Amanda Cassatt shares storytelling tactics in Web3, highlighting Shiba Inu’s Shiboshis NFT collection as a unique player in the competitive NFT market.
The domains of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and the broader Web3 environment have been rapidly growing.
It has come a long way from its modest beginnings as a haven for fintech enthusiasts utilizing blockchain to subvert the established banking system. Celebrities now support it, massive institutions are investing in it, and authorities want to keep an eye on it.
This indicates that the narrative around the area presented to outsiders to entice them in as frequent users has also changed in just ten years. In what way can one narrate a tale about an ecosystem with scant historical records? How do you market an ever-changing concept?
Amanda Cassatt exclusively spoke at Proof of Talk in Paris. Cassatt is the CEO and founder of the renowned Web3 marketing firm Serotonin. She tells the Web3 stories and describes how she created one of the most prosperous marketing empires. She was once the chief marketing officer at Consensys.
Telling stories in the absence of non
In 2015, Cassatt, a founder in New York, explored the cryptocurrency industry in search of a payment solution. She was one of the first Ethereum gatherings at that point.
“Despite my inability to conduct a thorough investigation on the codebase, I observed that this was the most intelligent group of people I had ever encountered, and they were the happiest I had seen anyone this smart, probably in my entire life,” the woman said.
Cassatt claimed that it took them “a while” to fully and accurately explain the principles of Ethereum to her because, at the time, it wasn’t done so in “accessible ways” for non-technical people. She continued that Web3 might serve as a “superior financial system’s alternate foundation,” which astounded her.
“Fundamentally, instead of locking you into one system based on where you’re born, it enables many different systems to be architected and to compete with each other and to have people choose to opt into them – and that just seems better.”
At this point, she realized that she had to join what she was calling the circus at the time.
“I realized that many of the people on that crew were not well-versed in media operations and storytelling,” Cassatt remarked.
She eventually contributed to creating some of those explanations as she developed in her position at Consensys.
Roots of Web3 Growth Hacking
However, things were very different regarding narrating the stories of a comparatively new place, particularly between 2015 and 2017.
Words like “crypto,” “Bitcoin,” or “Ethereum,” according to Cassatt, are prohibited on all paid platforms, including Facebook, Google Ads, Mailchimp, and the Meta business suite, which is essential for digital marketers.
According to her, there was no method to perform programmatic advertising in the typical Web2 style that appealed to the burgeoning sector:
“We had to move away from this calcified model of what marketing is – marketers managing these big spends on Web2 ad platforms, because we literally weren’t able to do that.”
The CEO of Serotonin claims that marketing may be divided into three categories: owned, earned, and paid. When Consensys first started, its primary focus was earned and owned content.
“We basically couldn’t do paid things other than event sponsorships and hosting events and stuff like that because the platforms didn’t allow it, which was very cool because it meant we came back to our growth hacker roots.”
Cassatt views the increased use of sponsored growth marketing in the industry as a “reflection of the space maturing” and a good thing.
Putting the organizers in order
As far as she could remember, her most successful strategy for Consensys was creating a network of meetup organizers. According to her, these individuals wished to add the “Ethereum meetup organizer” label to their identities for a particular city.
“So we organized the organizers.”
She explained, “We made sure they had standard decks and presentation templates to standardize and professionalize how they spoke about projects, or that they had the money for pizza and beer, or the culturally appropriate equivalents.”
According to Cassatt, they assembled a series of traveling content for new DApps that would visit all of the various gatherings, pick up users, and get feedback.
As a result, there was consistently original and organic content, which increased efficiency because we didn’t have to plan every meetup group ourselves.
“It’s a great metaphor for how to build an organic community in Web3.”
You make sure you have an incentive structure with both intrinsic and external motivations that people want to choose to participate in. Look around your community to find sparks, then plug people into that system and empower them so you, as the marketer, don’t have to come up with all the fantastic ideas yourself.
Every business is in the media.
How businesses see the information they create is another innovative approach to the Web3 domain that startups can use more broadly.
“I basically think of every startup as its own niche media company about its own subject matter.”
According to Cassatt, startups should see themselves as such and have an email newsletter covering every advancement in a particular area or issue.
She brought up her experience working at Consensys, where they started several newsletters covering “everything that was going on in Ethereum” to get readers interested in the content rather than just the sales pitch.
“It was a source of truth that people could come to in the space.”
Suggestions for the future generation
While keeping up with the quick changes is one of the hardest things about working in the Web3 area, be it as a marketer, developer, or consumer, Cassatt provided some timeless guidance:
“Try to find product market fit. The potential for high reward in the crypto space has brought in so many creators and would-be founders and that’s amazing because it’s more shots on goal for creating something cool.”
In comparison to venture-funded Web2 firms, she added, this also implies less startup training, discipline, or experience in the field.
“I would acquire knowledge on how to effectively identify product-market fit for a startup, generate a concept, test it on acquaintances within the intended market, determine whether they would be interested in using it, and find out how much they would be willing to pay,” the speaker stated.
After finding the initial frame of fit with those early evangelists, send it to the following concentric circle of people to see if they would be interested in using it.
“Get the people that you know in your target audience group excited about it before you grow to the next and then grow to the next. People forget this but it’s so simple – you have to do things that don’t scale at the beginning.”
