Hive Marketing Budget and Direction

Let's face it, HIVE needs heavy marketing, and it needs it yesterday. If we want to reach the larger market, increase our user base, developers, and investors, we got to reach outside our happy hive.

Their has been a few proposals that were floated asking for funding for this, but for one reason or another, they are not / did not get funded. It maybe the amount asked, or just not a clear path, or the cost vs benefit was not ideal. Whatever the case, we are still here, and the need for marketing is still here.

A few days ago The Man Cave project put up this tweet.

https://twitter.com/TheManCaveProj1/status/1334165499069001728

- TheManCaveProj1

At the time of writing this, 56 votes were cast with a 86.5% saying YES. W can assume the community is behind this idea. So what would this look like?

On average, new companies (*Start ups) Spend 20-25% of their budget on marketing, and more developed companies, 10-15%.

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• Disclaimer: the numbers below may be wrong, math is not this authors strong suit, but, lets use them for a case in point.

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At the time of writing this, the HIVE DOA :

DAILY FUNDED	DAILY BUDGET	TOTAL BUDGET:
3,838.500 HBD	6,965.748 HBD	696,574.807 HBD

We have about 3,127 HBD a day left in the budget. Let's take 25% of that, this would be about 781.75 HBD a day for the next year (365 days) directed at marketing, or in a year 285,338.75 HBD. Next year we could reduce that to 20%, then 15%, then 10%.

285,338.75 HBD, wow this is a lot, more than most people make in a few years of work, but if we want to see HIVE grow, we have to spend. You can make the argument that we should in fact, take 50% of the DOA and direct it at marketing, PR, and growth... But, lets stick with 25% for now.

What would 285,338.75 HBD x 1 year go towards?

Marketing 101, marketing channels should align with the business objectives. We are an online based platform to build upon and to grow communities on, so focus 90% of the budget on online marketing. The last 10% in print adds and physical places.

The online paths would be:

• Social Marketing
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Content marketing
• Website
• Trade shows (Perhaps not this one too much - Covid :/ )
• and Print

We also have to ask, what is our cost per customer / user / developer acquired? Let's use the standard phrasing for this, Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC.

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“He or she who can afford to spend the most to acquire a new customer, wins.” - Dan Kennedy

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Let's say that on average it will take our CAC is 25 HBD to acquire 1 new user. Given our budget above, we can set a soft goal for success of 11,413 new active (32 more than now a day) HIVE users based off marketing efforts.

We have to ask the questions then...

• How would an influx of 11,413 new users effect the HIVE ecosystem?
• What percent of them would be developers, investors, or users?
• Do you think 11,413 new active users is worth spending 285,338.75 HBD on?

Looking on the latest HIVE Stats :
@arcange/hive-statistics-20201202-en

We have a little over 2000 authors a day, and about 10,000 ish Dapp users.
So, 11,413 new users would x 2 our current community! This is x 2 the content, x 2 the developers, x 2 the dapp users... the value that would bring in, would be well worth the small cost in HBD.

This brings up the idea of spending double that, so, 50% of the DOA on marketing efforts, or getting 22,826 new active users. At these numbers, influences start to join, the change of viral content goes way up, the buying and spending of HIVE goes way up, and we can see our community start to grow, in leaps and bounds.

Look internal or look external for marketing.

We established that a large marketing budget would benefit the community in many ways, but who should market? A HIVE community group, or do we hire someone outside of HIVE.

Both have benefits, but also draw backs. Looking at both sides, hiring outside of HIVE would however provide the best ROI (Return on Investment).

Why?

— We are not selling to HIVE users, we are selling to people that don't know HIVE. Its best then to have fresh eyes see a project and then say, “I see this, its cool, I can sell this”. Its like an artist looking at their own art, they are never happy, but to the viewer, they love it... we are the artists of HIVE, we see too much of it, and may not have the objective outside perspective to best see the way to promote us.
— A company that is hired, wants to keep their job and clients and would not be swayed by internal politics. Hive is great, but also, lets face it, we have too much drama. You do a bad job and someone may just down vote your account. But an outside agency, they don't care about that, they just do the job. Pay them and be done with it.
— Most internal marketing efforts (proposals) would benefit one project more than the over all community. So, lets hire a 3rd party to market for all HIVE, remove any personal gain for projects, and just get it done.

There are a few more reasons as well, but those are the three big ones.

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Summary

We need to market HIVE, starting yesterday. We have the budget to do so. Let's just Hire a company outside of HIVE, pay them and be done with it.

The Worst case, we lose 25% of the DOA funds and gain nothing. The Best case, we on board a lot of new people who will help HIVE thrive and reach mass appeal.

• What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below.

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Tagging some EPIC people to weigh in on this :
Hive account@lordbutterfly Hive account@theycallmedan Hive account@starkerz

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Over and out.

- D.Buzz

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