MARKETING
Are They Really Worth The Hype?
According to Hubspot Blog Research on content and media planning, 14% of media planners currently leverage non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Conversations surrounding NFTs and Web3 have risen in the past year and continue to pique marketers’ interest. In this article, we’ll cover what NFTs are, how brands are using it, and if it’s worth the investment.
What’s an NFT?
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a digital asset with a unique signature that lives on a blockchain and can be anything from artwork and music to collectibles and videos. It holds a speculative value – determined by the community – and can be exchanged or traded without fear of duplication.
So, how exactly do they work? Well, when an NFT is created, also known as “minted,” it can represent tangible items like art and clothing and non-tangibles like music, videos, and images.
For instance, Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million in 2021. Who determines the value of the item in question? The community. Unlike real-world or cryptocurrency, an NFT’s value is speculative.
What makes NFTs so popular is that they represent the decentralization of power from the few to the many. This is particularly valuable for creators who have historically relied on third-party platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram to share their content and gain from it.
NFTs put the power back in the hands of the community by letting them decide what’s popular and incentivizing them to support what they like.
They’re so popular in fact that Open Sea’s Alex Atallah, the cofounder of the largest NFT marketplace, recently shared on Twitter that there are more NFTs on the platform than there were internet pages in 2010.
1/ There are now more NFTs on OpenSea than there were websites on the internet in 2010.
Very soon, NFTs will outnumber websites, maybe even webpages. This growth has major implications for how we should index NFTs…
— Alex Atallah | OpenSea (@xanderatallah) March 9, 2022
For context, the platform houses over 250 million searchable NFTs. In 2010, there were roughly 200 million websites.
Let’s see what this means from a marketing perspective.
How Brands Use NFTs for Marketing [+ Examples]
Lomit Patel, senior vice president of growth at Together Labs, recently shared on LinkedIn that he believes NFTs are doing today what social media did in 2010 – drastically improve their potential for brand awareness and audience reach.
NFTs are disrupting the current marketing landscape and prompting brands to find innovative ways to incentivize their audience to engage.
“We’re moving to a market-based society where everything is going to be ownable, priceable, traceable — everything — and NFTs is just a fancy way to do that and create the marketplace around it,” said HubSpot’s CMO Kipp Bodnar on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.
Because it’s so new, it’s a way to build buzz around your brand.
Let’s look at one brand that’s already doing this: Norwegian Cruise Line.
To celebrate the launch of Norwegian Prima Class, a new class of vessels, the brand collaborated with an artist to create six NFT art pieces. Each piece has been put up for auction, with the first starting at $2,500 and the proceeds will be donated to Teach For America.
In a press release, the brand shared that they chose to celebrate the launch using NFTs because it’s cutting-edge technology, which reflects how they approach their products and services.
By doing this, Norwegian leveraged the buzz surrounding NFTs (basically newsjacking) to create buzz surrounding its launch.
NFTs also allow brands to better incentivize their audience through exclusive content and shift the focus to community building.
In March 2022, beverage company Anheuser-Busch hosted an #NFTBeerFest event at its flagship brewery reserved for holders of specific NFTs from Budweiser, its child company.
Just kicked off #NFTBeerFest!
Are you here? Let us know below 👇 pic.twitter.com/Rxm3aaSOhN
— Bud Light (@budlight) March 27, 2022
Those who bought either a Budweiser Heritage Can NFT or Royalty Collection NFT reportedly enjoyed free beer, tours, giveaways, and performances at the event.
Having access to exclusive content is exactly the sort of incentive that marketers can leverage. They already do so through gated, premium offers, this is just another version of it.
“In the future, really understanding incentives is going to be a marketer’s core skillset to acquire customers,” said HubSpot’s SVP of Marketing Kieran Flanagan on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.
(Check out this roundup for a detailed list of how brands have leveraged NFTs.)
How much do NFTs cost to make?
An NFT can cost anywhere from $1 to $900, according to a Yahoo report. It varies greatly depending on the blockchain you use, the size of your data, gas fees, and other factors.
Cons of Using NFTs
The biggest drawback of minting and using NFTs is the environmental impact.
You may be thinking, “It’s a digital asset, how does that affect the environment?” Well, the creation of an NFT consumes a great deal of energy (electricity) – depending on how complex it is – and can emit devastating amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
Some creators are finding more sustainably conscious and less energy-intensive ways of minting NFTs. However, there is still limited data to validate these efforts.
Another con of using NFTs is that there’s still so much we don’t know. Similar to cryptocurrency, it’s subject to a lot of volatility as it is not regulated by any particular entity.
In addition, they don’t hold specific value, leaving you at risk to lose your entire investment.
From a marketing perspective, many consumers are still confused and skeptical about it, making it difficult to entice them. This is usually what happens with any new technology – early adopters face the brunt of the impact while late adopters learn from their predecessors’ mistakes.
Are NFTs Worth Your Marketing Investment?
NFTs can be a difficult sell to brands because they’re risky. It’s unclear what the future holds and it’s a bit too early to judge their impact on a large scale.
What we do know is that many of those who do use it have seen a lot of success.
In fact, 39% of those who use NFTs say they have the best ROI of any channel in their media mix, according to HubSpot Blog Research.
For many marketers, it’s still an undiscovered territory, with 16% surveyed saying they plan to use NFTs for the first time in 2022.
“How you think about acquiring customers and the cost of doing that is greatly changed when you’re using different incentives through tokens to build your business,” said Flanagan.
He adds that through Web3 and NFTs, brands get more trackable incentives. So, whether this holds value will depend on the brand and goals.
However, one thing is for sure: It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.
MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
MARKETING
How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy
MARKETING
More promotions and more layoffs
For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.
The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.
Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes
Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643.
Here are the median salaries by role:
- Senior management $199,653
- Director $157,776
- Manager $99,510
- Staff $89,126
Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.
One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%).
Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.
Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams
Employee turnover
In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”
Men and Women
This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.
In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.
Methodology
The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents.
Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.
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