Crypto Marketing with Ty Smith
Importance of Marketing in a Bear Market
About this episode
Ty Smith, TJ, and Kylie make the case for marketing harder, not less, when crypto is in a downturn. They argue that down markets clear out competitors, lower advertising costs, and leave only serious, engaged people paying attention, which makes it the cheapest and highest-quality time to build a brand.
The team walks through where to put marketing dollars in a bear market: influencer marketing, where prices drop as demand falls but supply of willing creators stays the same; SEO, where fewer competitors are writing keyword-targeted content so older bull-market articles become easy to outrank; and PPC, where reduced bidding lowers cost per click. Ty also shares his process of using Ahrefs alongside Google Trends to confirm a keyword had real historical search volume before investing in ranking for it.
The bigger argument is about reputation and timing. TJ points out that the crypto community remembers which projects kept showing up and shipping content during the crypto winter versus those that disappeared until the next bull run. Building an audience and content library now, while competition and noise are low, pays off when retail interest and search volume return.
Key takeaways
- Shift marketing budget toward influencers during bear markets since demand drops but influencer supply stays the same, cutting sponsored content prices from thousands to hundreds per post.
- Invest in SEO content now because fewer competitors are targeting crypto keywords, making it easier to outrank stale bull-market articles once search volume returns.
- Cross-check keyword opportunities with both Ahrefs and Google Trends since low current search volume can hide historically strong keywords worth ranking for.
- Use PPC while bidding competition is low to get cheaper cost per click on the same keywords that were expensive during the bull run.
- Keep publishing content and building community on social media even when engagement looks quiet, since people are always online and want to root for a team's story.
- Treat bear market audiences as higher quality since most people still paying attention are active investors, users, or industry insiders rather than casual retail.
- Show up consistently through the down market because the crypto community remembers which brands kept building through the winter versus those that only marketed during bull runs.
Questions this episode answers
Why should crypto companies market during a bear market?
There is less competition and less noise, so it is cheaper and easier to stand out. Ty and TJ note that costs drop across influencer marketing, SEO, and PPC because fewer companies are spending, while the people still paying attention to crypto are serious, high-quality prospects rather than casual retail lookers.
How does influencer marketing pricing change in a bear market?
Demand for sponsored content drops sharply while the supply of influencers willing to post stays about the same, so prices fall a lot. Ty says influencers who once charged thousands of dollars per tweet were getting only hundreds in the bear market.
Is SEO worth doing when search volume is low?
Yes, because fewer people are creating content around crypto keywords, making it easier to outrank old articles once the market picks back up. Ty checks Google Trends alongside Ahrefs to confirm a keyword had real historical volume, even if current search volume looks weak, before committing resources to rank for it.
What is the advantage of content marketing and social media in a down market?
According to TJ, people are always on social media regardless of market conditions, so consistent content lets a brand build a community that roots for the team and the story, not just the product. This is easier to do when there is less competing noise on platforms like crypto Twitter.
Does the crypto community remember which companies kept marketing during the bear market?
Yes. TJ says the community is small and somewhat gatekeeper-ish, and people remember which companies kept building and marketing through the crypto winter versus those that only showed up during bull markets. Ty adds that showing up consistently now pays off in reputation later.
Full transcriptShow
Ty Smith0:06
Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. My name is Ty Daniel Smith and with me, as always, is TJ and Kylie. Today we are going to discuss the importance of marketing in a bear market. So we're going to discuss why you should be marketing in a bear market and which channels you should shift your marketing resources to. So crypto has been in a bear market for what seems like 20 years. And something we often hear from clients is that they want to do more marketing, but they're waiting for the market to pick up, which is really frustrating because we see bear markets as a really good opportunity to market.
TJ0:44
Yeah, well, that's true across multiple different industries, too. I've seen in down markets is the best time to grow market share for multiple different reasons. There's less people out there marketing, so it's easier to cut through noise, and there's more cost-effective for your advertising spend. What normally would cost X amount, because there's less buying and other people doing it, you can get a lot more exposure for it. So whether it's real estate or cars or crypto or really anything, I think across the board a lot of experienced marketers would say the best time to grow market share is in a down market.
Ty Smith1:25
Yeah, definitely. In terms of where you should kind of shift your resources in a bear market, I think influencer marketing is a great option.
TJ1:31
Yeah, a lot more hungry.
Ty Smith1:33
They're, yeah, exactly. Influencer marketing in general, it's just, I mean, it's people. Influencers are people and it's very supply and demand. It's not a business that has fixed pricing all the time. So now in a bear market, demand is way lower, but supply stays relatively the same. So all these people still want to do sponsored content, are still willing to do sponsored content, so pricing has gone down significantly. People that were once getting thousands of dollars per tweet are now getting hundreds. So that's a really good opportunity.
Ty Smith2:01
And SEO, I think. I mean, I always talk about SEO as a great opportunity, but especially in a bear market, it's a great opportunity because it's one of those longer-term marketing plays that if you get in now, it's going to pay off so much in the future. And there's so many less people creating articles around keyword opportunities.
TJ2:21
That's what I was going to say. That's one where you can feel the competition kind of the most with SEO and keyword-type stuff. When the market's at its hype and everybody's targeting those specific keywords, you have to have really well-written stuff to break through.
Ty Smith2:33
Because everyone that knows SEO is using basically the same tools. There's not that many tools out there. There's Ahrefs, there's SEMrush, and a couple of others. And those, when everyone uses the same tools, everyone sees the same keywords as good opportunities, and then you get 100 articles on how to short Bitcoin in the same week.
TJ2:49
Where in a bear market, you might get 10 articles about how to short Bitcoin.
Ty Smith2:52
Yeah, and so a lot of people were creating SEO articles in the last bull market, but those articles now are not relevant, so it's easy to outrank them. And if we see a bull market soon, your content still will be relevant and should rank way higher than something older that was performing well before.
Ty Smith3:13
Something I like to do is I use Ahrefs to plan our keywords, but often what we see is because the market is so crappy, there's not a lot of search volume for a lot of these keywords. To see if there really is a good opportunity there, I'll use Google Trends. So you can enter your keyword there and you can actually see based on the date how much a keyword was searched. So crypto marketing right now, I think, was super, super low in terms of how often it's searched, but if you go back to early 2018, late 2017, it was searched a lot, which is why we spend a lot of resources ranking for that keyword. So that's a really perfect way of doing it. Another one is PPC, pay-per-click. That's just simple. It's just there's less people bidding on a keyword, so it's less expensive to rank for those keywords.
TJ3:52
And really what you're doing throughout marketing in a down market is you're sowing the seeds to really see that explosive growth when the bull market comes back or when any upward-trending market starts coming back. You're laying a lot of groundwork, you're gathering high-quality people, because that's another thing is you get a lot more serious people looking at stuff during down markets, too. You're not going to get people that are just curious about it, looking up stuff randomly. These are usually going to be active either in this space, investors or users, or...
Ty Smith4:32
Especially if your product is very focused on institutional investors, right now, if you're paying attention to crypto, you're heavily involved in crypto.
TJ4:39
Right. Almost everybody that's paying attention to crypto right now is, like you said, involved in the space, working in the space. There's not a lot of retail people still interested at this point, which is, can be nice.
Ty Smith4:49
But if you create content now, when those retail people do become interested, you're going to already have a resource out.
Kylie4:55
And if you think about it, it's kind of, it's a little morbid to say, subliminal messaging, but you're getting your product and your brand in front of people and hammering it in when there isn't competition. They're going to remember that when they start making more money and they want to invest, and it's going to stick with them.
Ty Smith5:11
Yeah, I always think of crypto Twitter as a great example because back in late 2017, crypto Twitter was crazy. You couldn't get, no one could see anything on Twitter because there was so much content being posted all the time. Now, if you post something and you're a crypto company, a big piece of the world is going to see that.
TJ5:23
Yeah, well, and it's pretty, yeah, it's pretty quiet on crypto Twitter. There's not a lot of, it's sad out there these days. Come on, where is everybody?
Kylie5:36
You're just clicking the refresh button like, is there something new?
TJ5:40
But what that leads us, that's kind of a good point, too, is to why a big part of what we believe in here is content marketing and part of why that's such a big, important piece to have in your company is no matter what's going on with the industry, whether the market's up or down, people are always on social media, they're always talking, they're always curious. So keeping people involved and aware of everything you're doing, they, even if they're not as interested in your product, a lot of times people want to root for the team and the story and see your progress as a business and a brand and as a company. So the more you can use social media to get that out there, and again, it's free, so the more you can just share who you guys are, what your vision is, what the product is you're creating, and get that out on all the different social media platforms, people are always interested in people and what's going on in brands, and brands are also people. There's people at every company. So the more you can show who you are and build a community of people kind of rooting for you, that's another thing that's really easy to do or easier to do in a down market when there's less noise, is you can really show people who you are and why you're doing what you're doing, and then hopefully people believe in that cause and start rooting for you.
Ty Smith6:55
Yeah.
TJ6:56
And the crypto community as a whole is a little gatekeeper-ish in terms of they...
Ty Smith7:17
A little.
TJ7:17
They're very... People remember. People remember which companies were still here, were still working on products when we were in the crypto winter. And that's definitely going to pay off for people that stick it through.
Ty Smith7:35
Oh, they totally notice who shows up and markets during bull markets and goes away in down, like, yeah, we know. We know. Everybody knows. Because it's still a small community right now, and that's kind of where the, yeah, that's where it's great. Another reason in a bear market, you get to that small, niche community now, two years from now, like you said, they'll remember.
Kylie7:45
Who knows, it may never be smaller than right now, so get in and just start doing it.
TJ7:49
Yeah, probably won't. It probably won't ever be smaller than it is right now.
Kylie7:55
Right. This is, this is it. This is the opportunity.
Ty Smith7:58
Yeah, well, I hope we don't get any more bearish than we currently are, but it's possible. And we're definitely marketing through this market. We've actually, this has been great for us. We love it. It has been, yeah, really has been. I don't think Coinbound could be as successful as it currently is if we had built in a bull market.
TJ8:03
No, definitely not.
Ty Smith8:05
Yeah. All right, so that is all for today. Please remember to rate, review, and recommend this podcast. Reviews are super helpful for us to grow and continue to produce content like this.
TJ8:15
Five stars only.
Ty Smith8:16
Five stars only. If you have four or below, go do something else with your life. Just send me a private message. And remember to join us on Slack at coinbound.io/joinslack. We have a dedicated crypto marketing channel, so if you have any marketing questions, we can answer them there, as well as engage with a whole community of crypto marketers and crypto content creators.
TJ8:36
Or just talk.
Ty Smith8:37
Or just talk, yeah, we like to talk, too. And follow us on Twitter @coinbound_io, Ty Daniel Smith, Crypto Kylie, and Young Dumb Crypto. Thanks, guys.
