Who's on the marketing team?
Cliff notes: We're all marketers now.
If you’re in crypto, you’re in marketing.
That might sound like hyperbole, but in a space as fast-moving and competitive as web3, marketing isn’t just the responsibility of the marketing team—it’s part of everything a project does. Whether you’re a founder, BD lead, DevRel, CTO, or even a core engineer, your work shapes the narrative, the positioning, and ultimately, the adoption of your protocol or product.
🫅 Founders: The Face
The best crypto founders understand that their vision is the most powerful marketing tool. From raising capital to hiring top talent, from appearing on podcasts to posting on X, their presence shapes how their project is perceived.
Crypto is deeply narrative-driven, and founders who actively share their thesis, engage with the community, and create compelling stories about the problem they’re solving set the tone for everything else.
♠️ BD: Selling the Story
BD isn’t just about partnerships; it’s about positioning. Every deal a BD lands reinforces a project’s credibility and market fit.
Strong BD teams understand that they aren’t just closing deals—they’re shaping the perception of the protocol within the ecosystem. How they talk about integrations, how they educate potential partners, and even how they negotiate terms all contribute to a project’s broader marketing strategy.
💪 DevRel: The Builder’s Marketoooor
DevRel is marketing disguised as dev support. Whether through tutorials, workshops, hackathons, or engaging with builders on Discord, DevRels don’t just teach developers—they sell them on why a protocol or solution is worth using.
In crypto, where grassroots adoption is everything, a strong DevRel is one of the most impactful marketing assets a project can have.
🦾 CTO & Engineers: Building the Brand
The best marketing is building a product that people actually want to use. A rock-solid, well-documented, and developer-friendly protocol sells itself. Engineers who contribute to open-source projects, write technical blog posts, or engage in forums and governance discussions help position their projects as thought leaders.
Marketing isn’t just about creating hype—it’s also about credibility, and in crypto, trust is earned through transparency and proof-of-work.
📣 Marketing: The Glue
Of course, there’s the marketing team, and their job is to bring all these efforts together into a cohesive, strategic framework. While some projects build internal marketing teams, many rely on agencies and external partners to handle content, branding, community building, and growth strategies. Agencies provide the flexibility to scale but often lack the deep expertise needed for the frontiers of web3. For long-term impact, finding and hiring mission-aligned, active, and skilled contributors can make all the difference (more on that magical trifecta in the future).
Whether you scale with agencies or invest in internal teams—marketing is not optional. Marketing plays a critical role in amplifying the work of the entire organization, ensuring that messaging is clear, consistent, and compelling.
Marketing helps spread your idea. It’s about translating complex ideas into compelling narratives and making sure that every external-facing effort, from partnerships to product updates, reflects the project's long-term vision. In crypto, where mindshare and reputation are everything, marketing is not just about engagement farming and short-term attention hacks—it’s an integral part of building something that lasts.
The Crypto Marketing Playbook: We’re all marketers now.
Crypto marketing is different from traditional marketing because of its decentralized, community-driven nature. Success depends on the whole team embracing their role in telling the story and shaping the movement. Whether it’s a founder crafting a narrative, a BD driving ecosystem growth, a DevRel onboarding builders, or an engineer building open-source code—marketing is embedded in the fabric of the entire organization.
In web3, we’re building the better world we know is possible. That requires more than great tech—it requires changing minds. And that starts with painting a picture of the world we want others to see and be a part of.
The question isn’t “who’s on the marketing team?”—the question is whether your team knows they’re all marketers now.
Inspiration from marketing great Seth Godin:
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