Marketing the NFT Framework
This article discloses all details of the Marketing Plan that has been developed by KalayaanCrypto and J. Herranz — currently responsible for the Crown Communications and Social Media team. All actions aim to grant an increased visibility and impulse to the Crown Core v0.14 Emerald release, that will bring the NFT Framework code for both protocol and token creation to the Crown mainnet.
Table of Contents
- Context
- Goals
- Marketing Plan Design
- Financing Model
- Community Escrow
- Addresses and Phases
1. Context
The Crown developers, with Artem as author and main coder, have created the Non-Fungible Token Framework based on the Crown Papers original ideas of an expanded registry.
2. Goals
Developing the NFT Framework has been a very hard task that could only be achieved thanks to the unconditional support the Crown community has shown towards a never resigning Artem that crusaded through the endless crown-winter with the Emerald shining like a Fata Morgana on the horizon. We still don’t know how to express our gratitude towards an engineer, cryptographer, and incredibly committed individual that has sacrificed years of his professional career to author a unique NFT registry for Crown Platform.
It would make no sense to have invested so many hours and such a vast amount of resources for a spectacular self-authored and community funded framework if it does not get the chance to be known and receive the repercussion it deserves in the crypto-ecosystem. The marketing model employed until now, limited to organic publications in social media and sporadic investments in Twitter Ads, will only reach the active Crown community and the small Twitter community built during more than 5 years.
Content
There will be two types of content to publish in Medium and disseminate through social media:
- Informational Content: for less advanced users of the blockchain/crypto world and with low knowledge about Crown. This will help them identify us as an active project, with a long history and strong vitality to constantly submit new proposals and release new development features.
- Technical Content: for advanced users that are already familiar with Crown and the technical possibilities of NFTs in general.
Press release
As observed during 2019, organic publication of articles on Medium will not give a milestone release like Crown Emerald the necessary relevance.
The standard way has been to send press releases to media of the sector directly and this is something we will be doing. But experience tells us that we have no guarantee that news outlets will publish them or even respond to our mails. This is why we have designed an additional option:
We are going to hire a news amplifier to give the press release maximum diffusion. This amplifier counts with a network of news pages and specialised blogs that will then be echoed on social media.
These pages and blogs count with thousands of daily visits and their social profiles also have big communities. The price may seem high but it will help to communicate the uniqueness and strength of the project among new audiences.
There is another option which consists in paying these blogs and pages directly. We regard this as a risky move, since the reach of separate pages is lower and their background weaker. Our ultimate recommendation is to go with the news amplifier.
Videos
In the last months we witnessed the uprise of community videos with excellent creations such as the Crown Cuba or the Crown Czech Community contributions:
We think that despite and beyond the low number of visits (the Czech Community made an incredible effort in their regional channels to push the video above 2000 views) these and other published audiovisual pieces hold great potential. The community agrees on drawing upon these videos as follows:
- Uploading them to Facebook, Instagram TV, and Twitter.
- Introducing ads in YouTube. We are going to edit the videos to two different advertising formats: non skippable ads (15–20 seconds max) and skippable ads (30 seconds recommended).
Social Ads — Exclusive Designs
During 2019 we were able to observe that the only effective way Crown had to gain community in the social media during times without relevant progress/activity has been through paid campaigns
Following this thesis, we are going to invest into Twitter Ads and Facebook Ads (Facebook + Instagram). The ads will consist of creative pieces with own design. Midnight will be playing a key role in this project to grant the ads maximum visual professionalism. Midnight will also be a key piece in the rest of actions that demand visual aid.
3. Marketing Plan Design
The plan has been conceived by the contributors responsible for Communications since 2018. @Crownfan brings a vast experience in the Communications sector and a comprehensive knowledge of Crown Core, Crown Platform and the Crown community. @KalayaanCrypto is digital marketing specialist for more than 10 years and has been in charge of Crown and Social Media since June 2019. Before that, he was in charge of the Crown_Esp Twitter handle for several years.
Uniting these skills and forces has resulted in the above approach. In our humble opinion it would be a mistake to focus on paid advertising without taking into account what has been produced during the last years: Content and Communication.
We have thoroughly studied the results obtained during 2019 during the generation and publication of community content through Medium, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The metrics have been low but we believe there is a huge potential yet to leverage.
The biggest follower growth of the last two years was experienced in Twitter thanks to paid advertising campaigns. This fact has alerted us to continue in this line.
If this is so, why did we not get more done? This question has a simple explanation: There was not much to communicate. It did not make sense to invest and simply explain what is Crown.
We have studied several advertising platforms to see which one is the best to publish on, what type of content is best to publish, and how much it is going to cost us.
The study has resulted in a comprehensive media mix according to the available resources to cover the Emerald — NFT Framework release during March and April.
This is a very ambitious plan compared with what has been done at Crown until now marketing wise. We want to highlight that this is a minimum viable media plan. This means that investing less than suggested would deliver poor results and be a waste of resources.
We have designed this plan as an all-round action with content and campaign design in February and March, media investment during March and April, and optimisation and reporting for these two months.
4. Financing Model
The official financing model of Crown is well known. Crown is self-sustainable thanks to the Decentralised Governance and Proposal System, which allows for monthly contributor payments through a voted on Superblock:
Every individual with an internet connection and able to run Crown-Qt can submit a proposal. This person only needs to present a good idea to the community, who will decide if the proposal is supported or not by voting on it with the amount of Masternodes each member runs.
The superblock is limited to monthly 54000 CRW. We had many months in which the initial budget of the communications team was too short in order to not compete against other contributors, or months in which we could not submit a proposal at all. These precedents have informed us on the following:
- It could be that the proposals do not pass and the team would have to front advertising payments and bills.
- The price is very volatile and what today is $0.06 could be less tomorrow so that contributors would have to top up the crowdfunding, resulting in confusing experiences with the proposed numbers.
This is why we are suggesting a new financing model. A global plan (advertising investment + manpower) that has been presented in the Marketing Plan Light Paper.
5. Community escrow
Martin M., Czech Community Ambassador and Crown contributor for years will be acting as escrow for the Crown community. He holds the keys to the crowdfunding main address:
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/crw/search.dws?q=CRWYH6vvHUGbJuibYNKaoLYskYwFZQAUxgkT
Anyone wanting to participate in the crowdfund can send CRW to the address above.
Shortly after publishing this article, the first transaction from this address will be made to the advertising fund address:
CRWQfsHpMKaXKhMfg2sxxaBXpR4jMs5pd6ax
6. Phases
The funds sent to the advertising fund address will be sold OTC and exchanged to fiat in their totality. They will finance the paid advertising (Twitter, Facebook + Instagram, YouTube, press release).
As described in the marketing plan, there are three subsequent payments for workforce/manpower. We publish these addresses for maximum transparency, phases have been added in brackets.
(Design) February: CRWWFKs9KTTe7NsVzvSeDBDdGg41xcyVL6Ww
(Execution) March: CRWPVfRhSA5ZdyhsQSas7GVXu9YLqj7aHKNo
(Upgrade) April: CRWMK4czwJfdenhAw9bCbtU4uiV1AYkh5j6q
These funds will be shared among the communications team and represent the compensation for the three months marketing sprint. There is a commitment within our team to hodl a majority of these funds long term.
If you have any questions, talk to us on Discord
@KalayaanCrypto and @Crownfan
