Crypto marketing teams and agencies are constantly testing, poking, and prodding to see what is going to work. On a timeline, they’re still in their infancy, and trying new things that eventually fail is part of the gig. That being said, specifically around conferences, there is too much being spent. Events in crypto do not generate the ROI for the spend most companies make on them. New projects rarely have the marketing budget to support an event blitz, yet the idea of blowing thousands to paste a logo around an event that will create meaningful interest for your product is a stretch at best. Sponsoring the WiFi at CryptoCon2024 will not ‘build awareness’ and help you generate more users. If money will be spent, it can’t be a one-off. There needs to be an overarching marketing plan that measures and considers each component and specific reasons for each activation. Consider these the ‘threads’ that weave the overriding story a company is trying to tell.
The above post went viral recently, and while only Polkadot folks will have the internal measurements to show if it was worth the ROI to them, from an outsider’s perspective, it’s very difficult to see how their $450,000 spend could generate the desired result.
When considering a spend, a booth is usually the default option: it’s the home base for all activations and a place to drive foot traffic as introductions are made.
Remember that an event's real value is not measured by how much was spent but by how many people can be onboarded. Direct engagement, on-the-spot sign-ups, and personalized onboarding at a booth or around the conference are immediate and verifiable. Beyond a booth, arguably the biggest bang for your buck is paying to get on stage. This allows a company to control its messaging, target its audience (by being on a relevant panel or similar), and, after the event, edit and repurpose content across other activations—like social media pushes. But don’t sponsor the wifi or succumb to other flashy awareness plays to get seen. Control the budget and hustle the floor.
What does this have to do with meme coins?
On the polar opposite end of the traditional marketing spectrum, meme coins are a case study in organic growth and network effects. With no budget, they’ve demonstrated an unparalleled ability to capture public attention and drive user engagement.
There are a million think pieces on the positives and negatives of meme coins, but from a marketing perspective, their ability to catalyze the culture, capture the ethos, tap into community dynamics, leverage social media, and use word-of-mouth marketing to achieve viral growth is remarkable. The organic approach often results in more potent network effects and more engaged user bases than those acquired through paid activations.
As it pertains to the broader ecosystem, meme coins:
- Have a Community-Centric Approach: Successful projects prioritize community building over flashy marketing, whose ROI is hard to measure.
- Organic Growth: Viral, user-driven growth often outperforms paid acquisition in terms of user retention and engagement.
- Network Effects: The power of distributed, enthusiastic communities in driving adoption cannot be underestimated.
- Liquidity and Price Discovery: meme coins demonstrate how rapid community formation can lead to enhanced liquidity and efficient price discovery mechanisms.
Crypto projects continuously poke and prod at different marketing strategies to see what can stick (one project went viral for their founder giving a talk with their shirt off, and now it might be a “thing” for them). Still, the message is to constantly reassess the marketing strategy while noting the lack of authenticity and measurement some traditional tactics have. The success of meme coins challenges teams to think creatively about the true objectives: user acquisition and community building.
Spend the budget building a community that is genuine to the company, not to rest on vanity metrics that do nothing for the business.