Why Marketing Bitcoin is Contentious

If you are someone who has worked in an office with a marketing department, then most likely, you won’t immediately grimace at the thought of “marketing Bitcoin”. If you are a Bitcoin maximalists and reading this, you may be trying to cancel me right now for merely suggesting such a preposterous idea like “marketing Bitcoin”.

What’s with the controversy?

Recently, Dan Held, a Bitcoin OG, has been actively discussing ‘marketing Bitcoin’ on Twitter. He joined Stephan Livera on his podcast where he answered the question “Does Bitcoin need marketing?” The podcast was a general and cursory overview of marketing tactics of Bitcoin as well as some discussions about the ethics in marketing.

“When you craft a narrative, how will that narrative [resonate] with the user or the person I’m trying to convert to Bitcoin. There are different narratives for different people.”

-Dan Held

“LinkedIn spammed all of your contact lists to growth hack. Is that ethical? Did they win?”

-Dan Held

Critics of Dan mentioned that he’s willing to say just about anything in order to win, and that the ends justify the means. Many scoffed at him and commented that marketing is inherently unethical. Others just merely said that Bitcoin does not need marketing.

Bitcoin is decentralized, so it doesn’t need anyone speaking on behalf of it.

- Stephan Livera

#Bitcoin’s marketing-need is similar to E=mc²’s marketing-need, or the Gutenberg press’ marketing-need

Zero

For those for whom its value is blindingly obvious, it’s a life-saver

For everyone else… Well, they didn’t make it. (And they won’t be missed) @danheld

- Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) July 2, 2020

I’m listening to his interview with @stephanlivera and it is truly embarrassing. His message can be reduced to “the end justifies the means.” He has a disregard for ethics and disrespect for Bitcoiners. He sees no distinction in quality of influence/followers. https://t.co/bjcHiPha7g

- John Carvalho (@BitcoinErrorLog) July 2, 2020

Let’s not start this conversation as “right vs. wrong” because believe it or not, we are actually on the same side. Bitcoin does need marketing, and it is up to all of us to market Bitcoin-and to do it right. However, before we get into why Bitcoin needs marketing, let’s first identify why there’s so much controversy. It’s important that we all understand each other and start from a shared common point of view.

I think it’s safe to say that all of us want Bitcoin to become mainstream and replace this current, predatory and corrupt financial system. We are all more or less aligned with this mission in the greater scheme of things. So why can’t we all get along?

A trend of (dis)trust

Since the advent of the Internet, a rising trend of ‘ distrust’ has been increasing. With more information available at everyone’s fingertips, people are generally more aware and thusly more discerning than they were before the Internet. This “ Distrust Society “ trend has led to things like truth in advertising, ethical brands and yes, the creation of Bitcoin. We’ve all seen lies in advertising that have led to massive manipulation and global problems we are still fighting today. Cigarette companies advertised their addictive products to gain massive profits. Beverage companies praised their sugary drinks with a positioning of feeling great while contributing to an international obesity issue. The creation of Bitcoin itself was founded on the back of massive manipulation from the Central Banks.

So it’s safe to say that most people within the Bitcoin community are an untrusting bunch with a healthy amount of discernment and skepticism. It was this shared sense of distrust that brought us all together, yet also keeping us from getting along.

Like oil and water

Within a company, some roles are natural enemies of each other. CFOs who are in charge of profits will typically be challenged by HR who are in charge of the staffs’ wellbeing. Although they work within the same company and share a common goal of company’s overall success, they are responsible for different, sometimes opposing objectives. Companies that figure out how to navigate this dynamic and can communicate with each other would do better.

The same goes for the Bitcoin community. If we segment our community into different groups, you will find natural conflicting personalities. I’m going to make the assumption that most Bitcoiners within this community, especially OG Bitcoiners, are developers or at least computer science savvy. According to Peter Thiel in his book, Zero to One, there is a natural friction between the introverted developer and the extroverted sales and marketing type. To developers, marketing and advertising is simply not genuine and shallow. They tend to believe that the product is good enough and should be able to speak for itself.

This perception from developer types is not completely false. Marketing and advertising is rather shallow because marketers are trying to take very complex ideas and reduce them to simple, easy to understand concepts that gain the attention of a specified target audience. And developers are also not far off the mark if they feel that Bitcoin is a strong enough protocol to succeed on its own. It probably will, but that doesn’t mean we can’t give it a little push in the right direction. However, before we talk about why marketing Bitcoin is important, let’s first define ‘What is Marketing’ ?

What is Marketing?

According to the AMA (American Marketing Association), this is the definition of marketing:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

https://www.ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-marketing/

Simply put, marketing is mostly communication and all the 5 W’s and How around communication.

• Who are we communicating to?
• How are we communicating to them?
• What are we communicating and trying to influence?
• When will we communicate this idea?
• Why are we communicating this?
• Where is our target audience, and where shall we communicate?

The Bitcoin White Paper and the https://bitcoin.org website are considered marketing. They were created in order to present and communicate the concepts behind Bitcoin. It’s clear that Satoshi Nakamoto wrote this white paper with a computer programmer audience in mind as the paper is quite technical and describes a programmer’s problem-solving approach. One could argue that the headline of this was poorly written. “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” isn’t the same narrative we use today, but that subject is for another blog article. Regardless, if you consider all marketing as evil, then the white paper is included in that group as the white paper and the website are forms of marketing.

Marketing is not inherently evil. It’s merely a tool; however, it can be used for nefarious purposes.

Marketing is a competitive landscape

The marketing world is highly competitive-especially in digital marketing. Every company is trying to get their message out there. Every company wants their product to be what people buy over their competitors’ products. This involves a lot of different tactics that I will not go into now, but if you don’t play the game, then you lose, and that is what Dan was trying to convey in the podcast.

SEO for example is a competition to getting more traffic for your site through higher rankings in Google. For example, let’s take a look at the SERP of the keyword phrase ‘buy bitcoin’.

The 1st position on this SERP is a page on the bitcoin.org site. Great. But the 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions are from other companies. These sites are getting massive amounts of traffic through Google because their digital marketers were able to optimize their site to rank for these top positions over their competitors. Take a look at these other sites carefully — Do they all share the same objective as you do? Are their intentions pure? Are what they doing something you would consider ethical?

This is an example of just one channel: Google Search, but there are many other channels and platforms that need Bitcoin marketing as they all have different audiences and different players within them. If we allow the bad actors to have free rein within various channels without anyone to compete against, then aren’t we essentially complicit when new coiners get rekt by scammers or detractors?

You cannot judge ‘marketing’ as inherently evil. You have to judge the intent behind the marketing.

Send in the troops!

The fact of the matter is that there is a constant battle out there. Marketers are constantly battling to capture the attention of the audience and present some narrative and influence some action about Bitcoin. Some of these marketers have an objective that is aligned with your own, and some of them do not. You need to judge the output and the intent rather than scoff and turn a blind eye toward marketing as a whole.

If we allow the bad actors to have free rein on marketing, then what do you think would be the general perception of Bitcoin? Scam? Just a tool for drug dealers and criminals? A failed experiment?

If you have a Bitcoin company, and you want grow the Bitcoin market, then you need to allocate some resources to this objective. You need to be a part of this collective initiative to grow the Bitcoin market as well as drive new users to your product/company while maintaining a positive image of Bitcoin as the brilliant disruptive invention that it is.

Dan Held mentioned that this will be a decentralized marketing effort. That said, consider this a call to action for all players within the Bitcoin space to get involved with marketing. We need to all use our skills to help propel the industry as a whole forward-not just ourselves or our companies. These skills are development skills as well as marketing skills.

For more Bitcoin marketing knowledge, follow me on Twitter (@nhaterrific), Medium (@nhatnguyen_40993) or on my website, https://bitcoindabbler.com/.

Originally published at https://bitcoindabbler.com on July 8, 2020.