What is DeFi Marketing and How to Launch a Campaign

In this article, we’ll be exploring everything that you need to know about DeFi marketing, walking you through top tips you should incorporate before launching your next campaign.

We’ll be covering:

• What DeFi Marketing is
• Best DeFi Marketing Channels to Use
• Top DeFi Marketing Tips
• How to choose a DeFi Marketing agency

Let’s get right into it!

What is DeFi Marketing?#

DeFi marketing is the practice of gaining publicity and public attention for any decentralized finance project that someone launches into the world of blockchain. In this case, DeFi projects are all financial platforms that use applications based on smart contracts to function. While Bitcoin was the first system that allowed for the construction of DeFi applications, Ethereum is now significantly more popular as an ecosystem.

Looking towards a DeFiPrime, which is a system that recycles older financial applications into the world of decentralized finance, the vast majority use Ethereum’s developer network. This is representational of the whole system, with the advanced developer toolkit allowing people to build with Ethereum easily.

Source.

Once a team of developers has come together to create a DeFi application, they then need to start working on a marketing campaign. DeFi marketing is very different from traditional forms of digital marketing, often requiring marketing managers to use different campaign streams, as well as invoke different strategies. 

DeFi marketing campaigns need to be expansive, adaptable, and directly focused on accommodating the tastes and trends that are typical within the blockchain community.

Best DeFi Marketing Channels to Use#

When running your own DeFi marketing for your new platform, we suggest that you learn about which different marketing channels are the most effective. Blockchain has had a rocky history with marketing channels, with the largest advertising platform in the world, Facebook, banning all DeFi-related posts back in 2018.

Source.

Although this ban only lasted just over a year, there are long-term ramifications, with blockchain marketing specialists still favoring alternative ways of marketing their new launches. When launching your own DeFi marketing campaign, you should focus on:

• Influencer marketing
• PR Sites 
• Airdrops 
• Referral Program

Let’s break these down further.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is currently the fastest growing marketing method, aligning with the incredible speed with which social media is growing around the world. A social media post has influenced over 60% of all consumers, with something they’ve seen online interesting them. This just goes to show how effective influencer marketing can be. With its rising popularity, this is definitely a marketing format to take advantage of!

This, in a nutshell, is influencer marketing, where people build up an audience of people that trust their options. A company can then approach that influencer and offer them a fixed sum in exchange for posting about their product. Within the world of DeFi, there are a huge amount of Instagram and Twitter accounts that share blockchain news or engage with this industry.

Source.

One of the best strategies for launching a DeFi marketing campaign is to use influencer marketing to get your message out there. Not only can this be a very low-investment way of spreading your campaign, but it can also have knock-on effects when someone’s post goes viral. 

Equally, due to the established trust within influencer accounts, many people fully believe in the products accounts share on their pages. Considering the history of DeFi scams and rug pulls, this level of initial confidence can go a long way towards securing a successful DeFi marketing campaign.

PR Sites#

The blockchain community has a thriving journalism industry, with the fast-paced movement of news being deployed through a network of different journalism outlets. When you’re launching a new DeFi platform, one of your main goals should be to get featured on a range of these different platforms.

Getting featured in an article on a news site allows you to build up backlinks for your website, which will help with the general SEO of your site and bring a greater degree of natural traffic. But, beyond SEO reasons, getting featured in news articles is a great way of expanding the general visibility of your campaign.

Due to how fast-moving cryptocurrency is, people will check crypto news sites several times a day for more information on their favorite projects. Once you’re featured on these pages, you’re then able to get more eyes on your project, boosting familiarity and increasing the number of people that will read about your project and potentially come to your site to read more.

If you’re new to DeFi marketing, then you’ll probably have an easier time getting featured on these sites if you partner with a blockchain PR agency. These agencies have links to news outlets, allowing you to get a range of different mentions across a web of news sites.

Still, you can go about this solo if you would like, it’ll just be slightly harder. You should aim to find blockchain news outlets that accept ‘Guest Posts’, then submit articles directly to them. Newspapers won’t want to post your article if it’s too obviously an advertisement, so try and cover a relevant topic and include a small mention of your DeFi project. 

Airdrops#

Airdrops are one of the most popular media tactics within a DeFi campaign. An airdrop, within the world of decentralized finance, often includes sending out small amounts of the native coin of your new system out to people that sign up for your service or perform a small action.

A typical strategy is to ask people to retweet your account, follow the profile, or shout out the company in return for a small amount of your native token. People love free stuff, so many are willing to perform these actions to get some cryptocurrency in return.

Especially considering how easy it is to go viral from airdrops, this is by far one of the best publicity stunt channels that you should be using when launching a new DeFi platform or application. 

Some of the biggest airdrops in history have given out hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, to boost the public awareness of their coin. Additionally, because the platform gives out this money in the form of the native token, more people having the coins and being able to use them also increases the price, so this strategy is a big win-win for your business when done correctly. 

Source.

Referral Program#

Much like airdrops, which rely on social interaction and word of mouth to pass your project around, referral programs greatly boost the success of a DeFi marketing campaign. By offering a referral program, where one user gets a reward for bringing a few of their friends on chain, you can greatly increase the social scope of the marketing campaign.

Just think, if you start with one person that brings three people onto the platform, and each of those three people then brings three people, you’re already significantly altering the scope of the campaign. Continue doing this down the line, and you’ll rapidly end up with a huge campaign with a range of social entries into your system.

Referral systems are used in a range of industries, but within the world of blockchain, where transparency and trust are everything, they go that little bit further. 

Top Tips for launching a DeFi Marketing Campaign#

Once you’ve established which channels you’re going to use and spread your campaigns through, it’s time to start the actual launch of your platform. This is a tumultuous period in any DeFi platform’s lifespan, with how effectively you execute the marketing campaign often leading to the success or failure of the whole system.

Source.

Considering the vast amounts of capital locked away in DeFi, it’s no wonder that there is so much competition in this field. If you’re looking to create a successful campaign and beat out your competitors, we recommend that you focus on these two tips:

• SEO and content marketing are key
• Social media engagement is vital

Let’s break these down further.

SEO and Content Marketing

Content marketing and SEO should be inseparable when running a DeFi marketing campaign. What we mean by this is that every piece of content you create, either for your own website or for other sites you’ll be guest posting on, should have a high level of on-page SEO.  

Search engine optimization, especially when it comes to doing keyword research and finding out exactly what format of articles you should be writing, is vital when it comes to running a great campaign. The vast majority of clicks on Google go directly to the first page, with 75% of all traffic going to the top three pages of any search.

Due to this, you want to optimize your home site, creating a website that will naturally rank well on Google and other search engines. Coming up as an authority for different topics within the world of DeFi will bring a range of natural traffic to your page, while also ensuring that you’re seen as an authority within the world of blockchain.

If you’re unsure about how to do keyword research or implement SEO strategy, then get in contact with GuerrillaBuzz – we’ll be able to walk you through the whole process.

Social Media Engagement

Although the blockchain community uses a whole range of different social media sites, going beyond just Facebook and Twitter, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a holistic presence on as many platforms as possible.

When launching a DeFi PR campaign, you should have as many platforms as possible where you can recycle content. One blog post uploaded to your site might have a limited reach, but when then shared on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Reddit, SteemIt, and more, you’ll instantly boost the amount of traffic that you’re likely to get.

Be sure to spread your net as wide as possible, then use your presence to bring as many people to your page as possible. Creating active social media accounts is also a great way of directly interacting with the DeFi community, further boosting the effectiveness of this tip.

How to Choose a DeFi Marketing Agency#

When selecting a DeFi marketing agency to work with, you should pay attention to the professionalism of the brand, as well as if they have any published case studies of past work. If they don’t have any successful campaigns to show off, then you’re best looking elsewhere.

Equally, a great marketing agency will have a range of free content that’s regularly posted on their company blog. If you navigate to their blog and don’t see anything posted, or anything of value shared with users, then you should look elsewhere.

Be sure that the agency you’re working with has:

• A stable social media presence
• An active blog
• A history of happy clients

If they have those three things, then you’ll definitely be on the right track toward finding a winner. 

If you’re worried about launching a DeFi marketing campaign by yourself, then get in touch with a top DeFi marketing agency like GuerrillaBuzz(SP). 

Final Thoughts#

DeFi marketing campaigns are notoriously difficult to execute, equally due to their expansive nature and the fact that decentralized finance is still a relatively unknown technology compared to centralized finance platforms and applications. If you’re looking to smash your first DeFi campaign out of the park, then we suggest you take our tips and tactics into your everyday operations.

If you want a bit of extra support during your campaign, be sure to reach out to GuerrillaBuzz. With years of experience as a leading blockchain marketing platform, we’ve handled a range of successful DeFi marketing campaigns.

From consulting to the complete running of your launches, we’ll be able to guide you through the whole process of launching a successful DeFi campaign.