More than $35
billion worth of new investment has poured into cryptocurrencies since the
beginning of 2017, and famed investor Tim Draper is publicly supporting Tezos’s ICO.
With news like
that, it’s pretty clear to anyone watching that the world of blockchain
technology and decentralized-based solutions is heating up rapidly.
As investment
and activity increase, so does the need for greater differentiation. The
intensity of competition and number of “me-too” or “copycat” projects are only
going to increase dramatically.
So, it’s a good
thing that some of the startups in the decentralization industry are getting
ready.
Blockchain Startups Have Not Invested in Marketing … but They Will
According to
the “Marketing Maturity of Decentralized Startups, Q2 2017
Report” just released by the Decentralized Marketing Network (DMN) — a co-op of
blockchain startups such as Rootstock, Tierion and OB1, pooling their marketing
knowledge — 3 out of every 4 blockchain and decentralized startups plan to
increase their marketing headcount in the next 12 months. Further, 70 percent
of them plan to increase their spend on marketing.
It’s a good
thing too, because the report uncovered something that most industry observers
have known for a long time. When blockchain-based startups “market,” their
messaging is often inconsistent, ad hoc and typically more aligned to features
than benefits.
It’s no
surprise really.
Most disruptive
technological periods begin this way. There’s a flurry of great engineering-led
innovations, but marketing maturity is low. The report backs this up, finding
that an average of only 5 percent of budgets were spent on marketing, and only
35 percent of startups have anyone who even has responsibility for
marketing.
Beware: Marketing Is Misunderstood
The number of
reasons why marketing as a discipline is misunderstood are many. Everyone has
familiarity with tactics such as advertising, promotional items, flyers,
business cards and websites. So, naturally, everyone thinks they understand
marketing.
Sadly, that’s
not the case. In her fantastic review of the book Drucker on Marketing by William A.
Cohen, Jenny Cheung writes that “selling has to do with persuading a prospect
to buy something you have. Marketing has to do with already having what
prospects want.”
What Smart Marketers Do and You Can As Well
Marketing isn’t
an afterthought. It’s the critical thinking that goes into creating a product
or service that actually meets someone’s active or latent needs.
Getting there
doesn’t have to take eight months. It can be done in a few weeks, but it
involves:
1. creating a brand platform;
2. refining a strong, differentiated value
proposition;
3. understanding your audience and the various
personas;
4. building a messaging platform (here’s a way to get started quickly); and
5. creating a tight marketing plan that aligns
objectives, goals, strategies and tactics.
It also
involves operational and strategic discipline, which are covered more broadly
in “14 Rules for Successful High-Growth Marketing.”
Most important
of all is that it is never too early to get started. Des Traynor, the founder
of Intercom (a $50m revenue company), has a really powerful talk in which he basically
says, “We made a lot of marketing mistakes early on and I wish we had done it
differently.”
Learn the Lesson: Tech Alone Isn’t Enough ...
The classic
example of a superior technology losing the battle is the Betamax–VHS battle in the ’80s.
Betamax started off with a near 100 percent market share, but VHS countered by
offering recording times of two, then four, then six hours versus Betamax’s
higher-quality picture but with only one hour’s worth of recording time. Why
time instead of quality?
The answer
turns out to be something that sits at the core of marketing. The legendary
Peter Drucker said that the “aim of marketing is to know the customer so well
that the product sells itself.” What the VHS proponents figured out was that
customers wanted to record movies. They were longer than one hour, which made
VHS a superior choice, even if it wasn’t superior quality.
By focusing on
extending the length of time available on a tape based on that insight, they
were able to meet customer needs and emerge victorious.
As decentralized
startups enter the next phase, making the investment in marketing earlier
rather than later is the wise way to go.
According to
the Decentralized Marketing Network, many
startups have realized that. The DMN is planning to offer webinars, newsletters
and forums all with the goal of giving technical founders a strong
understanding of marketing fundamentals in positioning, value proposition and
messaging. The better understood that marketing is as a discipline, the better
the chances are for the the success of a technology.
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