From @akachacolate

i'll warn you in advance, lots of people are about to catch strays. pew pew.one of the topics i get asked most frequently about is “how to hire high quality marketing talent.” in the past month alone i have been approached by 10+ companies looking to make their first marketing hire while i’ve watched three projects part ways with their existing head of marketing/cmo. i've also had five separate individuals reach out for advice on how to improve 🤯i empathize with all of you. it is very difficult to find quality marketing talent in crypto. it is especially hard to find a CMO. the job is really freaking hard and the talent pool worth hiring is quite small. that being said, i also believe a lot of the struggles have to do with founders lacking realistic expectations and a fundamental understanding of what qualities to screen for when hiring marketers. this article will focus on why this challenge has been so difficult and what primary qualifications your marketing leader must possessbefore i dive in, i want to shout out @divine_economy who shared a spot-on assessment of where crypto is today in terms of broader mass adoption. you should read his tweet here: https://x.com/divine_economy/status/1847700739814006831i reference this tweet because many founders need a reality check. since ftx imploded and we entered one of the worst bear cycles, crypto as a whole has gotten a bad rap from the general public. we are not as relevant as we were a few years ago. please take a step outside of the bubble of crypto and touch grassthis "cycle" has been primarily driven by memecoins. there hasn't been a mass onboarding event led by significant innovation, like in DeFi summer a few years ago. not to mention, the regulatory environment in the US is an absolute shitshow which has hamstrung many companies from executing on their product roadmaps efficiently and delivering something completely new. do you honestly feel like we've gotten a giant influx of new users? i mean millions of new users, not just a sprinkling of new people trading shitcoinstransparently, i do not believe crypto will be relevant in the overarching cultural zeitgeist until prices for majors pump 30%+ from where they are now. i say this because the majority of my friends do not work in crypto. i have a few non crypto-native friends that started using phantom to trade shitcoins on solana, but i am not getting nearly the same level of interest in crypto from normies like i did pre-ftx. my personal litmus test for when crypto is relevant to normies again is when my non-crypto friends and family start furiously asking what to buy again. i see the signs that that could be soon, but it hasn't happened... yet.the size of the relevant audience that you are marketing to has not grown substantially over the past two years. new wallets do not equal new usersthis is the main reason why i think almost every single crypto project is struggling with marketing. have you invented a completely new killer dApp that will onboard millions of net-new users? i imagine you haven't. so why are you expecting your marketing leader to single-handedly and instantaneously bridge the gap between crypto and normies when it's an industry wide problem? your marketing leader will not be able to magically drum up usage for your product if there is not enough organic demand for it. however, this doesn't mean that your marketing hires are uselessa cracked marketing leader needs to be both short term and long term focused. in the short term, they need to make your brand relevant to the existing crypto community. you are competing against a large number of projects (both direct and indirect competitors) to capture the attention of a relatively small audience (crypto twitter). if you don't win the attention of crypto twitter, you will lose. these are the core users that you know will be around in the short term. this is how you survivebut the real prize lies in being able to tap the rush of new users when they arrive, and they will. there will be a large influx of users either because we have an innovation so novel that it attracts completely new people into the space or because prices have risen enough that people FOMO in. so the long term focus is in establishing your distribution channels so that you are primed to acquire said new users. do you have distribution outside of crypto twitter? do you truly believe that your project will be relevant to net new users that are completely new to crypto? most projects i talk to cannot honestly answer "yes" to these questions. you need to be able to in order to thriveand this is where I sympathize with founders. there are not many hires that can handle and/or understand both. the talent pool that is qualified to help you tackle this problem is very small. why is that?to be able to gameplan a successful marketing strategy for both the short term and long term, crypto marketers need two fundamental skills:

there can be exceptions to the norm, but people i've interviewed that have no crypto experience, and even many that do, simply do not get crypto twitter. it's a very specific niche of internet culture that is closely tied to complex research, computer nerds, and degen gambling culture. if you've never gotten rugged, had a wallet drained, twiddled your thumbs while you waited for your funds to bridge, and interacted with the giga brains, you will not find immediate success here. you cannot communicate to an audience that you do not understandon the other hand, most crypto-native marketers i've talked to are horrendous with data. they cannot build simple dashboards to measure things quantitatively. they do not know how to a/b test. they also cannot spot obvious red flags when data trends do not make sense. if you can't do these things, you will not be able to regularly test campaigns and iterate on top to improve your marketing consistently. oddly enough, considering how much data is collected with blockchain tech, most people suck at interpreting it. by contrast, i've found data analysis is one of the core skills that reputable non-web3 companies teach you early in your careerthe best analogy i can give here is that your marketing leader is driving a car (your marketing strategy). to be a good driver, they need to see not only the road in front of them, but also the general direction in which they are headed to reach their destination (a killer brand). understanding crypto twitter is analogous to seeing the immediate road ahead. savviness with data equates to reading a GPS. there are many other skills that make for an ideal hire (creative juice, plugged in with pop culture, ability to constantly context switch, managerial experience, etc), but in my opinion, these two qualifications are an absolute must to steer the marketing vehicle effectivelyunfortunately, there are few candidates that meet this bar because they usually need deep experience both within web3 and outside of it. you are essentially looking for an F1 driver.. and the talent pool consists of a sea of young teens that only have a permit-------almost every single JD for a CMO or Head of Marketing I have come across seems to lack this understanding. they use language like "drive our content strategy" and "oversee the creation of marketing campaigns," but during the screening process they're not adequately gauging for the two qualifications i shared above. instead, i hear lots of interview questions like "how can we be more like _____?" or "how can we acquire new users?"you're screening for the wrong things. an MBA doesn't teach you anything about crypto twitter. and throwing in a one-liner qualification saying an ideal candidate has been a CMO with a "proven track record" within web3 already...? how many of us do you think there are?this is what generates so much of the regurgitated, boring ass marketing that makes your project gain zero mindshare. a cracked marketing leader will utilize their understanding of crypto twitter and leverage data to form ideas and test them out. they won't have the magical secret sauce before they start the job, but they will be able to give you a hypotheses to execute and form a calculated, strategic brand positioning tailored to your project. they will stand out because they won't be afraid to make bold bets that haven't been taken by others before, even if the founder/ceo has qualms about it. and while they may draw inspiration from other projects, they sure as hell won't want to copy themmost importantly, they will understand on a deep level that crypto twitter is merely table stakes. to build a business that can thrive through multiple cycles, you need to acquire distribution elsewhere. and to figure out how to make that happen requires time and a leader with savviness that few possess. make sure you're screening for the main qualities that demonstrate that level of savviness (warrior of the CT trenches and data wizard)and for my final closing thoughts for today's article, i have a direct message for the CEOs: the entire time you've been a CEO, you've likely been led to believe that you are the best person for the job. you may possess one of the sharpest minds, but you are not necessarily the best marketer. with marketing, your audience isn't just the giga brains. it isn't just the VCs that write the million dollar checks. it's everyone that interacts with your brand.once you find a qualified leader to run this function, are you prepared to cede some control over the direction of the brand? because i can guarantee you that the most qualified candidates will disagree with you on many things, and they should. you want someone in the trenches that understands your audience segments better than you do. this will be the person that builds your strategy and runs the show on this side of the house.so are you ok with having another leader in the room? or do you just want a scapegoat to blame when it doesn't work?in part two, i'll yap about how to screen for your other marketing employees. until then, eclipse everything 🫡