Advertising-Proposal

[particlmike33]

Particl badly needs advertising. We are an amazing project with a working DAPP (the marketplace), yet no one knows about us, and our liquidity is nearly zero.

The devs are already having trouble selling their 35k part they receive every month from the treasury. If the situation gets any worse, they will be unable to raise any funds. And the devs deserve to get paid for their work! If our liquidity drops any lower than it is now, it means our project will be dead because the devs won't be getting paid. This is a serious issue.

The perfect time to advertise is now. We have a decentralized marketplace with infinite markets, MAD escrow, and private encrypted messaging. And we have a DEX in the works.

Waiting to advertise until the DEX is completed would be a mistake. We would be gambling our projects survival on if liquidity doesn't drop any lower anytime soon. That is a gamble I'm not willing to take. We need advertising ASAP to ensure our devs keep getting paid.

Newcomers that hear about us through advertising will be perfectly okay with buying part on a centralized exchange like bittrex or probit. 99% of all crypto projects out there rely on CEXs and don't have a DEX. CEXs are widely used. I'm not saying a DEX wouldn't be amazing for us--it is an amazing feature thanks to our devs. But it isn't needed before marketing. Newcomers can buy part on a CEX like they do for every other project out there. A DEX is a great feature to have once we have more people, it isn't a necessity to have before we get new people.

In terms of funding for advertising, there is about 46,000 part in the treasury, that is up to the community how to spend.

In addition, there is 138,000 part in the reserve fund that is not needed at the moment. It is leftover from the first dev funding proposal, and they currently have the second funding proposal keeping them going.

It is up to the devs what the 138,000 part will be used for.

I am asking simultaneously for the community to approve the 46,000 part in the treasury to be used for advertising, and for the devs to approve the 138,000 (or a chunk of them) to be also approved for advertising.

I've researched many advertising options, and the ones that seem best to me are:

Milestone 1: Pay coinmarketcap $10k for us to be in the trending section. This will keep us trending until we have had 10k clicks, it is $1 CPC. Coinmarketcap has 700 million monthly page views. Imagine 10k people going to Particl's site and many more seeing us in Coinmarketcap's trending section in the search bar!

Milestone 2: Pay MarketAcross $20k for them doing a month of work. What $20k gets us is written out here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1--0lnkyiY-s6Biudb7nSrJa3dLeCJn01/view Milestone 2 should happen concurrently with Milestone 1 for maximum affect

Milestone 3: Pay youtuber DataDash (500k subscribers and 50k views/video) for a review/interview about Particl. This costs $15k. Maybe a dev or a well known community member can be a part of the video?!

All Milestones happen at the same time for maximum affect.

Total Cost: 45k, there is about 46k particl in the treasury, and another 138k in reserves. The community can vote on the treasury funds, it is up to the devs if they want to contribute some of the reserve funds. I'm assuming at this point we only have the 46k from the treasury, if the devs say otherwise, we will add on additional milestones.

If people are uncomfortable with giving me the funds (which I understand) then hopefully the devs can get involved. I can do all the work and plan all the discussions with the 3 advertising companies listed above, and when the PR is ready just forward the invoice to the devs and they can pay the companies. They don't need to do any of the work/planning if they don't want to, just pay the invoices. This way money isn't sent straight to me if that makes the community uncomfortable.

MarketAcross's $20k plan is the following:

Deliverables:

--Monthly PR & Content marketing campaign

--Messaging Brief. On-going Adjustments & strategy

--At least 13 unique articles and media coverage

--2 Reddit Promotions Or Telegram AMAs/Podcasts

--Positioning and messaging strategy - Taking a deep dive into your solution and assembling a detailed
brief on what angles we believe should be pushed to which media.

--Advisory - Provide our experienced inputs on on-going matters, whether PR or marketing relevant.

--Press releases - Strategizing, drafting, and distributing news announcements you have with a guarantee
for a minimum amount of hits.

--Media outreach - Identifying relevant publications for each news announcement and actively pitching
reporters in attempt to secure maximum and optimal coverage.

--Content marketing - Utilizing our network to communicate educational content and third-party coverage
according to the agreed upon market positioning and messaging strategy, this could include:

--Generating Link building value from powerful domains to keywords you would like to push.

--Expert commentary - Positioning your C-level executives as experts by commenting on viral stories or
topics aligned with our overall strategy.

--Moderation and reports - Biweekly reporting and/or calls on-demand, monthly reports of coverage we
secured.

--Social amplification - Amplifying the media hits on Reddit to create virality. Getting more eyeballs and
amplifying our top articles through our vast reddit network - we guarantee to upvote to at least top 5 on
any top subreddit we would choose to go for. On the 4Chan front (in specific cases), we would be pushing
daily threads to make sure we control and shape up the narratives we are pushing alongside our media
outreach efforts.

--AMAs and podcasts - We will work to connect with influencers in Finance/Crypto and in order to generate
coverage to your brand as well as to highlight your executive team. This will be achieved primarily via
podcasts and YouTube channel coverage pieces, as well as setting up AMAs on telegram.

--Designated account manager.

[kewde]

Hi @particlmike33

I'm willing to approve this PR but we typically take about 2 weeks to simply discuss the proposal here before it goes live. The reason being that proposal shouldn't modify its content after its been partially funded, so those two weeks give us some time to make sure that the proposal has been well collected.

I have a few suggestions though, because I don't believe that this proposal will pass in its current state:

1. Make the goals SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant (and time bound)
2. The payout structure doesn't reflect the actions that you want to take.

This proposal suggests a lot of ideas, 6 to be specific but with the current budget you won't be able to execute on all of them which is the first red flag in this proposal IMHO. While the core idea is good, we need to make the deliverables more explicit and level the payout structure.

I would suggest making these modifications before asking to push this to a vote because the lack of specificity in the deliverables may cause some to vote against.

[AfGandalfistan]

Dear particlmike33,

In my opinion some of those advertisement options focus on a too specific user group. We should rather concentrate on using the fundigs as efficiently as possible which means that we let professionals take over this task rather than smaller communities. This will have two main benefits:

1. We can develop a professional promotional materials tailored to the exact needs of the Particl project
2. We can adress a much broader potential customer base.

This could either mean that we hire a professional PR studio or we pay an advertisement developer ourselves.
Therefore, before we push this proposal to a vote, we should first create a specific roadmap with a detailed plan on what and where exactly we want to advertise, where the funding will go exactly, who will be responsible of the whole coordination, what steps we need to do and when we want to complete each step (milestones).

[particlmike33]

Hi @particlmike33

I'm willing to approve this PR but we typically take about 2 weeks to simply discuss the proposal here before it goes live. The reason being that proposal shouldn't modify its content after its been partially funded, so those two weeks give us some time to make sure that the proposal has been well collected.

I have a few suggestions though, because I don't believe that this proposal will pass in its current state:

1. Make the goals SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant (and time bound)

2. The payout structure doesn't reflect the actions that you want to take.

This proposal suggests a lot of ideas, 6 to be specific but with the current budget you won't be able to execute on all of them which is the first red flag in this proposal IMHO. While the core idea is good, we need to make the deliverables more explicit and level the payout structure.

I would suggest making these modifications before asking to push this to a vote because the lack of specificity in the deliverables may cause some to vote against.

Thanks for the suggestions @kewde,

I want to see if the community favors any other combination of the 6 options, but I'm personally thinking the best options are:

Putting 10k towards Coinmarketcap's trending section that costs $1 CPC, and putting a one time monthly payment of 20k to MarketAcross, and any remaining money be used for ChainWire's gold package which costs about 9.5k.

In terms of SMART milestones, I think it would be best to do Coinmarketcap and MarketAcross at once, and see what the results are.

Depending on the results, we go ahead with ChainWire or stick with Coinmarketcap and MarketAcross and put more money towards those two, with the remaining 10k. We can also leave the option up to a community discussion.

So we would need about 40k from the treasury.

If the devs are willing to use the 138k funds from the reserve, this proposal would change, so I am interested in knowing what the current discussions about that are.

In terms of the goals after Coinmarketcap and MarketAcross, hopefully we go above $5 and have 100k in volume.

If it was less successful, we can go ahead with ChainWire, otherwise stick with the previous two.

What do you/other people think of these new milestones/goals?

[particlmike33]

Dear particlmike33,

In my opinion some of those advertisement options focus on a too specific user group. We should rather concentrate on using the fundigs as efficiently as possible which means that we let professionals take over this task rather than smaller communities. This will have two main benefits:

1. We can develop a professional promotional materials tailored to the exact needs of the Particl project

2. We can adress a much broader potential customer base.

This could either mean that we hire a professional PR studio or we pay an advertisement developer ourselves. Therefore, before we push this proposal to a vote, we should first create a specific roadmap with a detailed plan on what and where exactly we want to advertise, where the funding will go exactly, who will be responsible of the whole coordination, what steps we need to do and when we want to complete each step (milestones).

I am trying to make a specific roadmap, and would like people's input. Do you have any opinion/thoughts on an advertising roadmap, beyond that we should have one?

Both MarketAcross and ChainWire are professional PR companies, and they are both options that I have mentioned, so that fulfills one of your requests.

In terms of who would be responsible for the coordination of advertising, I'm guessing that is me because no one else is really putting any work into this, but if other people step up I'd be okay with them holding the funds.

[particlmike33]

I have updated the initial commit/proposal to better match formatting, thanks for the suggestions

[cryptoguard]

Thank you for the effort you put into creating the proposal. I know it takes a lot of time.

How the CCS Works

Third parties can contribute as soon as a proposal goes into the "funding required" state. Once funding is secured, it will pass on to the "funded" state. If you ask for more funds than in the community fund* available, it can never pass "funding required", except individuals add funding to the respective proposal as donors. At worst, a failed, but donor-funded proposal helps fill the community fund.

Community Funds

You can find the general community fund that was created at the project’s inception by following this PART address.

Additionally, half of every staked block gets redirected directly into the project’s community treasury which you can track at the following PART address.

At the time of this writing, the community treasury contains ~28,000 PART. For more information on the project’s community treasury, refer to its initial proposal here.

Proposal Design Needs

Please satisfy the formal rules as described here → CCS Platform

Particularly these points:

• Proposals must be coherent and well-structured

• Proposals must only include one proposal. If you want to propose multiple things at once, create various proposals.

• Proposals that involve a third party to act upon have to be approved by that third party before they can be put up for community voting.

• Especially, you must verify the third parties and contractor's legitimacy to ensure all parties alleged to be involved in a proposal are aware of the proposal and they are indeed the party they claim to be and willing to follow through if it gets successfully funded.

General Notes About Proposals

The team appreciates any proposal and effort that creates support for the project as a whole. The more involvement, the better.

Personal opinions, assumptions, or framed narratives don't belong into a proposal at all because they skew the bigger picture.

It may be helpful to create a Reddit or Forum post to outline the thesis, feed it with context, and link from there to the respective proposal(s), which can have their topic-scoped discussions within the CCS system. As a reference, the team chooses to publish an accompanying blog post to explain, in more details, proposals. This provides the additional context required to understand a proposal and keeps the CCS proposal itself well-structured and to-the-point.

Topic-related instant messaging discussions can be held within the “Proposals” channel:

• Discord → #proposals

• Telegram

• Matrix / Element

General Notes About the Team's Reserve Funds

As for getting access to the team's reserve funds to fund this proposal, the team can add up to a proposal's funding out of their reserves if it decides to do that.

The team's fund reserve is created for business management reasons and helps them react flexibly to arising opportunities or unforeseen events depending on the cost centers. This includes, but is not limited to, doing special marketing operations, exchange listings, hiring staff, etc. Note that the reserve funds don't need to remain static in PART and are therefore a negotiation subject to over-the-counter (OTC) allocations for interested institutions and individuals.

With the funding proposal system introduction, it was defined which resources are reserved for what purpose within a grant round:

• Development (60%)

• Marketing (20%)

• Management, legal, and administration (10%)

• Business development (10%)

We want to spend as much of the marketing funds as possible to attract new people to the Particl Ecosystem with the ultimate goal of improving user adoption.

Thoughts on Marketing at This Point in Time

We feel it's important to mention that, as part of its strategy, the team prioritizes marketing efforts that yield long-term and sustainable results. To achieve this, a lot of foundational work, like additional onboarding material and product design improvements, has to happen. And it’s also a profound question to ask: What do you want to market to whom?

While it would be possible to spend the currently available funds from the team's reserve treasury on traditional marketing avenues such as digital ads, media placement, or influencer marketing, these initiatives would incur a relatively very hefty monthly burn (5-digit figures) that has to be sustained over an extended period of time (i.e., many months) before they produce any reliable and measurable results.

Indeed, when it comes to traditional marketing, you have to perpetually fight with other companies or projects for a spot on people's digital screens and you need to constantly be in their face for them to even notice you. This is extremely costly and it is why you need to make sure your product is ready to convert these people into users. Failure to convert may even lead to an adverse reaction, creating adversaries or disinterested individuals rather than advocates or users.

But as always, the proof is in the pudding, and the team was at the front seats to observe that reality when we hired, in 2019, a decent marketing firm to lead media placement and influencer marketing opportunities. While getting the front page on one of the most prominent technology publications like Hackernoon, and many times, may lead one to think that this would automatically lead to more users, the reality is different than the dream. In fact, for the few months we’ve funded this traditional marketing initiative, we’ve only seen a marginal increase in the number of community members, which fell back to its pre-marketing figure as soon as we stopped the initiative due to its high costs and negative ROI.

At the present point in time, we do not believe that spending the available resources on these more traditional means of marketing would result in sustainable user or market growth. And while a potential ephemeral rise in exposure may feel like a win, the inability to sustain heavy marketing spending over several months would ultimately not result in a positive ROI in terms of the money spent. This would instead burn future opportunities that may have been seized at a more opportune time.

It is for these reasons, coupled with the fact that the team's reserves are limited, that we have opted to focus on building the aforementioned foundational requirements and keep on improving the Particl products, notably in terms of accessibility and usability, before we devote serious marketing allocations. As we’ve hinted heavily in the Particl Desktop 3.3 — What to Expect blog post, we’ve got a clear plan moving forward which will bring Particl to what is expected from Web3 apps in terms of accessibility and usability; a net requirement for any crypto marketing effort in 2022 and beyond.

It is the reason why we are keeping funds intended for marketing in reserves; we are not deciding not to do marketing, but rather do it when the product is more mature, able to convert at a better rate, and at a moment when dollars spent in marketing will net positive ROI. And while “taking the long path ahead” rather than throwing dollars into traditional marketing for quick boosts in exposure may not produce as many visible results, it is the responsible and realistic way to go to ensure the long-term longevity of the project. It is, in many ways, an investment for the better success of future marketing initiatives; the seeds that we plant today will bear plentiful harvests at the right time.

That being said, we are happy to see the community mobilize and come out with creative ideas to help with marketing. However, we'd like to remind marketing proposal owners to be mindful and realistic about the points mentioned above and about expected results. This is why our suggestion would be to prioritize boots-on-the-ground and guerilla marketing efforts that can yield more sustainable and long-term results for a fraction of the costs compared to traditional marketing avenues which are more expensive and might only produce ephemeral results in the current context.

[particlmike33]

@cryptoguard Thank you so much for this detailed reply!

I personally feel the reason ROI on old marketing efforts weren't great, was because we weren't doing the right type of marketing. I think the marketing options I've listed above would be more effective.

But I also understand your/the team's point of view that perhaps no type of marketing would work well right now.

I also don't think guerilla marketing works well, as we've been doing it for years with no or very minimal results. However, there is no reason not to do it as you mention, since there is no real cost of doing so (besides time/labor but not money). I just wouldn't want to rely or expect on this method for any meaningful results.

For many years now we've been saying we would wait to advertise until we have a better/more finished product.

I feel like that time is now, but it seems you/the team do not think so.

Do you have a list of features or an idea of what would be necessary before you would think it is the right time to market?

I'm just worried we will keep saying "now is not the time" and we might run out of funds if it goes on for too long. A concrete plan of what features/factors are needed for the team to think it is the right time to advertise would be nice, if you/the team have thoughts on that.

I also didn't know we had an additional 25k part in a different reserve fund, thanks for mentioning that!