FOMO is a one-time event, while product adoption is a long-term commitment.
Before we officially begin, let’s take a step back and ponder one question: what do DeFi farmers want?
When evaluating marketing strategy, we can simply look at the big picture and then discover what users want. Therefore, we build the user journey map by addressing user concerns before moving to the next step.
-APY/APR to your current position
-Rewards in stables or native tokens
-Sufficient buffer to avoid liquidation
– Consumes time and effort
-Gas charges and exchange fees
-Easy navigation
– Smooth onboarding flow (wallet, swap, bridge, portfolio tracking)
-Contract security
-Pull carpet
-Bank run risk
-Log narratives
-Market and potential
-Team background
-Open source code
-Call from VC
-Ecosystem resources
-Visibility of the project
-Partnership and accessibility
-Token distribution and issuance
-Token Utility
-Token Liquidity
stage 1
Main task: Building content assets and social assets from day 0
Finding product-market fit is always the key to building a new product. If you are looking for real protocol/product users, content marketing and community building are the best levers to do effective marketing on an affordable budget. You can imagine all the documents, files and even instant communication in your community selling your product to the public. How would you prefer the introduction then?
content marketing
Crypto is a typical content-driven space. Identify how users are getting value from your product, what is yield in the DeFi space. Add a tick to explain how your protocol maximizes user returns by responding to likely skepticism with a bold claim. Once the value props are set, it’s important to work out the mechanics behind the scenes and know that your users understand where the returns are coming from. All in all, Twitter and Medium are the main platforms where you can use your writing skills to effectively influence the DeFi community.
Acquisition Channels: Twitter, Gitbook, Medium, Youtube
community house
Community assets can help drive awareness, acceptance, and engagement. Building a clear, systematic, and rewarding community guild is key in the early stages. Manage the starting/early members and guide them to produce organic UGC content. Also, Founder is the best community manager; talks to users, answers their questions, identifies, executes, and improves user needs.
Acquisition Channel: Discord, Telegram
security protection
Security is the most important factor when it comes to DeFi. Hiring a third-party security company to review your code is a fundamental step. Multi-sig of smart contracts also introduces decentralization and alleviates the worry of being dragged onto the rug. Launching a bug bounty program helps engage the border DeFi community in security efforts, especially in white hat cases.
Security companies: Trait of Bits, OpenZepperlin, Quanstamp, Certik, etc
Community Audit Platform: Core4rena, Sherlock
Bug Bounty Platform: Github, ImmuniFi
Once the solid foundation of content and social resources is in place, it’s time to move on to the next phase: get the word out.
stage 2
Main task: Execution of the acquisition strategy
Partnership Synergize
Maintaining important relationships with many prominent projects across the space can help you gain many benefits including, but not least, new users, visibility and credibility. It usually has protocol/product level features (security support, use of LP tokens) so you can pull users directly from existing user pool tested by your partners.
Honestly, this is the primary acquisition channel in crypto. Some projects choose to do the public sale with the CEX/DEX launchpad before launch so that the token can be partially distributed and attract attention. However, this may be coupled with CEX/DEX listing and MM on the secondary market for overall ideal effects. When it comes to projects that are about to debut without a token, leveraging the partnership/integration would be an effective weapon.
Reference: Benqi on Avalanche
Viral campaign/UGC management
Finding the jewel (alpha) in crypto is the universal meme and good marketers should put this to good use. Expectations can be manipulated. Early adopter campaign, OG NFT, testnet users and first LP are at the top of the reward list in building a brand new community. There are many ways (e.g., meme contests, content challenges, trade contests, ambassador programs) to encourage the community to follow your social log, interact with the log, and even refer their friends to join the game .
NFT platforms: POAP, Project Galaxy
Community platform: Gitcoin, Layer3
Influencer Marketing Strategy
Compared to Web2, Web3 and crypto are far too niche at the moment. Instead of TV and billboards, users rely heavily on the content creators on Twitter and Youtube. Working with legitimate influencers in the sectors (NFT, DeFi, GameFi, CEX) your project specializes in would increase your exposure, create valuable content for targeting audiences from the 3rd party dependencies, and then improve overall brand equity.
Geographically, English-speaking countries/regions would undoubtedly gain ground, while regional countries like China, Russia, Japan, and Vietnam are among the most active users of cryptocurrencies. Executing the KOL strategy can be hugely effective – add as much value to the TVL from the start.
SEO Optimization
Google search accounts for a significant part of where these users are coming from. It is a typical behavior of crypto users that they would do their own research via Google. It is important what brand image you want to convey with it and how convincingly the message is conveyed by the Google index.
Solution: Keyword optimization, serious media coverage, own media operation
By now, you should have a clear launch strategy for the show.
stage 3
Main task: triggering the positive usage cycle
Attractive APY for product acceptance and arbitrage opportunities
APR/APY is variable, but for DeFi users it is a significant signal. Many projects are embarking on aggressive liquidity mining programs to seed and inject 3-digit APY into asset pairs to boost initial liquidity. However, it is worth considering the balance between emissions and rewards to avoid a death spiral once liquidity mining ends.
Reference: Benqi on Avalanche, Aave on Polygon
The protocol leverages bAsset rewards to catalyze a virtuous cycle: subsidies incentivize new stablecoin deposits, lower the borrowing rate, which incentivizes more bAsset-backed lending and allows more bAsset rewards to be collected.
Establishment of the TVL Foundation
TVL is the #1 metric in DeFi, and an ever-growing TVL chart lends itself to long-term projects as you know exactly where your users are coming from and gradually increase the numbers. Building TVL (e.g. $10M for a new project) can bring more opportunity and trust to the wider audience, leading to a healthy cycle. There are also some useful tracking websites, DeFi yield charts, and wallet management to encourage growth during the new users’ onboarding journey.
Integrations: DeFillama, Coindix, Debank, Zapper.
hold shipping
Launch is just the beginning and it is important to provide a roadmap to drive the hype ranging from product features, token ignition and partnerships to community grants. Integrating the launch strategy with good metrics into a good narrative to get more collaborative opportunities. Rather than just hearing about the launch, the community is hoping for a successful story. At this point, a large amount of traffic and users usually pours in.
Promotions: Flash news, content creator release, media mention/feature
Final Thoughts
Web3 is a for-profit space and DeFi has always struggled for APY, but how to bring competitive, safe and sustainable yield farming products to the market will determine how much liquidity you can invest. FOMO is a one-time event, while product adoption is a long-term commitment.
Bottom up!
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