You never knew marketing crypto/blockchain would be this difficult.
As most of you know, I’m in the blockchain / crypto space, and have been since the start of 2018. Prior to this, I was a marketer in a dating agency/app company. I thought marketing a dating agency/app was difficult in Singapore due to its ad regulations. We focused a lot more on generating content and fun ideas with PR and traditional marketing methods such as OOH.
That’s until I got into the crypto space. It is honestly one of the most difficult things to market due to various reasons – from public education (lack thereof) to restrictions on ad platforms. It’s also a build-up of skepticism in this industry caused by scams, high profile hacks reported by the mainstream media and government officials taking a stand against crypto.
Anyway, people often ask what exactly I do in this space as a marketer. I’m from an advisory, although it has now expanded beyond that – it means that the bulk of what I do is to come up with marketing strategies for different blockchain projects for different purposes. We start from ideation to running campaigns for token sales, and in some cases, to actual product user acquisition post-sale. In my perspective, through the entire process, we are still faced with many challenges and do not get the opportunity to explore each channel or platform deeply enough.
The main problems with blockchain projects today:
- Crypto is one of the most difficult things to market due to regulations and its available platforms. Platforms are selfish. Facebook started to loosen up its ad regulations shortly before announcing Libra. -cue eyeroll-
- The ones which ads you often see are the ones which have raised the most money. What about the small but really promising blockchain projects? Some of these are started by passionate and legitimate founders; people who believe in their vision and know what they’re doing but unfortunately, do not have the resources. We are all missing out on all these little projects due to the high BTE – namely the marketing budget.
As a marketer in this landscape, I can say that we are often limited by our project’s budget. What’s worrying is that even if we do spend on one or two items sometimes, the data may not be the most reliant… And in worst cases, no data may be provided.
I wanted to hear from fellow marketers in this industry so I spent my last week trying to gather insights from blockchain marketers. To my disappointment, there is no such community that’s established which encourages honest and open discussions – sharing challenges, ideas and also pointing out the scam platforms. Everything is paid and sponsored for, to put a positive light on even the worst projects.
