Gridcoin Advertising (8): Googling BOINC
Welcome to the 8th installment of Gridcoin Advertising series! As the Gridcoin community continues to grow rapidly (22 new solo miners just today), marketing, advertising and design are becoming more and more important. Let's begin with a very a short intro for our new members: we are advertising Gridcoin through Google AdWords. Go to Google, search for BOINC and a Gridcoin ad should appear on the top or on the bottom of the first search page (sometimes on the page no. 2). It looks something like this:
Such ads are yielding better results every day! Bounce rate has been steadily decreasing - it was at 82% four months ago, 76% two months ago and now it's at 71.28% (all screenshots show data for the last 7 days):
Our top ads are yielding very high click-through rates (CTR), approaching 10%:
Google is rating our BOINC-related ads as 'above average' (total score 8/10) on two metrics:
List of most popular search-terms (phrases which are yielding most clicks):
Currently, we are spending 5 USD per day on these ads (10 USD in total for all ads displayed through AdWords, like on BOINCstats, Free-DC, coinmarketcap, coindesk, themerkle etc).
I propose to increase our total AdWords budget to 20 USD per day which would allow us to spend at least around 15 USD per day for BOINC-related Google searches and greatly expand the reach of our ads. Here is an estimate from Google, what could we get from this campaign with an increased budget:
Google estimates 298 clicks per week with a daily budget of 9.6 USD. With 15 USD per day, my estimate is that our cost-per-click would stay around 23-24 cents, good enough for about 62 clicks per day or 434 per week. Of course, an official vote will be necessary (since I am getting refunded from the Foundation for this expenses) but I would like to get some opinions first - we now have plenty of marketing guys on board, who are most likely more proficient with AdWords than me.
Great read and great work!
Regarding your proposal for funding increase:
I am concerned that the current barriers of access for new users encourages more people to scan and scatter than we might like. As this issue of access is currently one under intense and active development, I would be in favor of delaying your proposed increase to GoogleAd funding for a few weeks -- once we have the new information up and running we will be able to maintain the attention of far more visitors for a longer period, perhaps even to the point of adoption.
However, going from 5 to 20 seems like a small amount, even if it is quadrupling funding, so I'm not terribly committed to delaying.
Also, where is this funding coming from and how we do we donate?
Thoughts?
Google charges my credit card at the end of every month (~300 USD currently). I am refunded from the Gridcoin Foundation every few months or so (in GRC).
meep
no other thoughts? XD
Well, even if I put up the poll today, I guess it needs a minimum of 3 weeks to collect enough votes to decide on such a large expense. So, it can't happen tomorrow even if we wanted to :)
Regarding the website and rebranding... website has been updated yesterday, so let's say that's covered. As for new design - yes, it's in the works, but we are targeting only BOINC users with this ad campaign and most of them don't find design and fancy marketing that important. In fact, science-related slogans work best (altruistic messages like volunteer computing matters, science first and foremost etc.)
I agree about who to target and the messaging of marketing, but, and the current super block issue highlights this point I think, there are currently many barriers to adoption. It's not so much about design and fancy marketing. The instructions and explanations are fairly difficult to follow for people new to crypto -- and not all BOINCers are crypto. That, the superblock issues, the reward schedule, and cpid modification issue, and several others are issues that will damage GRC should there be another influx of users.
There is often an urge to expand marketing after
A. a large spike in price and
B. there has been an influx of users.
The first already happened -- which is why GRC is/was in a particular bubble the past weeks (BTC/ETH crash happening at the time of the post so all bubbles are popping).
The second is happening now. I would argue that we should stop actively marketing until the issues raised by the most recent influx of users settle. Every time GRC scales there are going to be new issues that crop up. Are we sure we want to pile two stages of adoption on top of each other in such quick succession?
Edit: I forgot, the voting system currently doesn't work either so that will be another issue I would think should be fixed before we bring any proposal regarding anything to a vote = )
Anything that helps science is good, in these dark days! :)
Gridcoin huh? Very exciting. I wish you the best of luck, @vortac with your advertising endeavers. I will be looking into this, and I'll toss you a follow as well.
Cheers!
@abn
I have two suggestions. You should make a weekly adsense advertising post here on steemit, ask for upvotes and have all the funds relocated for adsense advertising? What do you think?
Second, how about advertising on sites like coinmarketcap? I am sure the traffic would be highly targetted and converting :)
And I agree for increasing the budget. Just do it and if results are positive we keep it that way!
Good idea, but Google unfortunately doesn't accept Steem or Steem Dollars yet, only credit cards. Weekly updates require time and my real-life work also requires time or my credit card goes dry. Also, we can't count on whales and dolphins upvoting such content in perpetuity - I would probably make more if I just typed 'hello' and upvoted myself 100%, but that's not in the spirit of Steemit and reduces the rewards for other Gridcoin contributors here.
We are advertising on coinmarketcap, but on a very limited budget. Text ads fare poorly there, crypto-competition is fierce, we need some sleek, professional HTML5 banners with superior design to compete on such popular crypto-websites. Otherwise, it's just too wasteful.
I like the idea of something like a steemit newsletter funding development/marketing
love this. I'm long on Gridcoin. Can't wait to see more and more of the real world using Gridcoin!
I was a BOINC user a few years ago (I stopped when I replaced my computer) and recently got back into it via my newer interest in cryptocurrencies. For me Gridcoin was a no brainer once I heard about it (through a friend not an add) as I wanted to support Boinc anyway so why not get rewarded at the same time? It makes sense to me that the Boinc targeted adds would work so well as they're more about awareness than persuasion
Great work
Plz vote and support me on my page
Thank you for your professional opinion!
Couldn't find any other way to send you a message so just wanted to thank you for taking interest in my recent post. Highest upvote value I've ever seen on any of my posts... means a lot.
And I'm long Gridcoin so really happy to be following your posts here. :)
You are welcome! I am always happy to upvote high-quality content. Following you now.
Very kind of you to say and do. Seriously.
Since I haven't seen you post recently just coming into your comments section again to write in. Aside from continued appreciation for your upvotes (which you certainly do not need to do for me to write in like this) I just wanted to comment that I really like the articles you Resteem. Cryptocurrency is my area of interest on Steemit but I typically only see articles on TA, News items, or sheer hype related to pumping a coin.
Through your account I am enjoying staying up to date on Gridcoin's latest developments and I love reading your Resteemed feed containing passionate stories about those who discovered Gridcoin and why they are continuing to stay engaged with it. I have rarely paid attention to these in the past but you just have an eye for what really strikes a chord. Keep it coming and thank you :)
Btw if you run or are part of a curation trail I would be happy to join it to provide rewards to people who do put their heart and soul into the content you've identified as such.