Marketing isn’t very common in open source projects, and for good reason.
Good marketing in open source is development and platform level improvements, Decentraland isn’t it’s frontend users, quite the opposite in fact, Decentraland is it’s developers, given that decentraland is mostly a backend platform and SDK rather than a simple front end ‘game’.
To even be a ‘user’ of DCL you must have a basic understanding of 3D creation and implementation.
Want to know what great marketing is?
It’s native events that are driven by the communities desire to build, not giving a random entity who has never stepped foot in DCL 70k.
Hi @Morph The plan is to highlight all the major initiatives of DCL and what it’s about. We plan on doing a variety of advertising methods including search and display image ads/ around the web to targeted users. This means different promotions for different DCL initiatives and not just genesis city. We can deliver impressions which will lead to a better presence for the brand. We wouldn’t be able to withhold non advertising funds initially due to costs but metrics will be reported during the month to make sure growth is happening.
What are your projected cost per new user? - We plan on growing the overall presence of the DCL brand. Metrics will include visitors and engagement. We would not only depend on new users as an indicator of the growth
What is the difference between the money set aside in “Team Costs” for the graphic designer on the team and the funds in “Design and Graphics”? - Design and graphics involve much more than just the person doing the labor. This involves creation of graphics /video and tools.
Same question, but for the team Costs of the Blog and content writer vs the funds for SEO? Content writing is a small portion of SEO. Also content writing is for Social and Advertising content as well. SEO also involved link building, content, paid research tools and more.
How are you going to ensure these aren’t simply ‘clicks’ and it’s leading to real onboarding of long term users? We can’t guarantee that someone will be a long term user. WIth marketing our role is to educate the potential users on why they should engage. We will not only base everything off of clicks. We are confident that the way we market will eventually lead to a bigger brand presence. The great thing about marketing is that it does give us the ability to remind and engage with current/potential users on current happenings with the brand.
Would you be willing to forfeit all payment if marketing is ineffective? (i.e. if you fail.) - throughout the process reports will be given from our team efforts. We plan that it will be effective and adjust as needed to how people engage initially.
We’ve brought in many brands without grants, and performed extremely well working with them directly as creators.
Why do we need the marketing when this is being taken care of by the community already? Are you aware of the brands that companies like Last Slice have brought in with absolutely zero grant funding?
Why should we pay $70,000 to an external team, when we have users on the platform succeeding at this already?
What evidence do you have that marketing is going to be more effective than on the ground development and working alongside creator/VR communities in general?
Finally, Do you have ANY experience with opensource projects, at all?
Perhaps @cwestmetaverse could do something first to build confidence, either bring in a big brand partner, or spend their own money launching a campaign to prove it can actually be successful.
Otherwise this is just speculation and more money exiting the DAO to the hands of people who do not even understand the platform.
I agree with the sentiment expressed by Morph. All of this should first be proven on a smaller scale and scaled up with subsequent grants with focus on the working strategies.
I do not agree that over 50% of the budget is for team pay when this is a grant about marketing dcl. I don’t know too much about google ads costs but is $7,000 even enough to get enough data to test a single campaigns effectiveness?
I mean Alex from the “Decentraland X” promised to bring loads of liquidity and make the DAO a ton of money, which is in big part out of his control, and the grant is still not revoked (only paused right now, waiting the revocation team answer)
Not surprising seeing this get whaled in, when the vast majority of the community is not for this. Tired of the money games we’re forced to play here sometimes.
Re: whatever this proposal is… (going off of the google doc)
You plan to promote the already established website. Sick anyone can do that, but unfortunately you haven’t even mentioned how you will do that. There’s absolutely no creative to review here to know how or why or what this might look like.
Search ranking - while I agree we need this, and Foundation should already be doing this. I’d say lets create a proposal poll asking for Foundation to do it, and see if they’d be down @Peanutbutta looking at you no grant needed for this esp not a large one.
Social Media and Content Strategy, I’m surprised there isn’t a pitch deck included in the proposal for us to review. How are we to trust you can do any of this, nor how will we know if the strategy you come up with is correct for this platform? There is nothing to go off of here. And the vagueness of “create ads on well known platforms” and then linking to twitter? Am I confused on how this says nothing actually?
External Website Promotion - Ads on eventbrite? For what events? Digital ones? Are you going to source all the events page and promote those events? How will you pick and choose who gets promoted? There’s lots of regular weekly events, and your disconnection to the platform and the community has me concerned for the way in which it will be shown to the outside. And who is to say you don’t cherry pick which projects and places you promote, like some of the brands you’ve worked for in the space? That has me also concerned that now you, another member of a team that already has had a grant, is now asking for a grant when we’ve seen other members of that team do the same recently. And I’ve never seen you around the platform really, nor have seen you contribute anything to it.
Blogs, have you asked and gotten approval that Foundation is interested in your blog articles and will use them? I’m not a fan of grants saying they will do something that involves Foundation, and Foundation hasn’t even been contacted or is not for it. This then becomes a throwaway if not.
Google ads - you have nothing about targets, demos, anything. There isn’t really anything pitched here but a bullet point list of what you can possibly do or what’s available for anyone to do. With nothing to back it up.
Email Marketing, DCL already does this, so does the DAO. And other DCL/DAO groups as well. What makes yours better than those, more affective?
Analytics, I’m pretty sure many are already doing this, some with grants in the DAO already, and DCL def has their own analytics.
You are saying you will do research, but why have you not already? Have you ever pitched a marketing/advertising campaign before? Again, this was a lot of words that really could have been maybe 10 point bullet point list since we don’t have anything to back any of this up.
Audience Profile, you copy and pasted language from what seems to be from Foundation or your team? I’m not sure as this isn’t a proper profile.
Site Audit - again something Foundation should be doing, and would be inclined to just push them a bit more on doing so if they aren’t already.
I’ve now come to a place in the doc that reminds me of the most glaring problem, and you’ve basically said it a few times throughout — you haven’t done any research. Why would I personally consider someone for a project for a large sum of money, if they themselves are selling nothing but possible doing. Not showing you have done this ever, not even saying what research has been done to prove you can and should do this. No pitch deck for any part of any of this list of 10 things to proof out your concepts.
Can you provide any examples of your brand work? Any analytics on your work for those brands? How you successfully helped those brands achieve their marketing mission you were hired for? Do you have any case studies? And the bios I’ve read on you, don’t really show me much of your work, it’s just you talking ab having done it, not the actual work.
If you haven’t read this doc thoroughly, I would consider to do some a few times. So you can really see that there isn’t much pitched here. I’m trying to be open that you may have the capable skills to do this list of 10 things, but you have done a poor job at putting anything of value for us to review here today. And I can say that this is a bad idea. I’d suggest you take a step back and reflect on the comments and why the vast majority of people have voted no.
Because this feels pretty disrespectful that such a loose proposal could possible pass because of one whale, and what I assume was some lobbying. I expect more out of members of this DAO.
Hi @mattimus Yes 7,000 is enough. We don’t plan on using the entire 7000 on a single ad. We will continuously test for results. We will create multiple ads for the different initiatives of DCL. The good thing about ads is that we get results quickly that will tell us of we should tweak our targeting and approach to better utilize funds.
“We will look at how top brands are promoting their projects” - what software do you intend to use for this? Do you have a use case from a previous relevant project that you can showcase where competitive intelligence data led to improved audience targeting or marketing strategy?
“We will build on all the efforts of Decentraland from the past” - how do you intend to do this? Do you have access to data from previous campaigns that were run?
Your budget breakdown skews heavily on the team costs vs the actual media spend. And some of the items seem to overlap. For example, isnt “R&D” and “Design and Graphics” part of “Team Costs”?
I’m not so keen on some of the marketing channels you’re targeting. For example, SEO is a long term play. I doubt we would see any measurable results in 4 months. How much of the $7k for Google Ads is for media spend vs team costs for organizing keywords into campaigns/ad groups, writing ads, assigning landing pages, optimizing, etc? Which channels do you have in mind for the $7k for Social Media Content & Promotion?
I admittedly havent read through all the other comments so my apologies if you may have addressed some of these already.
Thanks @AaronLeupp for the support. It sounds like you understand how marketing budgets can be used to get results. Yes the focus would not only be to get people to Genesis City. It would be overall views and engagement from potential users which will mean an increase in the brand presence. We plan on getting more done over time based on initial reactions to ads.
no grant needed for this esp not a large one.