Crypto Marketing with Ty Smith
What I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Crypto Agency
About this episode
Ty Smith spends seven years running a crypto marketing agency and uses this episode to list what he wishes someone had told him earlier. The lessons cover the balance between being the marketing expert and the student on protocols and tokenomics, why retainers evaporate the moment a bear market hits, and why the best clients almost always arrive through word-of-mouth referrals rather than cold outreach or content.
He also argues that crypto moves too fast for the rigid processes that work in traditional agencies, so the agencies that win are the adaptable ones, not the most systematized ones. He closes on reputation: crypto is a small world, and one bad client relationship or missed deliverable spreads just as fast as a great one does. Ty's overall point is that crypto agencies are their own category, and most conventional agency advice does not transfer over.
Key takeaways
- Learn to sit as the expert on marketing and the student on protocols or tokenomics at the same time.
- Plan your pipeline and cash flow for bear markets, since marketing retainers are usually the first budget cut.
- Prioritize delivering great results for current clients over cold outreach or content, since referrals produce the best clients.
- Build processes with room to adapt instead of trying to systematize everything like a traditional agency.
- Protect your reputation closely, since crypto is a small world where both bad and good client outcomes travel fast.
- Treat crypto agency building as its own category rather than copying traditional agency playbooks.
Questions this episode answers
Why do crypto marketing retainers get cut so often in bear markets?
Marketing is usually the first budget line to go when a bear market hits, so pipelines that were packed during a bull run drop to nearly empty almost every cycle. Ty says any professional services business in crypto needs to plan for this pattern rather than be surprised by it.
How do the best crypto agency clients actually get found?
According to Ty, the best clients rarely come from cold outreach or content creation. They come from word-of-mouth referrals, which means delivering great results for existing clients matters more than how polished an agency's own marketing looks.
Should a crypto agency build heavy processes and systems?
Ty tried to systematize everything the way traditional agencies do and found it doesn't work because crypto moves too fast. The agencies that win are the adaptable ones, so any process needs built-in room to change rather than being locked down.
Does reputation matter more in crypto than in other industries?
Yes. Crypto is described as a small world where one bad client relationship or missed deliverable spreads through word of mouth quickly, and the same is true in the positive direction when an agency delivers well.
Do traditional agency best practices apply to crypto agencies?
Ty says he is convinced that 95 percent of what applies to traditional agencies does not apply to crypto agencies, which is why he considers crypto agencies their own category worth learning about separately.
Full transcriptShow
Ty Smith0:00
So, seven years into running a crypto agency, I've learned a lot, and I want to do a quick shout-out to some of the things that I wish some people had told me a lot earlier. It would have saved me a ton of time and a lot of frustration. So, here's the stuff that I had to learn the hard way so you don't have to.
Ty Smith0:08
Number one, often times you're going to be the expert in the room on marketing, but not on other subjects. You might not understand protocols the same way, tokenomics, things like that, and you have to learn how to toe the line between being the expert on some subjects and the student on others, and it's a lot easier said than done.
Ty Smith0:16
Number two, retainers sound very stable in bull markets. When bear markets roll around, marketing is the first thing to get cut. So, we've seen pipelines, every single time a bear market comes around, go from absolutely packed to just kind of drip-drop near empty. And if you're building in this space any kind of professional services business, you're going to probably have to plan for that. Otherwise, you're going to have a lot of difficulty and frustration. I can absolutely promise that.
Ty Smith0:31
Number three is the best clients that we've had tend to not come from things like cold outreach or even content creation. They come from word-of-mouth referrals. And it's basically the whole game. So, if you can crush actually delivering for clients, you don't have to focus a lot on marketing, which is not necessarily something you would think of. People often look at marketers and say, 'How come your marketing is not the most amazing marketing I've ever seen?' And it's for exactly that reason. Often, agencies do better from word-of-mouth referrals and just kind of being undercover than just being out there and talking about themselves a lot.
Ty Smith1:12
Number four, crypto moves faster, a lot faster than any process you're going to build around. So, the agencies that win aren't necessarily the ones that are the most systematized, they're the ones that are the most adaptable. We spent years just trying to build a process around everything you possibly could because that's typically the process for a normal agency. It doesn't work for crypto agencies. So, we gave up, not necessarily on processing everything and making a system of everything, but just understanding that every process and system that we create needs to allow for things to kind of change as needed.
Ty Smith1:30
And last thing for today, your reputation in this space travels really fast. Crypto is a really small world. So, one bad client relationship, one missed deliverable, people talk. And the flip side is also true. If you can crush it for a client, you're going to get a bunch of referrals as well. And the best clients, like I said, come from things like crushing it for a previous client. So, if you can focus on that, you'll do a good job.
Ty Smith2:05
No one writes this stuff down because it doesn't make for a clean success story. I spent tons of time just reading everything I could over the years about like how to build a proper agency, and I am very much convinced that crypto agencies fall in their own category where 95% of the stuff that applies to traditional agencies does not apply to crypto agencies. So, hopefully if you can apply this stuff, you'll have a little bit of an easier time than I did.
Ty Smith2:19
Okay, that brings us to the end of the video. If you have gotten to this point, you probably care about growing a crypto company. Awesome, I do too. And so, I would like to request that if you have anything specific that you would like to know more about, please can you leave a comment down below. I want to make a lot more videos helping people build great, exciting things. It is my absolute jam. So, if you can leave a comment with whatever it is that you're struggling with, I can try my best to make a video on that topic. Thank you for watching, and see you later.
