How We Marketed Our Product: Insights, Mistakes and Working Strategies
Part 2: Crypto Media
While the first half of 2018 was dedicated to the launch of our product, the second half was focused on announcing it to the world. In other words, we created a buzz and built a community. The process was both fascinating and challenging. We’ve made mistakes, then even more mistakes, learned a thing or two and finally have managed to attract 50,000 active users. Now we want to share our story.
Looking back at the USDX Wallet app promo campaign, I can’t help thinking: wow, we did quite a job! And in a very short period of time. I have this enormous spreadsheet with data on channels, lots of numbers and stats. It looks dull and raw for an outsider, but for us, it’s like a mood board filled with visuals and memories. So, let me spell it out for you.
Crypto Media
After mapping out the social media strategy, we have dived into crypto media ocean. We have encountered sharks, stars and even a poisonous jellyfish. Here is our list of media platforms in alphabetical order. It’s up to you to spot who’s who in it.
CCN
We’ve opted for paid (sponsored) article with homepage placement; the material is of an introductory type (text and image are our own). It’s visible on the homepage during 48 hours and stays on ccn.com archives forever. A sponsored article can have as many links as you want, but with one condition: links should lead to the project’s website and/or official social media accounts. This placement gave us 98 clicks and 3 app installations (with $5.26 CPC). We’ve used SimilarWeb to get traffic and visitors stats.
Coinspeaker
We had two use-cases with this platform. First one is a traditional article placement (paid, but there is no “Sponsored” tag) on the homepage. It costs $500 if the text is your own (needs to be approved by their editors, obvi) and $550 if Coinspeaker author writes it; social media sharing will add $50 more to the bill. They’re very efficient: the whole process took just 3 days; the article stays in their archives forever. In the end, we’ve got 26 clicks and 4 app installations (with a $17.31 CPC). We’ve created trackable links and monitored stats via Branch.
The second use case is more interesting because it’s less obvious, at least for us. A Hacker Noon columnist — Kirill Bezverhi — contacted our CEO and asked to contribute to his article on stablecoin perspectives in 2019. We were rather flattered and wrote a blog post with our CEO’s views on the matter. In the end, one quote from this post appeared in Kirill’s research. Free publicity, so we’re good with it.
Cointelegraph
That’s a tricky one (hint: you’ll spot a poisonous jellyfish here). We have a rather embarrassing story to tell, but often a lousy experience is 500 times better than a good one. And 500 is not just a random number — it’s a cost per article, or so we were told. We’ve decided to experiment and change our tactics a bit: we’ve searched Cointelegraph authors via LinkedIn. We’ve found an “author” (a scammer, really), checked her profile on Cointelegraph — LinkedIn photo and Cointelegraph photo were different, but a scammer was a member of Cointelegraph employees LinkedIn group. So, after short negotiations, a scammer offered article placement — as the “news,” and not sponsored content — for $500. We’ve paid and, oops — nothing happened. We’ve investigated the situation and finally got connected with an official representative of the ad department. The real cost of a sponsored story is $4,000, btw. We didn’t opt for this media in the end, but it’s good to know — maybe we’ll get back to them in the future. Oh, and we still keep records of our communication with a spammer — just as a reminder for ourselves.
Decenter
Decenter provides you with a full promo package: an article on their website, Facebook/Twitter/Telegram posts with trackable links. We had two pieces — for English and Russian versions of their website (their designers created graphics). All our materials for Decenter included a special link with a 35% bonus in it. Most of the traffic came from Decenter Telegram channel — 13,332 views, 216 clicks and 53 app installations in two days ($10.68 CPC).
News Bitcoin
They have two options: everyone can submit their materials to editor@bitcoin.com for free publication (after an approval, obvi) or submit a press release for the paid placement (which will cost around $2,000, they accept BTC and BCH as well). Their guidelines are straightforward and rather strict, pay particular attention to this rule: “We usually do not cover pre-launch stage projects or talk and promises of future successes… we’re focused on real-world Bitcoin-related news.” In the end, our press release was approved for a paid placement (what a shocker, eh?). They allow two links + one contact email per article; our designer created the image. According to SimilarWeb stats, a press-release page on news.bitcoin.com has 60,000 daily views. We’ve got 298 clicks on trackable links and 31 app installations ($6.71 CPC).
Bonus: Coinzilla
Ah, banners! We didn’t ignore that option, we tried it and stopped, almost immediately. Here is our (bold) statement: banners on crypto-related media platforms don’t work. AT ALL. Also, a lifehack: if you really need to place a banner, work closely with Coinzilla manager and opt for a test format >> you’ll end up paying “just” 1,000 Euros instead of 5,000. So, if you have sufficient budgets — or you simply need an excuse to waste a large amount of money for nothing — this option is the best in class.
Phew. Thank you for reading! In the 3rd — and last — part of How We Marketed Our Product series — we’ll talk about the beloved child of a notorious Pavel Durov — the one and only Telegram. Meanwhile, you can check Part 1 where we share our social media adventures.
