Why crypto marketing budgets fail without PR

Many crypto projects spend heavily on marketing but see weak conversions and rising costs. This article explains why marketing without PR fails to build trust — and why PR is critical for making marketing effective in crypto.

Crypto companies often pour large budgets into marketing. Performance ads, influencers, sponsorships — all promise growth at scale. Yet, in many cases the actual outcome lags behind the expected results: rising costs, modest conversions, and limited long-term impact. Most importantly, such methods are not always effective in building trust. 

Public relations, by contrast, is often treated as optional: useful for “brand,” but dispensable when budgets tighten.

This article draws from the experience of Outset PR, a data-driven crypto PR agency, and explains why relying on marketing without PR often turns into a budget drain rather than a growth strategy.

Crypto lacks trust  

Crypto operates under a structural handicap: low baseline trust. Scams, failed exchanges, rug pulls, and regulatory crackdowns have trained users to be skeptical by default. In such an environment, marketing alone faces diminishing returns.

Paid campaigns can generate clicks and installs, but they struggle to answer the questions users ask before committing capital: Who is behind this project? Is it credible? Will it still exist in a year?

Marketing speaks in a first-person voice. PR introduces third-party validation. That distinction matters more in crypto than in most industries.

When marketing works and when it doesn’t

Marketing can be effective without PR in limited cases: established brands, low-risk products, or short-term campaigns designed to capture momentum rather than build durability. But for early-stage crypto projects, marketing often ends up doing double duty — driving traffic while also trying to manufacture credibility.

That is expensive. Acquisition costs rise as users research externally and find little independent coverage to confirm the claims made in ads.

PR does not replace marketing, but it removes friction from it. When users encounter credible media coverage before or after seeing a paid message, conversion improves and skepticism drops.

PR as a cost reducer, not a cost center

One of the least understood advantages of PR is its ability to lower total marketing spend, not by cutting channels, but by increasing efficiency across them.

A clear example is content syndication. A well-placed article often travels far beyond its original publication, republished by aggregators and platforms without additional cost. In crypto, this effect is amplified by ecosystems that automatically distribute relevant news across multiple channels.

Outset PR has observed this repeatedly in client campaigns. Articles initially placed in tier-1 outlets are frequently republished across platforms such as CoinMarketCap, Binance Square, and Yahoo Finance. This secondary distribution is tracked using the agency’s internal Syndication Map system, which monitors republications and estimated reach.

The StealthEX campaign illustrates the effect. A targeted tier-1 pitching strategy resulted in 92 republications across major aggregators and media platforms, generating a combined estimated outreach of over 3 billion. The client paid for the original placements; the additional visibility came at no extra cost.

Narrative compounds, ads expire

Marketing impressions disappear the moment spending stops. PR assets persist. Articles remain searchable, quoted, and referenced long after publication, shaping how a project is perceived during due diligence, listings, and partnerships.

That persistence has second-order effects. Influencers are more willing to collaborate with projects that have credible coverage. Exchanges conduct reviews faster. Paid campaigns convert better because users arrive pre-informed.

In this sense, PR functions as infrastructure. It answers fundamental questions so marketing does not have to.

Marketing and PR combined deliver the most 

The question facing crypto teams is often framed incorrectly. It is not marketing versus PR. It is whether marketing can be efficient without the trust layer PR provides.

Outset PR’s experience suggests that for most crypto companies, the answer is no. Projects that treat PR as optional often spend more on marketing to compensate — and still struggle to convert attention into growth. In crypto, you can buy reach, but credibility has to be earned.