Growth Marketing Playbook Introduction

Ecosystem Marketing Project Updates
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Hi, I’m Ross,

This is the start of a series on Growth Marketing strategies.

(Unconventional methods to acquire users for NEAR powered products.)

Throughout this series I will explain my campaigns and strategies.

Please copy the ones that inspire you, then post your findings and suggestions on my posts.

This process is constant experimentation and learning, the more feedback we share the faster we will hone in on amazing strategies.

Why write this playbook?

  1. To help every dApp, guild, integration and community effectively market their product.
  2. To highlight where NEAR community members can contribute to ongoing initiatives.

Format

These strategies will start off really short and to the point. If they don’t perform, we’re moving on … so we won’t waste a bunch of time documenting the “Optimal” strategy … we’ll start quick and if the strategy works, we’ll fill in the details.

Each strategy should have a:

  • Name
  • Description
    • High level, how do we execute this strategy?
  • Hypothesis
    • What do we expect to happen? What information do we have to support this?
  • Definition of success
    • If we don’t reach X result after Y time, seriously re-evaluate (kill the test and move on)
  • Request for help
    • Bytes —> 2-4 week projects for community members (and possible bounties)
    • Bits —> Quick bounties to consolidate information. (for example, I’ll send 1N to the first 5 people who write something unique they would improve on Mintbase)

Without Further Ado … Here’s the first strategy

Name: Ecosystem Growth Interviews

PART 1

Over the next week, I’ll meet with 22 dApps I’ve identified on NEAR who have the ability to “Log in with your NEAR wallet” And have the ability to purchase goods or experiences with NEAR.

I will interview them to understand how each team thinks about growing their user base. If they have answers, I’ll help them amplify their story. If they don’t, I’ll help them think through the following questions:

  1. Please describe your offering in a “We solve X problem for Y” format.
  2. Who is your user?
  3. Where do your users exist online (how do we target them)?
  4. What story do you use to excite potential users?
  5. What are you offering users to try your product?

[The full interview guide has been used twice and is under development, ping me for a link, I’ll post it here when it’s more refined.]

PART 2

When the project can answer the above questions, it’s time to promote it on a LIVE twitter AMA with our anonymous interviewer Near Chef. We’ll blow up their dApp users with the following call to action: Attend X AMA and receive Y reward when you connect your NEAR wallet to X’s service during the event.

The most important part of this equation is the offer.

NEAR’s super power is its ability to offer dApp users free trials where the dApp creator pays usage fees on behalf of the user until they reach the “Magic moment” … at which point you ask the user to pay.

Free should not attract bots and scammers. That’s why I recommend against giving away tokens just for signing up, unless those tokens can only be spent on dApp usage … or buying something in the dApp that recycles the tokens back to the dApp owner (like an in-game power up.)

The offer should be evergreen. The dApp owner may offer a larger version of the promotion during events like AMAs, but they should benefit from offering X bonus to every new user.

Hypothesis

  1. We will centralize a list of growth hacks that we can execute with minor changes to the existing tools on the NEAR main net. Each of these hacks will become its own forum post.
  2. We will see a meaningful bump in wallet connects for each dApp (specifically during and after their twitter livestream) - We will study the MaskNetwork AMA and the Aurora Quiz campaign to calculate historic engagement. I will post numbers here pre and post AMA.

Definition of Success

  1. Work with speed. Interview 22 teams by July 9th. Schedule 2-3 AMA’s per week as dApps hone in on their stories and offers.

Request for Help

  • Bytes:
    • Front end developer: Build the AMA website [project outline on request]
    • Writer: Create social posts for every AMA [project outline on request]
  • Bits:
    • 1N reward per Github URL for these 22 projects (to the first person who posts the project’s URL in the comments)
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This is so great to see, @ross! Love what you are pushing forward and cannot wait to see the Community and partners get involved.

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good to see great work is going on, even greater things on the way.
to me marketing is one leg of the chair.

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I feel the growth interview structure will be a great way to drive exposure to all the exciting projects building on NEAR and in turn, also bring exposure to NEAR blockchain, while getting the community involved in the process :+1: awesome stuff

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As the interviews progress, I cannot wait to see the findings and I know this will make such a great addition to the overall Community OS playbook repertoire!

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What the daps? Why did you chose them?

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Sorry about that, I just made the list of 22 dApps public

I chose these 22 dApps because they are live and available to log into using a NEAR wallet.

My original goal is to spur wallet creations and connections to these dApps so the community can try out projects on NEAR and provide feedback on how to improve.

I’m learning about more dApps through my conversations and I am learning that the owners of these current dApps are releasing new versions and/or other projects. I will follow those projects and interview them as well. If you know any teams who should be added please let me know.

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