Are we ready to scale up our advertising campaigns on Facebook and YouTube to reach 10+ million new viewers every month with the great news about Steem? Will Steemit please support our growth proposal here because of the crowdfunded advertising we have already done together?
This post attempts to follow the Crowdsourced Marketing Protocol: Ideas, Proposals and Projects guidelines found on @steemitblog written by @andrarchy and inspired by the first successful project: "Power-up Your Neighborhood - Introducing Sandbox".
Would you please join us in either watching the proposal video or reading about the growth proposal here because going forward with this growth proposal will help tens of millions of people EVERY MONTH find out about Steem on Facebook and YouTube through video ads?
MISSION
Our mission here is to continue and expand our video advertising campaigns promoting Steem on Facebook and on YouTube! Here is what we have already done together!
5000+ Upvotes = $5,000+ in Funding!
- Steem Video Ad #1 on Facebook and YouTube featuring 10 Reasons for $10 Steem in 10 Months at https://steemit.com/steemit/@jerrybanfield/steem-video-ad-1-on-facebook-and-youtube-featuring-10-reasons-for-usd10-steem-in-10-months resulting in $3,174.85 author rewards for advertising.
- Steem Video Ad #2 on Facebook + YouTube: Steemit is the #1 New Social Media and Blogging Website at https://steemit.com/steemit/@jerrybanfield/steem-video-ad-2-on-facebook-youtube-steemit-is-the-1-new-social-media-and-blogging-website resulting in $976.84 author rewards for advertising
- Steem Video Ad #3 Text and Script at https://steemit.com/steemit/@jerrybanfield/steem-video-ad-3-text-and-script resulting in $217.11 author rewards.
- Steem Video Ad #3 is Live on Facebook and YouTube at https://steemit.com/steem/@jerrybanfield/steem-video-ad-3-is-live-on-facebook-and-youtube resulting in $158.09 author rewards for advertising.
- Steem Video Ad 3 Gets 7,213 Likes in 48 Hours on Facebook at https://steemit.com/advertising/@jerrybanfield/steem-video-ad-3-gets-7-213-likes-in-48-hours-on-facebook with author rewards $317.65 for advertising.
- Steem Video Ad #3 Live in the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia at https://steemit.com/growth-proposal/@jerrybanfield/steem-video-ad-3-live-in-the-usa-uk-canada-and-australia with pending total payout of $149.41.
- SBD contribution by @cryptokeepr for $25.00.
- SBD contribution by @pretzelgirlsandy for $25.00.
- Steem contribution by @adamhays for $29.50.
Results from Video Ads 1, 2, and 3!
- Millions of Viewers Learn About Steem on Facebook and YouTube at https://steemit.com/advertising/@jerrybanfield/millions-viewers-learn-about-steem-on-facebook-and-youtube. Over 2 million people reached for about $3,000.
- Steem Facebook and YouTube Video Ad 2 Results at https://steemit.com/steemit/@jerrybanfield/steem-facebook-and-youtube-video-ad-2-results. Almost a million people reached for under $1,000.
- Video ad #3 is currently running with results we can see at https://www.facebook.com/jbanfield/videos/1517754641578040/ which are summarized in the screenshot below!
In summary, we have already given over $5,000 in author rewards on six posts to fund 3 video ads for Steem on Facebook and YouTube. 3+ million people have seen the ads since June 2, 2017 with Facebook and YouTube now having billed about $5,500 to show the ads. Track all ongoing funding and expenses at https://airtable.com/shrXuoYTnODWA0QG1.
TEAM MEMBERS
We can all participate in future ads by creating posts, making comments, curating, and maintaining our witness servers! Future ads will focus more on the community and less on me specifically because the first ads all needed to focus on promoting me to verify their effectiveness. With @jerrybanfield having 10,000+ followers within the first 90 days on Steem, we have clear proof the ads work to not only get new users to join Steem but also to bring those new users to whoever is featured in the ads. Hopefully the ads can help many new authors get started and existing authors continue to build a following!
With the funding of this growth project, our goal is to focus on bringing as many new users to Steem as possible and share the spotlight in the ads with anyone that is interested in participating from the Steemit founders to the developers, witnesses, authors, investors, and curators. Using a more diversified approach featuring interviews and deeper looks into our community, we can expect to bring more new authors, new curators, new investors and new witnesses to Steem!
For making the videos and doing the ads, I will continue produce the majority of the videos and continue do work to place the Facebook and YouTube ads because I already have done the work to make first, second, third, and often tenth impressions with over 1% of the population on earth which is about 100 million Facebook users and millions more on YouTube. In future ads funding by this growth proposal, I will send viewers to many different author profiles, posts, and resources developed like https://steemdb.com/ and eSteem.
If I need help with creating, analyzing, optimizing, and presenting the results from the ads, my friend @aarellanes will be available to assist me.
JUSTIFICATON
Why do this growth project?
Because advertising works, it works for the very top companies in the world to build their brand.
Apple is number one company in the world in terms of value, in terms of cash in the bank, and guess what?
Their advertising works.
I used to hate Apple, and after enough of their advertising, and enough of my friends converting to Apple, guess what?
I have an iPhone. My wife has an iPhone. I'm recording my videos on a Mac Pro, which I rented after buying an iMac and after buying a Mac laptop, even though I've used Windows for years.
Advertising works and it works really well. We want to tap into the power of advertising and we want to do a really good job with our ads the way Apple does.
When it comes to online advertising, I've got consistent proven results of doing an outstanding job getting a lot of results for a very low cost.
Here's that results summarized from a campaign I just ran on Facebook that we already funded for Steem: 1.9 million people on Facebook saw the ads we funded on just $2,351.20 of ads spent.
You can see the case study for this ad on this post "Millions of Viewers Learn About Steem on Facebook and YouTube!": https://steemit.com/advertising/@jerrybanfield/millions-viewers-learn-about-steem-on-facebook-and-youtube
On YouTube, when people are learning and looking for exactly what we have, they find the videos I've made because of our collaboration together.
Search for "#1 new blogging and social media network" and guess what?
You learn about Steemit right when you really wanted to learn about Steemit.
When you combine the two of these strategies, you get an incredible result.
ROADMAP
Here's my roadmap to combine it and execute an incredible online advertising strategy together for Steem.
Phase 1: Proof
In order for this to be valid, I need to show proof that I'm capable of doing this and that the community, all of us that are on Steem have a desire for this to be done. Why waste money on ads if there's no proof.
Here's the proof, proof that I do an outstanding job on the ads, and proof that we as a community really want advertising.
This is about 5,000 or so upvotes on five different posts I've made, which collectively, we have given me now about $5,000 to spend, because I agreed to spend all the author rewards on these for advertising on Facebook and YouTube. We've already given me $5,000.
I've already gotten some incredible results. Millions of people have learned about Steem for the first time, and for the second, third and fourth time after seeing my ads.
Here's the best of the results I can see after reviewing all of the data.
I started my ads on June 2nd, thanks to our funding on the post I'd just showed you.
Now, what have we got since then?
Some unbelievable things have happened since then.
The ad went live on June 2nd, along with the same video on my YouTube channel.
Now, you are welcome to call this a coincidence if you want to. I think many of us would agree when you combine all these data points that this is the result of a collective effort boosted by advertising.
Without all of our individual efforts, advertising wouldn't matter, but with all of our individual efforts, it helps a lot.
On June 2nd, the day the ad came out, the price of Steem was at $1.08.
As I turned up the ad spend and the ads went all over in the days following June 2nd, the Steem price, if it's a coincidence, just so happens to have gone up to the biggest market cap we've ever had within a week afterwards.
The trading volume, a week after the ads came out was the highest it’s been perhaps since Steem was ever released. With all of a sudden, Steem barely getting traded to blowing up to the highest it’s been.
Since that initial week or few weeks of release, the ad spend has continued to drop and drop again, until just recently, when I started some new ads. Just recently, there was a little price bump too.
Let's look at the daily post count now.
The daily post count hovering around 6,000 before the ad started. The ads go live and guess what?
Very soon, the post count goes through the roof.
When you combine all of these together that's fantastic results.
Sure, some people started posting because the price was higher, but many others started posting because they've never made an account before.
If you look at the account creation, it was pretty low before the ad started.
After the ad started, we have had almost double the users in just three months.
When I signed up in the middle to end of May, there were about 160,000 users on Steem. Today, we've got over 300,000 users on the Blockchain. The amount of new users has rapidly picked up after the ads went on.
Especially, you can see these 109 users on July 1, then in the days after the first ad go live, there's a ton of new signups, and we've consistently had huge days with thousands of users. One day, we had over 5,000 new users as people seeing these ads have signed up.
Now, I'm not saying the ads do it all by themselves, what I am saying, is that advertising multiplies all of the rest of our efforts.
Let's say you're trying to sell your mom on Steem, "Come on Mom, signup for Steem." She sees an ad for Steem on Facebook that I made, she googles and sees a couple of more ads on YouTube. Then, she comes back to you about it and asks about Steem again. She still doesn't make up her mind. She sees a bunch more of your Facebook posts about Steem, and then she sees another ad her friend shared a week later. Your mom finally signs up and starts asking you to upvote all of her posts.
That's how advertising multiples our existing efforts.
When we've heard about something for the first time like Steem, and then our friend tells us about it on top of that, it's much more likely to result in a conversion to becoming a new user. It's much more likely when someone who's already signed up for Steem sees an ad, that will end up going back in using the website again when maybe we forgot about it before that.
I've seen all these results in all the comments on my profiles, telling me these ads work.
Phase one therefore, is finished.
With phase one finished, that brings us directly to phase two, which is fund.
Phase 2: Funding
For 2017 and 2018, would we like to reach10+ million people every single month with the amazing news about Steem?
Here's exactly how much that will cost.
For 27,000 Steem a month, I'm absolutely certain I can get ads out on YouTube and Facebook to 10+ million people every single month.
That is as easy as this:
25,000 plus a month of the Steem will be used for Facebook and Google ad budget while up to 2,000 Steem will be reserved for related expenses such as fees to change the Steem to USD, contract labor for help with creating and optimizing the ads, help with video editing, travel to film an interview on location, etc.
In maintaining accountability to the community, the entire budget will be available to review at all times at https://airtable.com/shrXuoYTnODWA0QG1 along with presentations in weekly reports showing what return we are getting on the ads.
Phase 3: Viral
Once this project gets going with tens of millions of new people every month learning about Steem from these video ads, we’re absolutely going to go viral beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
I think we will be number one website blogging platform and we will get into that in a minute.
The question is, how do we know when to pause and end the funding for this project?
When user growth is too fast to handle, then we will need to pause the ads. When I spend the budget I will plan for that. In other words, I will not just dump all of it out immediately, but if the user growth gets too fast, I will slow down the ads I’ve got and wait until problems are fixed.
DESCRIPTION OF SUPPORT
We are asking for financial support from the Steemit team as described above in the Roadmap, "Phase 2: Fund," which is 27,000 Steem a month because we want a budget that will allow us to reach 10+ million people every month YouTube and Facebook.
We will also need technical support from the Steemit team as explained below.
Adding Google Analytics and Facebook pixel to signup
Please give us a Google Analytics account and a Facebook pixel to use because if we can track signups directly through the ads we can make the ads work way better.
When Facebook and Google know which exact user is most likely to sign up for an account, which is reported to them through Google Analytics and respectively through a Facebook pixel, then Facebook and Google do a really good job expanding that and figuring out of all the users they have which ones are most likely to be the most enthusiastic future Steem users.
With the simple Google Analytics and Facebook pixel installation on the signup page we can track that.
SCHEDULE
Phase 1: Proof (June 2017 - August 2017)
Done!
Phase 2: Fund and Track (September 2017 - September 2018)
Google Analytics and Facebook pixel installed along with new ads EVERY WEEK and reports WEEKLY. While the funding request is for a year here, we are welcome to adjust it to more or less as needed!
Phase 3: Self-Sustaining Viral Growth(2019 - )
While I think we are already getting great viral growth with the ads we are running and the work we are already doing to share with friends and family, the question is when will our growth go so far that it becomes uncomfortable and we would want to pace ourselves a bit more? I think by 2019 we will have so much momentum we will not want to keep spending money on ads because at that point we will be getting tens of millions of new users every month.
Are we ready to reach the next level?
Will we invest in being the very best, the number one among all digital currencies in terms of having outstanding advertising showing why the average person who knows nothing about cryptocurrency should start?
Will we invest in building a social network that becomes the number one social network in the world where you actually get paid for what you contribute instead of just helping them be the most valuable social network and company in the world.
Will we become the top website to start a blog on where it’s just as easy as making a post and getting your mom to invest a little bit, and then having her upvote your post to start earning a little bit with a new blog?
Will we become the number one community in the world for people to collaborate and build projects that make a difference in this world?
Will we invest in being that number one difference that our world desperately needs as we face unimaginable problems today?
What if Steem is the simple difference we’re looking for? The next step we take in advertising it, will make that number one difference reach millions more people every month.
We have a choice today. How do we go forward? This is a choice we make together.
Would you join us today in upvoting this post on Steemit because each of our upvotes shows the Steemit team how much we want this? All author rewards from this post will go to video ad #3!
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk