Hello!
To the many of you I haven’t yet met, I’m Sean and I’ll be leading marketing here at Radicle!
In my first update, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and then talk a little bit about what marketing is going to look like in 2023.
An introduction to Sean
For the first 15 years of my career, I had a front-row seat building, selling and marketing advertising products that drive billions in revenue from tens of thousands of customers around the world. But what’s been great for companies & profits hasn’t always been the best for people. I started working in web3 in 2021 to try and change that.
I went full-time web3 in August of last year, starting with leading marketing at Gitcoin. I built the marketing team from the ground up through a period of rapid growth & decentralization from a corporation to a DAO. We created foundational marketing initiatives across community, content, product marketing, PR, growth, marketing ops, events, and brand.
At Gitcoin, we achieved strong YoY growth in community participation in Grants Rounds, including community dollars raised +55% ($1.1M → $1.7M), total contributions +102% (297k → 600k), unique community donors +208% (14k → 45k) and strong growth in our primary acquisition channel, Twitter, where our audience grew by ~2x (60k → 115k+ followers).
I couldn’t be more excited to apply our many learnings to the work ahead of us here at Radicle!
Progress in Marketing
2022 Marketing Goals & Assessment
In December 2022, I presented a comprehensive assessment of the overall state of marketing to the Radicle Foundation. Below, I’ve included a summary assessment of Radicle’s 2022 marketing goals.
2022 Goals
Current marketing goals were outlined in this July 3, 2022 post, and are as follows:
- Significantly improve Radicle’s brand recognition and industry positioning as a fundamental piece of web3 infrastructure.
- Create marketing funnels that build from first touchpoint through to product adoption
- Connect a growing base of marketing contributors and establish processes and execution velocity
2022 Assessment:
Assessing 2022 Marketing Goals with progress since July 2022 on a 1-4 scale where 1 = horrible, 2 = not good, 3 = good, 4 = excellent:
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Significantly improve Radicle’s brand recognition and industry positioning as a fundamental piece of web3 infrastructure.
Commentary: We have been building in silo and most of our comms with the community have been internal and reactionary. That is, support in Discord and Governance engagement have been our most persistent voices. There has not been much effort to position ourselves in the market due to product not being ready, team alignment on messaging and goals, and personnel turnover. Rating = 1/4. -
Create marketing funnels that build from first touchpoint through to product adoption
Commentary: Some top of funnel initiatives have been created (podcast and newsletter namely) but neither are set up to bring people down the funnel. We have no other coordinated efforts, likely due to there being little to no use for people who enter would-be funnels. Rating = 1/4. -
Connect a growing base of marketing contributors and establish processes and execution velocity
Commentary: We have some talented and willing folks, but leadership and goal-setting has lacked. Processes have been created, but buy-in has been low, especially with the decentralized nature of the org. Rating = 2/4.
Current marketing plan
I propose we move forward with the following Marketing Perceptions as we begin the year. If we’re successful, these are the primary things we’d like our target audience (more below on who this is) to repeat back to us.
- The era of building open source software using closed-source, centralized, censorable platforms is over. Decentralized & open source is the future and Radicle is leading the way.
- Radicle helps open source software developers thrive financially.
- Radicle is a leading open source ecosystem building & supporting multiple open source projects.
Ideal Customer / Audience profiles:
I’d also propose the following target audiences (listed in order of priority):
- “Open Source Devs”
- “Privacy & Decentralization Maxis”
- “Community Builders & Evangelists”
- “Web3 Promoters”
Full audience profiles outlined here. These still need to be reviewed & validated, and should be considered a work in progress. Would love any feedback.
Q1 2023 Marketing Goals:
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Create marketing core team in the DAO. Build and gain buy-in for comprehensive 2023 marketing strategy, including new brand hierarchy and ecosystem approach, positioning & core messaging.
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Talk to at least 5 individuals and 5 target customer projects about their pain points related to our potential value proposition, and deliver market feedback to builder teams.
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Identify top 2-4 channels for content distribution, create content plan & put tracking in place to ensure we’re able to optimize for impact in 2023.
Contributors:
As Nas noted in his update regarding sunsetting the Growth Team, I have been working closely with @ettinger and @maddybergen to understand what they’re excited to work on and how they can best contribute to marketing in the coming months. I’ve also started talking to a few other potential contributors from outside the Radicle ecosystem. I’ll share more about our team and any developments as we work on a formal proposal to the DAO next month.
Closing
As 2023 begins, I’m super excited to be here and help usher in a new era for marketing, for Radicle, for open source & for the internet we all use & love. Thanks for reading this lengthy update. I’m looking forward to working with you all this year and beyond. - Sean
