The innovations and opportunities that are powered by Web3 technologies will change the face of digital marketing as we know it.
Before we begin let’s start by making sure you understand all the parts and pieces we’re talking about.
If you are a newbie to the NFT space and aren’t sure what an NFT is, read our NFT Meaning: What Is An NFT? blog post.
If you don’t know what a social token or creator coin is, read the post. Or, if you don’t know what digital marketing is, check out What is Digital Marketing?
Now that you have some of our top NFT, creator coin, and digital marketing resources, let’s look at how these new Web3 technologies are going to change the way we market.
How Will Tokens Change Digital Marketing?
Social tokens are the greatest community building and incentivization model ever created.
Not only can these social tokens provide rewards, similar to a “learn to earn” model, but they create opportunities for co-ownership and co-creation that we’ve never had before.
Community Building Through Rewards
Creators can, at any point, reward their community members for being engaged in the community or taking an action.
Many online communities gamify their Discord servers by giving away different roles to community members based on how active they are in the community and how many times they post or engage in conversation.
Sometimes those roles will provide members with access to different areas of the server or provide some new utility.
Social tokens, or creator coins, are cryptocurrencies that can be used to build communities.
Creators can also reward their communities with tokens for taking certain actions or even for showing up.
Creators can set up contests within their community where they give away coins to drive members to take certain actions.
For example, you could tell your community that the first 5 people to retweet something and then post a link to their retweet within your community Discord channel would get 10 of your coin.
How To Incentivize Your Community With Tokens
There are many digital marketing tactics you can power with social tokens.
If you have an e-book you want users to download, you can give them tokens for doing that. You could also provide rewards if they read your latest blog post or newsletter.
The Giraffe Tower has built software, Social Connector, that allows its network of creators to automatically reward community members for engaging with their content on different social channels.
If a community member likes, comments, or retweets particular Twitter posts, they can automatically earn coins for doing that.
This has driven huge spikes in social engagement for many creators.
So much clarity into the future vision of our ecosystem after hosting our first #GaryClub IRL event!
Beyond excited for the future of @GaryCoinOnSol and @giraffetowernft! 🦒🦒🦒#learntoearn #NFTCommunity #CreatorEconomy #creators #Solana
— Gary (@GaryLHenderson)
Creators can also use the software to reward community members for showing up, in particular, Twitter Spaces or Clubhouse rooms.
SocialConnector.io is Web3 software that allows creators to reward their communities for engaging with their content.
What Is The Value Of Social Tokens?
Social tokens have value in a variety of ways, but the value depends entirely upon the community and the coin holders.
If community members are willing to pay more, do more, or give more in trade for a token, the token value will increase within the community.
Some tokens have an actual dollar value if their connected to (or backed by) another type of cryptocurrency.
Some creators are paying their staff, paying for services, and even buying cars and haircuts using their digital social currency.
$DRIVE COIN is a social token that gives exclusive community access to car enthusiasts at Drive Club and they recently purchased a community project car using their coin.
Bought a car with $DRIVE. Probably nothing.
— $Drive coin (@DriveCoinClub)
But the true value of tokens comes with the utility they can provide.
The idea of the “hold” economy allows consumers to earn or purchase these tokens, enter the community and get value. They decide, based on what benefits they get from the community, if they want to continue to hold the coin.
This leaves it up to the community owner to continually provide value and benefits to the community members.
When a person gets consistent value from a community they belong to – ongoing learning, personal or professional development, collaboration or earning opportunities, etc. – they want to share that community with their friends, which creates a perpetual growth machine for a strong community.
Creators and coin holders can track the value of their social tokens to see how the community growth is affecting the coin value.
What Is The Learn-To-Earn Model?
There is a lot of education needed within the Web3 space.
The general public still has no understanding of what cryptocurrencies or NFTs are.
Social tokens provide creators with a way to incentivize their communities to learn by paying them in digital coins for completing different training programs, engaging in certain social media challenges, and simply educating themselves.
Several of the large cryptocurrency exchanges and Web3 developer communities use this model with great success to help educate their users.
Creators who build any sort of educational course, whether it’s Web3 specific or not, can use this learn-to-earn model to reward the community as they complete different training programs.
How Will NFTs Change Digital Marketing?
The opportunities within non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for digital marketing are still being created and explored.
More and more brands are and experimenting with new projects.
NFTs can provide gated access and be used as rewards in similar ways to social tokens, but the unique nature of NFTs creates additional opportunities.
Unique traits can create sub-communities within the larger community which can increase the perceived value (and actual value) of particular NFTs within the collection.
For , which all give access to his VeeCon conference, but certain NFTs will also provide group access or 1-to-1 access to participate in certain events with Gary.
How Can NFTs Be Used As Loyalty Programs?
Many brands are replacing their current loyalty programs with NFT projects including , , and the .
Big brands are jumping into the Web3 space using NFTs and social tokens for loyalty programs.
These types of NFT-based loyalty programs can create a variety of opportunities for brands. Everything from exclusive events or one-of-a-kind discounts, to special services like free delivery or free tickets.
Holding an NFT (non-fungible token) could even give a user the ability to help select the next new item to be offered on the menu.
What Is Co-Ownership In Web3?
Creators in Web3 can provide opportunities for their coin and NFT holders to actually own a part of the community.
The popularity of NFTs being used to show involvement in a community is immediately obvious if you go on Twitter, or other social platforms and look at how many people have their NFTs as their profile pictures.
These pfp NFTs indicate that social media users belong to a particular community, own a piece of that community, and feel strongly enough about that community that they will replace the image of their own face with these cartoon apes and giraffes.
Many users on Twitter are changing their profile pictures to their NFT non-fungible token images.
NFTs contain programmable “smart contracts” which allow creators to add particular utility to projects, like sharing a portion of all secondary sales with other holders of the project or having voting rights within the community for certain decisions.
There are several creators in the music industry who are leveraging social tokens to reward their community members.
@TheChainsmokers recently gave away 5,000 tokens to their top fans which provided a portion of the revenue from all streaming income from the album as well as opportunities for VIP access and special merch.
Talk about real co-ownership!
This is a first ever. We’re giving our fans a piece of So Far So Good, for FREE, tonight on @join_royal
If you score a token, you’ll earn a small percentage of streaming royalties from our new album, get a shot at VIP tix and other cool stuff. https://t.co/UjeOaAOved pic.twitter.com/dBV5E67AWA
— THE CHAINSMOKERS (@TheChainsmokers)
The real power of an effective community comes from the members recognizing the benefits.
As they get value and utility, they are incentivized to bring their friends into the community which builds the skill sets and knowledge-sharing potential even more.
And the true beauty of Web3 is that the coin holder can turn around and sell their coin or NFT at any time.
If they don’t feel like they’re getting value from the community anymore, they can just get out. And, many times, it doesn’t cost them anything or they can even experience a financial gain if the coin value has increased while they’ve been involved.
There is no web 2.0 model that exists where you can join a community, get value out of the community for as long as you want and then be able to leave the community and potentially make a profit by doing that.
What Is Co-Creation In Web3?
Web3 communities provide creators with opportunities to create content WITH their community members.
There are several Web3 communities that have been built for the sole purpose of co-creating content and providing a portion of the revenue or ownership of the final product to the community.
The is a Web3 community where members create their own NFT which provides them access to the community so they can contribute to an online, community-built story that can feature their character if they write a compelling enough story.
Dragon Forge is a Web3 animation studio that allows NFT holders to have a voice in the direction of the animated series as well as a portion of the commercial rights of the project.
The Macroverse and Dragon Forge are both community-based creator projects powered by NFTs.
How Will Web3 Change Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
With the end of third-party cookies just around the corner, brands are looking for other ways to collect data about their users.
The opportunities that Web3 creates for users to manage their own data and control what brands can access through their digital properties are extremely powerful.
The potential for brands to provide extremely personalized experiences based on the data the user decides to share will result in commerce experiences that we’ve never had before.
Imagine if you visit a website and it’s just a blank page with a button that says “Connect Wallet.”
You know you’re coming to the site because you want to purchase a new pair of shoes so, you open up your digital shopping wallet that has custom NFTs that contain information like your shoe size, your favorite colors and athletes, brands you support, your environmental concerns, NFTs from previous purchases you’ve made, and a host of other information.
The brand could serve you a fully customized selection of products that met your specific needs and fit your budget and style.
And, if you had decided to share information about your metaverse space, your shoe purchase could come with a digital twin that your avatar could wear.
Nike purchased RTFKT to create NFTs like CryptoKicks which are digital shoes for the metaverse.
Final Thoughts
How Else Will Web3 Change Digital Marketing?
We’ve just started to scratch the surface of what will change with digital marketing because of these Web3 technologies.
While this post talks primarily about NFTs and social tokens, there are just as many opportunities happening in the metaverse and cryptocurrency spaces and the potential for brands and marketers is growing exponentially.
Web3 technology is here to stay and will provide many new models for brands and creators to build digital marketing projects which will empower their users and create strong and loyal communities.
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