For Part I of DeFi Product Marketing on a Budget 👇
Unique Selling Points, Users + Marketing Conditions, Branding
Part II Table of Contents
- Using Data and Metrics in Web3 Marketing
Use data and metrics but with a bucket of salt.
[Marketing Funnel: Growth & Conversion]
In Web2 digital marketing, data and metrics are vital for measuring the success of campaigns and performing analyses on what needs tweaking.
For example, if someone clicks on an ad, goes to our site, and buys one of our products (or just adds it to the cart), we can track that journey at each step. On top of that we can ask the customers or potential customers directly about the process and expect relatively honest responses.
However, while the growth and awareness stages are measurable through some pre-existing analytics, due to the anonymous nature of the DeFi beast, it gets much trickier once you get to the conversion and loyalty stages.
For example, if someone clicks on one of our marketing tweets, goes to our twitter profile and clicks on our site URL, that’s all trackable. Then on our site, we can see which pages these people interact with and how much time they spent on them, etc. That’s all great.
But from there we have no idea how this person ended up interacting with our page. We don’t know whether they actually used one of our products or how much they may have used it.
Ugh.
And to make things more difficult, we can’t perform legitimate “exit interviews” with actual users to hone the system or process.
Suggestion #1: Geographical Data
Track data through something like Plausible or SimilarWeb to see what’s bringing eyeballs and visits to your product, including documentation or other related sites.
Use geographical user data in particular to think about where your product marketing might have the strongest effect and consider why and also what you can do to either increase or divert your efforts for that region.
Here’s a real example of a basic flow for using “geographical data” taken from my experience. This type of flow can be useful for internal discussions with your marketing and product teams👇
Demographic Data: ~82% of site visitors are based in US (or using a VPN)
Possible Reasons: Our blockchain (Avalanche) is based in the US and primarily attracts US investors/users. Current marketing activities are mostly collabs and tags related to Avalanche, and we are running events based on US time zones.
Problem: We have a glaring pop-up on our Dapp that says US citizens aren’t allow to use our protocol!
Solution: Remove the pop-up or focus on the 2nd or 3rd most popular region by shifting the timing of tweets and events or promoting KOL activities in those target languages and cultures.
Suggestion #2: Socials & Community Data
Each social media platform provides distinct and valuable data for informing your DeFi marketing strategies.
First, we have Twitter, the flagship of DeFi marketing campaigns. Crypto Twitter (CT) is famous for its nonstop shilling of new projects, “expert” analysis, and meme vibes.
Account Followers
Pre-Token Launch Target: 500+ (Organic)
Rationale: Establish real interest from potential users before token speculators. These followers are more likely to interact with your tweets, even if it’s just “likes” and honest growth can go a long way when it comes to conversion. After your token is launch or leading up to an imminent launch, you can expect the number of followers to increase exponentially (with some marketing boosts of course).
Followers vs Engagement
Target Ratio: 50%+
Rationale: For all those accounts out there that bought the bots, the Twitter algorithm is coming to get you. If you have 10k followers, for example, but only 500 views on your tweets…good luck. This is why you want organic growth, which is much harder to achieve and requires daily dedication, but pays out dividends down the road.
Type of Engagement
Target Order: Retweets then Likes/Replies
Rationale: Staying on top of the 2024 Twitter algorithm here by tracking what it likes. Retweets (aka reposts) are still the #1 driver of virality as long as you keep “organic” engagement in mind. Likes & Replies come in a close second, again as long as the replies are serious engagement with your tweet by reputable accounts: “gud projekt” is not gonna cut it.
Profile Link Traffic
Eventual Target: Below 80%
Rationale: In the beginning of your DeFi marketing journey, 99%+ of your organic Dapp site traffic is going to come through your Twitter profile link. You’ll want to maximize this traffic through clear call-to-actions in a reply to your main tweet (again to make the algo happy here).
However, after your protocol launches and especially after a token launch, you should explore other avenues for bringing eyeballs to the site (newsletters, Coingecko, paid articles, Reddit, etc) so that you’re sure to be maximizing all possible avenues.
Next up is my personal favorite, Discord, where the true protocol community building takes place.
Pre-Token Launch
Target Members: 200+
Rationale: We’re in a prolonged bear market and so, for the most part, only non-retail DeFi users are left standing. 200+ real members means you have some interest in what you’re building and you can start growing your “community” with content and contests (organic or incentivized). Important note here is also the “activity vs member count” ratio. If you’ve got 10k+ members, but only a few people saying “gm” every day, then more than likely you’ve just got a bunch of bots, which really don’t serve any purpose other than to mislead.
Type of Engagement
Target: 90%+ DeFi & product discussion, feedback on the product, questions for the team, assistance for others
Rationale: “Gm” is fine, but by itself it doesn’t really do anything or show any serious activity or development on the product. When a new user enters a Discord community server, it’s typically because they have an actual question about the product. If the server is full of nothing but “gms” or off-topic “shitposting” then they might not be willing to venture their question — and that first question is most likely their first stepping stone to becoming part of the community moving forward.
Region / Languages
Target: Active communities in 3+ languages
Rationale: DeFi is global and although English is lingua franca, requests for other major languages in addition to active on-topic conversation in those other languages are healthy signs for your Discord community. “3+” is kind of arbitrary, but it’s also a more realistic number as things only really get pumping globally during a bull market.
Pro-tip: Don’t create “other language” channels until your server has 3k+ real members and the languages have been requested through some kind of request/polling system.
Honorable Mention here goes to Telegram (TG) for providing some data/metrics you can use early on in your marketing journey. For example, TG will show you how many people are actually reading all the messages in the channels, which might be useful for understanding your user behavior or preferences. The only way to really gauge something like this in Discord is through emotes on announcements.
Suggestion #3: On-Chain Data!
Use the blockchain scanners to check when / how much people are using your protocol. If you have whales/large users, you can contact them through on-chain or through a messaging dapp. Or you can simply observe how they are interacting with your protocol (and which other protocols/chains they are active in)
Key questions for on-chain data points
- Time of interaction: What time zones did most of the activity (esp. deposits) take place? Did the deposits coincide with any marketing activity (best way to measure results!).
- Specific user data: Which chain(s) are your users most active on? How much do they have in their wallets? Does their wallet have a domain name that’s connected to their discord/twitter socials?
- Contract / product comparisons: How many actual on-chain users do you have for certain products and how much are they spending/depositing on average? Answering this can help you think about your target audience — eg does your protocol primarily appeal to whales or tons of little minnows? Data points like these can also help inform any future airdrop campaign strategies.
Pro-tip: If you have some available back-end guru devs on your team, they should be able to visualize all of this important data through Dune or Flipside dashboards! And if you don’t have a dev, try out Chat GPT or Bard for analyzing smart contracts.
Anything I missed?
I’ll keep adding more data points here as I go!
