Article Author: SunnyZ, Cube Labs

Three stages of project growth.

Based on my personal observations, the growth of Web3 projects generally goes through three stages: First: Campaigning on task platforms to gain traffic; Second: Buying and exchanging traffic in the TON ecosystem (essentially the same logic as previous traffic exchanges, but luckily, buying traffic on TON has become standardized and quantifiable); Third: Advertising on traditional platforms (such as TikTok or Xiaohongshu). These three stages are linked to the growth of the project itself.

When the project first starts, it is highly likely to go to task platforms to gain traffic. After gaining followers, they start buying and exchanging traffic. This round of exchanges is concentrated in the TON ecosystem; many projects do not need to issue tokens and can thrive purely on traffic business. However, the leading few in TON have already directed users to too many projects, and every time you enter the community, you see users coming from the same few channels, indicating that growth has somewhat stagnated.

New traffic platform—TikTok

At this time, perceptive project teams will focus on TikTok, where there are plenty of crypto KOLs, but very few project teams are actually utilizing it. One reason is the lack of resources and not knowing where to find TikTok KOLs, and another is not knowing how to advertise crypto on TikTok; it takes time to accumulate experience in this area.

Here, Sonic is a great example, achieving a million users in two weeks, with TikTok ads playing a significant role, indicating that TikTok has huge growth potential as a new channel for crypto. Regarding Sonic, we will anonymize the data and break down the details of TikTok advertising【see below】 (data is for reference only and not actual data requirements):

We can see that, as the growth manager, you need to clarify what your data metrics are. Here it mentions metrics such as views, interaction rate, popularity tags, and discussion levels, and all target data are clearly defined. In fact, the aforementioned improvements in token purchase intentions, expanding brand exposure, etc., are all extensions of data. Once the data meets the requirements, brand exposure will naturally increase. This is where the growth manager needs to understand what the project really wants.

I have talked with many founders who tend to be relatively idealistic, placing high hopes on their developed products but lacking understanding of the market, often leading to mistakes in marketing or growth decisions. I have always believed that founders who can’t even understand the community have issues (personal view). It’s essential to listen to the user's voice to achieve organic growth because growth is a grounded matter that must be data-driven. This was already mentioned in my article about user refinement operations. Fortunately, there is a noticeable trend where project teams are beginning to pay more attention to data, starting to base activities on data. Of course, good growth must grasp both sides and be strong in both; I even believe good growth can act like a mini CEO, focusing on growth, marketing, conversion, and retention. If they can excel in these areas, the project will already have a great quality.

However, within a team, there are actually very few people who can do everything, which gives rise to another commercial ecosystem—agencies. To some extent, this signifies a more refined division of labor, and growth is becoming increasingly professional, which is a positive development. Considering that many project teams have this demand, I have compiled a list of several good agencies I have encountered in the market, along with their respective strengths and weaknesses for everyone's reference.

Marketing Agency LKI

Advantages: From an external perspective, whether it's website design, presentation of awards, or SEO ranking, this agency has done an excellent job in its own quality. The agency's founder (Laura) is also very active on social media, easily attracting attention due to her rich experience in the industry (since 2016) and her identity as a female founder.

This agency does both marketing and token listing consulting services. They list a wealth of resources (such as over 1 million KOL resources and claim to have 'private relationships' with them); some partners are quite famous (like Binance, Gate, and even mentioned in VC discussions like a16z);

Disadvantages: The team is entirely foreign; there may be language and time zone issues. The headquarters is located in London, and the service prices are high. Moreover, during our communication with the founder, we found that she is not familiar with the listing requirements of various exchanges. In the latest round of the market, successful TGE cases seem to be lacking (this can also be seen from the case studies displayed on LKI's own website, most are examples of data growth).

erostage

Advantages: The strength lies in good localization and top-tier resources, as the team consists purely of foreigners covering different languages across various countries, so different PMs are most familiar with their own country's market, whether it’s incubated projects or their own projects, both have excellent quality.

Disadvantages: Rarely engages with the Chinese market, charges higher fees, currently only works on its own projects, and will only participate in incubation if the project is very good. If the team is in China, there may be some time zone delays, making progress relatively slow.

Mango Labs

Advantages: The agency that tells the best stories and understands communication the most, embedding a project's concept and positioning into the community's mindset; it has a wide audience among major institutions, exchanges, and professional users. They will help project teams specifically organize narrative notion pages. Also, it is one of the most degen agencies, having handled several meme projects, well-versed in how to spread information through memes, with a narrative style and format that very much aligns with the current market trends. Reasonable fees.

Disadvantages: Mainly focused on the Chinese-speaking region; primarily covers narrative production and marketing strategies, not much community operation and ROI-driven user growth.

Cube Labs

Advantages: Cube is my own agency, offering a variety of services, mainly focused on full-package solutions, adept at tailoring services based on project needs, quick response time, and good resources. There are many communities in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Turkey, etc., and we can reach TikTok influencers globally. We excel at directing real users to Twitter and Telegram through campaigns.

Disadvantages: The team is newly established and lacks major cases. They primarily focus on collaborating with startup teams and pre-TGE type projects.

PrimePicks

Advantages: Among the partners, there is Howel, the founder of the largest MCN in the U.S. TikTok, who has served top Web2 brands; there is also Wayne, a veteran in Web3, with years of experience covering exchanges, public chains, projects, and incubation, understanding every aspect of Web3 marketing. Eight years of global influence management and collaboration experience provide excellent expertise in high traffic and content.

The core team is made up of experienced industry experts, with members from leading companies like Google, Meta, and Douyin.

Comprehensive digital management and high-quality customer service offer full-spectrum digital management and first-class customer support.

Eight years of global influence management and collaboration experience provide excellent expertise in high traffic and content.

The core team is made up of experienced industry experts, with members from leading companies like Google, Meta, and Douyin.

Comprehensive digital management and high-quality customer service offer full-spectrum digital management and first-class customer support.

Disadvantages: Web3 marketing on TikTok is a newly growing demand market, currently only limited cooperation models with influencers have been developed, requiring more case studies to accumulate cooperative methods.

MetaEra

Advantages: Has a wide range of guest resources in politics, academia, industry OGs, KOLs, etc. Excellent offline event organization capabilities, having held dozens of influential events in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, the Middle East, North America, and Europe, the online Chinese-speaking Space has always been a leader in the industry. Maintained a rapid growth trend in 2024.

Disadvantages: The team was established relatively recently, and its content output is still mainly in Chinese.

Marketing strategies for different types of projects.

Having discussed the agency, I think we can talk about the tactics of different types of projects and how to cooperate with professional agencies. Here, I divide projects into three categories: one type is completely startup projects with no growth yet, another type is projects that have not issued tokens and are preparing for TGE, and the last type is projects that have already issued tokens and are preparing for secondary market interactions. Each type of project has different strategies.

The first type of project can gain traffic through task platforms as mentioned earlier, then buy traffic on TON, and after acquiring hundreds of thousands of traffic, they can exchange with others. User retention entirely depends on the quality of your product. This type of cooperation is charged based on CPA, which is only part of growth; marketing needs to coordinate with user growth to conduct a series of campaigns and PR. Such a combination can make the data look good and gradually accumulate users.

The second type of project needs hype before TGE; such projects require a short, quick burst of activity, shilling within 4-6 weeks, getting the token keywords to the top three on Twitter, with data needing to show exponential growth to meet the standards for exchange review; this is the focus of growth.

The third type of project considers where to find buyers and how internal growth interacts with market makers. Generally, market makers are third parties, while growth is internal to the team, which makes it difficult for both sides to respond quickly to each other's needs. This is a problem I have found while talking to many founders; clearly, the team has good positive news, but the token remains stagnant, which is quite awkward. Additionally, it's rare for growth to complete a closed loop; it's not surprising that the demand for both sides isn't understood. For projects that have issued tokens, what they need to find is buyers. This round of buyers is largely comprised of non-crypto core circles from South Korea, Turkey, and Western countries, and industry insiders are not as frenzied about buying tokens as those outside the industry.

For projects that have come out of a bear market, they are quite familiar with the first and second types, and the next step is to convert users within traditional traffic pools, where TikTok is a great choice. Due to limited space, I'll write about how to use TikTok for traffic in the next article.