There are no predetermined winners in crypto, nor are there perfect marketing agencies
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There are no predetermined winners in crypto, nor are there perfect marketing agencies
You are the only hero in your crypto journey.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Damian
Translation: Block unicorn
Recently, I had dinner with a friend in a small town in Hungary, discussing marketing in the crypto space. Being in the same industry, it's hard not to talk about crypto with others. After all, my family and old friends don’t understand this field, and I believe many readers of this article can relate.
This friend shared with me a painful experience he had with a crypto-native marketing agency (name withheld). I found it both amusing and understandable given his concerns—he isn’t a marketer after all. I felt sorry that his team wasted time and money. So I reminded him: "Look, I told you not to hire a marketing agency because there simply aren't any 'good' ones."
I went on to explain that expecting a marketing agency to proactively deliver results for you is completely misguided. They won’t shape your brand, grasp the nuances of your project, or produce creative breakthroughs because their attention is divided across multiple clients.
As a startup, you may be deprioritized compared to big-name clients—a harsh reality. For agencies, high-profile clients are often more valuable, not just due to existing retainers. Logos and influence serve as universal currency, especially in crypto. Retaining the most “valuable” clients is one of the most critical things an agency must do to keep its business running.
So are marketing agencies truly useless? Not exactly. I know most people working at these agencies put in full-time 8- to 10-hour days serving multiple clients. The value they provide stems from clients who already know—or at least realize—what narrative they want to leverage or what image they wish to project. Agencies should only be used when greater short-to-mid-term output is needed, such as content production or helping run planned campaigns.
The McDonald’s Marketing Problem
Marketing agencies are tools, means to an end—not the X-factor that magically makes your marketing great through their own initiative. Don’t get me wrong; agencies often advertise their expertise in branding and technical concepts, giving smaller projects the impression that hiring an agency will help them gain footing. Nor should you be fooled by another logo x logo partnership displayed on an agency’s website—remember, their collaboration with that big-name partner might have lasted only a month before being terminated.
A truly excellent crypto “marketer” needs to understand a company’s product stack better than its developers. Yet, at current pay levels, agency staff have no incentive to go beyond their already completed 8-hour shifts.
Imagine earning a salary comparable to a McDonald’s manager, but being expected to understand oracles, databases, ZK, MEV, AI, lending, staking, restaking, and more. Would you take that job?
In terms of agency structure, you might have some senior managers who perform well or even excellently, yet never engage in meaningful face-to-face communication with clients. Top-tier managers are busy delegating work to their teams and formulating strategies based on client feedback. Some managers must simultaneously handle as many as seven or eight accounts. Poor managers spend their days doing… frankly, as far as I know, eight hours of calls? Inevitably.
On the other hand, junior staff earning meager wages—who are genuinely eager to learn more and add real value—are rarely given the opportunity. These serious juniors are ready to do the groundwork to learn project details and build appropriate narratives, but they’re blocked by mid-level managers who prioritize quantity over quality. If every client demanded top-down marketing campaigns, agencies would be forced into commercial decisions that sacrifice prioritization of company time. This doesn’t mean the agency model is entirely broken—it means managers fail to manage client expectations effectively.
Sure, senior management understandably doesn’t want to lose business or conflict with clients, but in the long run, for the benefit of both the agency and the client, managers need to be more honest and say “no” more often. Projects also bear responsibility: they must understand that no agency can ever replace a good in-house marketer.
Think of those outstanding marketers in this space who earned their roles through determination, learning, engagement, and networking. You’ll find them as community managers (@thisisfin_), growth leads (@0xMista), marketing leads (@lou3ee), or narrative leads (@kramnotmark) on projects. Their success over agencies comes down to one thing: deep immersion in the space.
My view on marketing is simple: either you're deeply immersed, or you’re not. If not, you'll struggle to find any source of creativity, because chances are, you neither understand nor communicate with your audience. That’s a major issue—after all, market research and “marketing” are inseparable.
Extractable Value in Marketing
If you’re a project considering hiring marketing help, hire an individual marketer directly. Hiring your first strong marketer is like appointing the first general of a new division in your army. They’ll lead that division—whether it involves hiring more marketers or engaging agencies is entirely up to them.
If you do hire an agency, they must have a solid plan. Your marketing lead must reach a stage where they can effectively hand off memos for execution, maximizing benefit to your project.
For example, suppose your marketing lead needs to publish four blog posts per month. If they provide all necessary resources, the agency could help write half—or even all—of them. If your marketing lead can implement a sound strategy, effectively delegate tasks to any supporting party within marketing, and achieve results that aid business growth, then they’re a solid hire. If the agency delivers the required work, then they’re a good agency. The key point is that an agency’s usefulness and a project’s success go hand in hand—but only if their client is “good.”
For instance, if the project hiring the agency is inherently boring or hasn’t found product-market fit, no agency can save it. If a project has many interesting things to say but doesn’t know how to express them, an agency can’t fix that either. But if you’re a project that clearly knows what it takes to succeed and merely needs executors, then an agency can excel—provided you manage them like an internal team, with regular updates, guidance, and check-ins. Therefore, as a rule of thumb, it’s best not to make an agency your first hire.
I guarantee you: any agency claiming they operate at four times the performance level of an in-house hire is talking nonsense—and frankly, that kind of self-promotion is itself poor marketing. Instead, the added value is much simpler (and duller): if you need extra hands to get work done and access to connections, they might suit you. That’s why in-house hires are better: you have the chance to train or give hires time to proactively learn, at which point they have little reason not to excel in the business they’re working on.
Poor Communication
Overall, agencies and projects share a mirrored problem: they’re both terrible at communication, which is ironic. Agencies whose very role is effective communication oversell their services, inflating expectations. Projects accept these misleading claims and raise their expectations, while failing to actively manage their external teams. This usually results in a lose-lose situation. There’s no predetermined winner, and no “good” marketing agency. You must proactively ensure your own victory as a project, whether or not you work with an agency. Ultimately, you are the sole hero of your journey.
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