There’s a lot of difference between traditional tech companies, and crypto native brands. For one, and probably most importantly, they do not grow the same way. Crypto native brands move faster. Many of traditional growth barriers do not exist for them, and the tools both use for scaling differ greatly. While crypto is faster, working around it also brings more pressure forth. Users are not as easy to retain, competition is there to greet you from the get go, and we’re talking about global competitors, and you cannot rely on hype any longer as crypto has been around long enough to become standard way of starting and running business.
Yet, despite everything that we said, these crypto native brands still continue to grow, creating a quite logical question, about what is the fuel behind its continuous growth. In this article, we will do our best to try and attempt to explain what it is that aids crypto native brands in building and scaling their global user base.
Community Above All Else
This is why starting with crypto is interesting. One does not start with a product launch. It builds a community first. Before the launch of a product, crypto native brands such as Stake, first create a campaign by using means such as Discord, Telegram, or Twitter. Traditional brands use these channels for final announcements or teasers. While it might work, it is better when you use them as intended as it’s where questions can be asked, issues can be reported, and products can be further shaped and adapted before the eventual launch.
Folks who are exposed to a product early on, often feel as industry insiders, as they provide feedback, test different features, and aid in spreading positive voice about a brand or a product. For those using the end product, having it before others creates a strong sense of ownership. When users feel like they were a part of the project they tend to stay loyal, and even call up others to join. Approaching matters this way is a lot different from what you would normally call traditional marketing. Another way to put it is that crypto native brands do not try to push ads onto their targeted audience, but instead focus on having conversation with their audience and bring them in on a basis of shared interest. To simply put it, it’s better to have less audience with all of them being active in conversations about your brand, than having a massive following without participation. It is engagement that drives growth first and foremost.
Early Adoption Via Means of Incentives
The best things that crypto brands can do and traditional businesses cannot is that they can reward their users directly. When you can do this, your product grows differently. Usually, rewarding the audience goes through a couple of standard channels. Those are referral programs, airdrops for early users, staking rewards, and task based quests among a few others. This system works because it is simple for everyone involved. A brand creates a product or a service, the user then joins, completes various actions, gets rewarded for it, and as a result remains engaged with the brand itself. When the brands start growing the rewards system itself grows too.
Through incentives, the users do not feel as a regular customer. It becomes a matter of shared success. If the platform has benefits, so does the early adopter. Of course, not all are smiles and giggles. There’s a catch too. Sometimes, these incentives can attract users that are not as ideal for either one of your products or for the entire brand. Some users will run away as soon as there isn’t something more in it for them. That’s why this type of approach works only if incentives are paired with clear utility.
Creators vs. Traditional Ads
When it comes to crypto, paid ads have a limited impact. You will find some platforms that fully restrict ads. With some, ads simply do not convert as intended and fail in their intent. That’s why, crypto native brands have decided to up their game a bit. Instead of ads, they rely on creators. Being a creator is an occupation that can generate more than enough money for those who are experts in their niche and have a good audience. Those who can help a brand grow and scale instead of ads are different crypto influencers, YouTube educators, Twitter analysts, and short form content creators.
The reason why content creators work better than ads is because they already have a relationship with their audience. There is mutual trust. Having them talk about a product or a service carries more weight with the audience than any ad could achieve. Also, when you have campaigns that are based on performance you know that everyone is going to put in their best effort. Exposure will be there, but with more accent on engagement and conversion the results will be even better. Visibility that creates results, and all within an efficient system that actually works.
The Utility Factor
For years, leading up to this decade, for growth, hype was enough. Today, that’s not the case. At least not entirely. Users will no longer fall for hype only, despite the products’ quality. If it doesn’t solve real life problems it will not stick around. Because of this, crypto brands have changed the way they run their business. Nowadays, they tend to focus on clear use cases, improved user experience, and reduce friction in onboarding.
Brands that launch speculative products usually struggle to retain users. Platforms that offer real services such as payment processors, trading tools, gaming, or different financial services experience growth both short, and long term. Also, these days it is trendy to hide the depth of crypto and its complexity. Different platforms today aim not to confuse their users, so they keep the explanations of what a wallet, private keys, or smart contracts are. Because of this, end users feel as if they’re using a regular app, but with all of the advantages of a crypto one. For mainstream adoption, this key was the one that unlocked the doors of growth and scaling.
Global from Day One
The ultimate trick. Unlike traditional brands who are required to build their presence first locally, before expanding, crypto ones have the ability to hit the global markets from the get go. And they do. To access a crypto product or a service one only needs an internet connection. All payment processes are also digital. If you are about to join a community, you’ll do it online. Physical infrastructure is obsolete. Thanks to matters being like this the reach is instant.
Like many things around, crypto native brands, you also get instant competition. When you’re into crypto, your competitors are not your neighbours, it’s the entire world. And trust us when we say it, there’s a lot of competition when you take into account products that are instantly launched worldwide. To get the best out of their product launch, brands resort to localizing the content that goes together with what they’re selling. They do the marketing in different languages, and build communities based on the region where they’re looking to make the most progress. While the growth of crypto native brands is usually global. The engagement that takes them there is almost always local.
Growth is Led by Products
Once the project is outside of its infant stage the growth needs to move from acquisition to usage. When you’re just starting the goal needs to be getting users interested. After basic interest is created the goal becomes having the users active. At this point growth becomes all about the product. While marketing remains important, the focus shifts to expanding its use cases, improving performances, and adding new features. When this is one the right way and timely, the users get inclined to stay by being given the right reasons to do so. The best example of this is a crypto wallet. At first its use needs to be basics, and to serve as a storage. As time moves on, adding integrations with other platforms, staking, or swaps or other different features add to the present and future users engagement. It is the moment when marketing gets sidelined in favour of product value.
Crypto Native Brands Have Edge Thanks to Data
What makes crypto unique and gives it a massive advantage over different other platforms is its transparency. Blockchain records everything, and on chain data allows brands to have access to all the user behaviour details from the first moment. That’s why data such as transaction patterns, wallet activity, and retention over time give a brand a much better view of their user base. Based on this data brands can make better and faster decisions regarding their product or a service. Quick adjustments, measuring results, and test campaigns are just a part of a winning formula. Guesswork is brought down to a minimum, as brands get reliant on direct surveys and not estimates, thanks to blockchain, brands can have access to raw data and see for themselves what their user base is actually doing, without having to guess anything. Growth strategies as an end product of all of this access to data is what makes them more efficient.
The Challenge of Retention
As it is usually the case getting to users is the easy part compared to keeping them and adding to the number. Crypto brands are known as spiking up the user numbers in early stages of development when their reward campaigns are still roaming free. During this stage it is important to work on the goal of user retention, as users who are not retained tend to disappear. Brands who are focused on retention put a lot of work into creating daily and weekly use cases, offering ongoing rewards without showing signs of slowing down, keeping their initial communities alive, and releasing regular updates to their product. The goal of this approach is to build habits with the user base, in order for them to grow and keep the growth stable. If retention is not present, the growth gets stalled, and each campaign then needs to be restarted from ground up.
More Reach Through Partnerships
In the world of crypto no brand stands alone. To get the work on scaling going, many brands create partnerships. For example a wallet gets integrated with a DeFi platform. Games connect to NFT marketplaces, or exchanges receive a link to a payment processor. With each integration, or a new partnership, a door gets opened to a new group of users. The network effect plays a vital role in both scaling and growth. The interconnection between platforms is what gives the ecosystem vibes, and with more links attached the network gets stronger. Users can move between offered services without interruptions. Many brands use these alleys to grow without ever really having to build an entire product internally.
Simple is The Best
Truth be told, crypto is still a taboo subject for many people. It is too complex to be understood by your average user who still didn’t develop interest in crypto. Because of this, the brands who want to kick off with growth and scaling as fast as possible often decide to simplify the experience for end users. To do this they put the focus on minimal crypto jargon, clean interfaces, and easy onboarding. The technical side of the project must not be an obstacle for the users to get going with the product. Many crypto native brands decide to lower the entry barrier, ensuring that drop off during the onboarding process is kept to a minimum. By keeping their product as simple as possible, many crypto brands achieve early and continuous success by not even giving their users a chance to think about the blockchain technology, by keeping the focus on the product itself and allowing it to be understood by the means of being simple.
The bottom line is that crypto native brands grow and scale differently, but with a few core principles remaining the same. The growth is ensured by keeping the community strong, providing users with smart incentives worth onboarding and staying loyal, giving real product values, having global access, and keeping focus on high retention. Marketing is important, but not as much as the product itself.
