This post is our initial draft of our proposed grant for The Decentraland Report. We welcome everyone’s feedback, requests for information, or insights.
Category:
Content Creator
Grant Tier:
Tier 6 $240,000
Title:
Marketing Our Metaverse Sustainably using our Decentralized News Network
Abstract (750 ch.):
Since January 2021 The Decentraland Report has been a platform for community members to join as reporters and preserve the history of the metaverse. By increasing the reach and visibility of this platform, we bring attention to creators across the entire Decentraland ecosystem.
Our surveys show high user satisfaction, retention, and an active creative economy. We offer valuable opportunities which allow members to receive both crypto and fiat rewards. This model has received recognition around the world and in mainstream media.
With this grant we have two goals:
- To increase the number of users in Decentraland and 2) ensure our community will continue to have The Decentraland Report as a resource (without depending on DAO support for video editors, server and operational costs). The Decentraland Report team would like to invest in targeted advertising and reach a community size of 100K+ users.
Grant Size:
$240,000
Description (3,500 ch.)
The Decentraland Report team has been preserving the history of the metaverse since January 2021, bringing Decentraland to the attention of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe. As seen on Major News Networks such as CBS, NBC, Cointelegraph, and more, The DCL Report has grown by developing meaningful experiences around easily discovering and joining Decentraland. However, many creators/developers/designers have yet to discover ways to start exploring the Metaverse.
To prepare for a growing community, our team completed development of an automated rewards system which delivers our $REPORT tokens and NFTs via a smart contract. This initiative was accomplished with the help of community sponsors and the Decentraland DAO to solve problems in user retention and scalability.
For example, the increasing size of the community would be limited by the amount of prizes a person could manually send. By successfully automating this, we now are able to keep our $REPORT token distribution fair, transparent, and gives our DAO the potential to remain a platform for the community members to tell their story as they build and participate in the metaverse.
Our decentralized news network is a reputable and cost effective method to generate content about Decentraland. In addition, it gives community members an open platform they can participate in at various levels. Whether as a reporter, or viewers using their $REPORT tokens to reserve coverage.
Our goal is not to depend on DAO funding to sustain The Decentraland Report. We have budgeted this grant funding to invest in marketing to reach enough members on our official community page to maintain our monthly operational costs (i.e. developers, designers, video editors, community managers, social media/marketing director).
Specification
Crafted videos explaining how to access ecosystem value will be used in targeted advertisements across social media, and AB testing for landing pages to perfect messaging. Through this we aim to bring over 100k members into The Decentraland Report community.
To address sustainability a SaaS business model has been established. Through a strategic partnership with Xpand.GG, The DCL Report retains 90% of revenue from donations and recurring subscriptions on our community page. Through Xpand, we can automatically divide revenues across our team.
With essential infrastructure to support our growth in place, we envision bringing like minded creators who will be positive contributing members of the Decentraland ecosystem.
We aim to reach individuals within the following demographic:
Ages 20 - 40
Individuals Interested/Active in Web3 & Metaverse
University/Higher Education Student & Faculty
Backgrounds in Computer Science, Design, Music, and Art
We will focus on placing content within relevant contexts (i.e. blender tutorial videos) and marketing channels (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Billboards, Brave BAT). The associated advertising spend will be allocated according to performance results resulting from data generated through impressions. This content will include DCL Report DAO voted highlighted projects each month
While content is hosted on each Reporters individual channels, content is also now hosted across DCL Report social and content channels. The budget allocation below is a framework for spending which will allow us to optimize content, advertising, targeting, and ultimately reach our goals in user acquisition.
Targeted Advertising Placement - $150,000
Initial suggested distribution of targeted ad placement:
Twitter 30%
Facebook 15%
Instagram 15%
YouTube 25%
Global Guerilla Marketing using Visual Impact Driven Audio/Visual Pieces 10%
Other 5%
Marketing Director - $24,000
Reporter Generated Micro-Content - $24,000
Video Editor and Content Manager - $15,000
Audio/Visual Design Team - $15,000
Web Design - $5,000
GlowLabs.xyz Service Fee - $5,000
Giveaway/Prizes Funds - $2,000
Ad spend will happen in various phases. 25% of the initial advertising spend will be used to optimize messaging and audience targeting. The remaining 75% of advertising will be used to reach our growth goal and empower our community to always have a platform where they can be heard and tell their story as we build the metaverse.
By watching and subscribing to our channel on Xpand (Call to Action) they will earn all these rewards, learn how to navigate the metaverse effectively, and use the $REPORT tokens acquired to have their projects covered when they decide to release work themselves.
Personnel
Operations
Project Manager - KevinOnEarth999 (www.ImagineOnEarth.com)
Marketing Director - Nicole Nixon (https://www.nicolenixon.net/)
Web Designer - MetaverseGainers
Graphic Designer/3D modeler - Sango of the East
Video and Content Manager - Stefan
Reporters
Maryana - Mondays from 11PM UTC to Tuesday 12AM UTC
Fractillians - Tuesday from 12AM UTC to 1AM UTC
KevinOnEarth NFTuesdays - Tuesdays from 11PM UTC to Wednesday 12AM UTC
MetaTrekkers - Wednesdays from 1AM UTC to 2AM UTC
FriskyBumbleBee - Wednesdays from 11PM UTC to Thursday
Moustafa - Thursdays from 4PM UTC to 5PM UTC
KevinOnEarth - Thursdays from 11PM UTC to Friday 12AM
Fabinho - Fridays from 11PM UTC to Saturday 12AM UTC
Ina_DCL - Saturdays from 6PM UTC to 7PM UTC
Partners
Xpang.GG for rewarding community engagement
GlowLabs.xyz for rewarding social media engagement
Roadmap and milestones
To see our progress to date you can take a look at our Gitbook: The Decentraland Report - The Decentraland Report | A P2E News
To be sure we were ready to scale our community via marketing, we conducted various surveys and analysis across our platform. While the web3 community sentiment has certainly shifted with the current market conditions, our audience has continued to stay engaged.
Using Qualtrics to measure Net Promoter Score of 66, which is held as an Excellent Net Promoter Score. Here are some of the responses as to WHY people scored this way and why we believe it is time that we spread the word about The Decentraland Report:
“Metaverse is very new , DCL being a platform for metaverse a lot of startups are buying and building on it , it’s really hard to track all the happenings in it. DCLReport helps us stay updated.”
“Because the Reporters are all such a staple of the community and have so much knowledge on the entire WEB3 space. It is a great place for the new user to get started, and an experienced user to network and gain even more knowledge. With all the new awesome reporters there is now even more great content always coming out.”
“It’s the most concise and on-topic stream about Decentraland. I know whoever I recommend the stream to they will get the information they are looking for from it.”
“The future of journalism and decentralization!”
“The best place to go for the most accurate and up to date information on all things DCL.”
“It is the soul of decentraland. It serves to start and be informed of everything that happens”
“Great diverse team, covering an array of topics throughout Decentraland. There are numerous occurring at a given time, by having such a diverse team- you’re able to connect with multiple individuals and provide visibility of projects occurring within this space.”
Firstly, We see the current target market size being a segment of the 16.9 Million Enrolled Undergrad/Grad Students across the US as well as 135,000 College Level Educators. We will be focusing in on the most relevant degrees (education, visual/performing arts, general studies, and engineering) which accounts for ~7.3M students and ~118k Teachers.
From this pool of individuals we will look at starting with smaller groups until ultimately we believe an audience size of ~1M will bring us the necessary results. At this point there are not many Marketing Case Studies available which accurately depict the results which can be expected with this type of campaign. Including the intended web3 rewards strategies we are employing we believe can have outstanding results, and as a result we included in this grant deliverable is a thorough and open Marketing Case Study which will be made available to all.
By hitting all Milestones we would aim to reach 100k total DCL Report Community Members (as measured on Xpand.gg, where $REPORT Token and ecosystem value distribution is made) within 6-8 months of grant approval, the time necessary to effectively spend capital allocated to advertising.
Month 1-2: Complete Landing Page and Marketing Materials
Month 3-4: Begin A/B Testing Marketing Campaign and Audience Targeting
Month 5: Deliver Results and CAC Cost Analysis
Month 6 Optimized Marketing Campaign
Upon Completion: Marketing Case Study
Key Progress Indicators which we will track and report during campaign:
- Landing Page Traffic and A/B Testing Results
- CPM
- Customer Acquisition Cost
Funds managed by 3 multi-sig/owners consisting of KevinOnEarth999 (Founder of DCL Report) Alek (Founder of Xpand.GG) and one other individual. All individuals for Multi-sig will be approved by The DCL Report DAO