Preface
A study was written revealing the problem of loss of interest, as well as the extreme influence of external market factors on the saleability of the ENS product.
I disclosed the danger of this phenomenon both for the ENS identity and mass adoption in the corresponding topic. You can consider this topic as a Temp Check, but feel free to leave criticism here as well.
Since working groups do not oversee marketing, and ENSLabs do not oversee DAO initiatives and do not have feedback tools and reliable communication channels, the only way to breathing life into such projects is to directly ask for approval and funding from vote holders.
In this regard, a rather unique situation arises in which the project budget is hundreds of times smaller than those put up for a vote by the DAO, and the bulk of the expenses are personal compensation. Funding for this project is essentially a grant that cannot be obtained through other sources.
It is worth understanding that this project is of a research and not a material nature. The result of this project will be practical recommendations that will be transferred to ENSLabs or another entity that will be responsible for the marketing direction.
It is also worth noting that part of the work has already been completed, and the financing is both retroactive and advance, which is also very rare. The first part of the study was written without anyoneās request, since based on the disdainful attitude towards marketing in the ENS DAO, it was concluded that without specific numbers and models, it would not be possible to properly explain the dangers of current approach. The written part is both a call-to-attention and a pack of problems that will be addressed in the future, more practically oriented part.
ENS has recently received a record amount of criticism, including regarding marketing. Research aims to suggest something, not just criticize.
Abstract
ENS is an important structure in both web3 in general and Ethereum in particular. By not paying attention to such an important aspect as marketing, ENS is missing an opportunity to grow and diversify an audience that shares similar values and might be interested.
There is no need to aggressively push the product and turn it into a classic business, you just need to be sure that absolutely all people who could become part of our community know about our existence. This can be achieved, for example, by both global actions, such as revising positioning, and local ones, such as working with search algorithms and decentralizing sources of communication with society.
Problem Statement
The number of ENS registrations is generated mainly by the tidal forces of the market, and the product itself is a tool of speculation.
The ENS community is critically exclusive, predominantly US-based, male, and age-matched, due to marketing efforts being targeted at such audiences.
Accordingly, the goal of the project is to rethink the approach to positioning, using more effective marketing efforts that would be consistent with the values āāof a decentralized world and would rid ENS of its speculative image, while attracting a diverse audience, focusing efforts, including on informing people from different countries, genders and ages, about the ENS product.
The path to reducing the influence of external factors lies through building an audience that values the product itself. And value is the direct quality of the product and its usability, multiplied by its positioning in the public space.
Structure
Researched:
- Disclosure of problems
- Dependence of ENS on the market
- Impact of ENS actions on marketing
3.1 Analysis of the impact of Customer Journey (website-to-registration) on conversion
Proposed:
3.2 Analysis of conducted marketing campaigns
Essence
Understanding how individual ENS campaigns impact user engagement is important to understanding which approaches are worth pursuing and which ones are not. Includes both analysis of the impact of campaigns on registrations and advertising metrics (CTR, ROI, CPC).
Example
The āAshley D. Can PSAā marketing campaign decreased user engagement by 36% in the next 3 weeks, compared to the previous 3 weeks. This drop is not explained by the models built in the first part of the study, and therefore, this phenomenon is not explained by either autoregressive or external factors.
Having access to a full analysis, one could conclude that the ENS audience is not oriented towards provocative and post-ironic content, which is not only ineffective, but even harmful.
3.3 Target Audience Analysis: Demographics and Engagement Ńhannels
Essence
A diverse audience creates new meanings, brings diverse experiences and makes the product more accessible and understandable. A monotonous audience, which exists exclusively in its own information bubble, is boring and at some point reaches its ceiling, forming stereotypes about the productās belonging to any social group. Analysis of ENS audience features and traffic sources will make it possible to achieve heterogeneity, thereby increasing the audience and making its composition closer to the ideal picture for a web3 company. A historical timeline of changes in audience demographics will also help determine what influenced diversification/unification.
Example
I already gave an example in this post. The ENS audience is homogeneous, and this is not only a problem for the industry, because both its competitor, Unstoppable Domains, and decentralized applications, for example, etherscan and uniswap, have a much more diverse audience. Even if we accept that the audience of the cryptocurrency world is mainly US men aged 25-34, then shouldnāt we also change this general pattern through our actions and make the web3 community more diverse?
It is not necessary to solve this problem by maintaining social networks in different languages or content aimed at women or adult audiences. Firstly, it is very labor-intensive and secondly, it is incredibly difficult to do it in a way that does not give rise to discrimination. But you can, as I suggested, use social networks with a more diverse audience than Twitter (there are also significantly more US men aged 25-34 there), for example YouTube or Instagram.
3.4 SEO Analysis
Essence
The most valuable in a decentralized world is organic traffic, in which the organization does not forcefully influence the user. If a person/organization wants a domain on the Ethereum network or web3, he/she/they absolutely must find the ENS website.
Example
An example is in this post. If we search for the search keywords āweb3 domainsā, we will find that ENS is offered in 25-35 places depending on the region. If the use of contextual advertising is a controversial tool, then working with search algorithms through On-Page and Local SEO is simply necessary.
If we had a complete understanding of all the keys by which users cannot find us, we could give, for example, an appropriate request to the front end to add keywords to the website, perhaps even in the headings, because search algorithms work better this way.
Or at least use alternative text in pictures, which now simply describes the picture, but could influence ENS ranking in search results.
In this way, we will not harm the visually impaired, for whom such a tool was invented, and will increase organic traffic. Such a simple action will not make thousands of people pass by who already have a desire to acquire a name in a decentralized network.
3.5 Sentiment Analysis
Essence
It is important not only to measure marketing effectiveness with key performance indicators. It is also worth paying attention to how public opinion about a product changes, as this is a critical factor in organic development and creates a word-of-mouth effect.
Example
Unfortunately, unlike what I did in previous chapters, I cannot give a ready-made example due to the large amount of data, the processing of which requires a professional tool (Twitter API v.2).
I can only assume that after the loss of speculative interest in the ENS product, we are receiving a large wave of negativity in the public space. If we knew for sure that this was happening, we could develop a program for absorbing negativity. I need real numbers to back this up, so you need to understand that there is a significant chance that implementation of this chapter will not produce practical results.
3.6 Analysis of the influence of voluntary influencers
Essence
Voluntary product promotion is the most organic way to raise your audience. Unpaid posts or videos with positive narratives regarding ENS create a favorable public image.
Example
Lots of people help grow the ENS community, like dr3a.eth, who constantly posts educational organic content on her social media. Even if non-financial, encouraging such guys, for example through collaboration posts, which will help them increase their audience, will be an excellent form of compensation that will motivate other people to also voluntarily promote the product. Semantic analysis of their posts and asking them for key metrics of their posts in order to understand their quantitative contribution will help identify a pool of such people.
By implementing such a compensation system, we can achieve a strong network effect.
The list of areas under study may be supplemented during the research process, but this will not affect the final $estimate in any way.
$Estimate and implementation time
The time spent on the first part of the project is 389 hours. The expected completion time for the remainder of the project is 291 hours. At 40 hours/week it will take approximately 7 weeks.
The general estimate can be viewed here: ENS Marketing Research Report Table - Google Sheets
I tried to segment the time spent as much as possible according to the areas of work performed.
Total personal compensation: $21,700.
Costs: $875.
Total amount requested: $22,500.
Transparency and public control
For reporting to the DAO, it is planned to use the following reporting formats:
Time spent report (real time);
Reports on the progress of work (bi-weekly);
Reports in Meta-Gov group calls (on request);
Receipts for expenses (at the time of purchasing a subscription).
I hope this is enough so that the DAO is always aware of what is happening within the project and can quickly respond to non-compliance with the application.
TL;DR
It is proposed to create a sheet of practical advice for those responsible for marketing ENS, using a structured and professional approach. Recommendations should not contradict the principles of web3 and are designed to solve the problem of declining interest, homogeneity of the audience, negative public image and speculative nature.
