The most commonly known words associated with Web3 are Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and NFTs. To some, these terms are still unknown terrain, and to others common standards. In the last decade, a whole industry has established itself and is currently challenging and changing many aspects of our daily lives. There is one common denominator for both newcomers and industry experts, and it’s called Web3 marketing. Without diving into too much detail, marketing and advertising in Web3 has been present for a while but recently reached a stage that has opened up a whole new industry with a reach beyond Web3. In this article, we will dive into why this is the case and how it could (contribute to the next wave of adoption) help founders to enhance their user acquisition.
Looking at the current state of marketing, Web2 marketing has become an integral part of today’s business landscape, and it’s hard to imagine what it’s like without it. Nevertheless, its presence has lost its effect for many reasons. High competition, ad blindness, ad blocking, algorithms, and closed ecosystems aka data-silos make it hard for founders to incentivise and engage their target audience. Web3 marketing, on the other hand, takes a different approach and tackles the afore-mentioned issues associated with Web2 marketing. Instead of speaking to the masses, it has a user-centric approach, leveraging whole ecosystems instead of data silos, sharing ownership and value, and offering unique experiences. Thanks to the underlying technology, companies, founders, and marketers can now better understand target groups ( due to bi-directional engagements ) allowing for cost effective business growth with an improved customer retention. In the next sections, we will cover the differences between Web2 and Web3 marketing and point out why the latter helps founders to get a better grip of its customers.
What is Web2 marketing?
Web 2.0 marketing refers to the use of interactive web-based platforms and social media to promote products or services online. Common Web 2.0 marketing tactics include creating engaging social media content, building online communities around a brand, using influencer marketing, leveraging user-generated content, and utilizing targeted online advertising. Overall, Web 2.0 marketing focuses on building a strong online presence, fostering customer engagement, and creating valuable interactions with customers to drive business growth.
How does Web3 marketing differ?
A good way to understand the difference between Web2 and Web3 marketing is to compare their marketing mixes. Web2 marketing is not user-centric and is instead geared towards the masses with little incentives to engage. Web3 marketing is user-centric, aimed at building customer relationships and interactions and reciprocal value creation. The relationship is fostered by shared ownership, exclusivity, culture, and incentives.
One of the reasons for the above-mentioned differences is the technological limitation of Web2. While Web2 could be categorized as one-directional engagement, where the customer is mostly limited to receiving information, Web3 enables customers to engage with their brands. See below for the differences in Web 1, 2, and 3.
How can Web3 marketing solve the issues of Web2 Marketing?
Web3 marketing presents a number of exciting opportunities for businesses, founders, and marketers to differentiate themselves from the more traditional Web2 marketing approaches. Here are some of the biggest opportunities:
- Decentralization: Web3 is built on decentralized technologies, which can provide greater transparency and security in marketing activities. This can be particularly important for areas like data privacy, ad fraud prevention, and consumer trust.
- Immersive experiences: Web3 technologies like virtual and augmented reality can provide more immersive and engaging experiences for consumers, allowing businesses to create more memorable and impactful marketing campaigns.
- Micropayments: Web3 technologies can facilitate micropayments and micropayments-based revenue models, such as pay-per-action or pay-per-view. This can provide greater revenue opportunities for businesses, while also giving consumers greater control over the content they consume, and earn via microtransactions.
- User ownership: Web3 enables the concept of user ownership, allowing consumers to own their data, identity, and online assets. This can create new marketing opportunities for businesses that focus on user empowerment and incentivization.
- Community building: Web3 technologies like decentralized social networks can create more engaged and invested communities around products and brands, allowing businesses to foster deeper relationships with their customers.
- Analytics: due to the transparency and data availability of blockchain technology, analytics can be leveraged across entire ecosystems. Marketers are no longer limited to their company data center and can instead access all data without jeopardizing identities.
Overall, the biggest opportunities for Web3 marketing are centered around the unique features and benefits of decentralized technologies, such as transparency, personalization, and user empowerment. Web3 marketing solves several pain points that Web2 marketing is experiencing, especially in the areas of customer engagement, loyalty, analytics, ownership, and data availability.
What more can be done?
As outlined above, Web3 marketing solves various pain points of Web2 marketing. This section charts a few use cases and examples of companies that already use the technology.
Loyalty programs:
- Personalized Rewards: In Web3, a user’s wallet-based login verifies the identity and ascertains proof-of-loyalty of a customer through an NFT issued by a brand. They then share information in return for perks such as early access or an invite to a launch event.
- Liquidity and value accrual i.e. if a loyalty program is good then it will have an intrinsic value that can be monetized/ sold.
- Insight via on-chain analysis: On-chain analysis provides detailed and real-time analytics. Marketers can access accurate metrics regarding campaign performance, conversion rates, user engagement, and customer behavior. This data is highly reliable as it is recorded directly on the blockchain and is not subject to manipulation or discrepancies. These insights enable marketers to optimize their strategies and make data-driven decisions.
- Measurement of engagement not sales: Because Web3 loyalty program members are not fungible, each has unique behavioral and spending attributes, activity levels, and redemption data. Research suggests that higher engagement loyalty program members spend 25% more than dormant members. Measuring granular engagement data through Web3 technology can offer more insights into who is active and who is not than traditional metrics like spend and member numbers.
Customer Engagement
- CaaS (community as a service): A new service geared towards building & managing communities of other companies. For example, Tribally is servicing Axie.infinity with community services, from roadmap to day-to-day operations like Discord and Telegram.
Physical utility: digital twins of real products
- Gift certificate for the redemption of real product
- Proprietary NFT-powered secondary product marketplace
Social utility
- NFTs as an access card for memberships or an invitation for events.
Digital utility
- Single branded wearables
- Multi or cross branded collaboration wearables
Conclusion
Web3 marketing is able to solve many pain points that Web2 marketing is struggling with. Centralization, closed ecosystems, data privacy issues, generic advertising, lengthy onboarding processes, data overflow, and declining user experiences make Web2 outdated in many areas. Many companies have identified this issue and begun to incorporate Web3 technologies into their portfolios to maintain a competitive advantage. Institutional demand is expected to grow since Web3 marketing tools are now easy to use for non-Web3 users. Nevertheless, the adoption will not happen all of a sudden and will take time and support from those already part of Web3. At Outlier Ventures, startups receive support in all areas related to their business. This is also the case for marketing, where the expert team is dedicated to building a community and brand identity for around their product.
This alone is a market for itself called Web2.5 where marketing just joined the club and will help to get the next billion users onboarded.
Outlier Ventures: A strong partner for your Web3 business
At Outlier Ventures, we are at the forefront of innovation and support those looking to get started in Web3. The following aspects give us the unique position to help, connect and succeed in the space.
- Our portfolio consists of companies from all areas in the Web3 space, enabling knowledge sharing, connecting, validation, and being up-to-date.
- OV offers 360-degree support to founders. Thanks to internal and external expertise we help to solve the challenges a business encounters. This ranges from legal to tech, design to marketing, token design to NFTs, investors – you name it.
- Market trends are an integral part of our day-to-day business, helping us to understand better where the next billion users will be onboarded.
- With OVs Basecamp and Ascent accelerator programs, we support pre-seed and seed-stage startups. Based on the nature of the product we offer specific support in areas like Polygon, Zero Knowledge, Aptos, IPFS, and more.
- OV actively fosters relationships with investors and partners to drive the adoption of Web3 technology and guides founders in the right direction.
- The ecosystem results from all efforts mentioned above, which is a valuable asset and contribution to the overall Web3 ecosystem.
