Community engagement is difficult.
It's even more difficult in the middle of a bear market, where the power of speculation and potential profits no longer has the same hold on your users as before.
In a world where user acquisition is central to the marketing goal of many protocols and decentralized platforms, many fall prey to the idea that money is the only motivator for users to participate in your community; simultaneously, it can also be believed that once a user reaches the bottom of the sales funnel and takes a primary action, they will stay beyond just money.
When Web3 players fail to achieve the user retention and growth they want, they default to the low-hanging fruit that is easily accessible to them: create a POAP, organize a giveaway, partner with a potentially wider community, AMAs and NFT rewards.
Despite the high turnout sometimes associated with these tactics, they tend to mask a more important symptom: We're running out of creative ways to market our products to Web3 users.
As the Product Marketing Manager at Layer3, I grew our Twitter followers from 18,000 to 43,000 in a few months, more than doubled our Discord from 3,000 to over 8,400 members, and I organized creative community events with a focus on user experience and speaking. mouth marketing.
In this article, I share some very effective tips And creative marketing techniques that anyone can handle in Web3.
1. Don’t just do AMAs, events, or one-off spaces
I see so much— too many, in fact — many reputable ecosystem projects announcing one-off AMAs and/or Twitter Spaces as a way to engage and retain users.
As a new entrant to the Web3 space, you would probably assume that the appetite for AMAs goes beyond the charts. Beyond the facade and the interesting numbers, you will also notice that AMAs are often encouraged by POAPs.
The Proof of Stake protocol is a great idea for some communities: attend an event and receive an NFT ID that certifies your participation! In practice, however, credential cultivation and participation for the sole purpose of obtaining credentials is real and often creates biased incentives for users who may not be interested in your product or ecosystem in the first place.
![Our recent community call on Discord.](https://layer3.mirror.xyz/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.mirror-media.xyz%2Fpublication-images%2FQ9EwBDd8Nab2LGwPagU91.png&w=3840&q=75)
At Layer3, we've stopped using POAPs to incentivize AMAs, Twitter Spaces, and team panels. Recently, we hosted a quarterly community call on Discord with entirely organic traffic, using Discord as the only channel to promote the call. By targeting Discord users only, we had over 400 participants, all of whom asked questions related to their use of our product and platform.
This success was achieved through intentional timing and planning: We haven't had a community call in months and we conducted this call as part of a broader launch of our quarterly report, which included huge feature updates that we had delivered over the past few months. These features led to organic growth in users, many of whom were hungry for the opportunity to ask the team a few questions.
If we had had a community call just a month ago, it wouldn't have been the same. And at any given time, 5 engaged users are better than 100 uninterested ones.
In web3 (and in general), you sometimes have to capitulate to the dynamics of your product. Catch and ride the wave instead of forcing your users to create it for you.
2. Play “The Great Online Game”
As Packy McCormick says, Crypto is just more amusing.
We're starting to realize this more and more at Layer3, where we help users discover and (re)discover the magic of crypto through Bonuses. Gamification in Web3 is a powerful tool, and it doesn't just happen with GameFi.
But gamification should not be limited to an airdrop, a draw or a giveaway either. For communities that don't just focus on reward mechanics, create mini-games for users that are intrinsically rewarding, instead of mindless actions (e.g. deleting an allowlist) without a coherent goal. Last week we launched a campaign allowing users to participate in “Crypto Bingo”, a way for them to track their progress on Layer3 and share their achievements with the world.
We combined this with a draw where users could win 50 USDC for completing Bingo and sharing it on Twitter under the hashtag #Layer3Bingo— an additional element of sharing on top of a basic financial incentive.
Another similar campaign we launched was a shareable crossword puzzle, which users could complete and share on Twitter for a potential raffle prize of 5 USDT.
Our users loved these campaigns. For what? They're just more fun! The search for a whitelist spot with no end in sight has been this past year. And it treats your users or audience as disposable, rather than as humans with their own needs for recognition, play, and sociality. Games aren't fun if the player doesn't feel any sense of completion when finished..
You don't have to create a complex puzzle for your community to solve every time, but you do need to think intentionally about the path you actually want your users to take. Even gamified memes work!
3. Organize multi-day events or campaigns
A B2B SaaS company hosting a 5-day, all-digital marketing extravaganza will probably seem a little strange.
However, in the online world of Web3, users are constantly looking for new ways to engage and contribute to their favorite protocols and ecosystems. When we were thinking about how to launch our Projects feature, we wanted users to emulate the experience this feature would actually bring them— so we launched a 5-day marketing campaign where users could do just that.
As campaign participants, users would follow the typical “lifecycle” of a community contributor, where they would start at the top of the sales funnel by saying “GM” in Discord, and end by providing valuable feedback and direction for the future. of the product.
We also incorporated elements of learning, public construction and coherence this would appeal to a large cohort of web3 users. For example, users might share an article with the rest of the community on day two, a familiar action that many new users take to learn more about Web3.
By making #5DaysOfLayer3 a structured campaign with a coherent objective, and including significant actions with an expected result, we made sure that users didn't feel like their efforts were going nowhere. We also rewarded each user who completed the five-day task with a commemorative NFT, deposited directly into their wallet.
In the process, we also learned about our users' experiences with Web3 and compiled valuable feedback from our most engaged community members. A win-win!
4. Create growth loops with your most engaged users
When it comes to organizing community-focused events or campaigns, we always ensure that community members are truly involved.
![A user story from an experienced user.](https://layer3.mirror.xyz/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.mirror-media.xyz%2Fpublication-images%2F9HOtMJRAcXmY6PLKIKkF7.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
A typical user can make a plot on layer 3. From discovering new protocols and ecosystems through Bounties to applying for longer-term work with projects, we've assembled some superstar contributors who are deeply invested and have gained a lot using our product. For many Web3 communities, there are heated debates about how to reward your early supporters and users. Wen token? An airdrop?
While many airdrops are well done and provide great value to crypto-based ecosystems as a whole, retrospective airdrops are not the only way to demonstrate that you care about your early adopters! In order to build relationships with this cohort, we did several things:
- Creation of a private channel “Builder's Lounge” within Discord, not intended for whales or insiders.but for those who have demonstrated contributor skills in skills such as writing, analysis, social media or video production + those who want to improve the platform
- Sending shareable personalized graphics to contest winners, who participated in hackathon-style events hosted by our ecosystem partners for crypto rewards
- Creating a private support ticket system so that users can benefit from personalized customer support from our CMs
- Hosted community calls and AMAs with our superstar users, who could provide mentoring and guidance to new users
![Shareable graphics for contest winners.](https://layer3.mirror.xyz/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.mirror-media.xyz%2Fpublication-images%2FK1gumlty2neirBAiCI8tc.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
Marketing in Web3 isn't just about getting users to take a vital action on your platform or selling a user your product: it's also about enabling them to contribute and find their own way in Web3. We will know we have succeeded when every user of our platform becomes a contributor.
Conclusion
At Layer3, we want to solve performance marketing for Web3 and enable simple discovery for users and communities. Every marketing campaign we've launched has been done in conjunction with Layer3's “suite” of products that power Web3 marketing, including Bonuses, competitions and projects. Last week we launched our quarterly report on Mirror as a 500-edition NFT collection, accompanied by a support bonus allowing collectors to earn XP on the platform. In just under an hour, the entire collection was minted!
As our co-founder Dariya summarizes in This threadOur Bounty Builder makes it easy to reward communities, creating a whole new framework for “cost per action” (CPA) ad spend in Web3.
If you haven't experienced the magic of bounties, you can try them nowOr get in touch if you want to know how to use Layer3 as part of your marketing support!
by Sarah of layer 3