Navigating Crypto Marketing in 2023: Million-Dollar Budgets or Mountains of Effort?

Intro: Crypto marketing nowadays

When it comes to crypto marketing, the audience's mind often conjures up fond memories of the heyday of the crypto market, with Apes, Goblintown, Stepn and other projects that impressed with their social media reach and unbridled audience support.

However, now in 2023, the year is characterized by the continuation of the crypto-winter that started in 2022 and its consequences in the form of insufficient advertising budgets and increased skepticism on the part of the community due to the large number of bunk projects. The marketing pattern is taking the form of a pragmatic system with the preservation of creative engaging mechanics, gradually moving away from the pattern of mass and sometimes mindless forcing of all new projects.

Some projects are moving into risk-averse marketing strategies, relying on tools that guarantee results and scaling of successful funnels — some are testing new approaches, trying to find unique mechanics of interaction in the media space. In this article we decided to reveal both though different, but simultaneously effective on the market approaches. Be with us, alongside experts from Majinx.io and BlockFunnel, as we unveil enticing marketing campaign invitations tailored for contemporary projects and present a variety of choices for startup owners to consider.

Chapter 0: The general logic of approaches or where it all begins

In today's world of cryptocurrency marketing, making the right choices is crucial. It all depends on how your project kicks off. Startup owners face a significant decision: they can opt for an extensive approach, which requires pouring substantial funds into building extensive engagement funnels to gather a massive community, or they can take the intensive route, characterized by minimal budget investment but a higher demand on the team's efforts.

Thus, BlockFunnel experts work with the first approach: their well-tested funnels of collecting, engaging the audience and, as a result, selling the product guarantee massive performance and are characterized by an increased probability of successful implementation of product marketing. Their approach is based on a clear paradigm: with the necessary optimal budget, as well as properly formed USPs, the success of the project is almost inevitable if the product is relevant and relevant to the audience's needs.

Majinx.io specialists, whose activities, in addition to marketing, are related to closing their clients' investment rounds, understand the situation of budding startups and work with the second approach: their paradigm is that a well-built network of partnerships and ambassadorship programs allows projects with minimal investment not only to acquire a startup community, but also to obtain PoC, having secured the support of strong media personalities. In their opinion, while losing in quantity, the quality of the audience remains the same, if not higher, it receives additional benefits in the form of important partnerships and support, which can play into their hands in case of attracting investors.?

Let's proceed to a detailed analysis of each of the development paths.?

BlockFunnel short story long

BlockFunnel isn't just another agency. We're birthed by Web2 and crypto marketing OGs, boasting a portfolio of more than 150 campaigns and an equal number of marketing advisories, all accomplished in just the past six years. During this journey, we've had our fair share of stumbles, tried and tested hundreds of strategies, and, yes, stumbled again. But these experiences have been invaluable, helping us identify patterns that now power our marketing strategies. This, in turn, has allowed our clients to achieve their next milestones and generate tens of millions in revenue.

Chapter 1: The Basics of Growth Marketing a.k.a. From Zero to Hero

Once upon a time in the world of web3 marketing, there existed a profound mystery among marketers. It was the enigma of Growth Marketing, a fundamental and highly effective methodology for gathering and nurturing a high-quality community. On the other side of the spectrum, many marketers were unknowingly dabbling with various tools, lacking a systematic approach. Today, we endeavor to unravel the secrets of success in this marketing realm.

At its core, Growth Marketing is an approach that propels businesses to greatness through innovative and data-driven strategies. Yes, Growth Marketing can be distilled into a few key highlights: experimentation, creativity, and collaboration across different areas. While many emphasize the eternal need for experimentation in Growth Marketing, here at BlockFunnel, we find ourselves in agreement and ready for a friendly debate.

Think of it this way: when you board an airplane and the pilot announces: "I am the most unique pilot you've ever met, and today, we embark on an experimental flight." The passengers' reactions would be mixed, for their primary goal is to safely travel from point A to point B in a familiar mode of transportation. Similarly, in the world of marketing, these principles apply.

Based on our extensive experience working with diverse web3 projects across various niches, objectives, and target audiences, we have discovered certain patterns. These patterns represent the stages of the marketing funnel, which every marketer can draw inspiration from.

Chapter 2: The Growth Funnel a.k.a. The more you learn, the more you earn

The patterns we've noticed in the funnel stages provide valuable insights for your marketing strategies. Here are the key stages:

Acquisition: This is the first stage of the funnel and should include a variety of channels where your target audience potentially resides. Examples include your own channels, partners, influencers, media buying, and SocialFi platforms like Zealy, Layer3, Galxe, Link3, and more.

Activation: Often underestimated, this stage focuses on creating a destination for potential leads to increase conversion. Examples include landing pages, Twitter, and articles on platforms like Mirror or Medium. Notably, crafting the right offer for potential customers is crucial at this stage.

Engagement: This stage involves capturing and engaging people in your project through activities such as articles, Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions, and other strategies. We often utilize platforms like Link3, Mirror, and Claimr as a core instrument.

Revenue: At this stage, it's important to establish a campaign's target action, which typically serves as the campaign's goal. This step also helps filter out multi-accounts and abusers. Examples include participation in token sales, NFT minting, testnet activities, exchange trading volumes, and token staking.

Referrals: This is a critical and well-developed aspect of the funnel directly impacting campaign success. The rule here is simple: more referrals lead to lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and a higher Return on Investment (ROI). In most cases, 90% of referrals come from Twitter tasks and User Generated Content (UGC) on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X, Lenster, Frenster, and others.

Chapter 3: The Main Pros and Cons a.k.a. How not to get fucked

Before crafting your funnel, it's essential to create a high-quality offer for your customers and audience, based on a deep analysis of your niche, target audience, the market as a whole, and design rewards distribution logic.

Additionally, it's crucial to meticulously work on acquisition channels, which often require an additional budget. Our recommendation is to allocate no less than $50,000 for a three-month campaign. However, the exact amount depends on your product's stage and your current audience engagement.

There are a few more cards up our sleeve that we're willing to reveal to significantly reduce CAC for some of our dear Cointelegraph readers in a free 45-minute consultation. To join the waitlist, simply complete a quick form on our website.

Majinx short story long

Majinx is a company that specializes in fundraising for pre-seed, seed and Series-A projects. Having successfully raised over 25 projects totaling over $40 million, the team has come to a clear understanding that marketing and social traction are an integral part of project development and successful raises. With this in mind, Majinx's marketing experts are focused on acquiring a highly engaged organic graph for the project and have their own approaches that bring the project reach of over 4 million audience in the first stages of development.

Chapter 4: The Basics of Partnership Marketing?

In their work, often facing the situation of a low marketing budget (up to 15k dollars), but the urgent need for a currency community, the Majinx team has developed its approach, which is based on the paradigm "if internal resources are not enough — use external resources". Realizing the side goals of the project in increasing brand credibility, the marketing focus in such cases is based not on one goal in getting a quantitative and qualitative community, but on two: getting a not very numerical but highly active community (10-15k with er≈15-20%) through interaction with 5-7 key partners or better to say — brand ambassadors.?

Thus, the whole logic of marketing is reduced to manual selection and a relatively protracted process of negotiations with potential ambassadors of the project from among already established products on the market, or auxiliary service institutions (incubators, lunchpads, etc.). This makes it possible to conquer two peaks at once: to transfer the target active audience and also to get media amplification at the expense of the partners' brand. It is one thing to collect audiences from different sources in the hope of getting the most likely near-target audience with high starting activity based on relevant interests — it is another thing to collect them from similar established projects with an already active audience and high level of support.?

In this case level of marketing complexity decreases at the stage of conversions in the audience conversion funnels and increases at the stage of the marketing launch itself — because one wrongly selected partner, or a failed integration can greatly complicate the course of marketing and development of the project as a whole. It is also worth mentioning that you should not resort to this approach if the project is typical for a certain market and does not have significant distinctive features (as in the case of the gameFi market in its majority in 2023).?

In the case of properly selected partners and a well-designed product, marketing can be successful with a 70% probability. All that remains is to build the right positioning and communication strategy and voila - you have a great PoC for further promotion of the product.

Chapter 5: Marketing Team Management Insights?

The range of marketing in the approach described above is much narrower than in the option proposed by BlockFunnel, but the process should not be considered easier or faster.?

Even taking into account the fact that the scope of work is smaller, the efforts made by the team are very significant. The sequence of actions requires full involvement of the team in the negotiation and manual selection process, which can last a month or even several months.?

If we reduce the entire marketing campaign to a step-by-step essence, the sequence of actions will be as follows:?

1. Search and collect a base of partnerships and ambassadors: use the main social networks of your localization to reduce audience loss and increase the conversion rate (Twitter, Discord, Telegram, LinkedIn). Form a portrait of the ambassadors and move in their direction. Since the selection of such partners is manual — try to collect maximum information about each of the potential stakeholders — because this will help to make the right strategy for negotiations. Do not forget that the quantitative indicators of the ambassadors should not be inferior to the quality, because in addition to the characteristics of the brand for you valuable and the characteristics of the community — the number of people in their composition.
2. Secure partnerships and build a communication strategy: think about what exactly will give you the key driver of consent from the partner and form a USP. For different types of partners, you will usually form different offsets based on product values. Remember — partnership is about mutual benefits, so if you don't have a big media presence or budget — try to emphasize creating an ecosystem of co-development. Once the communication strategy is ready - start negotiating. According to the Majinx team's experience — during a month of negotiations you can "close" up to 20 partners with a total audience reach of more than 2 million users.
3. Acquisition and engagement: since the starting audience figures are high in terms of engagement - emphasize building the right audience acquisition funnel. Research your partner's audience, build the relevant warm-up, prepare your social media for the following traffic flow and launch campaigns. Don't hesitate on standard engagement mechanics like AirDrops, but base reward forms on the values of the product, not "$50 happiness". Think of unique mechanics to instantly engage your audience through limited opportunities for newcomers and large benefits in the medium term, which will generate interest in researching your product.
4. Retention: once the audience has moved to your sites and interacted with your product — remember that their lifecycle will be minuscule if you don't give value and activity immediately. Under the influence of an external driver (the brand of the ambassador), the audience expects to receive a high-quality product and opportunities to develop within it as soon as possible, so procrastinate with info promotions, engaging interactive mechanics and SocialFi platforms like Zealy, Layer3, Galxe, Link3. Once partner support is in place — the ball is on your side, which means you need to show continuous growth and development to get your audience to stay with you. According to Majinx.io statistics, if there are no significant activities or interactions with the community during the first month, the project loses up to 83% of its audience and begins to bear reparation risks.?

Chapter 6: Pros and cons of the approach

For projects with low budgets, this solution can be a lifeboat. The financial costs are low and the motivation of the team offsets the high workload aspect. It would seem that it is not an option, but a panacea. However, it is worth taking into account a number of limits, which can become a rare flag for startup owners to use this strategy:?

• Product uniqueness. It is worth understanding that the basis for support and positive feedback from partners is first and foremost the quality of the product, and then the vignette of marketing packaging. If you just want to enter a competitive market with a good, but typical product that has technical advantages but is not a novelty, BlockFunnel's strategy will work much better.
• Quality of selection and negotiation. You'd better have a couple of Wall Street employees, as negotiations will not be easy. You need to find the line between wanting to appeal to the tops and the product characteristics and find that narrow segment of projects or companies that will agree to help you. It's not easy, but if successful - your marketing adventure will pay off very quickly.?
• Team stability and engagement. This is not an option where you can start media-buying and quietly count the leads that came to your site using algorithms of different platforms. Constant focus and workload at the startup can be a serious obstacle to success. However, if you have a fire in you and you are ready to rock the world - everything will definitely work out.?

Wrapping it Up

The crypto-market still amazes with the pace of its development and its unconventionality. The diversity of projects and their uniqueness entails the right to choose different approaches to attracting the target audience, which means that the choice of marketing strategy is always left to the creator of the product. The approaches presented in this article are just a fraction of the broader spectrum of successful approaches, but thanks to them dozens of projects are already successfully operating on the market.

So if you are waiting for a sign to make a decision or start developing your product as part of marketing — don't waste your time and just contact BlockFunnel or Majinx.io for consultation by following the links. This is a time-sensitive offer, so hurry up to fill out the form before someone else takes your place under the sun!

Authors:

• Maksym Koval, Head of Marketing at Majinx
• Dmytro Lizanets, CEO at BlockFunnel