In recent years, especially after the NFT bloom in 2021, Web3 has attracted the eyeballs of entrepreneurs and non-tech professionals, especially marketers, business developers and communicators. They see the lucrative potential of this burgeoning industry and want to jump into it before their competitors do. However, it’s not easy for non-tech professionals to learn and enter this space because the currently available learning resources mainly surround topics like coding and investment. Non-tech educational content is relatively scarce and a bit all over the map. You might have to spend more time and effort gathering information if you want to equip yourself as a non-tech professional in Web3 than in other fields.
This situation might change because of the newly released book by Web3 marketing pioneer Amanda Cassatt — Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution. For non-tech professionals who are not Web3-native or anyone who knows nothing about marketing or Web3 at all, this book can be a gateway to learning about and pivoting to the nascent field.
Being accessible to all is at the core of Cassatt’s book. Unlike many jargon-ridden resources in Web3, this guidebook is written in plain language with a logical flow. Even if there’s a technical term, it usually comes with an explanation that beginners can easily digest. For instance, when Cassatt mentions smart contracts, she first debunks that they are “neither smart, nor are they contracts,” then defines them clearly as “basically if-then statements expressed in code” and illustrates a concrete example to help readers imagine how they work. Her precise writing dials down anything complicated and abstract into simple and concrete.
Apart from clarifying Web3 concepts, this book is particularly useful in comprehending the similarities and differences between Web2 and Web3 marketing. As a copywriter with some marketing knowledge and a bit of Web3 experience, I always wonder how my Web2 skill set can be transferred to Web3. Now I’ve found some inspiration because this book walks me through the entire process of Web3 marketing: Cassatt describes thoroughly what strategies she and her team apply in each phase or step to make things work. From her experience, I’ve learned that the most significant difference is that Web3 emphasizes community — builders, investors and users of a project altogether — but Web2 doesn’t; the role of Web3 marketers is to build and catalyze a marketing funnel and eventually let the community practice self-marketing with this tool we’ve made. Other than that, their mindsets and strategies are similar to what we do in Web2; they are just integrated with different tools, activities and opportunities unique to Web3.
So far, this book has received mostly positive feedback across the internet. The only criticism — a harsh one — claims that this book is a “self-promotion manifesto disguised as expertise.” The commenter accuses the author of plucking concepts out and rebranding them with a Web3 touch, such as using “Crypto Twitter” instead of just “Twitter.” To be fair, I understand why the critic feels that way because, as I’ve mentioned, many strategies in this book are not something new; they are existing practices applied to Web3, an industry with a distinct set of rules and conditions. But I don’t think this is necessarily a wrong approach; it might be a sound way to remind readers that these concepts differ from their Web2 counterparts. Taking “Crypto Twitter” as an example, this term highlights the unique behaviours and characteristics of Web3-related Twitter users, such as being pseudonymous.
The commenter also argues that the book is brimmed with self-references to the author and her company that are not backed up by actual data, budgets, or results. It’s true, but I’d like to give the author the benefit of the doubt because the target readership of this book might be broad. There are always beginners who have very limited knowledge of Web3 or marketing but are looking to learn about them. They might find data or numeric results hard to understand. I think the author is trying to lay down every detail and make these concepts and strategies clear without cramming newbies’ minds with puzzling numbers.
Overall, this guidebook is beginner-friendly. It is especially helpful to readers with no prior knowledge of Web3 or marketing, but the more you’re familiar with Web3, marketing or both, the less you’ll find this book amusing. Therefore, I highly and only recommend this book to non-tech professionals who want to transition to Web3, Web3 insiders looking to help in a marketing position, and newbies who are here to learn about both.
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Last Update: 04/28/2023
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