I’ll be honest — when I first jumped into the crypto space, “marketing objectives” sounded like a buzzword people threw around to sound smart on panels. I mean, we’re talking about blockchain here, not shampoo. Shouldn’t the product speak for itself?
But after a rough (and expensive) lesson, I’ve completely changed my tune.
Let me backtrack. My team and I launched a crypto tool last year. We were focused on the tech — wallets, integrations, security layers — all the backend stuff we geek out over. Marketing? We figured we’d just tweet a few times, drop a whitepaper, and let word of mouth do its thing.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
After months of work, the launch came and… crickets. A few clicks. Some curious DMs. But no real traffic. No traction. And definitely no adoption.
That’s when it hit me: even in crypto — maybe especially in crypto — if people don’t know what problem you’re solving, they won’t care that you solved it.
Most crypto projects assume their idea is disruptive enough to catch fire on its own. But the space is too crowded now. There are thousands of tokens, dApps, DAOs, and whatever else popping up every week. Everyone claims to be the “next big thing.”
If you're not deliberately shaping why your project matters and who it matters to, you're gambling — not building.
And that’s the real pain point: without clear marketing goals, everything starts to feel like guesswork. You try things randomly. Run out of budget. Get frustrated. Sound familiar?
Out of desperation, I started asking around. I talked to other small teams, solo devs, and indie NFT creators in Discord groups. The ones actually growing weren’t shouting louder — they were just clearer. They had simple marketing goals like:
“Get 500 qualified visits to our site this month.”
“Reach 100 email signups from NFT collectors.”
“Run one paid campaign targeting DeFi users in APAC.”
Simple. Trackable. Focused.
I stopped thinking of “marketing” as this big intimidating thing and started treating it like I did product features: build it, test it, iterate.
I ran a super low-budget ad campaign just to learn. Didn’t care about huge numbers. Just wanted to see what clicked. Honestly, I wish I’d done that sooner. If you’re even slightly curious, you might want to launch a test campaign. It gave me way more insight than lurking on Reddit threads ever did.
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer: if you're serious about building something in crypto — and not just flipping for a quick buck — you need some kind of marketing goal. Not to “sell out,” but to stay focused, especially when things get messy.
And guess what? You don’t need an agency or some massive ad budget to get started. Just pick one small goal, test one small strategy, and see what works. It’s not about “growth hacking” or gaming algorithms. It’s about connecting with the right people who actually need what you’re building.
If someone told me a year ago that one of the most valuable things I could do for my crypto startup was define marketing objectives, I probably would’ve laughed. But now? I get it. Tech matters — but so does the story you tell about it.