Marketing for V4 Launch: Let's Brainstorm

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Hi everyone,

With V4 launch tentatively less than a month ago, I thought it’d be worthwhile if we discussed how to really get the word out and create some hype around the new release. With the goal of reaching that $1M in weekly prizes, it’d be smart to leverage this big release as a potential marketing opportunity.

So, I have some ideas just to get the ball rolling and would appreciate any feedback.

  1. Paying for Adverts

Generally, I am not a big fan of paying for adverts since they often aren’t a great bang for your buck. However, when it comes to PoolTogether, I have to make an exception. Sometime catchy to bring people into a lottery could easily attract attention since it has mass appeal.

Some tagline like, “PoolTogether: A lottery where you can win big just by saving your money. A no-loss lottery: only possible with DeFi.” (Sorry, if that’s bad, just brainstorming here.)

I think using the treasury to pay for some banner ads on block explorers and/or major cryptocurrency websites could yield some nice results and buzz.

  1. Teasing the V4 Launch

Even though I’m very active in this community, even I have to put together breadcrumbs when it comes to the V4 launch. I think there’s room here to inform the public on what V4 is about so there’s expectations and some momentum going forward.

For example, on Twitter, we can slowly tease out certain features of V4 every few days or something. Just to get some buzz and discussion going. I personally think this is the best way. Rather than posting breadcrumbs on Discord, let’s put some out on Twitter.

  1. Reaching out to L1s

Since V4 supports all EVM chains, I’m sure they’d be happy to give us a shoutout and we should market heavily in their communities. But maybe this is already happening behind the scenes :slight_smile:

Anyway, this is just a brief lil’ thing I wrote up, and would love to hear what you all think! I’ll comment some more ideas as they come to me. Thanks for reading.

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All great ideas and definitely the right time to be thinking about this! One thing I’m working on right now is a “narrative guide” inspired by this.

Overall, I think narratives are SUPER important and we need to do a good job telling the story of V4.

We also have this spreadsheet we were all collaborating on identifying outlets to carry the news.

LETS GO!!!

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Here is a teaser for you! https://twitter.com/PoolTogether_/status/1440367857091575813?s=20

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I like @Andre’s idea of making V4 testing public so people can at least play with it and discuss its features prior to launch.

Also, articulating a strong narrative around V4s features, supported by memes is a great idea @Leighton.

Another idea to raise awareness (and funds) can be to hold a PT V4 NFT auction. We could partner with some artists to create some NFTs (I can try connecting with NFT artists to see who may want to create some PT-themed content if we don’t already have artists in mind), and/or we could create some NFTs of things like the V4 code itself (similar to what Danny Ryan did with the eth2 model NFTs) or perhaps a signed graphic from the core team, etc. We could also incentivize participation/bidding with some pPOOL on perhaps Matic + award winners with POOL.

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Beanie continues to share strong public support to pooltogether community and his reach in NFT space is unmatched. If someone can reach out to him, using your connections and have him share some of our narratives (being drafted by Leighton) and/or think of POOL-NFT limited time marketing blitz with his NFT community…it will be fantastic

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I love the idea about improving awareness using the NFT space…but i have an extremely opposite idea for implementation.

Instead of having a pooltogether themed NFT from good artists…why dont we purchase popular NFTs (such as fractionalized tokens of punks or BAYC…) and gift X users (by putting them in prize pool) to some of initial winners…

Imagine there being 100 winners and each of them getting an additional prize pool of a tokenized punk or bayc…this will definitely go viral…

P.S: Budget to purchase and gift punks or bayc fractionalized tokens is within our control… Or maybe Leighton can pull some strings and get us something from pleasrdao NFT collection…

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Paying for Adverts can be worth if you define the objectives.
People need to be exposed to the AD over a period of time to be convinced.

Teasing the launch only reaches people who already know about PoolTogether, doesn’t get much word out.

Reaching out to L1’s is quite potential, if there’s a proposal and a win-win situation.

You can combine all of these 3 ideas into 1 if you do a stunt. Something that break the boundaries of crypto-communities and get people talking about.

For example. Print lottery tickets and distribute them on the streets, in a funky way ofc. Shoot that, create some funky content around it, perhaps capturing the reaction of non-crypto people “oh really, no-loss? how can??” …

Follow that up with “How to’s” and “Intro to PoolTogether” content.

Run ads to spread these content pieces, not to convert. Awareness will be high.

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I think the real value of PT is that it is not gimmicky, but rather provides a legitimate way for people to gamify a core responsibility of all adults - saving some money. So while ads can always be used to promote/ drive awareness, they are a bit more gimmicky, and I think PT’s story is best shared via PR - leading to longer form explanations (articles, medium posts, podcast appearances) which can provide the context. Frankly, without it, it sounds too good to be true!

I’d argue hiring a PR company would be the best use of money to drive adoption and share the key features of the V4 launch. To @Leighton’s point - the narrative is really critical and the best way to tell this story; linking PT to a historical tradition of no-loss lotteries, with a crypto twist and more substantial rewards to ensure every wins and no one loses, then add in V4 details to highlight how there is a mindset of continuous improvement/ greater value for users would seem to be the framework.

I’m not opposed to ads, however, and feel they could/should be part of the mix. The key being that they lean towards more educational/ informative and be in the right, limited locations.

As for ads, imho, the use case of PT is similar to staking - taking money out of active trading and setting money to the side to earn yield and reduce risk - so targeting that audience and putting ads in those places would seem to be most ideal. If I am staring at a list of staking options or LP’s that I can drop some of my DAI or ETH in and I see 5%, 6%…etc. in the pools but next to it I see a PT ad for 'No-loss lottery: 6% + chance to win more every week!" that is where the value proposition is most clear.

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Just because I can’t help myself, some quick copy ideas for ads…
“Celebrating X years of no losers.”
“No losers allowed.”
“Better than your average lottery”
“If it sounds too good to be true, it’s PoolTogether”
“Millennials love it: everyone’s a winner!”
“PoolTogether: Total ETH won: XXX,XXX,XXX. Total ETH lost: 0. Find out how”
“Go beyond staking - hop in the pool to stake AND win.”
“Why this _____ (insert influencer like Bankless) thinks this is better than staking” (collab link to podcast where Leighton or someone from PT is talking about how it works.)
“What’s more rewarding and fun than staking? PoolTogether.”

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I can see if boardroom would be interested in having a banner before their biweekly articles (2x per week) like how we sponsored bankless articles.

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I think reaching out to Beanie is a good idea. He is a POOL holder and also is deeply connected to PixelVault. iIf we can make some inroads there, that would be great.

An NFT raffle coupled with a prize could definitely create some buzz, especially in the NFT communities. What about giving out a Cool Cat for a lottery? Might be fun.

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First of all, this is a great post and forward thinking. You/we as a group can create a PT Grant request if we work out a specific marketing plan.

To start with, we have a ton of publications, influencers and communities we can work with listed in Leighton’s v4 spreadsheet. A lot of these are Ethereum based and also some of the protocols which have connections with PoolTogether e.g. DAI etc.

We can post and connect with these individuals and groups and look at how they can help us and what we can do to help them. Some of that may be advertising and sponsorship.

Then, we need to work out who is going to be most interested in using PT right now and how can we reach them? I think it is people interested in DeFi and perhaps not super advanced users. So, working with CoinGecko and CMC would be a good start and incentivising people to work with us and refer depositors.

This could also be paid Google Ads for specific searches - but also education.

On another note, I think it is also good to think of long-term marketing to introduce more awareness of PT in general not just v4., At the moment, I am guessing a lot of people may not know much about PT, so we need to increase this awareness before they are interested in v4

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Looping back, I published this narrative guide today: PoolTogether Narrative Guide. Since launching, PoolTogether has been… | by Leighton Cusack | PoolTogether | Sep, 2021 | Medium

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