The Missing Piece: What Your Blockchain Tech Startup Marketing Needs

You’re pretty smart.

After all, you and a co-founder or two have come up with a never-before-imagined application for what could be the most revolutionary technology of all time, blockchain.

According to some experts, only a handful — say, somewhere between 10 and 20,000 engineers on the face of the planet — understand blockchain to the level you do.

You know what that means?

It means that of the 10,000 people who visited your website last month, NO ONE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.

Well, almost no one.

Your competitors probably get it. And there are a handful of investors who are deep in the tech, or they’ve taken it upon themselves to figure out what this blockchain biz is all about. Then there’s a few stragglers like me, who know something big is happening and are trying to figure it out without a computer science degree or any coding experience.

Everybody else? They’re totally lost. They nod their heads and throw around terms like “blockchain bloat” and “SHA-1 algorithm” but their knowledge is about as deep as Harvey Weinstein’s love life.

But no one will speak up and say they aren’t tracking with you when you dump explanations like, ”Another catalyst for this kind of disruption is the Second EEA Payment Services Directive (PSD2) whereby Fintech providers will become Account Information Service Providers (AISPs) themselves which makes it easier, faster and less costly to handle customer’s’ payment transactions and account related data.”

Really?

Not every team member, advisor, investor, and user will have a background in technology or finance. In fact, most won’t. And while you’re getting by okay now because you and your co-founders look at each other and say, “That sounds really, you know, corporate,” that’s not going to win you friends in the long run.

Sure, you’re probably not aiming at end-users yet. But even for a sophisticated audience, the above sentence (as well as the entire white paper I extracted it from) was packed with buzzwords, jargon, and acronyms. This seems to be the common approach to blockchain web copy.

My question is, Why do that to people?

One of the cardinal rules of marketing: Don’t make your reader or audience or customer do the work.

Here’s what you need to do instead:

Know your message.

Simplify your message.

Share your message.

Tell us why you matter, and how you’re doing something that no one else on the face of God’s green earth can do. Tell us what’s exciting, different, and amazing about your platform or app or service. And that doesn’t include a bunch of gobbledygook.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be proud of your technology. But people aren’t investing in the tech; they’re investing in what the tech can DO. You have to explain how PSD2 and AISPs affect their life, for good or for bad.

Will you save them time, money, stress? Will you give them security, accessibility, visibility? Make it clear. Say it, and then say it again, in a way only you can.

If you don’t, all the acronyms and all the websites with the white letters on dark blue backgrounds just blur together. It’s like there’s a checklist for creating a blockchain website that you’re afraid to deviate from.

When you boil it down, you guys all sound the same, too. On dozens of sites there are the same promises with the same overblown corporate-speak (”a new instrument for value exchange!” “complex mining algorithms!” “maximum reliability and security for transactions!”).

If anyone else can say the same thing you’re saying, that makes you, in a word, boring.

Lain Ehmann is a Stanford-educated marketing strategist who writes effective copy and content for technology startups and entrepreneurs. She doesn’t own any Bitcoin... yet. Reach her at Fastlain.com.