[READY TO VOTE] Marketing Support mission request

Delegate Mission Request Summary:

This mission aims to provide marketing support for projects within the Optimism ecosystem, including projects with approved grants in previous governance seasons. This mission request provides funds for the management/coordination of marketing as well as incentives for the actual marketing activities.

S5 Intent Please list the Intent your Request aligns with here: Intent 3 Improve the Consumer Experience.

Proposing Delegate: Gonna.eth

Proposal Tier: Eagle

Baseline grant amount: 170K OP [40k for program management; 130k for marketing activities]

Recommendation for 6 months of work and breakdown:

  • 40k for program management: which may include curation of marketing requests, the setting of milestones, and ongoing collaboration with projects

  • 130k to incentivize marketing activities: This amount will be used to incentivize community marketers to complete marketing tasks.

Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: One

Submit by: To be set by Grants Council

Selection by: To be set by Grants Council

Start date: To be determined upon approval

Completion date: within 6-9 months

Specification:

This program aims to provide much needed marketing support to projects in the Collective. By kickstarting this initiative the Collective can:

  • Provide a point of contact for projects in the ecosystem looking for marketing support

  • Partner with promising projects to develop and execute on a marketing plan

  • Foster a systematic, fair, and measurable approach to marketing for selected projects

How will this Delegate Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

This initiative aligns with Intent #3 by structuring marketing efforts, aligning project goals with market needs, and developing marketing campaigns to enhance consumer experiences. The added synergy of supporting projects with approved grants will further reinforce the community’s impact and reach.

What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?

  1. Ability to build processes and structures that will facilitate an efficient and effective marketing for deserving projects
  2. Ability to clearly define and package marketing work along with associated goals for community marketers to execute on
  3. Ability to match packaged marketing opportunities to those in the community with the right skillset to execute

How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?

  • Grants and ecosystem projects have a place to apply for marketing support
  • Packaged marketing opportunities available for community marketers to execute
  • Marketing Opportunities are actively being executed by community marketing groups

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

  • Number of packaged marketing opportunities available for community marketers
  • Number of packaged marketing opportunities executed on
  • Feedback from project teams.

Engagement with Grant-as-a-Service Provider: No

Has anyone other than the Proposing Delegate contributed to this Mission Request?

Consulted Jesse, lead of the Optimism Ambassador program, discussed marketing approaches in the blockchain space with industry experts like Portia Roberts and shared the proposal with Jack Anorak for feedback before publication.

20 Likes

This would be super helpful for builders which have protocols ready but no marketing exp, have burned through a bunch in the past across direct ads, garbage people who pretended to know what they were doing, rewards. Having a party thats able to handle this reliably would be super useful.

3 Likes

I would love to see support for this! There are so many talented marketers in the ecosystem looking to contribute - I think a match making program re: project + marketer could be a huge leg up for product-led teams that don’t have the resources to hire out full time support. Agency support can be so expensive, and take a long time to see value from. If we can get marketers connected with projects who are already integrated in the community it could be a HUGE win for smaller projects.

8 Likes

Fantastic initiative. I think this would be a great replacement for the remarkable amount of wasteful spending that’s been done to date on uncoordinated marketing projects (I speak not just for Optimism but crypto in general).

This also fits neatly into the broader notion of making Optimism the best place to launch a new project – it’s one more avenue of assistance that we can lean on our resources as a larger org to help with, work that should see a solid return through new apps that bring activity to the Superchain.

6 Likes

Echoing @amanda and @jackanorak’s points: coordinated, goal-oriented marketing can provide projects with much-needed visibility in a noisy space, but many teams aren’t resourced to build out in-house marketing functions or partner with agencies. Matching marketing skills to project needs would help address these challenges. For determining impact, it might be helpful to also look at how the marketing impacted the projects who leveraged the support (i.e. did engagement increase following the marketing? did page views spike? were new users onboarded?) - these success metrics could be something sourced for during the project feedback phase.

1 Like

Great idea. Agree with @jackanorak 's take on this.
In addition, this would be very helpful to many of the Season 4 Missions + many others!
We need better coordination on this. Brilliant

1 Like

This is a great idea. I agree that ecosystem projects need support in this area. That said, I also want to flag that it requires a tactful approach because projects have a marketing team in place and they might not be open to third parties airdropping copy pasta marketing strategies that may not produce desired results (more users).

It would be interesting to see these marketing service providers focus on projects that generate sequencer fees.

IMO this timeline doesn’t allow sufficient time to execute well. This might get caught up in strategizing, (which marketers love to do), recruiting, liaising, and fall flat on execution.

Many of these projects have an outstanding presence online and their native marketing teams may not be welcoming to third parties introducing a new roadmap/ strategies. Would you consider reframing this so that it targets applicants who can add value beyond ideas and strategy? i.e. copy pasta marketing strategies :-1: applicants who can add value through an established following/ userbase? :+1:

I can see this step being very time consuming; recruiting talent and mediating between service providers and projects would take a couple of weeks imo, planning and execution another couple of weeks. This could limit the number of projects these services are available to.

In this format I can see 3-6 projects receiving these services. Marketers might be inclined to target the projects with a large social following/ to piggy back on their already established online presence resulting in minimal value add.

For context: I have over 10 years marketing experience working in tourism, crypto and government entities (Social Manager, content creator, CMO, advisor). My experience with contracting outside marketing services results in little impact because they mostly aim to piggy back on established presence instead of adding value by targeting untapped markets and onboarding new users.

I was working on a similar strategy and drafted the following ideas:

  • Reports comparing existing web traffic, engagement rate, conversions vrs results from support services with an emphasis on traceable increase in platform users.

  • Generate (incentivized) user feedback for projects via onchain marketing tooling like deform.

  • Onchain attenstations from relevant stakeholders at projects benefitting from marketing services.

TL/DR on suggested improvements:

  • Heavy emphasis on increasing users over providing strategy
  • Rely on onchain results for accountability and impact measurement
  • Allow more time for execution
  • Reduce program management rewards in lieu of RPGF consideration
  • Increase reward amounts for people/ teams executing the work

These revisions can help ensure successful execution instead of another grant for flat footed marketing execution.

1 Like

It is up to the mission applicants to define what they want to cover. This is a synergy suggestion.

I know this is why I requested a short time. Usually time = expenses, I want to see effective people on this task

Up to the applicants what they want to cover but I agree here.

6 projects was mi scope when I wrote this proposal, but again it’s up to the applicants how many they want to do.

It is up to the applicants how they restrict piggybacking and create a good standard.

Thank you for your feedback it’s been very useful. I suggest anyone looking to apply to consider @Carlosjmelgar comments if this proposal is approved by the token house.

Keep in mind that if this mission request passes, many teams will apply for it. Leaving it as open as it gives the grants council (reviewers of applications) a good way to distinguish between professionals and “flat footed marketing” teams.

5 Likes

Great initiative! There are committed and talented marketers in the ecosystem ready and able to help projects in dire need of marketing support. Especially for the lesser known projects in the space, this initiative would help these projects reach a broader audience of builders and users.

6 Likes

Hi all - Blake here! I’m the Co-Founder of Myosin.xyz, the ultimate marketing network.

We’re structured as a DAO comprised of a global community of highly vetted marketers, covering everything from GTM to Community, Content, Design, Growth, PR & Partnerships, DevRel, Product, and more.

Our purpose is to help web3 projects, blockchains, and brands scale and usher in a web3-enabled future, and we do this as both an agency and product studio.

My co-founder Simon has been chatting with Emmanuel since DevConnect in Istanbul, and I recently caught up with Amanda and am excited for us to hopefully apply for this mission request.

We are currently working with the XRPL ecosystem and accelerator teams to support the Ripple ecosystem, and we’d love to do the same with OP ecosystem teams! This mission request is right up our alley, and we think we’d be a great fit when the time is right.

For now, happy to answer any Qs, and I look forward to becoming more active and getting involved in OP Governance!

You can learn more about us on our website, and we also have a great explainer video about ourselves that you can find right here, produced by our very own Design Guild: Myosin.xyz - Membership

Can’t wait!
Blake

2 Likes

This initiative would definitely help amazing projects get the reach that they deserve. My one concern, like @jackanorak stated, is the time to completion. Between discovering the appropriate projects to getting up to speed on the technical stack 6 months will most likely be too short of a window to get effective results. Marketing for Web3 projects is nuanced and technical and effective Marketing programs will dive into the weeds of projects to ensure effective communication.

Perhaps there is a phased approach and key deliverables for each phase to ensure not only increased reach through Marketing but increased active and engaged users. It is relatively easy to increase the reach for a product but to have returning customers that are engaged and active with the product is a different story.

One other thing to consider is moving this out of Eagle Tier to a lower tier for more inclusivity. I don’t know many Marketing projects that have approached grants in the ecosystem and they would automatically not be included.

3 Likes

This is an excellent proposal, by opening a marketing opportunity diverse talents could add to the collective of optimism. It would help us position ourselves more and continue growing. I hope it can be approved and I will be attentive to collaborate in whatever way I can.

1 Like

Marketing is very important in the Web3 space, especially considering how young this industry is which is why this is an important proposal. Will there be key metrics required of projects for the 6-9 months duration of the mission to track how effective this grant is/will be?

2 Likes

Coordinating marketing efforts further strengthens the vision of the Superchain. Often times, marketing requirements come in waves and teams tend to over or understaff relative to their demand depending on user inflow and events. Having an agile and educated team that can contribute to different projects within the Optimism ecosystem will undoubtedly be beneficial from an efficiency and cost perspective.

This is great and very much needed, especially for lean teams with smaller budgets

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

5 Likes

I am an Optimism delegate [Agora - OP Voter] with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

3 Likes

this is a great initiative. @katie is spot on!

We are an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and we believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

4 Likes

I think this is a good mission. I have a little trouble conceptualizing concretely how teams would apply for this mission, so I think it would help to give a couple of examples of what an application for this might look like.

I also am curious why you chose Ember tier rather than fledgling.

I am an Optimism delegate [Blockchain@USC] with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like

This a great proposal. The involvement of the community and expert feedback is a good touch. Interested to see how it unfolds and impacts the ecosystem!

1 Like

The Grants Council has opened early submissions as an Indication of Interest for this mission request here

For your application to be considered, the Mission request must pass the Token House vote on February 14th. Submissions will not be considered if a Mission Request is not approved on the 14th.

1 Like