Part I Table of Contents
- Focusing on Unique Selling Points
- Thinking of Potential Users + Market Conditions
- How to Approach Branding + Blockchain
Alright, let’s start off with a couple disclaimers.
First off, if you’ve been working in marketing for a while, especially in DeFi marketing, many of the following suggestions will seem obvious or limited to my own personal experience.
However! Our special little marketing niche is growing quickly and there may be some newcomers coming in with blank slates as I did back in 2021. Not every suggestion in this series will be applicable, but there might be something useful hidden in there for the most interested among us.
Secondly, if you’ve been working in DeFi marketing then you’re probably well aware that this field is a different beast altogether. And with different beasts come different claws, different fangs, and different sub-par analogies.
And so! I’d love to hear any and all thoughts about how all of the DeFi marketing pros out there are tackling some of the challenges in our space — please leave some of those thoughts in the comments or wherever I’m sharing this series of articles.
Some final preamble here is that these suggestions are geared more toward the low-budget projects out there. DeFi startups, most of them at least, have to focus more on development in the beginning, and unless they land some major funding, the budget for marketing is usually an afterthought.
1. Focus on your unique selling points (USPs)
As DeFi marketers, it’s crucial that we understand not only how our products work, but also how our product fits within the grander scheme of the global ecosystem (blockchains) and the competitive landscape (protocol categories). Once we zoom out and see where we are relative to the rest of the space, we can begin to focus on what makes our product special.
Suggestions for USP Marketing
- Create a profile of the competitive landscape
Start by going to resources like DeFillama to see what’s out there and where it all is. Make a list of all the potential competition for your product and make sure you note their blockchain and how much overlap there might be. Visit their apps for style and check out their docs for the real info.
- Create a table for “differentiators”
Note down every feature of your own protocol, eg., tokenomics, risk management and yield mechanisms, lego layers, etc. Create a simple checkbox table (✅) to clearly outline where your protocol differs from 4–5 of your primary competitors. This table will be important for you to reference and to distribute later on to your KOLs or marketing community.
- Highlighting USPs
In your protocol documentation, make sure these USPs are featured immediately after a brief overview. The overview needs to come first, since this is important for newly-initiated DeFi users, but the more experienced users will want to know right away what separates you from the rest. If possible, use a platform like Canva Pro to illustrate your USPs in a clear (and branded) infographic. Doing this will also make your USPs infinitely more shareable for your KOLs or marketing community.
- Write blog content & threads for each USP
This is a low cost way to give you plenty of marketing material moving forward, especially if your protocol has a fairly deep list of USPs. If there are enough details to the USP, I’d suggest starting with a blog post with an overview and an abundance of examples — especially if your product has already been live for a while. You can then later take pieces of this blog post, including the examples, and create weekly or bi-weekly threads to maintain a constant stream of marketing content and getting the most out of your hard work.
If you don’t have a lot of intriguing USPs — i.e. you’re a basic fork with a few small improvements — then you can look for other potential differentiators:
- Security 🔏
Do you have extra audits (or more reputable audits)? Most likely not in the case of a basic fork, so in that case you can perhaps highlight any important tweaks or refactoring, eg., anti-flash loan measures, etc.
Or perhaps you can highlight your team’s transparency or better commitment to operational security. - Community 👬
Maybe your protocol isn’t all that different, but you can point to a stronger, tighter-knit community if you’re lucky to have one (or you’ve built one!). An organically-built community can go a long way both in word-of-mouth marketing and in projecting trustworthiness to newcomers. - Token Price/Tokenomics 💸
If your token price is healthier than the competition, there is an easy “USP”. And if this healthier token price comes from some innovative tweaks in the tokenomics, even better. - Chad Team / Developers 🔨
Maybe you don’t have anything different except for your strong, reputable team and, hopefully, some strong, reputable backing. Long-term users and investors are more likely to gravitate towards a team of people that know each other and work well together over a team of completely anonymous decentralized figures who more often than not will crumble into the disarray and chaos of greed and “differing philosophies”. - UI/UX 🙌
Mechanics can be the same, but when they are packaged in a more attractive UI with a smoother UX, there is an easy differentiator to highlight in any marketing materials. - Blockchain 🔗
Perhaps you are essentially a 100% copy-pasta protocol? Well, then your last resort for USPs will be the blockchain you’re building on. What unique advantages does your blockchain have over the other? Can you tap into that specific blockchain’s user or developer community to start creating some of the USPs from above? Boolish.
In the end, perhaps just your marketing efforts will be the differentiator!
2. Think of potential users + market conditions together
These two go hand-in-hand to me because different market conditions create different types of users with different behaviors. For example, in spring 2021, the bullish userbase was relatively new and their behavior was driven more by unadulterated fomo; while in spring 2023, the bearish userbase was more a bit more weathered and particular about where they parked their surviving funds.
Suggestions for Audience / User Profiling
- Ask DeFi frens on socials (Discord, Telegram, Reddit, Twitter)
If you’re an active DeFi user, you’ve probably found your way into many different DeFi social communities where users discuss openly how they feel about certain protocols or what they think about upcoming launches, etc. This is a great resource to tap into for covert feedback or user profile building as it stays anonymous, but usually honest, especially if you’re using an “alt account”. Drop a tweet about your protocol in one of these groups and start gathering thoughts from these frens about the “why or why not?” wrt using your protocol.
- Understand yourself
This one isn’t scientific, but take a moment to reflect upon what kind of DeFi user you are. Are you a degen looking to flip profits on small-cap tokens? Are you a conservative yielder just looking for a steady 20% APR on your ETH bags? What do you look at first when you hear about a new protocol: the APRs? the docs? the discord? Would you be interested in using your own product? Why / why not? Information gleaned from yourself shouldn’t necessarily shape your entire marketing campaign, but it’s still a decent place to start (and it’s cheap!).
More suggestions for different market conditions
Targeting bear market users 🐻
- Security & strong partnerships 🔐
There’s less money getting thrown around during a bear market, so it’s important to gain trust through clear security measures and establishing partnerships with reputable protocols and communities. - Vampire-lite attacks 🔪
There’s less new money coming in during bear markets, so you can start looking where your competitors’ userbase are hanging around and at the very least build up some awareness of your own protocol there. This should be tactfully done and with an alt account where possible as any “vampire” attacks can create a great deal of unwanted backlash or bad karma and vibes. - Find and highlight user success stories 😆
If your protocol has been around for a while and you have a decent community, it might be useful to find any “user success stories” for your protocol, especially if they’ve found a way to use it successful during the bear conditions (at least partially). Highlighting these user success stories can project confidence to the rest of the market that your protocol can help bear market participants thrive or at least survive until the next bull.
- Build hope for the next bullrun 🐤
This one can come off pretty weak to a lot of depressed bear market users, but when there is nothing else to market in the current state of your protocol (e.g. low yields or no new features), then it’s time to bust out the Hope Machine! Try getting people excited through your protocol socials or even in the app site itself (APY calculators, anyone?) by focusing on the profitable positions they’ll be in when (never if) the market picks back up again.
- Stay active and disciplined 👷
Users tend to get jaded during the bear markets and product marketers and teams are certainly not immune to the sporadic waves of depression. Remind yourself that you believe in your product and that you believe in the recovery of the market as a whole and continue pumping out your marketing content and materials. Stay active in your protocol socials, however possible, even with an alt, and remember that in the bull market all it takes is one tweet or one spark to turn your project viral (in a good way). - Cheap KOLs 👍
One final way to target bear market users, especially for growth and awareness is through the employment of X or newsletter KOLs. If you’re working on a slim budget, take heart that the KOLs are generally a bit cheaper during bear markets as well. Use them to spread the good word about what your devs are building.
Targeting bull market users 🐮
- Use those bullish metrics
This is the low-hanging fruit, but still worth a mention here. If you have metrics that show how well your users and platform are doing, then let the world know in tasteful, professional ways. I recommend Canva Pro again here to create lots of professional-looking variations on the basic graphics. Note: if possible, avoid just throwing out incredible APY%, especially without more historical context or a clear explanation of the risks involved.
- Assemble a smorgasbord of educational & how-to guides
Bull markets inevitably bring in waves of new users. If you were born in a bear market, you might be surprised by the sudden wave of “What’s a liquidity pool?” or “What are emissions?” and other questions that bear market veterans actually asked as well long ago, but probably forgot. New users will most likely gravitate towards projects with helpful and patient guidance over the ones with prickly staff and a “just go google this” mentality.
- Build a loyal userbase / token holder community for the inevitable future bear
Start thinking of your bull-market moon boys as your future bear-market frens. You may not need a loyal community to maintain a strong TVL or token price during the bull market, but if your project is built to last multiple cycles, it’s never too early or too late to create a sense of communal ownership. - Be more selective with KOLs
KOLs are still available during the bull market, but just be ready for a heftier price tag. In this case, it’s important to be very selective about which KOL you use by diving deep into their audience and past work/interactions. Even though your marketing pockets might be a bit deeper during this time, spend it wisely — especially since one tweet from an unpaid CT personality may send your protocol to elysium regardless.
3. Think about blockchain and branding together
Ask any well-traveled DeFi user and they’ll already have an “image” of many of the top blockchains: Ethereum is full of OG powerhouses, Arbitrum is the sophisticated ETH-centric DeFi chain, Avalanche has a strong gaming community, Solana is sleek and neon, BSC has lots of cute animal and food mascots, etc.
So as DeFi product marketers we have to consider carefully how our brand and protocol type fits in with this overall blockchain brand. By doing so, we can craft or adapt our brand to our advantage when carving out a market space.
There are three scenarios here for product marketers:
- No brand, no blockchain
A true fresh slate — this is usually the case for a homegrown DeFi project that’s built “for fun with frens”. - Yes brand, no blockchain
Someone in the founding team has already decided on what they want and you gotta stick with it no matter where the project launches. - No brand, yes blockchain
This one likely involves a source of funding for the project that determines which chain you need to deploy on. Hopefully they chose to support your project because it already fits their brand…
#1 is my favorite scenario as it’s the most fun and provides the greatest amount of control over your vision. However, be diligent with your research and careful with your choices as it can be both painful and expensive to try to change post-launch.
My suggestion for creating a brand is look for something that’s both memorable and professional with some reference to the type of protocol you are building.
Camelot DEX is one of my favorite examples of a well-selected brand. The “Camelot” and “Grail” themes are recognizable and sticky, but not overly-silly or childish for the type of services they provide. Additionally the “round table” fits in perfectly with their focus on building relationships and an ecosystem of partnerships on their chain of choice.
In the case where you need to create a brand for a particular blockchain — pre-chosen by the great fundoors among us — take a look at the top protocols and see what they are doing first.
Protocols building on Avalanche, for example, tend to go for a wintry, mountain, or animal theme: yaks, yetis, blizzards, glaciers, snowbanks, snowdogs, etc. So if you want your protocol to establish a homebase on Avalanche in this case then sticking with that theme might be advantageous in tapping into their userbase or developer community. However, if you have plans to eventually go multi-chain, perhaps asap, then selecting a brand that fits anywhere would be safest.
In the end, try to avoid something that’s forgettable in the grand scheme of things. There a million protocols out there with entirely forgettable names based on some obscure latin phrase and play-on-words. Having a clear image that sticks in the mind of your would-be users can go a long way.
Just maybe avoid stuff like “Stanky Wet Rocket Dog” as your mascot or…my personal favorite for worst branding ever, “Milfswap” — which I believe rugged within weeks.
What a good place to end Part I!
If you liked learning about any of these facets of DeFi Product Marketing, I’ve got more coming 👇
Part II
Using Data & Metrics in DeFi Marketing
Creating Effective Long-Form Content (hint: don’t rely on AI!)
Treasuring Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Part III
Security Marketing
Marketing in an environment of “Regulatory Compliance”
My favorite marketing methods! (hint: it’s not platforms like Zealy)
Anything to add? Please let me know through LinkedIn or on Telegram!
TG: https://t.me/KJM_DeFi
