Decentralized Marketing Trends – Amanda Cassatt

hello my name is Amanda Cassatt and I am the secretary of marketing Dow I'm also the former chief marketing officer at consensus you can follow me on Twitter at Amanda Cassatt or on telegram at Amanda Clare happy to chat if you want to hear more about marketing gaps or marketing trends in our ecosystem last year I also spoke at eath Denver though I don't think I was competing with lunch last time about basically marketing 101 so the way of thinking that you need to have in order to market your product starting with knowing your user finding the appropriate channels to reach your users crafting key messaging and then testing to make sure your key messaging is actually resonating using metrics and that's the link to where the talk lives if you're interested in that mostly I was making the point that marketing a blockchain project or a DAP isn't terribly different from marketing anything else but today I actually want to talk about how it is different so what the trends are in marketing decentralized and blockchain projects as opposed to marketing maybe anything else so there are a couple trends that I've been noticing in the space that I wanted to highlight one is projects not collecting user data the second is project in our space using blockchain based marketing products themselves the third one is co marketing a platform and an application built on that platform the fourth is figuring out how we update the media narrative after kind of the 2017 ICO narrative to cold and then the fifth is using novel organizations like dows for marketing um so I've seen this throughout the space the first time I interacted with this was when I was new to consensus and I was working with Tim Coulter and thinking about truffle and unlike other projects that I'd done marketing for in the past he didn't have Google Analytics set up and so I was confused how am I gonna help market this project if we're not collecting user data and if we're not tracking users and I learned that philosophically a lot of projects in this space don't want to collect data on their users and that's great it makes sense ethically to not participate in surveillance capitalism and especially if you're running an open-source website and people can see everything you're doing it helps earn trust if you aren't tracking people the disadvantages are it's going to be really hard to calculate your cost of customer acquisition because your data is basically a black box it's going to be harder to optimize your homepage you're not going to automatically get to know very much about your customer and it's harder to collect some of your VC funders favorite metrics like active users or other other kinds of metrics that you aren't collecting and it's okay to it's okay to not collect user data but there are just different approaches you need to take to marketing if that's your situation one is if you've chosen from a philosophical perspective not to collect data on your users make sure you're actually getting credit from your users for being so ethical one thing I'd love to see is like a pledge of all the different projects that don't collect data on users actually getting circulated and companies being pressured to stop collecting data on users as a result but if you're if you're putting yourself at a disadvantage for an ethical reason make sure you tell people that and so they know that they're getting this from you there are some more privacy focused analytics tools matome o as an example cloud front is another example you can do first party tracking instead of third party tracking you don't have to you know install Google Analytics or a Facebook tracking pixel in order to get some analytic you also want to be careful about paid campaigns like traditionally a marketer is going to run a bunch of campaigns on platforms like Facebook AdWords but if the actual if the actual cash register is a black box and you're not tracking what people do as they buy your software then it's going to be hard for you to pump lots of money into kind of traditional paid marketing campaigns because you won't be able to tell whether they're converting you can still learn about your users without tracking them you just need to find consensual ways to learn about them like setting up a booth and talking to them or you know sending out an opt-in survey to learn about your users and then in terms of demonstrating traction you can use web 3 metrics for example volume number of accounts created and you can show investors where those actually live on the blockchain and they can verify that you're not lying which is great the second trend is using our ecosystems own marketing products simple ID is a project that's just coming out of the tachyon accelerator and what they're doing is pulling in on chain data from Alessio to to help DAP projects collect better data and market themselves better brave you're already seeing those prompts if you use brave to start watching ads in exchange for money I think we're gonna see more of that especially from marketers who are targeting the type of user who would use the brave browser Peppo it's a it's a social network but a lot of people are using it to market their projects and to market themselves and then earn really popular especially for projects that have a token get yourself in the hands of the kinds of people that buy and use tokens and get them to start using your platform that's been super successful and we so we use our own marketing products and we go to our own media outlets when we have news and our own influencers we are relying on each other in the ecosystem for the most accurate information not on media so much we're you know relying on the of people that we know to have the right information as technologists or business leaders more than a journalist covering the space in some cases so this is interesting traditional platforms like obviously our ecosystems on Twitter obviously we should be creating content that's optimized for discoverability and search but we're not spending money on these platforms because these platforms basically said fu to us in various ways by not letting us market projects with the word crypto blockchain etc in them so you can use all these things but you can't really spend on them and so they're basically missing out on all the spend going on in our ecosystem by disallowing advertising so we've resorted to our own influencers our own media outlets our own marketing products and that's actually made them more robust and I think we're gonna see that a lot more projects marketing themselves using blockchain based marketing tools the third one is the third trend that I wanted to point out is Co marketing a platform and an application a few years ago a lot of projects thought you know we're going to build a platform and a bunch of developers are going to come and build on it and then it'll be great and then a lot of projects saw that there maybe weren't as many developers coming in building on it and they needed to demonstrate the functionality of their platform to the world before other people would come and start using it and so we've seen projects start building on top of the platform's themselves and yeah an OST and Peppo to use that example again OST technology is the layer 2 on top of aetherium that that powers Peppo and pep O's the application built on top of it that they've built that's ryokan the photo that they built to demonstrate its functionality and that's taken off in itself and that brings up a really interesting marketing question if you have a platform at an application do you brand them together do you brand them separately do you sell them to different people are they really facing the same audience and it really comes down to knowing your customer and who your customer is for your applique versus your platform so this is really interesting this something we really need to do we need to update the narrative in the media about web 3 products because the ICO boom in 2017-2018 really kind of and sort of took over that narrative and I think there is a lot of enthusiasm in the media for projects and then perhaps a lot of those media outlets or journalists felt sort of burned when they felt like the projects weren't delivering or they felt like the ecosystem was contracting maybe they felt like they'd been fed wrong information and then the tenor of the interaction between the space and the media started to become one of suspicions to the point almost overly I think to the point where it's hard to get published a really genuinely just optimistic and cheerful story about a new idea on a blockchain this was really funny I heard one reporter saying this to another ethereal tel-aviv they said one thing I've learned from being in the blockchain space since 2017 is I don't write about the ideas I just follow the money and that kind of cynicism from the media covering the space is both not accurate considering the you know the really high quality projects being produced and comes from comes from this one moment in time that I think we need to move on from because we're seeing a lot of interesting projects ship right now in 2020 and I think we're gonna see even more project shipping and these are you know often like these are in many cases projects that got funded during the boom of 2017-2018 and then everyone was like where's the project you got funded where is it but that's actually a pretty normal cycle that it would take some time between getting your project funded and actually delivering it that's not a strange thing that's not a scam that's just a normal normal development cycle so what does it take to swing the narrative pendulum back in favor of web 3 projects to be something more more appropriate for how exciting these projects really are one thing that is exciting in that door is projects launching with tech that's ready to use from the get-go that's something that I've seen more and more odious and orchid from our ecosystem hadera hash graph also did that so having a token that also has usable tech behind it from day one I think that's a really exciting development this is also the year to talk about user growth I think what a lot of media outlets are hungry to hear about and eager to write positive stories about our products that are actually converting users and providing real value and so one way to you know attract attention kind of narrative lis is to be able to demonstrate user growth and to highlight user stories one thing that's been pointed out almost as like a criticism of the etherium ecosystem is that there's a lifestyle brand but I actually think lifestyle brands are a strength in terms of our ecosystems ability to market itself not a weakness we have you know the Buffett corn we have the uef so we have so much imagery in this ecosystem we have so many projects that are really good at you know drawing people in and having memorable branding I think it's really wonderful and I think we're gonna see a lot more of that and we're gonna see projects demonstrate their marketing chops by building these lifestyle brands because you know you go to San Francisco where you go to Berlin and aetherium isn't just a technology it's also a lifestyle people are going to blockchain meetups to see their friends it's a community it's a religion and that's a that can be a positive the fifth trend is novel organizations like Dow is being used to to help projects do marketing so the marketing Dow is obviously one example that I am shilling in particular and they're a bunch of really great marketing job people here mehta cartel so mehta cartel is helping a lot of projects actually market themselves daps in the space marketing dow is focused on growing aetherium as a brand so taking in proposals for projects that would help get the etherium meme out to more people and a quick pitch for marketing to hell whenever I see stuff like this it makes me think about how much we need marketing Dow if you go to random blockchain conferences around the world you see you know a booth for neo you see a booth for Tron Bitcoin often has a presence and a real ground game but there isn't that for aetherium because it really is decentralized and it is a decentralized community but it's not being represented in the world the way some of these other platforms are and it really needs to get its name out there and have that booth and I think actually a Dow is a great way to get the funding in place to make sure that that sponsorship gets taken out at that conference that that knowledgeable person in the area about etherium get you know gets a proper t-shirt and gets flown over to the event so they can you know sit in the booth and answer questions about etherium it sounds like not rocket science but someone needs to do it and kind of own that ground game and that's one of the things that marketing dow really wants to do and then you see other platforms like ripple XRP and the xrb army I mean you see like really robust if annoying ground games being waged and I think aetherium needs to figure out its own way to do that in its own way with its own voice and style so thank you so much for for listening if you are interested in marketing Dow the website's marketing gorg the twitter is at marketing dow hashtag app marketing dow and email us to get involved founders at marketing down org you can pledge right now on Dow house or you can email us and also feel free to get in touch with me if you'd like and happy to chat also happy to answer any questions if there's time yet do we have could you say more about marketing now and and how people join and just what what membership and it looks like what membership is we've got our membership chair right here do you want to do want to give Alex the microphone to talk about membership I'm decentralizing this talk yes there are three ways to join us as members we have the founding members which are the financial contributors that we are accepting right now we are targeting $250,000 of fundraising for q1 and we have raised $150,000 from consensus and otherwise if you want to contribute we are going to open up forms to contribute as a member and so we could perhaps assign you for proposals of the grants we're gonna give out to market them activities and the third way is simply to be a supporter we have a telegram group that you can find on marketing Delta org and yeah feel free to reach out and Eamonn tell myself and yeah so so founders at marketing down org is a great email address to reach out to to get involved or come find us or pledge directly on Dow house also if you're curious about what kinds of projects are already in the pipeline to be funded by marketing down you can go to the hashtag marketing Dow community and Peppo where we asked all of our proposers who made it to the final round to make a 30-second video about what they are proposing so you can check that all out there it was another question okay Thanks was just wondering when you were saying so if if you are not taking in analytics of people coming to your site and using your stuff any pro tips on like how to communicate that I know you said to use it but like I don't you just on your web page like hey we're cool because we don't track you or I don't know any better ways to communicate that yeah that's a great question because I want to help a bunch of projects do that I think it'd be great if there existed like like a pledge or a like an icon that everyone used on their website to show that they are you know privacy like signed on to a privacy petition that thing doesn't exist right now but it should what I'd recommend doing I think a banner is great I think it could be cute to have that banner you know how like they require you to have that banner where you opt in to some tracking and cookies and whatnot you could have one that says that you don't have that but with that same aesthetic which could be really cute I would also recommend having it in your privacy policy having it in your content you could even write a blog post and do some thought leadership about why it's important to you as a company to preserve user data and privacy I would just shout it from the rooftops because I think users actually do really like that especially people in this space who tend to be more privacy focused and if you are handicapping yourself a little bit by not collecting data you should be getting the benefit of people liking you for doing that yeah I'd love to I'd love to figure out how to like I'd love to coordinate a lot of companies in the space that intentionally don't do tracking to sign a pledge and to really help move the market in that direction because I think we're moving in a direction where users are going to start to demand not being tracked and not being commodified so definitely chat with me I'd love to make something bigger with that hey I was wondering how do you react to companies that feel like it's more like Schilling on your marketing like how do you tell them like the balance between Schilling versus like actually you should market yourself and you should be part of the egos yeah so it's funny because like the the section with the sponsors here is called the chill zone which i think is very on-brand for eat Denver and we've come up with this word you know shilling that's used in our ecosystem that's like certainly derogative derogatory in terms of marketing activities humorously derogatory that's fine I think making fun of yourself for shilling as a brand is sometimes funny I think the best marketing shouldn't feel like marketing it should feel like just crossing the chasm between the product and the users saying something like come use our product today or you know speaking in a really advertorial voice isn't going to resonate with users in this kind of ecosystem and it will sound chilly and not resonate but if you're communicating almost like I've worked with projects that want to communicate in an incredibly neutral factual just the facts ma'am tone and not have any Flair to their marketing but you're still doing marketing activities by composing the copy that's in that tone and pushing that out to their target segments that would never identify that as being Schilling so much is just being communicating about the project even if you've been very thoughtful and careful and placed it on just the right channels with just the right tone with just the right call to action ideally for people that react to marketing that it's Schilling for those people when you market to them it shouldn't feel like that it should be something that's gonna feel natural Hey alright so as a fellow marketer right I'm always curious about kind of the the the the dichotomy almost between collecting user behavior and and the data right and as a marketer I don't care about the data but I do want to see the behaviors so that I can learn how to better serve the customers right so any tips or recommendations or tools that you might have mentioned about how to kind of get around that that issue you understand so to track those KPIs that can give me the information I need to make better decisions yeah so there's enough demand for more privacy preserving analytic tools that there are already some companies that do that matome o is a really good example you can you can have some you know first party tracking on your website that gives you some analytics without going you know whole hog and having like a Facebook pixel on your website so I would look into those things I would you know if you if you don't do that at all I would do user testing and do it manually and see how people actually use your website see how people use your tools to give them surveys do kind of consensual data collection it is it's much more manual and yeah I would I would I would recommend like some of the first party analytics tools that don't track everyone all over the internet and if you aren't comfortable doing any of those then you are gonna have to do it manually but if you're like a privacy focused product for example or if you're serving a privacy focused audience probably the benefit that you're getting from not collecting their data and by you know cementing your trust with them is worth it so it's just it's a calculation based on how you want to position your brand who your audience is and how your company wants to act ethically and I think that's about right great thank you so much and feel free to come chat with me about marketing down [Applause] [Music] you