TL;DR
- Web3 marketing lacks a clear definition; most founders struggle to articulate what it means, leading to confusion and missed opportunities in how projects grow and communicate. This knowledge gap has given rise to amateur providers or worse, straight-up scammers draining the runway of promising companies.
- Hype is not a sustainable strategy: Many projects equate marketing with hype, touting big follower counts, viral tweets, or token airdrops. Hype alone ≠ is not lasting growth. A Discord full of airdrop chasers is not a loyal user base; retweets don’t equal revenue — see our FAQ on community metrics. Effectively, you’re not selling your business or building sustainable revenue growth you can count on.
- Fundamentals are often overlooked: Core marketing principles, such as clear positioning, target audience definition, and retention strategies, are usually sidelined in Web3. Too many teams skip basic go-to-market homework (who is the customer, what problem is solved, why it’s better) and dive straight into “building community” without a plan to convert followers into users. Most concerning is that the majority of marketers never speak to customers one-to-one.
- Traditional tactics still matter: Proven techniques – from PR to branding – are as critical as ever. Credible press coverage and third-party endorsements build trust (92% of people trust recommendations from peers over any ad), and consistent brand presentation can boost revenue by up to 23%. Web3 projects that ignore these do so at their peril. The definition your web3 marketer has for Brand or PR is likely bullshit.
- VaaSBlock research highlights the gap: In our analysis of 1,400+ Web3 press releases, we found most announcements stayed within crypto echo chambers and failed to convey real-world value. Meanwhile, our platform sees 25,000+ daily queries from users seeking credible info on Web3 projects, showing huge information demand that current “marketing” isn’t fulfilling. There’s a disconnect between what projects push out and what audiences need to hear.
- The path forward: Treat Web3 marketing as real marketing. Focus on real users over speculators, measure what matters (attribution, conversion, retention), speak in plain language, and invest in trust-building for the long haul, not just the next token pump. The projects that marry Web3’s community ethos with Web2’s marketing discipline will be the ones to onboard the next wave of users and survive the hype cycles. Start hiring more intelligent people in your company, not afraid to talk to customers who have experience in commission-only sales. Ben argues that Marketing is everyone’s role in a company, especially in an early stage.
Every week, I receive questions from the Aergo community, which range from updates on AI to business practices in the cryptocurrency industry. A few weeks ago, I received a question related to “what does marketing mean,” which prompted me to share some of the research VaaSBlock has conducted while developing our products, particularly our soon-to-be-released marketing effectiveness index. After receiving positive feedback on the answer from a couple of different parties, I decided to break this research and more into a bit of an article that I hope sheds some light on what is an industry full of amateurs and scammers with little idea of what they are doing.
What Exactly Is “Web3 Marketing”?
I often ask Web3 founders to define their marketing strategy, and I’m usually met with buzzwords or blank stares. The truth is, nobody really knows what “Web3 marketing” even means – and that’s a big problem for projects that haven’t earned an RMA™ Badge yet. It’s telling that those of us who worked in the so-called Web2 era never even labeled it “Web2 marketing”; we just called it marketing. As I like to joke, people didn’t realize they were in “Web2” until Bitcoin came along and suddenly everything became “Web3” . This hype-driven rebranding has created massive confusion. If we can’t even define our approach to marketing in Web3, how can we execute it effectively?
From my perspective as both a tech marketer and a Web3 founder, I see an identity crisis. Ask ten people what Web3 marketing means, and you’ll get ten different answers. Some say it’s all about building community on Discord and Twitter. Others equate it to dropping NFTs or tokens to “drive adoption.” A few think it’s simply hiring crypto influencers to shill your project. These fragmented answers underscore a lack of shared fundamentals. There’s no common playbook – just a lot of spaghetti-on-the-wall tactics.
Meanwhile, the demand for clarity is real. At VaaSBlock, we handle over 25,000 queries a day from users, investors, and partners seeking credible information on blockchain projects. People are hungry to understand what projects are about and which ones they can trust. But if projects themselves can’t articulate their value in plain language – if their marketing is just a cloud of jargon and hype – no amount of budget or buzz will save them. In short, we’ve a messaging void in Web3, which is undermining the industry’s growth.
Hype Is Not a Strategy (Followers ≠ Users)
In the current Web3 playbook, hype often masquerades as a marketing strategy. I’ve seen startups proudly tout a Telegram group of 50,000 members or a tweet that garnered 10,000 retweets, as if those vanity metrics equate to success. Spoiler: they don’t. Followers ≠ users. You can have a Discord with tens of thousands of people hyped for an airdrop, but that doesn’t mean you have a sustainable user base. Retweets and memes do not necessarily equate to product–market fit or revenue. We’ve all witnessed the cycle: a project makes noise on crypto Twitter, token price pumps, “community” numbers swell – and then momentum evaporates. Why? Because hype-driven communities often turn out to be an illusion. If your project’s following vanishes the moment incentives dry up, you didn’t build a community – you rented an audience with a token handout. This is the community myth in Web3: the belief that social media buzz alone will translate into real-world adoption. In reality, unless those followers are genuinely invested in your product’s value, you’re just fueling a hype train with no tracks.
A glaring example is the craze over airdrops. Airdrops – giving away free tokens to drum up interest – might boost your headline numbers in the short term, but it’s fool’s gold for growth. I’ve lost count of how many teams celebrate “10k new wallets from our airdrop!” without checking how many of those wallets stick around a month later. (Hint: almost none.) An analysis of 62 major token airdrops in 2024 found that 88% of those tokens suffered significant price drops within months of launch , despite initial hype. Why? Because the vast majority of people dumped the free tokens and left. Airdrops attract mercenaries looking for a quick flip, not long-term users. Unless you integrate those incentives into a real, longer-term engagement strategy – rewarding actual usage or loyalty over time – you’re basically paying people to pay attention briefly. It’s one of the fastest ways to burn money for fake growth.
The same goes for influencer “pumps.” Yes, influencer marketing can yield impressive ROI – up to $5.78 in return for every $1 spent, according to industry benchmarks . But that’s if you do it right, by partnering with individuals who genuinely reach your target users and can authentically vouch for your product. Too often, Web3 projects rely on a handful of crypto Twitter personalities with huge followings. Many will happily take your cash to post about your token – and then move on to hyping the next project a week later. Without genuine alignment or accountability, your marketing budget ends up funding a fleeting blip of attention. It’s no surprise that founders privately lament how they spent five or six figures on influencer campaigns and saw barely a ripple in real user uptake or retention. Attention bought is not attention earned, and only earned attention translates to long-term value. Web3 projects need to stop conflating a momentary splash with sustainable traction.
Ignoring the Fundamentals: Back to Marketing 101
The irony is that while Web3 prides itself on being innovative, we keep ignoring fundamental marketing principles that traditional tech companies have mastered for decades. In the Web2 startup world, you wouldn’t launch a product without clearly defining your target customer, nailing your value proposition, and mapping out how you’ll acquire and retain users. You’d set concrete metrics – signups, activation rate, retention, revenue – and iterate your strategy based on real data. Basic Growth Marketing 101 questions like: Who exactly is our customer? What problem are we solving for them? Why is our solution 10x better than the status quo? How will we reach and support these users efficiently? These are gospel in traditional marketing plans.
Web3 teams, by contrast, often skip this homework entirely. They go straight from “we have cool decentralized tech” to “let’s farm engagement on Twitter.” I’ve seen projects launch without a clear answer as to who their product is for or why it’s needed – beyond “because blockchain.” They assume the novelty of Web3 is a substitute for articulating real-world value. It’s not. If anything, we need to explain our value more clearly because the concepts are new and complex. Yet I’ve read whitepapers and websites so dense with blockchain jargon that they seem written for VCs or protocol geeks, not for everyday users. Terms like “composable trustless liquidity layer” abound, but the documents never plainly say what the user actually gets or why it matters. If I, someone who spends all day in this space, have to reread your pitch three times to understand it, how do you think a newcomer feels? Confused users don’t convert. It’s that simple: clarity sells, confusion repels.
And yet, clarity is scarce. In a review my team conducted of over 1,400 Web3 press releases and announcements, we found a troubling pattern: most were riddled with buzzwords and lacked tangible proof points. They talked about “revolutionizing finance” or “next-gen infrastructure” but offered no evidence of actual traction – no user growth stats, no real customer stories, not even quotes from partners or early adopters. In traditional tech PR, a startup announcing a milestone would at least mention, say, growth metrics or a case study (“10,000 users joined our platform in 6 months,” or “Acme Corp implemented our solution and saw 50% efficiency gain”). In Web3, too many press releases are content-free victory laps. It’s preaching to the choir, full of language that only insiders appreciate, with no attempt to bridge the understanding gap for outsiders. No wonder mainstream audiences (and non-crypto investors) remain skeptical – they hear grand claims but see few credible signals of real-world value or trustworthiness.
Worse, Web3 startups often forego the basic tools and processes of marketing. Web2 marketers live and die by their analytics dashboards – they can tell you exactly how many users clicked on their ad, how many signed up, how many purchased, and how those numbers vary by channel or cohort. They track customer acquisition cost (CAC), conversion rates at each funnel stage, and lifetime value (LTV). They run A/B tests on landing pages and messaging. In short, they treat growth as a science. In Web3, I’ve asked teams about their user analytics and gotten blank looks or answers like, “We have a lot of Telegram members and decent engagement on Discord.” That’s not a metric – that’s anecdote. It provides zero insight into how your product is actually performing. We need to start treating user growth in Web3 with the same rigor. Set up proper analytics (there are privacy-preserving ways to do this). Track how many people who connect a wallet actually become active users a week later. Instrument your dApp or website to see where users drop off. If you run a marketing campaign, use unique referral links or on-chain promo codes to gauge what actually drove new users. Right now, too many projects are flying blind, throwing tactics at the wall and hoping something sticks – without measuring if anything truly does.
The PR & Trust Gap
One fundamental piece of the puzzle that Web3 projects consistently overlook is public relations and trust-building. There’s a notion in our industry that posting incessantly on Twitter and pushing out updates on a Medium blog is “good enough” for marketing and PR. It isn’t. Traditional companies understand the power of earned media – getting credible, independent outlets or influencers to talk about your project in a positive light. That kind of coverage has authority. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know (word-of-mouth) above any form of advertising . In other words, what others say about you carries far more weight than what you say about yourself. Good PR leverages this by securing third-party validation: press articles, analyst reports, YouTube reviews, even community bloggers – voices that are not on your payroll – highlighting your successes or thought leadership.
Web3 teams often don’t go down that road. Instead, many rely on services like Chainwire or paid press release blasts that syndicate content to crypto news sites. I hate to break it to them, but that’s not real PR – that’s advertising in press release clothing. Sure, your announcement might appear on 50 crypto websites via a newswire, but readers (and Google) can tell it’s essentially a sponsored post. It doesn’t convince people in the same way a genuine piece of journalism or an organic community discussion would. As PR expert Francis Bea aptly noted, if you’re just publishing your press releases on Newswire or Chainwire, you’re not really building any trust or credibility . It’s preaching to the same crypto choir, with zero impact on the broader market’s perception. Real PR means earning coverage, which usually requires having a compelling story and reaching out through the right channels, not just paying for placement.
That’s why we created the Transparency Score — so outsiders can verify facts, not hype.
I recall a discussion on our podcast where we contrasted Web3 PR with traditional Web2 tech PR. The difference was stark. In Web2, even early-stage startups work the PR angle: they pitch story ideas to journalists, they issue press releases sparingly (only when there’s actual news), they speak on industry panels, they contribute op-eds to trade publications. It’s all about crafting a narrative and getting respected third parties to carry that narrative forward. In Web3, by contrast, many projects either don’t bother with PR beyond the crypto bubble, or they approach it in a very one-dimensional way (e.g., only doing announcements on crypto news sites). The result is an echo chamber. Projects become “famous” in a small Twitter niche, but ask an average person or investor outside that niche if they’ve heard of it – often the answer is no. In an industry built on decentralization of trust, we’re oddly missing opportunities to build trust with the public through basic PR efforts.
Another closely related gap is brand building. I get it: the crypto market moves at breakneck speed, and many founders think brand work is a luxury for later. But skipping it is hurting them. Branding isn’t just your logo or tagline – it’s the coherent story and reputation that people associate with your project. If one month you’re positioning yourself as a DeFi game-changer, the next month pivoting to AI, and the subsequent rebranding entirely after a token swap, you’re eroding any identity you had. Good brands stick in people’s minds because of consistency. In fact, studies show that consistent brand presentation across all channels can increase revenue by up to 23% (a Lucidpress study underscored this), largely because consistency builds trust and familiarity. Web3 projects are often anything but consistent – their messaging changes with the market winds, their communities get whiplash from constant rebrands and narrative shifts. This is no way to build confidence. Imagine if Airbnb one week, started calling itself a “travel token ecosystem” and the next week pivoted back to home rentals – users would flee. Yet in Web3, we see analogous behavior regularly, and it undermines credibility.
At VaaSBlock, our mission revolves around credibility in the blockchain space. We’ve seen firsthand how projects that establish trust with their audience can weather storms that leave hype-driven projects in shambles. Trust is earned gradually and can be lost quickly. Every touchpoint with your audience – your marketing messages, your community management, your product performance, your customer support – feeds into your trust bank account. If your marketing is all sizzle and no steak, that bank account is going to be overdrawn when the speculative frenzy cools off. On the other hand, if you communicate transparently, set realistic expectations, and deliver on your promises, you accumulate goodwill. That goodwill is what sustains communities through bear markets and what gives projects longevity. It’s no coincidence that the Web3 companies quietly gaining users year over year are the ones focusing on education, support, and genuine engagement, rather than just flashy announcements. Trust is the real currency in marketing, especially in an industry fighting an uphill battle for legitimacy.
Bridging Web2 and Web3 Marketing: The Way Forward
How do we solve this Web3 marketing identity crisis? It starts by fusing the best of both worlds: combining Web3’s innovative, community-driven approach with Web2’s strategic marketing rigor. In other words, good marketing is good marketing, whether it’s for a SaaS app or a decentralized protocol. Here are a few shifts we must make to elevate Web3 marketing into a disciplined, effective practice:
Put Strategy Before Tactics: Before spending a dime on promotions or stunts, nail down the fundamentals. Who is your target user really? (“Crypto enthusiasts” is too broad – segment it further). What pain point are you solving for them, and how do you explain it in one clear, compelling sentence? Why should they care about your product beyond the token going up? If you can’t answer these, pause and figure them out. Only once you have a solid positioning and message should you choose tactics (Twitter, Discord, paid ads, influencer campaigns, etc.). Strategy is the horse; tactics are the cart.
Treat Community as an Outcome, Not a Shortcut: By all means, grow your Twitter and Discord followings – but remember, a follower count is a starting point, not the end goal. The true measure of community is engagement and advocacy. Ten thousand followers who occasionally like your posts mean little if none become users or evangelists. Focus on quality of community interaction: are members asking thoughtful questions, helping each other, contributing content? Foster that by providing value – educational content, AMAs with your team, sneak peeks at your roadmap, in-person meetups. If you view community as earned via delivering value (rather than bought via giveaways), you’ll cultivate genuine supporters who stick with you. The strongest communities in Web3 (and Web2) formed around products that solved real problems and listened to their users.
Measure What Matters: Ditch the vanity metrics and start tracking actionable metrics. Define what success looks like in numbers: e.g., “We aim to have 5,000 weekly active users by Q4,” or “We want a 20% conversion rate from website visit to wallet signup.” Use analytics to see how people move through your funnel. How many website visitors actually connect a wallet or create an account? Of those, how many perform at least one meaningful action (transaction, game played, etc.)? What’s your retention after 7 days, 30 days? If you run a campaign on Twitter vs. a campaign on Reddit, which brings higher quality users? These are the kind of metrics growth marketers track daily. Web3 might require some custom tooling to get this data, but make the investment. If you’re not measuring, you’re marketing in the dark. And when the lights come on, you might find you were celebrating the wrong numbers all along.
Leverage PR and Third-Party Credibility: Make it a priority to get your story told outside your own Twitter feed. Craft pitches for tech journalists or general business media about the real-world problem you’re solving – many will be interested if you avoid crypto buzzwords and focus on tangible impacts. Secure opportunities to speak on podcasts, panels, and webinars (not just crypto ones, but adjacent industries too). When you do announce news, consider using a PR professional or service that actually reaches reporters, not just auto-posts to random sites. The goal is to earn mentions in contexts that carry weight. A single genuine article in a respected publication or a shout-out from a big YouTuber who loves your app can do more for credibility than 100 self-published Medium posts. Remember, PR is often about playing the long game – you might not see a huge user spike overnight, but each third-party mention builds your project’s public profile and trustworthiness. It’s the accumulated effect of multiple credibility signals that will make a newbie comfortable to give your product a try. (In PR, some use metrics like Advertising Value Equivalency to estimate what a piece of earned media would have cost as an ad – while imperfect, it underscores how valuable genuine coverage or word-of-mouth really is relative to paid ads).
Learn from Successful “Web2.5” Campaigns: Some projects and brands have already cracked the code by blending Web3 tech with Web2 marketing savvy. For example, when Reddit introduced millions of users to blockchain-based avatars, they never marketed it as NFTs or Web3 – they talked about “collectible avatars” and the fun of owning a unique piece of Reddit art. The result: over 3 million Reddit users created crypto wallets (likely without even realizing it) to claim these avatars. That’s mainstream adoption without shouting “blockchain” from the rooftops. The lesson for Web3 marketers is to meet users where they are. Use familiar terms and highlight benefits, not tech. If your dApp can save users money or time, lead with that – not with how many TPS your chain has or what consensus algorithm you use. Consider partnering with Web2 platforms or communities to pilot your product in a context that’s comfortable for newbies. The future isn’t about Web3 versus Web2 marketing – it’s about hybrid approaches that bring the masses in smoothly.
Align Incentives for Long-Term Engagement: It’s time to rethink the quick-hit token incentives. Instead of one-off airdrops that bring in freeloaders, design growth programs that reward longevity. For instance, you could reward users with tokens or perks for reaching milestones: 1 month of continuous usage, referring a friend who becomes an active user, contributing quality content to the community, etc. This way, you’re still leveraging tokens to incentivize growth, but tying the reward to actions that create value in your ecosystem. If you already did an airdrop, consider follow-up campaigns that re-engage those users (maybe the next tranche of tokens unlocks only if they perform certain in-app actions over time). The key is to think beyond the initial “pop” and bake retention into your tokenomics or marketing spend. Not only will this yield a more loyal user base, it will also give you a better story to tell: instead of bragging about how many wallets showed up on day 1 (only to disappear), you can brag about how your average user sticks around far longer than the industry norm – a much more impressive feat.
Professionalize Your Marketing Operations: Lastly, invest in marketing talent and infrastructure. This might sound self-evident, but in Web3’s tech-centric culture, marketing is often an afterthought – sometimes literally one person wearing 10 hats. If you’re serious about growth, bring in people who know marketing inside-out and are excited about Web3. This could involve hiring an experienced CMO or growth lead, or engaging a marketing agency with proven results in the tech sector. Importantly, integrate them into your core team’s decision-making. Marketing shouldn’t be a silo or a service department; it should be shaping product direction and user experience in tandem with engineering. Also, equip them with the right tools – whether that’s CRM software, analytics platforms, or community management systems. A marketer without tools is like a developer without an IDE. Show the same respect to the craft of marketing that we (rightly) show to the craft of building decentralized tech. When you do, you’ll find that marketing is not just about “promoting” what you’ve built – it will actually help you build better products, because you’ll be constantly in tune with user feedback and market needs.
Conclusion: No More Excuses
The next wave of Web3 adoption – the one that actually brings in mainstream users – won’t be won by doing more of the same flashy, short-sighted marketing antics. It will be driven by projects that marry the decentralized ethos of Web3 with the strategic discipline of traditional marketing. It’s not a choice between being hype-driven or being data-driven; between being community-focused or strategy-focused. The winners will be both. They’ll harness community energy and rigorously measure the impact of that energy on their business. They’ll use tokens and storytelling, memes and metrics.
I’m optimistic we can get there, because I’ve started to see the shift. More founders are waking up to the idea that bear markets are the best time to build brand and community trust. More Web3 marketers are discussing retention and LTV, not just Telegram statistics. And the data doesn’t lie: our industry’s experiments have shown what doesn’t work (e.g. mercenary airdrops), and forward-thinking teams are adjusting accordingly. The bottom line is becoming clear: hype fades, but trust endures. If you want to be here for the next cycle (and the one after that), you need to invest in the latter.
As someone who’s straddled both worlds – the Web2 marketing trenches and the Web3 frontier – I have a simple plea to my fellow builders: take marketing seriously. Treat it as core to your project’s success, not as an afterthought. Define it, plan it, fund it, staff it, and execute it with the same passion and precision as you do your smart contracts or protocol design. The projects that do this will not only acquire more users in the short run – they’ll build the kind of resilience and community loyalty that money can’t buy. They’ll be the ones still standing tall when the speculative dust clears.
Web3 is poised to revolutionize industries and empower users. But we won’t get there if we can’t communicate why it matters in a way that resonates. Our innovations won’t speak for themselves – it’s on us to tell the story. So let’s stop winging it. No more excuses. It’s time to elevate “Web3 marketing” from a buzzword into a real, respected practice that will carry our industry forward. The technology deserves nothing less, and frankly, neither do the users. Let’s tell the world what we’re building – and let’s tell it right.
