Thoughts on 'Gridcoin Joint Marketing Initiative 2018'
This is a great initiative to improve #gridcoin's marketing effort! Love it!
At first I wanted to comment on the original post, but my comment was getting out of control in terms of the length, so I've decided to make it into a post.
Here are some thoughts that come to my mind after reading the original post:
- I remember AdWords used to give credits (free ad $$) to new users, AdSense might be doing the same. Typically this requires to invest a bit of your own $s. If we did some research and made a detailed guide we could attract some volunteers from community and double or triple our marketing budget. I remember there is something called MCC account that allows you to manage others' accounts. So it's might be possible to centralize the effort.
- What about other alternatives to Google advertising? Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube? Maybe they also have free sign up bonuses? Maybe they are cheaper? Maybe they have better target audience?
- Who are we targeting with these ads? I'm thinking we would benefit from understanding our target audience, and experiment with different campaigns. For example, university students - "help science and get paid", gamers - "explore the universe while you're asleep and save for your game", "let your rig do some real work while you're not gaming", etc.
- I think we need an original content, we have so many great stories to tell. Can we find a real marketing person? We should ask the community, maybe someone is a growth geek or knows a marketing person who would volunteer or get paid by the community to produce high quality content. This might be a better alternative to google clicks. Worth exploring, IMHO. I'll chat with my marketing manager to see if she can fuel some fresh ideas.
- Can we try to partner with other offline/online communities? Science forums (once again, original content would probably help)? University campuses or student groups? If and when makes sense we can do a free cross promotion?
- Partnering with industry or tech communities? Android geeks? Raspberry Pi? Maybe some people in our community have connections that might be relevant.
- Make a crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter/indiegogo to: hire marketing manager, to make a documentary film, to whatever else we can think of. This can also serve a promo platform?
These are just some random thoughts, I'm sure if more research is done we'll be able to supercharge our marketing efforts. The bottom line is, I think we should be more creative when it comes to the marketing effort.
Gridcoin is a unique coin and deserves a unique marketing approach.
I realize that all of this might sound stupid, but I hope it inspires someone.
We should focus on... promoting whitelisted projects. These are great stories to tell. They have no marketing funds / resources. Gridcoin would be just mentioned somewhere, but that would be enough.
I'm a scientist (physicist + mathematician), so if the community decides to go with this marketing idea, I could help create scientifically accurate stories for several of the projects.
I'm a fan of several of these suggestions! I commented on the original marketing post regarding ads on Facebook. I know someone who did Facebook ads for his small business and had a reasonable level of success. I strongly believe that targeted ads on Facebook would allow us to reach audiences that ads on BOINC stats or Google wouldn't. So, I'm going to put my vote in for that one. I probably could create a poll to see if other people like the idea. Let's see.
Thank you for this detailed comment/post, @alkasai. I'll try to answer some of your questions:
Our AdWords account was created back in April 2016, so we are well beyond any noobie freebies, I'm afraid. Of course, AdWords is a huge business, improving constantly, I definitely need more such input to catch all the goodies.
I'll look into Bing Ads, should be quite easy to set up. YouTube and Facebook, not my domains exactly, besides I am handling too much stuff already. This Initiative is really the max I can do now, both in the terms of finances and free time.
We are targeting users who are interested in BOINC. Of course, we could also target university students and other groups, but that probably means larger bounce rates and would require an even bigger budget.
4,5,6,7. All good ideas, worth pursuing.
Thanks for taking time to comment on some of my ideas. Time is always the most expensive resource...
I didn't mean you should do that. I was thinking some volunteers in the community could perhaps contribute their accounts, but I realize that might be too many moving parts.
YouTube should be easy to setup, I think. They have banner type ads, but these are probably linked to videos, could be linked to some of tutorials on how to get started with GRC. Facebook is cool, cause it has good demographic targeting, and I think interests targeting as well. So might prove to have lower bounce rates.
Agree, but might be cheaper at the same time? I mean advertising crypto to crypto enthusiasts (as an example) would probably be too expensive. But if we're creative, we can find a niche that is cheap and can drive good adoption.
4,5,6,7 thank you! Would love to see any of these to be seriously considered. ;)
Hi @Vortac and @Alkasai thanks for stoking the conversation regarding marketing.
I may be able to help with Point 2, 3, & 4
I'm the nerdy (unfortunatly not the useful kind) one of my family but my fiancé has 8 or so years as a social media and content marketer for various industries (Publishing, Banking, & Scientific). If you would like any help managing gridcoins social media and marketing presence, dont hesitate to ask and I will relay it on to the future missus :)