Growth Marketing in the Web 3.0 Age – Stop Treating Your Community as Customers

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What comes to your mind when you hear ‘Web 3.0’? A mere few months ago, the most common answer was ‘crypto,’ but now the public sentiment has changed toward ‘decentralization’ and ‘privacy.’

From payment to art, from social networks to decentralized computing, projects like Binance, OpenSea, Lens Protocol and Ethereum transform how we interact with the internet.

Today, the Web 3.0 ethos offers more equality and increased control over personal data for the user than ever.

Still, we often overlook the shift in how businesses are organized and administered. After all, we are in an all-encompassing paradigm shift, and marketers should consider that when planning campaigns.

So, what is the fundamental difference between attracting Web 2.0 customers and active members of a Web 3.0 product community?

Putting community before the product

If Web 2.0 businesses used to fully develop and test the product before offering it to customers, this concept became obsolete in the Web 3.0 space.

Today, firms and protocols favor attracting early adopters, distributing ownership through native tokens and retaining supporters until the final development stage.

Of course, the specifics of growth models differ – after all, Web 3.0 has both centralized companies like Binance and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) like Uniswap – but the common practice remains the same. Nowadays, many businesses don’t have a final product from the start.

As a result, a Web 3.0 community must be active and have a clear vision of a project’s long-term goals and missions.

Otherwise, a lack of engagement and a non-transparent roadmap will cause low retention rates.

For a company that is likely to be launched long before even the prototype is ready, this means not only a declining customer base for the final product – but sometimes even a complete shutdown due to a lack of financing and public support.

Changing the way we communicate

So, how do we engage a Web 3.0 community? Make it a part of the movement. Present your feed as a never-ending interactive show and collect reactions and raise your followers to the rank of co-creators.

We need more than just streaming company news one way, or your community will grow emotionally detached and disinterested in the project.

Rather, aim to transform a long and tedious development process into history in the making. Tell a story.

Share why the moments they witness matter and inspire interaction. Conduct polls on strategic decisions, and collect dynamic feedback. In other words, activate your community members.

A good metric to use here is the engagement rate – the ratio of active members to the whole community.

It’s normal to have a small percentage of those who take part in the activities. Make sure you reward them and keep them engaged.

Remember – the active minority helps you make community life interesting for the silent majority to watch.

As far as the influencers go, get a couple – but solid – supporters. The competition is high, but as influencers are a part of multiple communities, they will onboard to yours if values, mission and vibe align.

Partnerships and integrations play a crucial part in Web 3.0.

The more liquid the community is – meaning, the more users can interact with various DApps and protocols staying within your community – the stronger your community becomes.

Fine-tuning tokens

Native tokens are the groundbreaking novelty of Web 3.0 products. When someone buys a token, he becomes a shareholder, developer and partner of the project.

Hence, it’s in their best interest to support the product, and they should be compensated.

Correctly fine-tuning the token is extremely difficult but also beneficial – from tokenomics determining the distribution schedule to outlining the utility and associated governance rights.

For example, token owners can be allowed to vote for the company’s future and use the tokens for in-app purchases and other purposes.

All of these introduce a monetary aspect to the interrelationship between your community and your project and attract additional attention.

Tokens also make a perfect reward for your active users – nurturing the engagement of the top 100 will have a ripple effect and can become the traction force for your whole community.

Leveraging resilient marketing

Marketing strategies in Web 2.0 and the associated growth loops were all about data, social graphs and targeting.

In Web 3.0, this is no longer feasible by design – personal data belongs to the user, and on-chain transactions are pseudonymous.

While collaboration with Web 3.0 community building and growth marketing platforms can help achieve slightly more specialized data by knowing users’ ENS and their on-chain activity, this is still far from the conventional Web 2.0 marketing accuracy.

Furthermore, in the current volatile Web 3.0 market environment, funding for marketing is limited.

To summarize, it’s become more important than ever to bootstrap growth through community-driven campaigns.

Not only will this significantly increase your organic growth and lower the cost per acquisition but also help build a network of loyal supporters and future customers.

Olga Kazmina, a founder of Zero1Team, and a senior growth strategist with over 10 years in driving user growth of fintech and IT startups and consumer brands.

Featured Image: Shutterstock/Sergj