Collaboration project with Adweek; author: Amanda Slavin. Contributor (content and design): Dylan Roelke

Creating Brand Champions Is the True Power of Web3

If you are wondering what Web3 and NFTs have to do with Marketing, you are not alone. You may be asking yourself is it reality or just another buzzword?  Web3 is not a new concept and certainly has the support of entrepreneurs around the world who are trying to design and build the technologies and protocols that would support this new iteration of the world wide web. 

As brands jump at the chance to tap into the mindshare of the customer in this new world, it will be imperative not to rely on old strategies that will not work in this new paradigm shift.

By embracing Web3, brands will experience a new champion. With Web3, your customers are not just driven by brand loyalty, but are incentivized by the community's power to increase the value of the new Web3 experiences connected to your brand.  

Big Changes for Marketers 

For the past 20 years, digital marketers have touted hyper-growth, vanity metrics relying solely on 3rd party data tools, to spend money, time, energy, resources, influencers, and content for growth. The way that growth has been measured has been through likes, comments, follows, and shares - the general success metrics that the third party tools have defined for us. Marketers have been obsessed with creating an audience, a passive audience, versus identifying ways to activate these audiences into a community of ambassadors who help shape your brand story. 

But what happens when the platforms you rely on change their cookie functions forcing you to rethink how to collect and utilize customer data in order to orchestrate a personalized experience?

The overall behavior Web3 elicits is more interesting than the concept itself. For example, when thinking through creating an NFT collection, participating in a metaverse community, or leveraging the blockchain for your next start-up, all of these aspects of Web3 are shining a spotlight on completely new success metrics, which in-turn require new behaviors to reach  success. 

Marketers will also experience a new demand for skills related to the NFT / Web 3 universe. According to CBS News, Jobs sites like Indeed and LinkedIn have already started advertising for positions in this space. Coinbase is hiring for a director of NFT business development, DraftKings needs a senior community associate for its NFT marketplace and VaynerMedia is hiring NFT artists, indicating a new demand for Marketers who are skilled to help accelerate the future of gaming and commerce.  

New Measures of Engagement

Most people think customers are either engaged or disengaged, but that is just not the case. Connecting with your audience is not binary. It is incrementally tiered, as you can see from the chart below, and requires an approach that is custom tailored to enhance the connection at each level. A customer can be at any level, and as a marketer, it is your job to decide where they are entering your funnel, and how you can continue to build your relationship with them through intentional and personalized communications/interactions. By correctly segmenting your prospects/ customers, you can craft a message that truly means something to them.

Now let’s look at how this relates back to Web3 using the levels, and how this will transform your approach to connecting with your customers in this new world. 

Starting at Level 6, the future of Web3

Level 6 is critical engagement, when you are inspiring someone to set goals to make a difference, which is directly related to how a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is structured. With a DAO, everyone has a voice. There is no central ruling authority. No bureaucracy and the power is transferred to the people, by the people and for the people. Developers, users, and contributors become owners and will have a stake in the business and a vote in how its run.

With Web3, brands will need to own these community networks either on discord, twitter, a DAO, or within the metaverse. In order to maintain active participation from these new owners  and continue building on the momentum, brands will need to understand how to engage in order to build trust and form a deeper relationship with customers. This calls for a shift in how brands have traditionally engaged with customers via marketing tools and tactics. Instead of serving ads and links to your latest blog, brands will need to invite these community members in and give them access to innovative products and services or sneak peaks - things that will help the community feel more connected to your brand and foster an environment that will empower customers to have ownership of their experience with the brand. This is the essence of Web3 and the core of the Seventh Level. 

The faith in communities to change and impact business, the networks ability to solve problems without relying on a hierarchical power structure, and the belief that we are a lot better as a whole working towards solutions, together.