Web3 vs Web2 GTM differences

While there are some small tactical differences between web3 and web2 GTM - the fundamentals largely remain the same.

Here are some core differences you need to be mindful of:

Multiple stakeholders - For many projects they need to focus on several stakeholders INSTEAD of ONE core end-user. Unlike web2, Investors are no longer just institutional investors - they can include community members who invest in your tokenised economy. You need to outline EVERY stakeholder you need to satisfy and create personas for each - Early adopters, community members, institutional investors etc

Understanding demand and supply sides -  Many web3 projects, especially blockchains, protocols and marketplaces need to focus on both the demand and supply sides. If you are in this category you need to be able to create a clear GTM strategy that take both supply and demand into account.

Community lead growth VS product lead growth - Tokenization allows projects to attract a large community before a product is even launched. How do you plan on involving the community and multiple stakeholders at each step of the product development process?

• Use your community to build products alongside you, bug bounties, hackathons, UGC, referrals etc

Define needs over product - As you have the opportunity to build a large and engaged community before your product has even launched - YOU MUST define the core vision, needs and key problems you are solving extremely clearly to align each stakeholder.

Incentive and mechanism design - Tokens are self-marketing machines. They can accelerate any marketing and retention effort by 100x BUT be careful - as the old saying goes “acceleration applied to an in-efficiency just expands the inefficiency” and this is the same with your token rewards - MAKE SURE YOUR INCENTIVE DESIGNS WORKS - test small and then scale!

GTM Essentials

If you were to boil down a successful GTM strategy it would boil down to 3 main components

1. You have a minimum lovable project
2. You have a target market you deeply understand
3. You design the most efficient plan to convince as many of your target markets to use your project
   1. Goals and budget
   2. Compelling Messaging
   3. Channel strategy to get your message to enough of the market

Here are some key steps and questions to ask yourself in a GTM strategy

1. Do you have a launch-ready “minimum loveable” product, service, community or offer
   1. Are you clear on your products/team vision, mission, values, core competencies, strengths and weaknesses etc
   2. Are you confident in a positive NPS if 1,000 new prospects used your project
      
2. Goals and KPIs
   1. Have you set clear growth goals and KPIs for your strategy
      1. What does a stretch goal look like?
      2. What does success look like
      3. What does failure look like
      4. What are the key milestones and blockers in achieving your goals
   2. Have you set an appropriate budget
      
3. Product positioning
   1. User personas - Do you understand your end users, power users, stakeholders and key partnerships and their respective personas
   2. Competitive analysis - Do you understand your competition so you can see where you win and carve out your own niche that you can dominate?
      
4. Clear Messaging
   1. Based on your unique positioning can you create compelling messaging that articulates your positioning effectively and puts you in a category of ONE?
   2. If you were in a room full of your competitors and had to pitch your perfect user - would they choose you or would you sound like another generic competitor 
   3. Do you have social proof - endorsements, case studies or testimonials?
      
5. Funnel and Channel strategy
   1. What is the user journey and funnel you have mapped out for taking a cold prospect and turning them into a power user?
   2. What channels do you plan on using to reach your target demographic with your messaging
   3. What campaigns on each channel are you looking to test?
      
6. Measure, test, iterate and scale
   1. Have you set up tracking and measurement dashboards for each marketing campaign on each channel to see what works and what doesn’t work 
   2. Remove what doesn’t work and double down on what does work
   3. Optimise
   4. Do you have the capital and resources to scale your working campaigns?

Channels

*The ones in bold are popular traction channels in web3

What a failing GTM strategy looks like

Most projects simply play “Simon says” and try to copy what their competitors have done - it rarely works and you are left with a blown-out budget and angry investors.

The typical failed GTM strategy looks like this

1. The founding team builds product
2. They want to get it out into the market as soon as possible
3. They copy their competitions marketing tactics like airdrops, PR, Twitter spaces etc
4. They send out hundreds of cold emails, Twitter DMS or use advertising channels and PR to get thousands and sometimes millions of prospects to see their project BUT…..
5. The project fails to get traction
6. They then blame PMF

Why do most projects fail when…

• They use the same tactics that had worked for their competition.
• When they reached their perfect users using proven marketing and advertising channels

Here’s the secret - it’s not hard to get your project in front of millions of people. Anyone can spend a few million dollars on advertising and drive traffic and potential users to your website BUT if you don't know how to convert them then it’s a waste of time

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