Best Crypto Marketing Strategy to Scale Community and Narrative.

Written by Julian Stafford (ruthybuilds), founder of Surgence Labs, a specialist web3 marketing agency that builds narrative driven go to market strategies for crypto, DeFi and infrastructure projects.

Crypto marketing in 2025 is not just about getting attention. It is about owning a story so clearly that the market, KOLs and your own community can repeat it without you in the room. For most serious founders, working with a specialised web3 marketing agency or crypto marketing partner is really about one thing: building a narrative that compounds.

In an environment where a new chain, DEX or yield product launches every week, the winners are not always the ones with the best technology. The winners are usually the teams that control the narrative and run a disciplined go to market around it.

At Surgence Labs, we use a simple but aggressive framework for most launches:

Whisper → Tease → Shout
layered across
Pre launch → Launch → Post launch

This article breaks down:

• Why narrative is the core of effective crypto marketing
• The three layers of a strong narrative
• How the Whisper, Tease, Shout framework works in each phase of your launch

You can plug this into your own token launch, DeFi product, L1, SocialFi app or infrastructure protocol.

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Most teams still treat crypto marketing as a checklist:

• Make a website
• Open a Discord
• Do a points campaign
• Hire a few KOLs
• Announce the TGE

You can execute all of that and still suffer if the market cannot clearly answer one basic question.

What is this protocol for, and why does it matter now?

A strong narrative fixes that. It is the foundation for your content, your token design, your community strategy and your BD.

A good crypto marketing narrative does three things:

1. Positioning
   It tells people exactly where you sit in the market.
   Example: “A perp DEX where idle margin earns you yield” is much clearer than “next generation DEX”.
2. Connection to incentives
   It makes it obvious what users can gain.
   Example: governance over billions in stablecoin volume, yield on assets they already hold, access to early ecosystem upside.
3. A story that can unfold over time
   It gives you a clear thread from testnet to mainnet to TGE to Season 2 and beyond, instead of random campaigns.

Once this is locked in, every campaign and every announcement becomes a new chapter in the same story instead of a reset.

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Before you apply any framework, you need to understand what you are actually narrating.

There are three layers:

1. Market narrative
   The macro context.
   Examples: perp DEX rotation, stablecoin wars, L2 season, SocialFi wave, RWA yield.
   You cannot control this, but you must plug into it.
2. Category narrative
   The slot you occupy.
   Examples: options DEX versus perp DEX, yield bearing stablecoin versus pure payments coin, “L1 where every action is rewarded” versus “developer first L2”.
3. Protocol narrative
   The concrete promise.
   Examples:
   • Deposit here, mint this, earn that.
   • Stake here, gain governance and boosted rewards.
   • Use the product, collect points that map to real upside.

If these three layers are not aligned, your crypto marketing will always feel scattered. You might say you are “redefining DeFi” while your product is functionally just another farm.

The Whisper, Tease, Shout framework is how we roll those layers out in a structured way.

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In simple terms:

• Whisper
  Decide and test your narrative with insiders before the public push.
• Tease
  Make the story visible in public and give people a way to get early exposure.
• Shout
  Own the launch window with a focused, unified message and clear actions.

We run this across the classic lifecycle:

• Pre launch
  Mostly Whisper, then Tease.
• Launch
  Tease plus Shout.
• Post launch
  Controlled Shout, then a new Whisper around the next chapter.

Below is how each phase works in practice.

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Get the story right before you get loud

Pre launch is where you win or lose most of your go to market. It is where you decide the story that will either compound for the next 12 to 24 months or trap you.

Before you post anything, get aligned on:

• Who this is for
• What outcome you change for them
• What proof you already have

For example:

• “Perp traders who want their idle collateral to earn yield.”
• “Stablecoin users who want yield without leaving the dollar.”
• “Onchain users who want every transaction to count toward ownership.”

This is not a tagline exercise. This is a decision about how you will be perceived.

In this stage you are mostly in private:

• Founder to founder calls with high context KOLs and funds
• Decks and memos that lay out the thesis and token model
• Quiet feedback loops on positioning, token utility and launch structure

You are pressure testing questions like:

• Does this narrative make sense to professional DeFi users
• Does the token actually capture the value the story talks about
• Are we over promising compared to what the product can do in the first 3 to 6 months

Pre launch is also where you set up the rails that will carry the story later:

• A landing page that communicates your one line story and primary call to action
• Discord and Telegram structures that reflect your narrative and funnel
• Early dashboards and leaderboards that can display TVL, wallets, deposits, badges, actions later

You are not shouting. You are quietly preparing the system that will convert hype into durable users when you finally go public.

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Turn a clear story into controlled FOMO

Once your internal narrative is locked, you move into Tease. This is still technically pre launch, but now you are visible.

Tease content should be specific but incomplete. It should sound like:

• “A perp DEX where your idle margin earns yield.”
• “A chain where every action counts toward ownership.”
• “A governance token backed by real stablecoin volume.”

The reader should understand that something different is happening, but still have questions. Those questions are what you convert into signups, pre deposits and badge mints.

Do not only post. Give people a way to step closer to the project:

• Waitlists and pre registration flows
• Badge or role mints that signal early presence
• Points or Miles systems where tasks are aligned with your thesis
• Pre deposit modules where users can lock stablecoins or native tokens to secure better future positioning

All of these should reinforce the same idea. For example, if your narrative is “perps that pay you back”, then your early tasks and deposits should revolve around stablecoin deposits, margin usage and governance touchpoints, not random social spam.

In this phase you want KOLs and partners to echo your main story, not create their own.

Give them concise angles, such as:

• “This governance launch sits on top of an already large stablecoin stack.”
• “This L1 is using points and badges to track every action, not just farming.”
• “This protocol lets you earn yield on idle trading capital.”

If the same angles keep showing up organically across X and Telegram, your Tease has done its job.

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Own the window while the market is watching

Launch is where your work in Whisper and Tease either pays off or gets exposed.

By the time you hit launch day, you should have:

• One or two sentences that capture your story
• One primary mechanic for participation
• One main place to act

For example:

• “A perp DEX where idle margin earns yield. Deposit stablecoins, trade, and farm governance on top.”
• “An L1 where every action counts. Connect your wallet, claim your ID, start earning points toward governance.”

Everything in your launch window must point back to this spine.

Shouting does not mean spamming. It means synchronising.

• X or Twitter carries your key narrative lines, stats and KOL amplification
• Discord and Telegram carry support, detail, FAQs and live instructions
• Launchpads, dashboards and in app views show live numbers and progress

Users should be able to move from a tweet to your app to your community and see the same story reflected everywhere.

Crypto users trust live data more than slogans.

During launch, highlight:

• TVL and volume milestones
• Wallet, badge and deposit counts
• Leaderboards of top participants

This turns “marketing stories” into verifiable facts the community can see for themselves.

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After the TGE or mainnet event, attention naturally drops. Your narrative work should not.

Immediately after launch:

• Recap what you promised during Tease
• Show how that is now live in product mechanics and incentives
• Give a clear picture of what happens in the next 30 to 90 days

If you positioned your token as a governance asset, explain exactly how governance will work and how value will flow to holders. If you positioned the chain as “every action counts”, show how actions will continue to be tracked and rewarded after the initial campaign.

Once the dust settles, you quietly move back into Whisper for the next chapter. That might be:

• A major new product line
• An expansion to another chain
• A new season of points or emissions with a different focus

You repeat the cycle. Align narrative inside the circle first, then Tease out, then Shout again when you are ready.

Long term, the only way to keep users and capital is to make sure:

• Every new campaign reinforces the same core story
• Your token and reward systems keep rewarding the behaviours your narrative claims to care about
• Your public dashboards continue to prove your claims with real data

If your story is yield on idle collateral, your future campaigns should focus on deepening that. If your story is “every action counts”, your metrics should show that you keep tracking and rewarding actions, not only those from the first season.

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If you are a founder or head of growth in crypto, you can use this framework as a simple checklist.

1. Clarify your one line narrative and make sure the whole team agrees on it.
2. Use Whisper to stress test that story with insiders and align token mechanics and launch structure around it.
3. Use Tease to create controlled FOMO with clear, aligned actions like pre deposits, badges and points.
4. Use Shout to dominate the launch window with a single story, a single mechanic and a single place to act.
5. Use Post launch to close the loop on your promise and set up the next chapter.

Crypto marketing rewards teams that treat narrative as infrastructure, not decoration. When you get this right, your campaigns stop being isolated events and start working like a compounding system that pulls users, capital and attention back to you over and over again.

Julian Stafford, known on X as @ruthybuilds, is the founder of Surgence Labs, a full stack web3 marketing and growth agency focused on narrative, go to market and community. He has worked with leading L1s, DeFi protocols, exchanges and AI x crypto projects to design launch strategies, points campaigns and KOL systems that actually move TVL, users and narrative, not just impressions. Through Surgence Labs he helps founders turn complex products into clear stories, execute high conviction crypto marketing strategies and scale communities that stay long after the first airdrop.