Cold Open On Target Users

Jack Haldorsson 0:00

Define who is your actual user, who will use this product. How can we communicate with this user? How do we sell the margaritas in Bahamas to the user?

Joeri Billast 0:13

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories Podcast. My name is Joeri Billast. I'm your podcast host. And today I'm excited to be joined by Jack. Hey Jack, how are you today?

Jack Haldorsson 0:25

Hey Joeri, and thank you so much for having me. And yeah, I'm doing good, going full speed. We are building a lot of exciting stuff, a lot of new initiatives. So yeah, very good from my side.

Always On Baseline Plus Seasons

Joeri Billast 0:37

Guys, if you're now wondering who is Jack, Jack Haldorsson, a managing partner and co-founder at Lunar Strategy, a well-known name in the space of Web3 and AI here in Lisbon. So, Jack, you often talk about marketing happening in seasons instead of campaigns. What does that shift change in our founders should actually think about crowds from day one?

Jack Haldorsson 1:04

I think it yeah, it's uh it's interesting because I think like a lot of people they like to do some marketing here and there. Things marketing should always be on, and you should always have a very like strong baseline, which is your social media, your own founder, founder account. Like this is like the baseline, but then the campaigns and stuff like announcements, and this should go in a little bit like seasons. So whenever you have a big product announcement, whenever you have a big product launch, you want to sequence your marketing and build up some nice momentum for it, so you can get all of the organic traction and then you stack and layer it with different distribution channels, like how to maybe work with influencers, PR, do some podcasts. But I think like how I like to see it is you want to have a very good baseline, and then you want to increase the baseline constantly because you start to build and you start to add more channels to it constantly. But I think when you're starting out, your socials is the most important uh account. It's your channel where you can speak with your investors, you speak with your users, you speak with your partners. It's essentially like a little bit investor relations. And then I see so many people they miss with the social that make it very boring, they don't get an audience for their posts, and like your socials is your most important channel. It's where you speak with everybody. You the investor is everybody. So you make that count, make that baseline very good, and then you stack the different channels on top of it, and you stack the different distribution channels, and then sequence and things like yeah, launch season, and then you have user acquisition season, and like, yeah, there's different seasons to marketing where you do different tactics and use different channels for it.

Why Launch Hype Dies Fast

Joeri Billast 2:58

Yeah, makes makes a lot of sense. Actually, when you look at Web3 projects, where do most of them break that sequence between pre-launch, hype, and real user acquisition?

Jack Haldorsson 3:11

I think a lot, you know, they they do one announcement and then they're famous overnight and then forgotten the day after, and they they don't have a good uh baseline. I think that's like the thing. You need to have something that is always good, that is always on, right? And we see that with most of them, and this is also like a little bit of a learning curve, right? You gotta get to to a good baseline, and you need to get the momentum, you need to get that user base, but but I think like the the baseline starts with your socials and your communications on socials and what activities you have there, what sort of announcements, what campaigns you have, and you gotta have a lot of them to build momentum, and then you gotta have new stuff coming up, new ideas, new this, new this, boom, boom, boom. And I think yeah, most people they they do it once, and then they think like, oh, I'm gonna get all of these users, right? But I think yeah, in marketing, you gotta get a good baseline, you gotta get the comms straight, and then you add the different distributions on top of it. But here also you gotta make sure that you have a product that's ready, a product that people like. So before investing big in marketing, I would also suggest finding products market fit. So working early stage with users to try the product, feedback, iterate, and then you scale.

Virality Versus Long Term Compounding

Joeri Billast 4:34

Absolutely. I've been following you on Twitter X, on LinkedIn, and so on. Yeah. I think it was there that you shared some frameworks around virality like FOMO, exclusivity, reward loops. But what separates engineered hype from something that actually compounds long-term? Great.

Jack Haldorsson 4:54

You gotta be a good product. And I think also like here it's important for the market team team to work close with the product team. So so you can make a good user journey, you can get a good onboarding flow, but also you can, as the marketeers, you are at the forefront of what people want. You see the trends, and you see the competition, you see that, and then you gotta get feedback to the product team. This is what you actually gotta build, this is what other people and this is what what works. So I think like long term, it's great products stacked with distribution and great communication.

Go To Market From Why To Channels

Joeri Billast 5:31

So and then uh Yeah, and of course, the go-to-market is also important. How do you design a uh a go-to-market that drives actually attention, but also real business outcomes and not just like this vanity metrics?

Jack Haldorsson 5:47

That's a great, great question, because this is like probably the most important time of any project's lifetime. But I think, first of all, to I always like to start uh with like the top line things, right? So which is like basically the why and the messaging framework. This is like why we wake up and build this product every day. This is why we do it, and then to go into the target audience. And I think most people think like, oh, we're gonna target crypto, right? And then they just try to shoot in the door of target everybody. But define who is your actual user, who will use this product. How can we communicate with this user? How do we sell the margaritas in Bahamas to the user? This will be our framework of messaging that we will start using, right? And then I think you should go into the different. So this is like the top line, we start from top. So why audience messaging framework, how we will communicate with these people, and then you design the different channels, tactics, and campaigns after that. And here I also did, as you mentioned, I did a video recently on these different frameworks and how to create FOMO, exclusivity, and stuff like that. There is a formula to it. Like you can when you when you study a lot of these campaigns, and we we use a lot of these for for our marketing as well. But I think when you do a campaign or you have a big announcement or a wait list and stuff like this, you want to first of all build a little bit of momentum so you have some stuff going on, and then you start to tease a little bit, then you maybe you have the wait list, maybe you had a countdown, like the wait list is gonna be up for 24-48 hours. Everybody who's on the wait list will get a mystery box, or you know, like they will get the invite code to this private beta. Like you start to build up this sequence of marketing activities and posts, and you design that journey for the user. And then like that is one campaign by going to market is many campaigns, wait list, beta launch, product launch, all of these things, right? And they all need a separate campaign timeline, a structure, and sequence. So that's how we how we like to do it. First, like define the top top line thing, which is like the the the top line, and then we design each campaign as as the VTM progresses.

Joeri Billast 8:21

I love to hear that you confirm you know the way that I'm working too. By the way, maybe you you know that's my book that I've written the future CMO. I'll oh I gotta read that, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, actually, Philip Kotler, if you know in marketing. Philip Kotler, the guy who you know invented or defined the four P's of marketing. That's the guy he said it was the best he ever read about CMO. So a little bit, a little bit as I do in this conversation. But yeah, it's interesting to know that when you write something and that in conversations people confirm it because it has input from people on the podcast, right? So I have my keynote and then I used AI to you know to see some trends and then to make it sense overload. Yeah, now that we touched AI, Jack. And I well I was in a webinar not so long ago when you are you know explaining about AI agents and so on. So today we're building in a world where AI agents are really starting to handle execution. What do you think that remains uniquely human in uh in the marketing leadership?

AI Agents And The Human Touch

Jack Haldorsson 9:27

So we are building a lot of internal AI stuff. I think design and taste and that human touch when you're doing stuff still gonna be needed. We are using AI for most of the manual admin stuff that is repeatable, and we are automating all of that, but we still won't have this human touch because AI has made it easier to create slow, and uh it's made it easier for everybody to start creating, which is awesome. I like I love to see people go out there to build stuff, and it's like you're you get excited where you can build all of these cool things, and you unlock all of these things. I see so many people build so much stuff that is useless. Of course, it's fun, but we need to get to this like productivity gain and this actually added value, and not only creating bad stuff. So we we're creating a lot of automations, and then for designs, we're doing some AI, but we're also adding the human touch to it, and then the same with different strategies, research, all of this. We use a lot of AI for, and then for our sales team, we're also doing a lot of AI with the DEX presentations, building landing pages. This is brilliant for AI when you can build landing pages, different tools, and all of this, you can basically build it over a day. And then if you have a good like brand skill for your AI, you can also make it very aligned with the different brands so you can ship it and it looks really, really good. So we use it for for that. And yeah, because I think it's important that you don't lose that human touch. And also, what I've I've find when you do something with AI, a lot of it boils down to not what you create with AI, but what you tell AI to remove. Because AI typically creates so much different stuff, like they create all of these features, all of these elements on the design page, and then you just tell it remove this, remove that, remove this, add this, put this, and then yeah, try to make it as easy as possible for for the user, but also easy for AI to create create good stuff.

Joeri Billast 11:37

Yeah, I love to use indeed the LLMs like Claude and so too to create the landing pages, it really helps if you understand what you want and you give it the right instructions, of course. Yeah. And I mentioned my book already. It's important for me. I talked about that at my TEDx talk also, you know, the trust needs to be there because if you create slop, you know, it's just you know more of slop, slop, slop. But looking at you know at marketers, at CMOs in general, what capabilities do you think that really become non-negotiable, let's say, the next two, three years?

Non Negotiable CMO Skills

Jack Haldorsson 12:12

For me, in my team and our team, like I want people to have a outcome full focus and not uh input focus, which and I think that's like a very important skill. And um like people tend to focus much so much on I did all of these things, but what is the outcome, right? So I think like we I I like to focus a lot on that, and then I think you need to be on the trends, and uh, I think like that is one of the most important parts to do competitive research, checking what the trends are because jumping on trends is probably one of the most like the best strategies you can do for for companies. Um being a relentless product tester, important for CMOs, try products, get into the brain of a user to understand like how do I as a user of this product get onboarded here? Is this smooth? Would I use this? You try competitors, you try different things, and yeah, I would just say get to shipping, try a bunch of stuff, see what works, the rate, and it goes also for the for the marketing, right?

Joeri Billast 13:33

Like test test test test. Yeah, right, test and and don't wait until you've built everything and then you know realize that you have a problem. Like a lot of founders still treat distribution as an afterthought. Yeah, like get it out there, like get it out there, right? Now, you worked across many Web3 projects. What patterns do you see in the ones that actually build great lasting communities versus those that yeah fade after the launch?

Jack Haldorsson 14:10

The ones that last have a product and they treat every user very, very uh carefully. So like you have your users, you reply to all the comments, but also like the focus on the high value users and not really the formers and stuff like this. So I think them they have a the ones that last have a good product, they focus on users and they focus on high quality users and not vanity, and then they iterate, keep getting better, they improve, and they have this urgency of getting things out to market. And I think like this team where you have speed. I I love speed, speed is my favorite tool in business or in marketing, like you gotta go, it gotta happen now. It cannot happen tomorrow, it gotta happen now, you gotta go out now, and we build this momentum where we have speed and we get things out, like yeah. I think that's that's important and and being consistent as well.

Joeri Billast 15:18

You know, show up every day. Right, consistently, uh you know, like I did with this podcast, right? You did with your business, you know, showing up every day, being there, and and that that that happened that that works, no. I think somewhere on on the social media you also mentioned that institutions becoming more confident while retail is less bullish. How should that shift influence marketing strategy today?

Institutions Rising Retail Waiting

Jack Haldorsson 15:44

Very, very good question. Um I think yeah, I I was at Paris Blockchain Week a few weeks ago, and I like institutions, they are done with the testing in the that side, they are integrating blockchain tech into their businesses, they're actually starting to use it. You see Stripe, they announced partnership with uh Meta and Tempo that they're gonna use stable coins to pay out their content creators on Meta. So you start to see institutions have never been more excited and bullish. And then whenever when institutions start to integrate it, when people start to use stable coins and be on-chain, which I think is gonna be inevitable over the next few years, then it's just a matter of time before people start to discover DeFi. They have their stable coins and then they're like, oh, I can just put it here and I get this great APY, right? Where they start to take the stable coins to polymarket or to different Web3 devs. So I think this is a very good shift that we're seeing, that it's so good institutional adoption, and then I think it's gonna trickle down to retail and to that people. But for the influence marketing space, I think yeah, captures as much market share as possible with influencers. We see Polar Market, Calci spend hundreds of thousands on creators and ambassadors every month, and yeah, capture as much market share. So when the big retail boom comes, you're gonna be pole position.

Joeri Billast 17:19

Yeah, absolutely. Now uh with your company, you also have a lot of experience in running events and building ecosystems in Lisbon. So uh what role does the physical presence play in a digital first industry?

Events That Build Trust And Content

Jack Haldorsson 17:38

Good question. I love to do events as a marketing campaign. So you use it, you get so much content, you do some talks, you get a lot of content from that. You not we like to use the events as a digital marketing event as well. Because you can get so much digital marketing material that people will engage with. But also the events are really good to build trust and humanize the brand a bit, because then people see like, oh, there's actual people behind this project, they're a great team, they are very competent, and also focus on high-quality BD partners stuff at this event where you can meet partners, you can meet users, you can speak with them in in real life. So events are great, or if you are a DeFi protocol, you can have like an LP focused event, you focus more on your target audience with event, especially when you focus on institutions. It's very good as well. So, yeah, we host a lot of events. We did with BASE quite recently, Limitless, a lot more. We're gonna do a monad event now at the in June. We're gonna do monad hackathon. So, yeah, we we like to do events to have it more niche on the more niche audience, but then also to use it more on the digital side as well. You use it as a marketing uh campaign.

Joeri Billast 19:07

Yeah, yeah, and you know, and then the human connection, and people then go to the event, they they learn something, but they connect also. I was at your offices for uh a Web Simit side event you mentioned that you would do a lot of events. I love that, you know, just you know, being around and and and and connecting with people. Uh I have my own uh event here in in Sintra, but it's it's not really product-related, it's more like a marketing retreat, which yeah happens to be uh when you make people come over from all over the world, come here to Lisbon or to Sintra, something magical happens. Um yeah, I know you since when actually are you uh are you here in Lisbon and did you and why did you choose Lisbon actually to start the company? It's a that's a question that pops up in my mind.

Jack Haldorsson 19:54

Yeah, it's uh yeah, like I've been here now for four almost five years, I think. Initially, I was only gonna stay for a few months, and then uh Tim was living here. And yeah, like then we just it's a lot of crypto, so it's a little bit like the crypt, the whole hub of Europe. The sun is great, the food is great, people are great, and then we yeah, we just decided to to stay here. It's close to to Europe. It's a lot of founders, it's a lot of startups, it's a lot of talent here. So um, so yeah, like I think over the after the first three months it was like, oh this is a great place, and we decided to stay.

Why Lisbon Became A Web3 Hub

Joeri Billast 20:34

Yeah, and there are a lot of good events too, which I like, you know, because people like to come over. Yeah. Uh no, I don't know. Question about about about AI, yeah. If you are looking ahead, what actually does a fully integrated AI-driven growth engine look? Or growth engine, I would say, look like for you? And maybe what are people or teams still underestimated about the complexity of getting there?

Building An AI Driven Growth Engine

Jack Haldorsson 21:01

Yeah. It is very hard to build out all of this because you need to have all of these automations, collector and stuff like that. I would love to have Sean here. Sean is our AI researcher and specialist. He's also one of the partners, he's uh is a legend that AI is building out a lot of the tools internally. I would say automate research, automate all of the manual work. I think that's like the the how to become more efficient, but still keep this human touch. So maybe build up a skill library for your design agent, for your copywriting. We have a humanizer, which is basically like we've downloaded so much stuff from that we have created over the last few years, and then we have made it to a skill for a humanizer. But think like you you can make it more efficient and then build automations, focus on automations instead of trying to in everything, the whole marketing theme. How can you automate these processes you have here to make it more efficient? And um yeah I think most like you start with one small automation and then you take the next one. That's what I would I would suggest because when you think of it like oh I'm gonna create all of the marketing team with with AI it's small functions you need to automate.

Joeri Billast 22:25

I would say Yeah I think that's uh very good advice I you know because people get overwhelmed with all these possibilities just try you know to do one thing and ship it and see how it could work and get feedback from uh from others um well the the time went really fast check um if people because you know you you obviously we could talk for hours but if people want to know more about you they want to follow you where would you like me to send them?

Jack Haldorsson 22:53

You can send it to to my X account I make a lot of content on um marketing and a lot of marketing content. Then if you want to jump on a meeting you can slide into my VMs you can jump on a strategy session if you're building something we'll be happy to jump on and shout about marketing.

Where To Follow Jack

Joeri Billast 23:11

And yeah I would say that would be the best the my ex okay uh as my listeners know Jack there are always show notes which are linked to the blog article so everything you you mentioned or your handle will be found in there. Well Jack it was really a pleasure to have you on the show today. It was a pleasure to be here and yeah thank you so much for for having me. Guys what an amazing episode I'm sure that you learned a lot so be sure to share this episode with people around you other entrepreneurs marketers maybe your neighbor who can benefit from this episode if you're not yet following the show this is a really good moment to do this to hit the subscribe button if you haven't given me a review yet this really goes a long way and of course we would love to see you back next time. Take care thank everybody about my mate's podcast sponsor Rio their life wallet makes sending crypto as easy as sending email and is available on both iOS and Android