Maria Magenes, Ginevra Maggi, Alexander Guy - What does it even mean doing marketing in crypto?

Thank you for being here. My name is Maria. I work at BBIT. Uh follow following up, we have a panel. Uh the panel topic is about what does it even mean doing marketing in crypto.

Uh I'll be your host and I'm introducing the three speakers. First, we have Maria Machines as our moderator. She's a marketeteer and community builder behind Hype and Spaghetti. Creates events and narratives at the heart of the European crypto scene. Welcome.

Right now we have Jin Geneva Maji. She is a marketing lead at Naon EVM alum of Safari Club. You can come off the stage. Shapes web 3 GTM and growth strategies across ecosystems from Ethereum to Solana. Lastly, we have Alexander Guy.

He's head of marketing at Senon. Led user growth to 1.5 million wallets and two billion volume. specializes in multi network adoption and onchain user acquisition. Please give a warm welcome to our panel.

So should we use this? Yes. Right. Okay. So guys, thank you for being here.

You're five people. So uh I'm the moderator but also a panelist and um yeah we will chat about marketing. Actually yesterday night we went out for dinner and we we were we already talked about this and probably we will repeat the same the same topic but uh of course the even if Mar did already a great job actually to introduce us. So if do you want to say anything else about yourself? Uh or it's fine.

Let's let's introduce oursel for a second. So hi againra marketing manager at our value prop position is to bring uh projects from the EBM side to Solana without having to change their code. been in the space for a couple of years for the best four years and uh yeah, thank you for being here.

Yeah. So, I'm Alex. I was the first marketing hire at Syrian. Serion is a like basically one of the leading EVM wallets. Uh although we just launched a lot of support as well.

Um basically Zerion is mobile first. We've been like in the space for a while and I am I am I doing something wrong? Am I doing something wrong? The but basically like Zerian has uh about 500,000 monthly active users right now. We processed $2 billion in trading volume last year.

Um we have we have an exploding microphone. So yeah.

Should we use this too? I I think like maybe Alex with because maybe it's

I'm struggling with the other one. Okay. So, um, so yeah. Um, I think so. I'm Maria as as Maria.

Thank you, Maria already said, I am quite an like Alex in the space. I joined in 2018. I have been leading the five big projects from a marketing point of view like a maker uh and balancer. Now I work for an agency but I also co-ounded Spaghetti which is the Italian um Ethereum community let's say. Um so I'm very happy to be here in Napoli to talk about marketing and the first question is actually the title of the panel I think as well which is what does marketing means crypto marketing means in your opinion and how do you me measure success of marketing because we see a lot of different uh a lot of projects now for example I work with several clients and some of them ask KPIs like TVL, some of them like community um increase like community building, some of them tweet like Twitter follower base.

So what's users what what's your measure of what is the measure of success in my in crypto marketing in your opinion?

Yeah, sure. So in my opinion doing marketing in crypto is doing marketing just like traditional marketing but what happens is that the space is so early so you have to let's say experiment a lot because there is not a playbook uh and the matrix will highly depend on what you do uh but I think that a successful project is the one that focuses on retention and not only to the top of the Fanella matrix.

Yeah. So, I mean, as a wallet, like one of the things that was really when I joined four years ago at Zyion, like one of the things that was really like confusing to me coming from a web 2 background, it's like the lack of available data in terms of figuring out like who these people are, where they came from, what channel brought them in general. It was very, very, very confusing and sort of destabilizing to me. And I think it's actually been a four-year journey for us where we finally now are able to really think about this in a much more meaningful way. So I'll just talk about like the metrics that are important for me as a marketer from a wallet perspective.

Like in crypto generally the idea of like authenticity and like real users is like totally um let's say a moving target. And so for us, like what we've always tried to talk about was like when we think about a real user at the wallet level, it's somebody who's like actually put money into this wallet. So like it's not just a new wallet that's been created. It's like okay, this is a funded wallet. So we define this metric for us as a funded wallet.

So we're then thinking about new funded wallets and then we treat retention uh as like a trading wallet. So we want people to be trading. Those are the two most important metrics for us as a business. And like me as a marketer, I'm trying to drive new funded wallets and new trading wallets pretty aggressively. Now, what's still very hard for me and what's still difficult for us to say definitively is like what channel brought those new like new funded or new trading wallets cuz it's just very we lose so many different like touch points along the funnel that like it still is really difficult to say for sure.

But I know the last touch point and so I can assign some sort of attribution to channels like from the last touchpoint perspective. But in terms of the full funnel picture even four years later it's still an area where I think that like crypto marketing is lagging behind like web two at least for me.

Cool. I agree with everything you said. I I wouldn't add anything uh otherwise it boring. Um so uh I think the next questions could be uh we I think we deserve here to discuss about the new trends in crypto marketing because uh so far we have seen we have seen a lot of like all basically the crypto marketing uh done on two channels basically discord and for community and Twitter for amplification I would Uh also due to the fact that sometimes paid ads were blocked because Google blocked ads um meta also blocked a lot of ads. So we stopped using these channels even if I would say we never used them so much.

Uh there was a period where we were all on Reddit on forums writing papers. Maybe you were you were not there yet. a awful awful. Um but now now also we see we saw the emerging of onchain new channel for example len and forecaster and um also a revamp of traditional web two channels like for example paid ads or tik tok for example which is a new uh trend. So I would like to discuss this and how do you think we are evolving towards if we are following the web two path uh so like uh the 70s fashion that is back now we are doing the same with the web two marketing in web 3 or we are actually embracing new channels uh like onchain channels in my opinion I will give my opinion first we are we are copy pasting the web two stuff because it's working better and the and also I don't think contain channel are now ready to do actual marketing and also uh I don't think these channels would help us in on boarding new audience while web channels do so in my opinion we are doing the same as like yeah copy pasting the the strategies that were used in web two one year ago Maybe.

Yeah, I think I also agree on this and I think the reason is not just that they're like they perform better. So they're like proven playbooks which is something that you mentioned I think originally Maria is like you know they just aren't in crypto. Oh no it was you. Uh but the basically like to me the reason why we're sort of returning to web two channels or looking at web two channels is actually because that's where users are and like crypto has faced like a really I would say existential crisis repeatedly where we get into this echo chamber on crypto Twitter and we all talk to the same like however many million users or hundreds of thousands of users like and the reality is that like that's just a very small not growing pie honestly I've been you know talking to that same community for about 4 years and so like I they all know us, you know, and so like we've reached a point at Zerion where it's like, okay, if we want to actually grow as a business, if we want to reach new people, if we want to actually fulfill our mission, like we have to talk to people on these other channels, and I I'm not going to say this in a negative way, but like dumb down the message to like a person who's just like interested in crypto, heard about it, wanted to try it. um much more simple messaging on these channels that are much more high reaching because excuse me because if we're ever going to grow beyond like this initial bubble that we talk about from like a a communications perspective like we have to go to these channels that's that's like my opinion you know um I guess it's maybe not controversial but like it's certainly for me about the users and where they are

I agree with everything on my end working for an infrastructural project we target mainly develop ers that are already in the space. So for us, Crypto Twitter for sure stays the most relevant uh channel. When it comes to Farcaster, I don't know guys, I think that the platform needs to be uh like very user friendly and we're not there yet. Um but just to add something that something else that applies to web two I think it's going to be uh more relevant even in our space focus focusing on SEO and the G also the uh optimization also on the AI platforms this is going to help a my passing. Um, no.

Okay. Uh, and then like yeah, we talk now about channels. Okay. But let's talk about also tactics in terms of trends. Uh, so we we stepped from um lately we see a lot for example of um micro ko, microcreators I would say.

And so I think uh I would I would now talk about actually actually K because this was one of the main amplification t tactics that we use in together with quests which is the other topic that we will talk about. But KS do you think they are still relevant? And also are we shifting because in my opinion we are a bit shifting towards this micro influencer uh that can actually influence the behavior of uh of of ourselves like like for example we we did we saw last year or actually two years ago in web two. So if you think about it, we steps from paying JLo to use our product to pay a girl that is followed by, I don't know, 300K. Uh that could be my neighborhood, my neighbor.

And I feel a bit more close, you know, closer. And so I I would buy this shampoo because she use it. She's nice. I follow her. So are we doing the same or we are still relying on the big k and if so who are the big kos and are like is the ROI worth it on them?

Jeez. So this is a lot of questions. Um like I I guess like on the K side of things like one of the things that obviously has emerged from a marketer's perspective over the last like six months uh is Kaido and like the concept of like YAPS people getting compensated for talking about your product and like I think that this is like a pretty serious trap for projects frankly it can work but the only way that a K of any kind or size in my opinion is effective is if like people actually believe what that person is saying and so like if there's just a lot of people talking about a project and you know you see it they're being compensated and kind of how do you even trust like as a new user or somebody who's coming to that project or or product like new that that's actually a legitimate opinion that they have and they're not just doing it basically to be compensated and so like to me like the micro ks I think are important because they've developed a small cult following like of people who actually believe them and I think that what you see we talked about this last night actually a lot of these people basically don't want to participate in some of this this type of yapping, you know, yapping as a service or like yap saturation, whatever you want to call it, because like they're like, I don't want to pollute my feed with this. Like, if people see me doing this, they're going to stop believing what I have to say, which means they're not going to trust me as much. And so, like, to me, the the K relationship of any size that you're talking about is like trust.

Like, how are you trusting this person? How trusted are they? Um, you know, what type of channels do they operate on? Like that's the most important thing for me because like you know as a marketer in this space but I guess in every industry you're going to have like a technical founder most likely basically saying like just pay well oh just do Kaido it'll be so effective blah blah blah blah blah and like there's a lot to that right you'll get a lot of views a lot of impressions maybe a lot of clicks but in terms of staying power and like legitimate users real users like I was mentioning in terms of funded wallets like I don't I'm very suspicious um I'm very dubious of this as a concept and so like for for us at Syrian We've tried to like think, okay, how can we make like our users like really talk about us and not because they're going to be compensated, but because maybe they get like a better experience inside the product. It's like we we want to give people more for referring us because like they like our product and like they want to tell their friends about it.

That route has always felt like much more natural to me from a wallet perspective than the like yapping ko type stuff. However, you know, we we paid Ks. We've done it before for launches. I think product launches just tactically is a really good time to use Kos because you have something to say. It's like we're launching this thing, here's an offer, you know, this person is very clearly writing about it because we have paid them.

It's very transparent that the relationship is not this like fake, you know, sort of like hype kind of stuff that comes.

Yeah. It is important to say because I think that here I don't think K are dead as a channel but I think

it's very very important and very very hard to choose the right KO and not like shouting shoting in the in the crowd with random people without like without any interest in shielding your product. So these people need to be bought in by the product. So he needs to believe in the mission and they need to to you know actually know the pro the product and the project and and so this is I think this uh this is still true and it helps a lot with the like the awareness phase but then as you said uh you need to convert.

Yeah. I would also just say if you're ever going to work with Koss like they're going to give you some kind of rate and they're going to say like oh it cost like 5k to do like a Twitter post you know and you know you think a lot of times as a marketer like okay I have to basically accept that you know negotiate with these people as soon as they give you the quote tell them you're not working with them and you've chosen somebody else I swear you'll get a better deal so like just if you're if you're talking to these people most likely it's going to be done through telegram or Twitter DMs and they're just going to send you a number and I'm telling you, just negotiate them down as far as you can go because like you have a budget that somebody's going to look at at some point and like if you just go and spend like 20k on four posts, like you're not going to get the right ROI. But if you can negotiate these people down and I'm telling you there's so much they'll give you a number, they'll give you some fancy rate card.

It's like being in the market.

Yes. Yeah. Exact. It's exactly like that. It's it's the Twitter equivalent of this.

Like trust me, they will back down the second you tell them that you're going to go somewhere else. like, oh yeah, actually somebody gave me a better quote or whatever. And then I think to Maria's point about trust, like once you have somebody who is delivering for you, like keeping them in the loop, keeping them happy. And by the way, giving them offers and stuff for like non-financial things. Oh, hey, we added you to this white list.

We're doing this thing. We just added you to the white list. Like no big deal. You don't even have to post about it. They'll post about it and they'll do it for free.

So like you can just keep that relationship going by giving them the alpha after you've developed that initial like interest with them. Sorry. So I want to say that to coming back to to the questions working in my opinion yes and also in my experience is one of the most effective strategies that you can leverage but of course there are many types of Ko and many ways to reward them. H so these tactics that you implement are going to change everything. Uh, so I had a super bad uh experience with the usual that uh they just tweet about you h they don't even maybe add the link or use referral even if you have it.

So this is not going to work. But if you manage to make someone that already uses your platform

your creator your uh but this is a bit different. This is when your users become a tokens. So in that case uh it can work uh maybe with a referral program to support it. Uh for example to me it was uh working very well when we collaborated with the YouTubers that were traders and they actually brought a lot of traffic in terms of volumes on the platform because they knew what they were talking about. Yeah.

I also just tactically point of advice if you're going to talk with a with a KO, write a document that literally gives them a step-by-step guide about what you want them to do, when, what link do you want them to share, etc. And basically make them like tell them multiple times like, hey, it's going to go out at 2 p.m. This is the link you need to use, you know, like really like you you just got to spoon feed these people stuff because they have a hundred different conversations going on at once. They're trying to manage all these different campaigns.

I imagine it's challenging. So like literally create a document, share it with them, put every single thing that you need in there like and just be as clear as hell because if you just try to do like hey we've got this launch like amplify this like that's all they'll do like you won't get any value out of it. So just be like really really really clear with them. Uh, and going back to the micro influ K micro influencers, I wouldn't call them K, but for example, if you think about it, recently um our crypto Twitter timelines, um, is invaded by small creators like for example, I don't know, Migi from Son, Diana, these people that actually um are in my opinion a bit the the future like we are going towards this path again copy pasting from web two. These people could be even hired in the team like for example Diana

or Migi

or Migi but top 10 is for example standing alone but some of them are hired by by the project and they are start they start creating content spec mostly and specifically for this project and they are going all over our timeline. So maybe the influence has even more than the Kos maybe or or it's just an awareness and mind share thing but still I think they are very powerful now as a channel for the top part of the funnel uh not for the conversion probably because they just show their experience with the swag etc. But for branding and for you know brand awareness they are great. So I think the purpose is different. So Kos are for awareness and also conversion.

Um micro influencers are more for brand awareness. They serve two different part of the uh of their family. In my opinion,

I still think it depends on like what your goals are and like you know cuz like Migi is very well known to like the three of us, you know, or maybe people here. He's like he works for Son. It's a new new chain, you know. Anyway, he's very well known to us. Like if you're trying to talk to that community, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

I like Mig by the way. He's follow. I think that sophon is a project that for now can't go outside the the our circle you know so for the purpose that they have this kind of thing is perfect wallet connect that recently hired Diana they are ready to go outside and Diana is not just posting on crypto Twitter she's posting a lot of also on Instagram Tik Tok so I mean um and they and she show you know the swag her experience. She doesn't even show what is the wireless connect. Uh but then people maybe interact and this is an easy pro product that you can probably use.

Uh not like Sopon which is completely you know I don't

cool bread. Yeah, it's an amazing bread. But I didn't get get exactly what what they are about, you know. Uh but but still when they will finally launch something usable, then I will have brand in mind and I will look at it. I mean, I actually think this is a pretty good transition to something that I've noticed like over the last four years in crypto marketing is like like brands are here, you know?

Like I was at ECC for Ken a couple weeks ago. So was Maria. Um and like I was kind of shocked by just like the level and quality of like some of the branding style events, you know, that I saw. And this is like a major change cuz like when I started like no one every project put out the same like techno music like animated video for their like feature that like three people cared about or understood. And like now we're at a place where you know micro influencers basically talking nothing about the products and just like vibing and like making really good video content like that exists now and that's a thing and that's a real change you know and so I actually think that for projects that are getting started now they should probably invest heavily in the brand side of things early on because like if you don't do that like you are going to be left behind because there's some really really really strong projects now.

I mean, look at Bass, right? Like Bass, they had a huge announcement yesterday and all the stuff that they did pretty much was like branded, you know? It was a branding initiative. You saw this blue square all over crypto and Twitter. Like all these projects are tweeting this.

There was like meme coins coming out with just the the blue square. Like the the brand is here in crypto marketing in a way that it simply wasn't four years ago. And like that's a major major change like in terms of your strategy as a marketer, how you structure your team, what type of koss or what type of like media strategy you want to have like the the brand is much much much more important than it was you know when I first started

and I think uh this is also because of a we are reaching the a more mature phase of the space. So we are at a point where there are products that we can deliver that we can show. So there is this shift from talking feature to actually talking value. Uh so yeah this is great and I think uh whoever has that product market fit and focuses on brand can really make the difference.

This is a good question because um do you think that like product market fit is a necessity to focus on brand or can brand help you find product market fit? No, I don't think brand can help you find the product market fit, but you can survive just with vibes. And we we see we see this all

I don't want to knock soap up, but this is a good example, right? Like they're they're a chain, they have some dabs, they raise some money, but like I mean, what is so fun?

Yeah, but uh it can help. Sorry, it can't help. I agree. But uh it gives you time, you know. So in the meantime, you're doing something.

You are building the brand and you're building people interested and you're building audience for when you finally find your product market fit. Then it can go into ways like you can fail completely and let go a lot of people at this point because you grab a lot of attention or you succeed and you find the product and also attracting attention and attracting people gives you the chance to talk with them more you know and so maybe it helps a bit in finding the product market fit I don't I'd also argue that crypto is unique to other industries in this way in some capacity because I sort of think that the only two things that really matter are like FOMO and hype in some capac you know if you really if you really boil it down it's like FOMO oh I should have bought that thing I should have done that thing I should have done this somebody else did I didn't know about that I didn't have the alpha so like the FOMO piece or like whoa that looks cool I want to be a part of this like those two things are like your real like currency you know in this industry and the thing that crypto offers offers is that with a brand like so fun their branding right now is just like on point. It's really really really good. And so nobody knows necessarily what they're doing or how they're going to differentiate from any other chain that exists but people are seeing how they differentiate brand and so it definitely buys them time to figure out the answer to the second part of the question cuz people are like I don't know why I'm buying so far or holding it but like I'm doing it you know because they don't want to either be in the FOMO place or they just think that looks cool and I want to be a part of it. So, like the hype and FOMO thing is real in this industry.

And like I think most marketers have to in some way reckon with one or both of those two things to do anything because if you're not if you're not hitting either one of those things, then like I don't know. I don't know how your project lasts. I guess maybe maybe if you're just like making people money, you know, at the end of the day, like if you straight up are able to make people positive sum money, which doesn't really exist in the space either, maybe. But like I think that as a marketer you got to be playing with one or two one or both of those emotions. Um because they are they are things that actually make people do things and and critically like make people do irrational things which is like I think really powerful too.

Yeah. Um I think we don't have much time left. So I would close this with um a more personal take and question which is uh what would be the tip that you want to give or to a team uh that needs the first move marketing move that you would do. Um if you have a like a a crypto project I will start hire a marketing person because no this is true guys because a lot of times there are these projects with I don't know already a 15 people team uh mostly devs 13 people devs the founder and maybe a co um that come with already uh you know the probably the product almost finished which has no fit in the market and then they try to hire a marketing person too late to tell them this is not a product market fit. So in my opinion the advice is hire the marketer before you uh implement the the final idea of the product because he will tell they will tell you if there is a product market fit and if they will be able to sell this outside uh to the market.

So this is my suggestion. Totally agree and uh uh I would also add talk to users. Don't wait to talk to user. Show your product even if it's not really your MVP and do research and uh collect the feedback because this is the only way to achieve a product market fit. So even without a marketing person if you cannot afford it do this.

This is a wonderful piece of advice. I guess most people are aware of Pump Dad Fun right now. So, they didn't have a marketer, but their like sort of famous like probably cliche growth story at this moment is that like Allan, their CEO, he DM'd like 5,000 people on Twitter before they even had any like users or anything and just was like, "This is the thing. This is what we're doing. What do you think about it?

Can you give me some feedback? I'll get on a call with you." Like literally 5,000. And by that point, he had interacted with so many people and they'd iterated so fast that like the product could become what it became. This is by the way similar to Clanker.

Like they're they were very active in terms of engaging with lots of different users, getting people to test their different AI agents before they ultimately became, you know, Clanker and launched several different like very very very popular meme coins. Great advice. Um, I would say like mine my advice to anyone trying to do marketing in the space or thinking about hiring a marketer is like be ready for a lot of like you have to justify your own existence like in these teams like I'm I'm not kidding is like I've I've worked in tech for

I've worked for 15 years in tech and like you always when you're dealing with technical people in some way shape or form in my opinion have to do this but in crypto it's very very very like extreme and like I know a lot I'm sure Maria, you know, everybody does too, but like I know a lot of good marketers who've like basically lost jobs because like their CEO was like totally unreasonable. Um, you know, you you face a lot of criticism in the space and just like develop a thick skin and reverse on the reverse side of thing, be ready to educate cuz I'm telling you the people that you end up working for and with like they don't know how to do this and so like develop a thick skin but also like flex your muscles and be ready to educate your team because like

be patient.

Yeah. Be patient too. And like to me, one of the things that I was like really sort of again coming from web 2, like most CEOs in web 2, even if they don't necessarily get all aspects of marketing, they kind of understand the way that like a marketing mix works. Like you're going to have to have several channels, you're going to have to do this, because there's like a lot of playbooks that exist that kind of like are just tried and true. And in crypto, what I find what I found is that a lot of these founders like literally even describing what their product is like a protocol, right?

A protocol is not like a an email app, you know what I mean? Or something like that. So, they literally don't know how they're going to acquire users. And they hire this marketer and they think like, "Great, solved, you know, everything's fixed." And you're like, "Yeah, but we got to do some work."

And they're like, "No, no, no. You got to like 10x everything by the next month." And you're like, "What? Hold on." You know, so you have to like do a little bit of education, but also like be ready to like

what's the problem?

Yes. Exactly.

Give viral.

The next like screaming buzzwords at you. Seriously, be be ready to flex those muscles because you'll have to. But also just like I think that educating your like the teams that you're working with is a really good strategy and approach because like they don't know. They do not know. So like when you're trying to say like what you want to do going and like really trying to explain why you're doing something, why you're like what the method is to to your madness here, like it really works because then they're like, "Oh, okay.

I get it." And like then you can have a little bit more leeway. Um yeah,

that's it.

Time is over. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. Great panel. If you have any questions for the team later, make sure to reach out to them and anything related to marketing in crypto.

Thank you guys.