The web3 marketing stack 🧱

Hello!

Welcome to "note to self" #4 focused on marketing in web3 💻

If you haven't already, join other readers in understanding how web3 is changing marketing and our future by subscribing below:

Today we're discussing the web3 marketing/growth stack. Let's dig in 🍽

Web3 marketing stack - an overview

As discussed in my initial newsletter, marketing in web3 has the potential to be different.

For those that don't know, a marketing stack is a collection of technologies that are used by marketers in order to pursue their marketing activities. Anonymity, communication, and tokens mean behavioral patterns in web3 differ, and this means that the marketing stack will differ.

A traditional marketing stack may look something like this for b2b saas. Here's the Intercom marketing stack. As shown, different tools are utilised depending on what stage of the funnel the customer is at.

What does web3 mean for the marketing stack?

Integrations or partnerships, user ownership or community, and token-driven growth pools will likely be key elements of future growth strategies.

1. Partnerships

Business development deals are nothing new but when negotiated through permissionless partnerships ( FeiRari merge ) things can look different. For example, projects with a native token may partner with a decentralised exchange ( DEX ) to increase additional liquidity.

2. Loyalty

Companies have focused on driving loyalty amongst their users in the form of retention, and in web3, companies can focus on driving user ownership and community too. As the role of the individual in value creation, for example on YouTube, becomes more common, the next step is towards ownership by these individual value creators.

Alongside this, an engaged community can allow companies to leverage this community, whether engaging on a Twitter space or inviting others to engage on Discord.

3. Growth loops

Liquidity mining is "a network participation strategy in which a user provides capital to a protocol in return for that protocol’s native token." In web3, protocols can bootstrap their growth using their own native token. The focus traditionally has been utilising repeatable growth loops, but in web3 native tokens are utilised to drive growth loops.

The web3 growth stack may partly look like this.

Growth in web3 - a mental framework.

Redpoint VC Tomasz Tunguz created this great web3 marketing stack mental model.

Elaborating on the model briefly, analytics differ in some regards, and new questions such as Discord and token metrics will need to be answered. Analytics is the force behind segmentation.

Campaigns consist of airdrops on ad networks through messaging based on your project. Airdrops into wallets must be done with permission. Ad networks will use public wallet information to target users. NFTs, governed by smart contracts, reward users for engaging with ads or subscribing, with token drops ( airdrops ) or other on-chain benefits.

Public wallet information can be used to target potential users. Users will be rewarded by interacting with ads.

Publishers receive their fees through attribution software. Attribution will connect ad impressions to on-chain purchases - on-chain data is public, allowing end-to-end cost per acquisition (CPA) ads, which maximize the return for advertisers.

There is still innovation and augmentation required in this model. I think a component missing is community-activated marketing through engagement strategies. Brands will also need to open up their minds for content creators to contribute to stretching their positioning, reach, and equity.

In other news: 📰

-> District of Columbia Attorney General sues MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor for tax evasion.

-> Opensea NFT volume down by 99% since May.

-> Blog/Pod/Video of the week: Creating Content Communities by Unusual Ventures Partner Andy Johns

-> A reminder: The merge is coming!

Spotlight💡: Mesha

What: Mesha helps web3 teams simplify their finance operations.

Why: Blockchain data is public but it's not easy to track and measure your financial progress in the absence of more sophisticated accounting and finance tools. Mesha is building tools for web3 teams to manage payroll, real-time financial monitoring, cash budgeting, forecasting, and expense management via the first corporate crypto credit cards for web3 teams!

Who: Tahem Verma ( co-founder ) and Gaurav Chaturvedi ( co-founder )

Check them out!

Thank you Rohit of Mesha for his contribution this week.

Next time: ⏭️

Next week I will discuss marketing in a post-cookie world, where less third-party tracking exists.

Have a great weekend!

Harry Arkwright