How to market marketing internally

10 tips for crypto marketers to earn a seat at the table

In crypto, marketing often gets a bad rap—dismissed as "hand-wavy" by technical founders and misunderstood in its potential to drive real growth.

Unlike traditional industries, crypto marketers navigate a landscape where success hinges not only on delivering results but also on publicly building credibility for both themselves and their organizations.

To thrive in this environment, you need more than just great campaigns—you need your team to get it.

Here’s 10 actionable tips to educate your organization about the value of marketing, secure buy-in, and establish marketing as a strategic force in your company.

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1. Start with the Basics: Teach "What is Marketing?"

Most crypto teams, especially technical ones, lack a deep understanding of marketing as a discipline. Spend time early on explaining the history, purpose, and impact of marketing. Use examples from both crypto and traditional industries to illustrate how marketing drives adoption, builds trust, and differentiates undifferentiated products (like forkable open-source code).

Pro Tip: Use analogies engineers love—such as how marketing is like optimizing a codebase: strategic inputs create scalable outcomes.

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2. Explain the "Fuel and Engine" Framework

Marketing isn’t just “making tweets” or “running ads.” It’s a combination of:

• Fuel: Creative assets like brand, storytelling, and content.

• Engine: The systems and processes (e.g., channels, automation) that deliver this content effectively to drive measurable results.

Help your team see how both sides are necessary for a successful strategy. Customizing your "fuel" to fit the "engine" is how great marketing works.

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3. Find Common Ground with Technical Teams

To bridge the gap between marketing and technical teams, show how marketing aligns with their goals. For example:

• Developers care about adoption: Highlight how marketing drives user acquisition and developer engagement.

• Founders care about brand trust: Explain how marketing differentiates your project from competitors, especially in a world of forkable code.

Speak their language. Just as engineers use GitHub to showcase contributions, marketers use campaigns and branding to showcase impact.

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4. Build Credibility by Being a Product Expert

Crypto marketers need to know their products and industry deeply. Use your own platform, interact with your community, and stay updated on trends. The more you can speak about the product and its users with authority, the more respect you’ll earn from technical leaders.

Pro Tip: Become heavy product users and learn about the more technical aspects so you can be seen as part of the conversation. This positions you as a critical voice in shaping strategy, not just executing tasks.

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5. Develop Your Personal Brand

In crypto, your personal brand matters as much as your company’s. A strong individual presence helps you:

1. Build credibility within your org

2. Attract top talent and partners

3. Get a “seat at the table” for key decisions

Start posting insights, sharing learnings, and engaging with others in the space. Being recognized externally makes you harder to ignore internally.

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6. Educate Through Storytelling, Not Jargon

Crypto marketers often get bogged down in technicalities or niche terminology. Instead, tell compelling stories:

• How marketing campaigns grew other protocols

• What differentiated a successful product launch

• Why trust and brand are the only differentiators in an open-source world

Remember, stories stick; data convinces.

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7. Show (Don’t Tell) the Value of Marketing

Crypto teams care about tangible impact. Prove marketing’s worth by:

• Highlighting metrics: user acquisition, wallet activations, TVL growth

• Sharing success stories: campaigns that outperformed, content that resonated

• Visualizing ROI: “For every $1 spent, we drove $X in new TVL”

Use dashboards like Safary to visualize data and make your wins undeniable.

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8. Focus on Strategic, Not Executional, Marketing

Founders often mistake marketing as purely executional: “Did the tweet go out?” Educate your team on the strategic side:

• Shaping go-to-market strategies

• Conducting competitive mindshare analyses

• Building long-term brand positioning

Frame marketing as a multiplier for the company’s goals, not just a supporting function.

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9. Set Clear Priorities to Avoid Random Acts of Marketing

Crypto moves fast, and founders often get sidetracked by shiny new trends. Protect your focus by:

• Defining marketing’s priorities upfront

• Communicating those priorities across the org

• Explaining why some requests (like chasing every current narrative) don’t align with the broader strategy

Educating your team on the "why" behind marketing decisions fosters trust and minimizes distractions.

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10. Collaborate Like a Product Org

Marketing isn’t sales; it’s closer to product in terms of cross-functional collaboration. Like product teams:

• Treat campaigns like experiments: test, iterate, and refine

• Work closely with founders & devs to align goals

• Build scalable “products” like educational content, developer documentation, and community playbooks

Position marketing as a builder, not just a megaphone.

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Conclusion

Educating your team on the value of marketing is an ongoing journey, but now you have the tools to lead the charge. By using storytelling to captivate, metrics to prove impact, and collaboration to align goals, you can transform marketing from a misunderstood function into a driving force for your organization.

Crypto's challenges may be unique, but they come with unmatched opportunities for marketers who are willing to step up, build trust, and make their voices heard. Armed with these strategies, you're equipped to not only "market marketing" but also establish it as the foundation for growth—both within your team and across the industry.

The key is to "market marketing"—internally and externally—every single day.