Web3 marketing has unique challenges for marketing and growth teams. Unlike Web2's cookie-based tracking, Web3 operates in a crypto-native environment where user privacy is paramount and wallet addresses replace email lists. This means onchain marketers must rethink their entire approach to attribution, measurement, and user engagement.
The shift from centralized platforms to blockchains impacts how marketing attribution is done in web3. While Web2 marketers use pixels and cookies to track user journeys, Web3 marketers must also connect wallet activity, in-app behaviour, and onchain transaction data across multiple wallets and chains to their marketing funnel. This creates both opportunities and challenges that require specialized web3 analytics tools.
This guide provides a framework for building effective Web3 marketing funnels that drive real onchain results. You'll learn how to turn scattered marketing efforts into a systematic growth engine, implement tactics that resonate with crypto-native audiences, and measure success through onchain attribution. You'll get actionable strategies to optimize each stage of your funnel and build sustainable growth for your Web3 project.
Understanding the Web3 Marketing Funnel
At its core, a marketing funnel maps the user journey from initial awareness to conversion. The "funnel" shape shows the natural drop-off in prospects as they move through each stage—more people will see your content than will become active users.
Leads drop off at every stage of the funnel. More people read a blog post than buy a product. Marketers constantly optimize the funnel: how to attract more leads and convert them effectively.
Web3 marketing funnels operate on different touchpoints than their Web2 counterparts. Like Web2, thinking about Web3 marketing in terms of a funnel can be helpful. In addition to visits on your website and socials, Web3 marketers also measure the number of wallet connections and onchain transactions as key touchpoints in the marketing funnel.
The fact that the web3 user's journey happens on multiple platforms and blockchains creates marketing attribution challenges. A user might discover your project on Twitter, research it on Discord, and then interact with your smart contract directly without visiting your website. Traditional analytics tools miss these touchpoints, making it essential to use Web3-native tracking solutions.
Stages of the Web3 Marketing Funnel
At the very top of the funnel, you grab a user’s interest and slowly guide them down the funnel to the point of conversion.
At a high level, you can think of a marketing funnel as a user moving through the following journey: Awareness, Education, Conversion, and Retention. Let’s unpack the funnel stage by stage:
Awareness Stage: Users discover your project through marketing on crypto-native channels. This could be through Twitter Spaces, educational content, or word-of-mouth recommendations. The goal is to capture attention and make a strong first impression.
Education Stage: Interested users learn about your project's features, tokenomics, and value proposition. They might read your whitepaper, join your Discord, or do a learn-to-earn campaign. This stage focuses on building trust and showing value.
Conversion Stage: Engaged users take meaningful onchain actions like connecting their wallet, making a transaction, or joining governance. This is actual adoption, not just vanity metrics.
Retention and Advocacy Stage: Once users are onboarded, the goal is to keep them engaged and turn them into advocates for your project. Empower them to spread the word by offering referral bonuses or community-building tools. Advocacy creates a network effect, helping your project grow organically.
A user’s path through these stages is rarely linear, depending on the type of Web3 app and the audience. For example, a user can jump around in the marketing funnel and may not cleanly progress from one stage to the next. If your product is an entirely novel category, users may spend comparatively more time in the awareness and interest stage.
Awareness Stage (TOFU)
Top-of-funnel (TOFU) marketing is your first impression on your users. TOFU is where you capture the attention of a lead and hopefully encourage them to keep learning about you. In other words, it’s the hook that gets people in the door. TOFU messaging should be helpful, educational, and/or fun so that leads gain value even if they don’t progress further down the funnel.
Types of Marketing That Fit Into TOFU
Typical top-of-the-funnel marketing channels include:
Crypto-Native Channels:
Twitter/X: The main discovery channel for Web3 projects. Focus on thought leadership, technical insights, and community building, not direct promotion. Share development updates, explain complex concepts simply, and engage authentically.
Discord and Telegram: Community hubs where users find projects through organic discussion. Provide genuine value in relevant communities: answer questions, share insights, and build relationships.
AMAs and X Spaces: Offer real-time engagement. Host educational sessions on industry news, be a guest speaker, or join discussions relevant to your project.
Content Marketing:
Educational content: Performs well in Web3 as users need to understand complex concepts. Create tutorials that solve real problems, market analysis with genuine insights, and thought leadership that showcases your team's expertise.
Industry and Market insights: Help users navigate crypto, building trust and authority. Share data-driven analysis on trends, regulatory news, or tech innovations.
Technical tutorials: Teach users valuable skills while subtly showing your project's capabilities. If you're building a DeFi protocol, create guides on yield farming that mention your platform as an option.
Tips for Effective TOFU Marketing for Web3 Apps
Your goal at this stage: get your audience’s attention. Tactics should increase website visitors and social media traffic, capturing as many leads as possible.
Write compelling and clear copy: Your copy is often the first thing potential users read. Make it attention-grabbing and clear. If your product isn't simple to understand, users won't engage. a16z crypto's blog does a great job of breaking down complex topics.
Use bold visuals: Good visuals capture attention. Use high-quality images and videos with a recognizable brand and color scheme.
Employ the art of storytelling: Create an emotional connection with potential users. Share personal experiences with problems and how you overcame them to provide value and build trust.
Leverage social proof: Build trust and credibility with testimonials, user statistics, and community growth metrics. Avoid inflated numbers; the Web3 community will call out projects that manipulate metrics. Boys Club, a crypto social club, effectively creates unusual swag that encourages users to share on social.
Be genuine—don’t use corporate speak! Web3 users are savvy. Corporate jargon and overly polished content often backfire. Embrace personality and treat potential users as knowledgeable peers.
Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
The middle-of-funnel stage is about nurturing relationships with users who already show interest. These "warm leads" aren’t ready to commit yet—they want to see proof, credibility, and real value before joining your ecosystem. At this stage, effective Web3 marketing means educating, building trust, and demonstrating your project’s unique strengths without pushing too hard for conversion.
Value Demonstration Through Content
Content at this stage should position your project as a credible solution:
Whitepapers & Technical Docs: Explain your technology, tokenomics, and roadmap clearly enough to inspire confidence without overwhelming non-technical readers. See the Formo docs as an example!
Learn-to-Earn Campaigns: Reward users for completing educational modules, aligning incentives so they gain knowledge and tokens while you build an educated user base (popularized by Coinbase and Galxe).
User Stories & Case Studies: Show real-world applications and benefits of your project. These examples help potential users picture themselves engaging with your platform.
Thought Leadership Content: Reports, indexes, or educational materials (like Chainalysis’ adoption index) build authority and showcase your expertise.
Community Engagement & Transparency
Trust grows through direct engagement and openness:
Interactive Sessions: AMAs, office hours, and educational webinars provide transparency and allow direct dialogue with your team. Frame them around broader industry problems (e.g., Ethereum scaling) rather than just product pitches.
Events: Meetups and conferences foster personal connections. In Web3, face-to-face interactions often carry more weight than traditional ads.
Transparency Signals: Open-source code, public GitHub activity, roadmaps with honest updates, and regular community communication show your commitment to accountability and progress.
Avoiding Common MOFU Mistakes
Middle-funnel users are evaluating options carefully. Push too hard, and you’ll lose them:
Don’t Over-Sell: Overemphasizing conversion at this stage can come across as desperate. Focus on education and value—trust will lead to adoption naturally.
Be Careful with Trend-Hopping: Airdrops and viral tactics may bring short-term attention, but without careful design, they often attract mercenary users who quickly dump tokens. Sustainable growth requires deeper engagement. Remember, quality > quantity.
Solve Real Problems: Highlight how your app actually improves user outcomes. Users at this stage are comparing you against competitors and need clear, practical reasons to choose you.
By focusing on education, transparency, and value, your MOFU strategy builds trust and positions your project as the credible choice—turning interest into long-term commitment.
Bottom-of-Funnel Marketing in Web3
The bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) is the final stage in the Web3 marketing funnel, where potential users are on the verge of becoming active participants in your Web3 app. This stage is all about converting engaged prospects into actual users, making it a critical part of your growth strategy. Here, you sell and motivate your audience to take meaningful actions.
Types of Marketing That Fit Into BOFU
At the BOFU stage, these marketing strategies and tactics are highly effective in converting potential users into active, paying users:
Product demos
Competitive comparisons
Case studies
Quests
Incentives (e.g., better yields for early adopters)
Hackathons
Tips for Effective BOFU Marketing for Web3 Apps
Converting users at the BOFU stage requires strategies that reduce friction and highlight your app’s unique value. Here are some actionable tips:
Use Clear Calls to Action (CTAs): Your CTAs should stand out and use action-oriented language like "Connect Wallet" or "Start Earning." A strong, clear CTA is essential for encouraging users to take the next step.
Reduce Friction: Simplify the onboarding process to make it as easy as possible for users to take action. For example, implement streamlined wallet connection flows that work across multiple wallet types and provide clear instructions. Embed forms in your app instead of redirecting users to external pages. Rethink your form design—only ask for the essential information to minimize drop-offs.
Let Your Community Do the Work for You: Satisfied users are some of your best advocates. Leverage community-driven promotion by encouraging existing users to share their experiences and refer friends. Quests and incentivized referrals, such as offering discounts or perks, can further activate your community.
Streamline Onboarding and First Interactions: A great user experience at the start can be key to turning potential users into long-term ones. Use guided first transactions and step-by-step tutorials to help new users with their initial interactions, such as making a deposit, trade, or governance vote. Consider offering transaction simulations so new users can see what will happen before committing.
Offer Product Demos and Testnets: Allow users to explore your platform risk-free. Providing demos or enabling participation on testnets lets potential users experiment with fake tokens, helping them understand the user experience without financial risk.
Incentive Alignment: Reward early adopters with token incentives designed to attract genuine users instead of reward farmers. Time-locked rewards or activity-based distributions can encourage long-term engagement. Offering governance participation opportunities or early access perks like exclusive features or direct communication with the development team can also create a sense of ownership and exclusivity.
Social Proof and Community Validation: Happy users are more likely to recommend your product to others. Harness the power of social proof through customer reviews, ratings, or testimonials to build trust and credibility.
Founder and Team Visibility: In Web3, visibility of founders and team members plays a crucial role in building trust. Be active in community discussions, Twitter Spaces, and other channels. Positive interactions with the core team reassure potential users that real humans are behind the project.
By combining these BOFU marketing strategies with a focus on reducing friction, you can effectively turn potential users into active participants in your Web3 app.
Retention and Advocacy: Building Long-Term Value
Converting users is just the start. Be mindful of sybil users and farmers. Successful Web3 projects prioritize retention and converting high-quality users into advocates who drive organic growth.
Community Growth Loops
Referral programs that reward both referrers and new users create sustainable growth. Design them to reward meaningful activity, not just signups, to ensure high-quality user acquisition.
Community rewards for active participation encourage ongoing engagement beyond financial incentives. This could include reputation systems, exclusive access, or special recognition for valuable contributions.
Governance participation gives users meaningful influence over the protocol's direction. Improvement proposals and public governance forums attract engaged contributors to participate in your community.
Long-Term Engagement Strategies
Regular feature releases and product announcements keep users excited about your product. Communicate your roadmap and involve the community in feature prioritization.
Community events like hackathons, AMAs, and educational sessions maintain engagement between product updates. These events also help users connect with each other, strengthening the community.
Educational content that helps users succeed with your platform increases retention. This could include advanced tutorials, market analysis, or best practice guides.
Measuring and Improving Your Web3 Marketing ROI
Marketing is an investment—whether in ad spend, content creation, or community-building—and you need to know if those efforts are paying off. Focus on outcomes like wallet acquisition, transaction activity, and long-term user value—not just impressions or clicks.
Web3 users move between Discord, Twitter, websites, and onchain. To be successful, attribution requires tools that unify these signals without compromising privacy. Wallet-based attribution connects marketing touchpoints to onchain behavior.
Essential Web3 Marketing Metrics
Effective Web3 marketing measurement requires tracking both traditional metrics and onchain metrics. Here are the web3 marketing metrics that you should measure:
Off-Chain Metrics (Web2)
These give insights into top-of-funnel performance but don’t prove adoption on their own:
Website Traffic: Are your campaigns driving people to your site or app?
Impressions & Clicks: Measure reach and initial engagement with your ads or content.
Cost per Click (CPC) & Cost per Acquisition (CPA): Benchmark efficiency and help prioritize profitable channels.
Leads & Newsletter Signups: The lifeblood of your funnel, showing how many prospects you’re capturing.
Active Users (Web/App): Daily, weekly, or monthly activity shows whether your audience sticks.
Churn: Reveals if the users you acquire are the right fit—retention is often more important than acquisition.
Social & Community Engagement: Discord activity, Twitter followers, and social mentions show brand reach.
Developer Activity: For blockchains and developer tools, GitHub stars, contributors, and integrations are strong indicators of traction and product-market fit.
On-Chain Metrics (Web3)
These reveal the impact of your marketing efforts on meaningful user behavior and protocol health:
Total Value Locked (TVL): How much capital users entrust to your protocol, a proxy for trust.
Active Wallet Addresses: A measure of actual adoption and engagement frequency.
Unique Token Holders: Indicates user base growth and long-term commitment.
Transaction Volume: Shows real activity and usage intensity.
Wallet Behavior: Helps distinguish genuine users from bots or mercenary participants.
Market Cap: A proxy for market appetite, but should be secondary to real usage and adoption.
Together, these metrics paint a more accurate picture of your project’s adoption than vanity metrics alone.
Iterate, Iterate, and Iterate
Refining your marketing strategy isn’t a one and done thing. You need to continually iterate and update your marketing to make sure you are maximizing your marketing impact.
As a startup, you’ll have a limited marketing budget, so you can’t afford marketing waste. When you gather marketing campaign data, you adjust. Double down on what’s working and cut back on what’s not. Analyzing data patterns and trends can provide valuable information for forecasting, planning, and evaluating new ideas.
Whether it’s knowing when to stop a particular ad campaign or to invest more in a particular marketing channel, trends can show you where your dollars and your time are most effective. Here are some tips to apply data insights:
Funnel Analysis using both web and onchain data reveals where users drop off. This insight enables targeted improvements to reduce friction and improve conversion.
Cohort Analysis tracks how different user groups behave over time, helping identify the characteristics of your most valuable users. This information improves targeting for user acquisition.
A/B Testing of onboarding flows, content, and incentives provides data-driven insights for optimization. Test different approaches to wallet connection, user education, and community engagement to find the most effective tactics.
Tools for Web3 Marketing Funnel Analytics
Traditional tools like Google Analytics and Mixpanel can't capture onchain activity, creating blind spots. Web3-native analytics platforms like Formo provide unified views of both web and blockchain activity.
Traditional Analytics (Google Analytics, Mixpanel): Good for web traffic but limited in capturing onchain activity.
Web3-Native Analytics Platforms (e.g., Formo): Provide unified views of both web and blockchain activity. They make web3 marketing intelligence simple for onchain growth teams.
Wallet Intelligence Platforms: Identify high-value users and segments based on behavior across multiple protocols.
Onchain Attribution Tools: Connect campaigns directly to blockchain transactions for clear ROI measurement.
Summary
Understanding web3 marketing funnels and strategies is critical for growth onchain. In addition, traditional web2 tools fall short. Web3-native data platforms such as Formo offer a unified view of user behavior across web and onchain. Wallet intelligence and onchain attribution tools surface key user segments and make measuring campaign ROI simple for web3 growth teams.
Next Steps
Start by auditing your current marketing stack to find gaps in onchain attribution and user intelligence. Implement wallet tracking to connect your marketing touchpoints to blockchain activity. This is the foundation for data-driven decisions.
Formo helps web3 marketing teams with comprehensive onchain attribution and wallet intelligence. Get unified insights into your complete user journey. See which marketing efforts drive real results and optimize your campaigns for genuine adoption. Start for free.
Follow Formo on LinkedIn and Twitter, and join our community to learn more onchain growth insights!
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you measure ROI for Web3 marketing campaigns?
Measuring ROI in Web3 requires combining traditional marketing metrics with onchain signals that show real adoption. Instead of just tracking clicks or impressions, you measure what happens onchain:
Wallet acquisitions (Cost per Wallet Acquired, CPW): Similar to CPA in Web2, but wallet-based.
Onchain transactions: Track volume, frequency, and token interactions linked to marketing efforts.
Community engagement: Discord activity, governance participation, and social mentions indicate depth of adoption.
Lifetime Value (LTV) per wallet: An advanced metric that ties wallet behavior (staking, trading, NFT holding) to long-term revenue.
Specialized Web3 attribution tools like Formo connect marketing touchpoints to onchain actions, enabling precise ROI measurement.
What are the best channels for Web3 marketing?
Web3 users gather across a mix of Web2-native and crypto-native platforms:
X/Twitter: The primary channel for reach, thought leadership, and trending updates. Twitter Spaces drive real-time engagement.
Discord & Telegram: Core hubs for community building, governance discussions, and announcements.
Farcaster & Lens Protocol: Decentralized social platforms gaining traction for early adopters and crypto-native users.
Content & SEO: Educational articles, explainers, and playbooks help onboard mainstream users and build organic visibility.
Live formats (AMAs, webinars, conferences): These foster trust and transparency, showing the team behind the project.
The most successful projects tailor content by channel—for example, memes and short updates for Twitter, deep-dive guides for blogs, and community polls for Discord.
How can I avoid Sybil attacks or bot abuse in my Web3 marketing campaigns?
Sybil resistance is one of the biggest challenges in Web3 marketing. To ensure your campaigns attract real users instead of bots or mercenaries, you can:
Implement proof-of-personhood tools: Use integrations with platforms like Gitcoin Passport or World ID.
Analyze wallet behavior: Look at wallet age, transaction history, and cross-protocol activity to filter out suspicious accounts.
Use wallet scoring systems: Assign trust scores based on factors like staking, holding, or consistent activity.
Design anti-gaming mechanisms: Instead of rewarding one-off actions (e.g., retweets), incentivize sustained engagement (participating in governance, providing liquidity, completing quests).
Strong anti-Sybil measures not only protect campaign spend but also build a more authentic community.
What's the difference between Web2 and Web3 marketing attribution?
Attribution in Web2 marketing relies on cookies, pixels, and centralized ad networks, which track users across websites. This method raises privacy concerns.
In contrast, Web3 attribution is:
Wallet-based: Each user interaction is tied to a pseudonymous wallet address rather than personal identity.
Verifiable onchain: You can directly trace whether a wallet joined your protocol, made a transaction, or staked tokens.
Privacy-preserving: Users remain pseudonymous while still enabling precise campaign measurement.
This shift allows marketers to link specific campaigns to real onchain outcomes, offering more accurate ROI measurement than most Web2 systems.
How do airdrops fit into Web3 marketing strategy?
Airdrops are a common Web3 growth tactic. However, token incentive programs must be executed carefully:
Acquisition: Airdrops can attract new users quickly by rewarding them with tokens.
Engagement: Well-designed campaigns require users to complete educational tasks, test dApps, or provide liquidity.
Retention: The key challenge is avoiding mercenary users who claim tokens and leave. Long-term lockups, staking requirements, or tiered rewards tied to future participation help.
Examples: Uniswap’s 2020 airdrop created loyal governance participants, while poorly designed campaigns often attract “airdrop farmers” who dump tokens immediately. Airdrops should be part of a broader retention strategy, not a standalone tactic.
What tools do I need for Web3 marketing analytics?
Web3 analytics requires combining Web2-style tracking with onchain intelligence:
Onchain analytics platforms: Tools like Dune help track wallet activity, token flows, and community behavior.
Attribution platforms: Formo and similar solutions connect campaigns to wallet-based outcomes, measuring true ROI.
Community platforms: Discord/TG analytics and CRM integrations for managing and segmenting community engagement.
Wallet intelligence solutions: Tools that score and segment wallets by behaviour, and identify high-potential cohorts.
Traditional analytics: Google Analytics can still be helpful for web traffic and TOFU performance.
The most effective setups integrate both off-chain data (traffic, impressions, CPC, churn) and onchain data (TVL, active addresses, transactions) into a unified dashboard for decision-making.
How do I connect off-chain marketing efforts to on-chain results in my Web3 marketing funnel?
Use Web3 attribution tools to generate trackable links for campaigns and connect wallet actions to specific channels. Add UTM parameters to URLs and capture them when users visit your site, linking those details to wallet addresses on connection. Distribute unique referral codes for each channel to attribute new users to a specific referree. From here, it's easy to measure which off-chain efforts drive on-chain engagement.
How can I use on-chain data to create advanced audience segments for more effective targeting in my Web3 marketing funnel?
Use wallets’ transaction history, holdings, and behavioral patterns to segment your audience with precision. Target high-value holders, active users, or those who interact with competitor protocols. Tools like Formo let you filter and export audience lists based on these criteria. This approach helps deliver personalized campaigns that actually convert. Regularly adjust your segments to respond to changing on-chain activity.
What are the most effective strategies for improving the retention and advocacy stages of a Web3 marketing funnel?
Focus on active community engagement through regular updates and shared governance. Reward loyal users with onchain loyalty programs, exclusive access, and dynamic NFTs. Encourage advocacy by launching ambassador and referral programs that incentivize word-of-mouth growth. Highlight user contributions and create feedback loops so your community feels valued and heard. Prioritize transparency and direct communication to strengthen trust and long-term loyalty.
