Welcome to the first installment of Growing Startups & Projects in THE Balkans—a new series where we spotlight lessons, strategies, and stories shaping the future of innovation across the region. In this series, we go beyond the buzzwords to explore how Balkan founders and teams are building real impact in rapidly evolving industries like Web3, AI, and beyond.

In our opening piece, Josip Vlah, co-founder of leading Web3 agency RZLT, shares battle-tested insights on what makes marketing in the decentralized world fundamentally different. Whether you’re an early-stage builder, marketer, or curious founder, this guide breaks down how to earn trust, grow communities, and market products in Web3—starting from zero.

Introduction: Why Web3 Marketing Is a Different Game

If you’re coming from the world of traditional Web2 marketing, prepare for a complete mindset shift. I started my career in web2, working with traditional brands where affiliate links, influencer campaigns, and broad brand awareness defined success. But when we co-founded RZLT, now one of the leading marketing agencies in the Web3 and AI space, we quickly realized that Web3 is its own universe.

Crypto communities care deeply about data sovereignty, decentralization, and trust. The old playbooks rarely work. You’re not pushing a product, you’re building a community, one rooted in transparency, aligned incentives, and public accountability. In Web3, success isn’t about buying attention, it’s about earning it through community, credibility, and genuine value.

Product-Market Fit First—Always

One of the first questions we ask new clients at RZLT is: “Have you actually spoken with your users?” It’s shocking how many haven’t.

Web3 moves fast. That  is powerful but also dangerous. Too many founders fall into the trap of building in isolation, assuming that great tech alone will attract users. It won’t.

Before thinking about marketing, focus on finding product-market fit. Interview potential users. Validate that the problem you’re solving is real and that others care about it as much as you do. Are you building something for the ecosystem or just for yourself?

We’ve seen over 80% of the early-stage projects we work with refine or pivot after doing user discovery. The ones that listen to their community early build better products and stronger marketing foundations.

Building a Go-To-Market Strategy That Evolves With the Ecosystem

Marketing in crypto is never static. Narratives change weekly from play-to-earn to real-world assets to modular blockchains and now InformationFi. Your go-to-market (G2M) strategy must be dynamic. But beneath the surface noise, there are a few blueprint principles that remain:

First: start with what you can control. Many early-stage projects don’t have the budget for PR or Influencer / KOL collabs and that’s okay. Focus on high-leverage, low-cost actions:

• Content Marketing: You need a content backbone. If someone hears about your project and lands on your site, what do they find? Content is the layer that bridges interest and action. It should clearly articulate your value proposition, mission, roadmap, and community ethos. This includes blog posts, newsletters, video explainers, technical docs, and social threads.
  
• User-driven storytelling: If you’ve done your product-market fit homework, you already have real users. Showcase their stories. Turn support tickets into blog posts. Turn feedback into Twitter threads. Co-create with your users and let them become your amplifiers.
  
• Community = Retention: Many founders think community is someone else’s job. It’s not. Community is the human layer of your protocol. It’s how you retain users, gather feedback, and spark organic growth. The best-performing projects we’ve worked with had founders active in Discords, answering DMs, and engaging. Web3 users don’t just want a product, they want to be part of something.
  

Founders who disappear after launch kill community momentum. And without community, word-of-mouth the most powerful growth lever in crypto never kicks in.

Crypto Marketing in 2025: What Actually Works

We’ve entered the InformationFi era where content is not only king but capital.

Projects like Kaito, Wallchain, and others are pioneering smart content formulas: users write, share, and engage with project-related content, and get rewarded not just for virality, but for relevance. The more high-quality attention they generate from target audiences, the more value they accrue.

This shift has unlocked a new type of contributor, content creators who know how to reach real users. It’s bottom-up marketing. 

You can read more about this trend and our InfoFi framework here.

Another rising trend: Team-Led Marketing.

The best teams are becoming their own media arms. Founders post product updates, engineers share behind-the-scenes dev insights, and marketers co-create Twitter Spaces with the community. Everyone becomes a distribution channel.

This transparency builds trust. In a space where scams and vaporware are rampant, humanizing your team can be the edge.

Closing Thoughts

Marketing from 0 to 1 in Web3 isn’t about running ads or chasing hype. It’s about talking to users, building with them, and translating their feedback into narratives that resonate. It’s about content that educates, founders who communicate, and communities that evangelize.

At RZLT, we’ve helped dozens of projects go from whitepaper to ecosystem staple. But the formula isn’t secret. It’s simple:

• Listen first
• Build what matters
• Tell the story in public
• And never stop evolving

Web3 is not just a technology shift, it’s a cultural one. And marketing it demands new rules, new rhythms, and new respect for the people you’re building for.