DeFi Marketing Playbooks by Stage: Pre-Launch, Launch, and Post-Launch Growth

DeFi growth tactics must align with a protocol's maturity stage—pre-launch, launch, and post-launch—because user readiness, product maturity, and risk tolerance differ at each phase. Pre-launch focuses on narrative clarity and wallet collection, launch centers on reducing onboarding friction and building trust for first transactions, and post-launch targets repeat usage and retained TVL. Misaligning tactics with stage leads to misleading metrics, wasted spend, and flat capital retention.