These 5 web3 marketing strategies are transforming digital marketing

Digital marketers, we need to talk about Web3 marketing. 

A new report released last month by marketing analytics firm Safary has revealed that over $600 million has been raised by a new generation of Web3 digital marketing agencies.

Traditional marketing firms are getting in on the action, as well, acquiring Web3 marketing startups in an effort to keep ahead of the curve. Global communications agency Mod Op recently announced their acquisition of CreativeDirection, while Flight Story, founded by prominent entrepreneurs Steven Bartlett and Oliver Yonchev, announced they’d absorbed Zebu - a Web3 marketing collective. 

Take it from Amanda Cassatt, founder and CEO of leading Web3 Marketing Agency Serotonin, when she says, “The world of marketing undergoes a transformative shift as Web3 emerges.”

What does this transformative shift entail? What is Web3 in marketing? What are the strategies and benefits? Let’s take a look.

What is the difference between Web2 and Web3 marketing?

First, a quick history recap. As the Safary report details, the 2010s saw enormous growth in the digital marketing industry, with approximately 150 companies in the domain in 2011 exploding to 11,000 by 2023. 

This 7,000% growth was fuelled by innovations in marketing tech, and the increasing capacity to leverage consumer data.

Yet, in the past five years, things began to change. Safary notes the promulgation of the European GDPR in 2018, the CCPA in 2020, and Google’s announcement in 2021 that it would end the use of third-party cookies, as compounding threats to the ability of marketers to target consumers via traditional means.

“As web3 emerged in the 2020s, so did a more community and privacy-centric marketing environment,” explains the report. “Consumers engaging on “dark social” channels like Discord, Telegram, and Reddit are notoriously difficult to track.”

With growing concerns over privacy, and stronger preferences for authentic, personalized engagement, the tools and strategies of traditional marketers risk being overtaken by more innovative approaches.

A simple comparison, given by Fiat24 Marketing Manager Karen Shidlo, looks like this:

Web1 Marketing: Email Marketing, nascent SEO, direct deal advertising placements.

Web2 Marketing: Data-driven, target-based social media and dynamic ads.

Web3 Marketing: NFTs, decentralization, AI.

“Whereas in Web2 a marketer needs to acquire, engage with, and retain customers,” writes Shidlo. “Web3 marketers will have many stakeholders to keep in mind. The group of stakeholders includes users, developers, and their broader communities.”

Web3 Marketing Strategies

“While the concept of a marketing funnel is almost indistinguishable between Web2 and Web3,” writes Cassatt in her earlier cited op-ed for CoinTelegraph, “the activities that take place along it are radically different.”

Some of these activities leverage the technology of blockchain - NFTs, token wallets, on-chain data. Others, however, simply engage with the emerging culture and values of the Web3 community, such as privacy and community, mentioned above. The five strategies below are by no means an exhaustive list, but a starting point to understand the overall approach. They are:

1. Web3 community building
2. Metaverse experiences and virtual events
3. NFT loyalty programs
4. Quests
5. On-chain data analytics

Web3 community building

In Web3, ‘community’ does not refer to an offshoot support group for a brand, nor simply to its customer base. Community can extend to all those stakeholders involved in a particular enterprise or project - investors, employees, customers, and the wider interested public.

Growth marketing expert Winfred K. Mandela says building a community is “paramount in the Web3 world.”

“Marketers must foster a sense of community by engaging with users on a personal level and creating content that resonates with their values and interests.”

Shidlo concurs: “I have definitely learned that Web3 requires a kind of community building which simply doesn’t exist in Web2. [People] want to be involved, they want to hear directly from the founders of the project, and, most importantly, they want to share a living, breathing online space with their peers.” 

Successfully building a community around a brand or product leads to what Cassatt calls “self-marketing systems, where aligned communities… are incentivized to grow projects together… the job of a Web3 marketer is to start the flywheel of growth until a community can take over.”

How to build a community in Web3

1. Participate in online discussion: Social media posts, internet forums like Reddit, Discord and Telegram channels. Attract members to your community with authentic, meaningful participation in discussions relevant to your brand. 
2. Collaborate with influencers: Influencers on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter who share your brand’s values can effectively amplify your message and help you connect with a wider audience.
3. Host virtual events: These can include live-streamed presentations, AMAs (Ask Me Anything), giveaways, and more.
4. User-generated content: A fantastic way to give a sense of ownership to your fans, which leads to ongoing investment in the brand.

Metaverse experiences and virtual events

We have seen a huge explosion in brands staking out their presence in the metaverse - interconnected virtual reality domains that integrate video-game-like experiences with social-media style interaction and real-world commercial activity. 

Big brands have spent millions of dollars on virtual real estate, which can host virtual concerts, exhibitions, and stores, to name just a few examples. Attendance at such events can be incentivized by the giving-away of NFTs or POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocols), which can be later used to power customer loyalty programs or other promotional activities.

Don’t forget offline!

Of course, it’s important to keep the current potential of metaverse events in perspective. While they have their use, they are still not - and perhaps never will be - the be-all and end-all. 

Offline events remain a powerful way to discover and engage customers. Even more so when they are used in careful combination with other web3 strategies. 

NFT loyalty programs

According to the Safary report, loyalty programs are one of the most well-funded Web3 marketing initiatives among the current crop of investment, with agencies specializing in them attracting more than $100 million in new funding.

That aligns with a recent Boston Consulting Group report highlighting the capacity for Web3 technologies to power innovative customer loyalty programs, driving engagement and strengthening brand-consumer relationships.

Specifically, NFTs or cryptocurrency tokens can be distributed to a community as rewards for their engagement with a brand. They can then serve as access passes to exclusive brand content, which can itself be packaged as NFTs, creating a virtuous cycle where customers are incentivized to align themselves more closely with a brand. 

Quests

One particularly engaging way to bring together rewards-based loyalty programs and experiences in a way that builds communities is through quests.

A Web3 marketing quest is composed of a series of gamified tasks that users have to complete in order to receive a reward. These could include engaging with a brand on social media through likes, shares, or uploading user-generated content; referring friends to a brand; solving puzzles, attending virtual or even offline events.

Quests are usually timed events, further motivating the community to participate. The gamified combination of many smaller engagement initiatives creates a compounding effect greater than the sum of the parts.

One Web3 marketing startup specializing in quests is bountyblok. With their suite of tools, you can put together a chain of tasks and mini-challenges for your users and distribute rewards for those who complete them.

On-Chain Data Analytics

Counterbalancing Web3’s emphasis on privacy and data protection is the fact that 72% of consumers say they will only engage with marketing efforts tailored to their interests. Thus, the task of Web3 marketers is to source and leverage relevant consumer behavior data, while demonstrating respect for user privacy.

Happily, Web3 may be providing the infrastructure to strike this balance. Charlie Silver, founder and chairman of Permission.io, writes on CoinTelegraph that “blockchain and smart contracts… facilitate secure and transparent data management. Marketers can leverage these technologies to gain a deeper understanding of individual user preferences, behaviors and habits… [and] develop highly targeted and personalized campaigns that truly resonate with their audience.”

All Web3 transactional data is available online. Analytics tools aggregate that data and deliver insights that allow marketing efforts to be much more targeted and, thus, effective.

Digital Marketing and Web3

The advance of digital marketing into the Web3 era should come as no surprise. Marketing teams are at the forefront of consumer engagement, and fierce competition means they are constantly seeking new means by which to deliver their messages.

Standing in the way is an imposing technological learning curve which means there is still time for the most agile teams to get a head-start. Happily, blockchain technology is becoming more and more user-friendly. Venly’s NFT and Wallet solutions are designed to be deployed quickly and efficiently, even by non-blockchain technical users. 

And with 30-day free trials on all of our leading products, there’s nothing to lose by trying them out.

About Venly

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