiti board?
“Future areas and perks can be unlocked by the community through roadmap activation.”
You couldn’t possibly be any more vague than that.
Imagine if they said this instead:
I’d use some of the language that was created?because of our collection. I mean, the phrase “aping into” something was created because of the Bored Apes. And yet that’s nowhere on the site?
I’d also highlight case studies like?Jenkins the Valet, an NFT investor who bought an Ape that looks like a valet driver and created an entire creative franchise based on it.
Create a vision of heaven for your users and they’ll follow you all the way there.
Your Homework
Answer this question
All of Your Homework:
1. A character
Answer these three questions for your company:
2. Has a Problem
Define your customers’ external, internal, and philosophical problems.
3. Then Meets a Guide
4. Who Gives Them a Plan
5. And Calls Them to Action
Answer the following questions for your company:
6. That Helps Them Avoid Failure
Answer the following questions for your company:
7. And Helps Them Achieve Success
Answer this question:
***
If you’d like to work with me, I do writing and marketing for Web3 companies. Send me a DM or email me at?[email protected].