Vision, Mission & Marketing
Nimiq, the first browser-based Blockchain, and its NIM currency, now come with a running and stable mainnet, an array of applications ranging from a native wallet to a checkout flow for online shops and the most amazing community a tech project could ever wish for.
We now have something to show.
It’s about time we get people to look at it.
Retrospective
Nimiq was and always will be a tech-focused project. We believe that quality is the decisive factor and that substance will beat hype in the long game.
However, we heard the concerns voiced by the community about a lack of focus on marketing and the implications of this on Nimiq’s project potential.
Over the last months, we have made wide and profound efforts to improve, and are excited to present an advanced growth strategy, which goes beyond simple marketing.
A New Approach
There is always this discrepancy between who you want to be and who you really are. Sure, we want more attention, but Nimiq will not participate in any of the at times downright fraudulent marketing practices that have become more and more common in the crypto space: Journalists selling out their professional integrity, influencers taking payoffs for non-transparently hyping ‘investments’ and conferences where the speakers are basically shilling their projects.
Instead, we will focus on a different type of marketing that intends to deliver substance and provide value for our community, our stakeholders, and the broader public.
Creating Value
To do this right, we started from scratch with a full brand re-think all the way from our logo to our shared vision. The brand guide will be published soon. To give you an idea of what’s at the core of the freshly overhauled Nimiq brand, here are our vision and mission:
Vision
Barrier-free value exchange for everyone
Our vision is a global society empowered by a decentralized, self-sustaining and censorship-resistant infrastructure that is equally accessible to everyone.
Mission
Enable the most accessible, censorship-resistant payment solutions
Our mission is to contribute to this vision with an open source payment system. Three factors are at the core of this mission:
Nimiq strives to be…
- the easiest and most accessible payment system,
- the best performing and most scalable payment system,
- uncompromising on decentralization and censorship resistance.
The reworking of the brand included a process that has forced us to take a long, hard look at ourselves. While team Nimiq believes it excels on cryptography, adaptation of blockchain research, user experience and interfaces, it can not lay claim to being expert on matters of business development, marketing and overall corporate skills common in many start-ups.
We realize excellent tech and high ideals alone are not enough to unleash the full potential of Nimiq.
Besides deploying a wide range of marketing basics — that we are going to talk about in a minute — we have identified two key target groups that we initially focus on:
1. Developers and Product Teams
To be useful and accessible to as many as possible on a global scale we need empowered and enthusiastic developers and entrepreneurs to build on Nimiq. For most projects, this is incredibly hard to achieve. For Nimiq, we are truly blessed to already have an amazing community of very talented developers who have proven their skill and commitment with several awesome applications and projects already.
Our focus will be the growth, empowerment and support of the contributing community of Nimiq.
Here are some of the actions that are either already in progress or will be kicked off soon:
- An overhaul of our documentation
- A rewrite and update of the Whitepaper
- Learning material, from basics to advanced applications
- Guides on UI, UX and brand implementation
- A complete asset library
- Github Wiki
- Developer meetups and events all around the world
- Nimiq hackathons
- Research grants
- Community project funding
- Marketing support
- More frequent and direct contact with core devs.
We aim for nothing less than the best developer experience in crypto. We hope and expect the Nimiq community to hold us up to these standards and welcome your feedback.
2. Communities with challenged currency or banking system access
The current mass adoption strategies used by most projects (Nimiq included) are: ‘If we build it then the people will eventually come’.
However, they have not been effective, particularly in developed countries that have well-functioning fiat currencies (where cryptos are mostly used for speculation). We asked ourselves: How can Nimiq help drive mass adoption in a meaningful way? By looking towards countries where existing payment infrastructure and currency are faltering that have:
- Poor payment infrastructure,
- Low levels of desktop/laptop ownership but high levels of mobile smartphone ownership,
- Expensive mobile data.
NIM has advantages over other cryptocurrencies in these types of settings:
- Fast & convenient — Being browser-based makes onboarding quicker and more convenient, even in areas of low connectivity. Combined with Nimiq’s focus on simplicity, this gives NIM a strong value proposition over other peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies.
- Low transaction fees — With Nimiq, transaction costs are far less than one cent.
- Browser-based — This means large wallet downloads are not necessary to use Nimiq, helping solve the common barrier to adoption problem of high mobile data costs in developing countries. According to The World Bank, 413 million Africans are living on less than $1.90 per day and mobile data costs can be as high as $35 per GB. Most other cryptocurrency mobile app downloads are around 25MB, creating a barrier to access given that the initial download could represent half a days salary.
We are investing in developing, peer-reviewing and further evaluating a detailed plan for adoption of NIM in such communities by:
- Creating a sustainable development model that upskills locals to compete in the global, digital economy,
- Collaborating and sharing data with academics to increase the understanding and study of cryptocurrency and economics,
- Creating a final adoption blueprint that can potentially be replicated and scaled across the world.
The initial outlines of this ambitious plan — that would represent a ground-breaking first step towards mass adoption — are:
- Identifying communities with the highest chances for NIM adoption,
- Scientific collaboration with the academic community,
- Getting support from charities operating in the local area,
- Establishing a local fiat to NIM exchange in the case-study location,
- Creating a local tech incubator and onboarding contributors from both the cryptocurrency community and entrepreneurs,
- Sharing updates and progress reports with journalists,
- The potential to replicate this strategy globally.
Again, this is a big picture task and we plan on approaching it step by step, involving the Nimiq community as much as possible in assessing along the way how far to proceed.
Marketing communication
While our focus is on developers and the challenged communities described above, we also want to share our new communication efforts.
By streamlining processes and diverting marketing related responsibilities from the core development, we believe we can now field a much more effective marketing setup. It is composed of a semi-internal brand and UX agency from Berlin, a content and PR team from Scotland, a search/social media agency (also from Berlin) and an array of freelancers around the world.
Here is a breakdown of the new activities:
PR
Status: Press and media relations are key to growing awareness and spreading messages. A specialized and crypto-savvy agency was signed, a first (test) release has already been sent out. This agency also plays a leading role in the development and potential execution of our adoption idea for challenged communities as outlined above.
Next steps: Nimiq will produce improved press materials (e.g. press pictures) and high-quality shareable content, as well as establishing media relations. More resources will be invested in development of the mass adoption effort, its review by peers and our community and eventually concluding on how to move forward.
Social Media
Status: Facebook has been added to our communication channels. Facebook will primarily target end-users and focus on providing support and content to the general public in crypto-layman terms. Besides English, a community in several major languages will be established, including French, Spanish and Portuguese (German currently in discussion). To handle and manage these communities, trusted community members get access to guides (tonality, how to set up ad campaigns etc.), know-how, and funding. If you are interested in joining this effort, please contact richy@nimiq.com.
Next steps: Test new setup and structure, finalize guides and the decentralized operational structure. Run paid campaigns to grow the communities and push content. Grow number of supported languages.
LinkedIn: We’re considering to add LinkedIn as an additional channel, although it is a low priority for now. Our profile here will only be available in English and is intended to target professionals (e.g. JavaScript or Rust Devs). While we can leverage LinkedIn for growing Team Nimiq as well, the main focus will be to run niche content campaigns and to promote our dev experience.
Search and Performance
Status: An agency was signed to set up professional marketing performance tracking, together with search engine marketing and optimization. This effort is also aimed at tracking and improving conversions and funneling efficiency of all apps and user flows, improving our UX.
Next steps: Development and implementation of a new SEO strategy. Evaluation of keyword campaigns on Google.
Community Support
Status: Supporting and helping the community is something we take very seriously. We are currently evaluating additional community managers to help Richy with the ever-growing workload. Besides that, we are creating a professional set of resources and guides to empower the many great admins supporting Nimiq.
Next steps: Hire additional talent, diversify our community management for specific stakeholders (e.g. token sale contributors, miners etc.), fully replace Richy with Mecha-Richy.
General Content and Updates
Status: We engaged new, quality content writers to work on a variety of subjects, from the new documentation to the various guides and pieces for our Medium publication.
Next steps: Find and deploy an improved information routine about the project’s progress. Invite and include more external writers/journalists to contribute to our publications (if you would like to write for Nimiq, please contact sven@nimiq.com).
Partnerships and Co-operations
Status: Similar to our marketing efforts, partnerships and cooperation were no priority to allow full focus on the initial core development. To leverage partnerships on a tech and awareness level, we now have dedicated resources and processes in place.
Next steps: Actively screening the market for promising projects with the potential for partnerships and synergies with Nimiq. Communicate more openly and cross-promote co-operations.
Event
Status: Team Nimiq will increase its participation in relevant conferences that focus on web-technologies, cryptography and blockchain applications. Additionally, we sponsor meetups to connect the community. The first meetup in Amsterdam was a great start, the next one will happen on the last day of the Web3 Summit in Berlin Oct 24th.
Next steps: Encourage and hold more meetups in different places around the world. If you are interested in hosting a Nimiq meetup, Richy is your man as well: richy@nimiq.com.
Website
Status: The current website reflects how we’ve operated in the past. It’s technically elaborate, extremely performant and works well for people who know Nimiq. But for new users or the interested public, it hardly delivers.
Next steps: We’re therefore overhauling our web presence and are working on deploying designated landing pages for the particular needs of different stakeholders.
Next Steps
Of course, a refined vision and marketing overhaul mean little without tangible outcomes.
Most of all, it needs to be developed on the respective product and tech sides in order to be credible in every way.
To begin reshaping our updated brand, we have reworked our visual appearance, from typography to color scheme, to our hexagon-shaped logo. We presented this rebranding in a separate article, and will roll it out gradually within the coming months.
We’re looking forward to the next level of Nimiq and hope you are too.
DISCLAIMER: None of the statements must be viewed as an endorsement or recommendation for Nimiq, any cryptocurrency, or investment product. Neither the information, nor any opinion contained herein constitutes a solicitation or offer by the creators or participants to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments or provide any investment advice or service.
