Traditional Marketing is Dead in Web3 (Here's Why)

Alright, so, here's the earth, round…

…Do you get that reference?

It's from an ollllld viral internet video called "End of Ze World".

It's from my adolescence. I must've been 13 or so when it hit peak virality.

I don't think it was even hosted on Youtube, most likely it was on one of those meme compilation sites.

Oh the good ol' days of the internet!

This was Web 1 folks…

Web 1 was a one way street. You could only Read things. You could not interact or publish things for yourself easily.

That happened with Web 2 (The Read, Write age)

I'll save getting into the differences between Web 1, 2, and 3 (and what the epic history of what they meant/mean) for marketers, later.

For now, I want share a few ways Web3 differs from Web2, so that you can well, understand it, get ahead of the curve, a be a more profitable marketer.

I could keep flowing here but I better get into some structured writing so that this whole article doesn't become some kind of mind dump that's just an insane reflection of how fast my mind is moving right now.

Ok, so, here's the talking points (brought to you in part by Claude 3.5 Sonnet)

The first point has to do with a shift in power dynamics

Traditional marketing follows a top down approach, meaning that the brand largely controls the message…

Web3 marketing puts the community in control of the brand's message.

Where Web2 brands can survive with little interaction between them and their users. Web3 brands need interaction in order to be successful.

Especially in the case of brands that use tokens as incentive for investment - the only way to get incentive is to offer reward. Those rewards can be a say in the direction and message of the organization.

Trust and Transparency

Gone will be the days where marketers can claim, "90% retention rate!" or fluff up their user numbers, or simply claim a "moneyback guarantee"…

With products on the blockchain, all of these things can be verified.

You can see how many users there are.

You can track wallet addresses to see how long they've stayed.

Using a smart contracts, you can be sure you get your money back if you cancel within 30 days…

Web2 marketing is "Trust us".

Web3 is "Trustless".

Value Exchange Model

In Web3, marketing is more about working together to promote the brand and its products, rather than just the company selling more of the product.

There are more options for value exchange.

My favorite example is through Knowledge Mining.

Say you're on some app to learn math.

Sure, getting virtual points is cool and all, but with blockchain tech, you can set things up so that learners who also create content for the app can get tokens which they can then use to pay for use of the app.

Decentralized Decision Making

This is an interesting one..

The idea is that rather than marketing decisions being made solely by a centralized marketing department, they are made in collaboration with the community.

Hmmm, not sure how I feel about that.

On the one hand, getting feedback from the people you are selling to is a gold mine.

You are literally asking what they want to buy so that you can give it to them.

On the other hand, the decision making process gets slowed down.

On the other-other hand, sometimes the customer doesn't know what they want…

Technical Understanding

As marketers, we've got to understand how blockchain technology works. That is, if we want to have first mover advantage, and reap the benefits.

Its pretty simple, any org using blockchain tech is gonna need to explain themselves to the masses. Not just what they do, but how they do it.

Blockchain is going to be a part of the unique mechanism of many orgs until it becomes as mainstream as using a website.

So if you wanna market Web3, we've gotta learn all the tech and learn how to explain it simply so that these orgs can be adopted by the masses.

Channel Evolution

TV is not TV anymore.

TV is Youtube. TV is the smart phone.

Magazine ads, billboards, even social media ads… will become less relevant.

What's becoming more relevant are channels like Discord and whatever types of decentralized social media platforms pop up.

I think if we continue to focus on the idea of marketing to communities, creating lots of story based content, and explain tech simply, we'll be able to market effectively on whatever channels emerge as the winners.

And that's it. Thanks for reading my newsletter.

Wanna collab or somethin? Hit me up on Myspace.