Marketing to Reach Sustainability for The Decentraland Report

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:

  1. 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

6 Likes

This is a go from me! Would love to see:

  • Community / DCL Report DAO ($REPORT) involvement in the advertisement direction and decision making process
  • Opportunity for discussion and suggestions of where ad spend will be placed in collaboration with the Marketing Director (this person will be very important)

I could see advertisements in Brave Browser being an option to look into further, for example.

The community deserves a pursuit like this and I think it is a great allocation of funds.

3 Likes

Definite yes from me! This is a dynamic team with amazing people whom I can trust to elevate Decentraland! XOXO

3 Likes

Thanks @PepeGawd and @YouMack !
We are excited to take our community to a new level of excitement and potential, which will only allow us to do more for DCL as a whole! <3

1 Like

UPDATE:
We have spoken with GlowLabs.xyz and will be working with them for our upcoming launch to reward social media engagement supporting our marketing efforts on twitter.

In such, there is a cost around utilizing their service, we believe it is worth it and being early adopters we will get tailored support at lower costs.

Awesome proposal thanks for all y’all do! I have 2 questions though:

  1. Do you know what the current size of the target market is and have data that shows that this level of investment across those platforms can result in 100k new users from the target market?

  2. If you hit all of your milestones, when do you think you would hit 100k new users?

2 Likes

Pepe, I agree we should be using Brave Ads as part of our testing in channels, and have updated the proposal to include this!!

In addition you will see the proposal indicates our monthly creator highlight to include in our advertising, this will be voted on using our DCL REPORT DAO!

2 Likes

Great to hear your voice on this! Thank you for your support and feedback!

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.

Adding these items to the proposal!! Thank you!!

1 Like

I would support Kevin on this, he started the journey pretty early, his work is quite important for DCL system

3 Likes

The plan is clear and the team is competent and already showed their potential. :white_check_mark:

2 Likes

Hi! Awesome proposal, good to see see efforts on putting Decentraland out there.

Since this is a pre-proposal I’ll be more exhaustive than usual on my feedback:

  • Do you have a plan on how to receive the grant? Are you being advised by lawyers and accountants? Remember that the DAO is not a legal entity.
  • The project is targeting only people in the US, I understand that is a big market, but not targeting a global audience will have long term consequences on how the community is shaped. The project should target a global audience, as the Report has been doing so successfully.
  • Related with the previous point I’m not sure that spending $24000 in Billboards is worth it. I’m not a marketing expert, but sounds like Billboards are useful if you want to flood 1 city, or 1 neighborhood with the brand. I would suggest to redirect those funds to a global guerrilla marketing strategy, way harder to develop but more cost effective. Using that money to develop an amazing, impactful audiovisual piece can also be a good strategy (Sparkle studios :wink: )
  • Would be great to see some $ allocated to developing the The Decentraland Reporter brand (implementing a visual identity). I see “Graphic Designer” listed, but with Visual Identity I mean more than the logo, its the foundation on which to build the marketing strategy.

Hope you find the feedback useful, looking forward to vote on the actual proposal!

3 Likes

And just a reminder to create a multisig with a good amount of owners and signers to receive the funds

1 Like

Hello Eibriel!!

Thank you for this Feedback, and we are incorporating the following:

  1. 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

  2. We will receive the DAO as ImagineOnEarth which is a US Based sole proprietorship. All Crypto/Blockchain related tax and accounting needs have been successfully managed since 2017!

  3. I agree that we need to consider a global market, however with the amount of ad spend available we will want to focus on a specific segment of the market to drive meaningful data. With that said, I would consider the $24k better spent in testing a more audio-visual piece for a guerilla marketing with global segmentation in mind.

  4. I’ll be more specific on use of funds for visual designs!

4 Likes

HI Eibriel, Thank you for the kind words my good friend.We are so happy to have your support.Kevin has constantly been leading, mentoring and guiding us. Without DCL Report this platform, I don’t know where we would be.

I love this concept of Funds managed by 3 multi-sig/owner, first time hearing about this. I will do research and learn more, I think this is a very safe and cautious approach.

Thanks
Metatrekkers
Chris

3 Likes

The Decentraland Report has been the best news platform to cover important events and project launches in Decentraland since january 2021. The team of reporters is expanding and covering events in many languages, keeping the community up to date with the latest news and activities in the metaverse. Having a serious a team of journalists is important, but increasing the reach and visibility of this platform would be a great opportunity benefiting the entire ecosystem.

The entire plan and funding concept seems promising if they reach their goals!

The CollecOnline team gives their full support to this project.
Laetitia

Kevin has our support 100%