GuShiio.com I am the only hero on the encryption journey.
Written by: Damian
Compiled by: Block unicorn
Recently, a friend and I had dinner in a small town in Hungary to talk about marketing in the cryptocurrency space. Being in the same industry, it’s hard not to discuss cryptocurrencies with others. After all, my family and old friends don’t understand the field, and I’m sure many people reading this will feel the same way.
This friend told me about a painful experience he had with a cryptocurrency native marketing agency (not named here). I was both amused and understood his concerns because he was not a marketer after all. I regret that his team wasted time and money. So I reminded him,”Listen, I told you not to hire a marketing agency because there are no good marketing agencies.”
I went on to explain to him that it was completely wrong to expect a marketing agency to proactively complete the work for you. They won’t brand you, understand the nuances of your project, or make creative breakthroughs because their attention is spread among multiple customers.
As a startup, it is a cruel reality that you may be prioritized less than big-name customers; big-name customers may be more valuable to marketing agencies, not just because of their existing retention fees. Logo and influence on a website is a universal currency, especially in the cryptocurrency space. Retaining the most “valuable” customers is one of the most important things a marketing organization can do to keep its business running.
So, are marketing companies really useless? This is not the case. I know that most people who work on marketing agency teams complete 8 to 10 hours of full-time work a day, serving multiple customers. The value their customers gain stems from the fact that customers already know or are aware of the narrative they want to leverage or the image they want to project. Marketing organizations should only use it when greater short-to-medium term output is needed to produce content or help run planned activities.
McDonald’s Marketing Issues
Marketing agencies are a tool and a means to an end, not the X-factor that magically makes your marketing great through their own initiative. Don’t get me wrong; marketing agencies often promote their expertise in brand and technology concepts, leaving small projects with the impression that the marketing agency will help them find a foothold. Don’t be fooled by another logo x logo collaboration on the marketing agency’s website, because you know they might only have a month of working with that big-name partner before terminating the agreement.
A truly good cryptocurrency “marketer” needs to understand their company’s product stack better than the developer. However, employees at these marketing agencies have no incentive to do more than the eight-hour shifts they have completed at current salary levels.
Imagine if your salary was the same as a McDonald’s manager, but you had to understand concepts such as oracle, database, ZK, MEV, AI, lending, pledge, re-pledge, etc. Will you accept the job?
In terms of the structure of your marketing organization, you may have senior managers who perform well or even excel at work but never have important face-to-face interactions with customers. Good senior managers are busy delegating work to their teams and developing strategies based on customer feedback. Some managers must manage as many as 7 or 8 accounts simultaneously. Bad managers do it all day long. Frankly, as far as I know, 8 hours a day on the phone? This is inevitable.
On the other hand, junior employees with meager salaries who are truly eager to learn more about the field and contribute value to their customers have never had the opportunity to do so. These serious junior employees are ready to do the basics to learn the details of the project and build an appropriate narrative, but they are hindered by middle managers, who focus more on quantity than quality. If every customer demands a top-down marketing campaign, marketing organizations will be forced to make business decisions and sacrifice company time priorities. This doesn’t mean that the marketing agency model has completely collapsed; it’s because managers don’t have the ability to manage customer expectations.
Understandably, senior management does not want to lose business or have disputes with customers, but in the long run, in the interest of the marketing agency and the customers themselves, managers need to be more honest and say “no” more often. It is also the responsibility of the project to understand that these organizations will never be up to the role of good internal marketers.
Think of the great marketers in this field who have learned, participated, and connected with their determination and gained opportunities as a result. You can see them in projects as community managers (@thisisfin_), growth leaders (@0xMista), marketing leaders (@lou3ee), or narrative leaders (@ kranotmark). The fundamental reason why they are more successful than marketing agencies is that they are deeply integrated into the field.
My view on marketing is that you are either deeply involved in the field or you are not. If not, you will have a hard time finding the source of any creativity, because after all, you may not understand or even communicate with your audience. This is a big problem because you know that market research and “marketing” are inseparable.
Marketing can extract value
If you are a project considering hiring marketing help, hire a marketer directly. The first time you hire a good marketer is like promoting the first general in a new division in your army. They will be responsible for leading their divisions; whether it’s hiring more marketers or marketing agencies, it’s entirely up to them.
If you hire a marketing agency, they need to have a strong plan. Marketing leaders need to reach a point where they can effectively hand over memos to agencies for execution, thereby maximizing the benefits for your project.
For example, your marketing leader needs to publish four blog posts per month. If marketing leaders provide all the necessary resources, the marketing agency can help them write half or all of them. If marketing leaders can implement a good strategy, effectively delegate work to any supporter in the marketing department, and achieve results that help business expansion, they are an excellent marketing hire. If a marketing agency can do the work required, they are a good agency. The key is that the effectiveness of the marketing agency and the success of the project are complementary, provided that their customers are “good.”
For example, if the project that hired the agency was inherently boring or did not find a product market fit, no marketing agency could save it. If a project has a lot of interesting things to say but doesn’t know how to express it, the marketing agency can’t solve the problem. But if you are a project that knows exactly what it takes to succeed and only requires executors, then the marketing organization will be very good at this, provided you can manage them like you would manage an internal team, i.e. regular updates, guidance and inspections. Therefore, as a rule of thumb, it is best not to make the organization your first hire.
I assure you that marketing agencies that promise to operate at four times the performance levels of internal hiring are nonsense, and to be honest, this self-promotion approach is itself poor marketing. Conversely, the added value is much simpler (and boring), meaning that if you need an extra pair of hands to get the job done and have connections, they might be right for you. This is why internal hiring is better: You have the opportunity to teach or give employers time to actively learn, and there is little reason why they should not perform well in the business they are in.
poor communication
Overall, agencies and projects have a corresponding problem: They both communicate poorly, which is interesting. Organizations with effective communication as their responsibility over-sell their services, leading to inflated expectations. Projects accepted this misleading information and raised their expectations while not actively managing their external teams. This is usually a lose-lose situation. There are no predetermined winners, and there are no “good” marketing agencies. You need to proactively ensure your success as a project, whether or not you work with the agency. In the end, you are the only hero on your journey.
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