# The difference between marketing in Web2 vs. in Web3 By [Nicole Wong](https://paragraph.com/@littledegen) · 2022-03-31 --- ### I struggled to find materials out there that clearly outlined the differences between marketing in web2 and marketing in web3. So here’s are some of my learnings for marketers that are considering a career shift from web2 to web3. As I fell deeper and deeper in the rabbit hole of web3, I constantly caught myself thinking about what transferrable skills and experience I have that I could bring into the world of marketing in web3. At this point, I knew nothing about marketing in Web3, what it entailed, whether it was different. The space intimidated me with all the acronyms, all the crypto bros talking about the technicalities of the different chains, but I thought marketing could not be THAT different could it? I knew the primary social media channels were a little different – Discord, Twitter, Reddit, Twitch but that was about it until I got my hands dirty in web3. ### Here’s what I’ve learnt: 1\. Stay flexible when it comes to branding 🎢 ---------------------------------------------- **In web3, your community is your boss.** They pretty much call the shots. Brands in web2 begin by setting a long term vision for the brand, crafting an extensive strategy to effectively build out the brand story and creating a brand guideline that they will then follow for an extended period of time. This logic is the same in web3, until you recruit your first members of your community. From then on, the power is in the hand of the community. They’re the ones who will define and determine how the brand will evolve over time. Because web3 companies are all about transparency where founders keep the community in the loop every step of the way. There will be constant user feedback and suggestions that can steer the narrative of the brand. Brands who are stuck in their ways will see members leaving the community. Therefore, it’s important to have the ability to take a step back, to think again, and have the strength to steer away from the original plan. 2\. Community building is your vehicle for growth 📈 ---------------------------------------------------- In web2, we always talk about brands with a “cult following”. That’s is the same in web3. A web2 marketer’s most transferrable skill in web3 is **community building**. Your goal as a marketer is to grow your community by turning the passive audience who only consumes content into active audiences who are willing to become your brand ambassadors. Your community is your vehicle of growth. They act as a viral marketing machine that will accelerate the growth of your community, when they believe in the brand. This is where our strength in crafting meaningful stories also come into play. With aspirational story telling, where we talk about the future that we can build together, what we can accomplish together, the problems we can solve together, we create **a desire for association**. It’s the story that gives the brand life and purpose, attract people who resonate with the goals, become a part of your tribe, then advocate for it. Remember, community is one of the biggest utility of a brand – so that’s how important building a strong and tight-knit community is. **Utility** = USP (Unique Selling Proposition) 💰 ------------------------------------------------- “Utility” is a word that is thrown around a lot in web3. To translate it into web2 terms, its your brand’s USP (Unique Selling Point). What are your product benefits, what are the community benefits that you customers will be able to enjoy? These are the ‘hooks’ of your brand, one of the key reasons why people would buy into a project. With the growing in number of rug pulls, people will get better at spotting false utilities over time, empty claims that brands aren’t able to execute on. Therefore, the ability to succinctly communicate the utilities of a brand is essential. You need to be able to convince the audience that this project is better than the sea of projects out there for specific reasons. KYC (Know Your Community) without cookies 🍪 /tools 🛠 ------------------------------------------------------ As a digital marketer, the success of my marketing strategies have always been determined by KPIs such as likes, comments, shares, engagement rates, click through rates. Web2 created countless platforms to help track our audiences, so we could optimize our strategies based on their every click. We marketers scrambled when ios blocked cookies – we didn’t know how to do our jobs anymore. There’s none of that in Web3. In web3 users are identified by their wallets (most of them even own more than one wallet). They’re no longer identified through their emails and names, therefore, we would not be able to use any the tools that we have our hands on in web2 – cookies, tracking tools, a/b testing. We can no longer our customers as data points in web3. We have to learn about them the organic way – by interacting, listening and speaking to them, learning about them from a distance of an arm (or a discord conversation). There’re no short cuts. Forget about paid reach. **It’s au naturel baby~ 🌱** ----------------------------------------------------- One of the biggest ‘cultural shocks’ I encountered when I dipped my feet into web3 marketing was that traditional social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter have all banned paid marketing related to crypto/NFTs. Though there have been claims that companies have been able to bypass the restrictions through a complicated application process, but the process can take up to weeks. Facebook recently updated its regulations to allows NFT related ads (crypto related ones are still banned), but it’s important to keep in mind that web3 came to be as a boycott towards web2 companies. By placing ads on social platforms, we are benefiting these web2 corporations. Sure, its is a great way to increase reach, but without the said cookies and tracking tools how easy is it for us to reach the right target? It’s not. We can no longer pay for eyeballs in web3. In this world, the **quality of reach is way more important than quantity of reach**. To build a strong and successful community, we must ensure that our content are reaching individuals that would resonate with our brand/our project to make them want to join the community. Organic leads are always of better quality than paid leads because the person that clicked “follow” had an _intrinsic desire_ to follow your content. They’re the ones that will become one of your _100 true fans_. 🏃‍♂️Reactive marketing > Planned marketing 🗓 ---------------------------------------------- In web2, we’re all about planned marketing – campaigns, content calendars, content pillars. These things may be useful to have in place when a brand is starting out to get the messaging out there. But be ready to throw those things out and switch gears when your community tells you they’re interested in something else. Always-on marketing strategy? Web3 marketing is truly ALWAYS-ON, like 24/7 on. Be prepared. Crypto trades through out the day, so conversations in the space continues throughout the day, around the world. There’s no stopping. Things can change without seconds so it requires you to be on top and monitoring the conversations 24/7. Web3 give us marketers a chance to really connect with our audience. We had to rely on tools to ‘listen’ to our audiences in web2, but in web3, everyone’s so active and vocal. So we have the opportunity to see their reactions right away and react to them on a timely manner. ### Last tip: The quickest way to get a grasp in web3 marketing is experiencing it and exploring it yourself. Happy digging! 🕳🐇 --- *Originally published on [Nicole Wong](https://paragraph.com/@littledegen/the-difference-between-marketing-in-web2-vs-in-web3)*