Targeted Marketing: How to Sell Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency to the Masses | Hacked: Hacking Finance

According to recent data from data management platform Lotame, advertisers have abandoned their usual broad-stroke marketing efforts in favour of more specific methods.

The ‘parent’ demographic once ranked as the highest possible target an advertiser could aim for – get the parents and you get the entire household. But that’s changed in recent years, and advertisers now aim for ‘advanced demographics’.

Such advanced demographic markers vary wildly, and advertising spending has been re-allocated to reflect newly identified buyer groups.

This has seen advertisers increase their spending by 451% to attract ‘animal lovers’. One advertiser increased its spending 98% to target the hispanic population – the largest racial minority in the U.S. Others boosted their budgets by various amounts in order to snare millennials (32%) and ‘young Gen-X’ (29%)

The Problem with Blockchain and Crypto Marketing?

If advertisers can see the wisdom in laser-targeted marketing, why shouldn’t blockchain marketers take the same route?

In my experience, most current blockchain marketing is stuck on a small scale. The general public is not being marketed to. Instead, PR is mostly directed towards other people already in the space, such as journalists (No, Ms. Xhu, I can’t publish an ad for your new coin).

I went to the discord server of a prominent altcoin recently, and the ‘marketing’ channel was full of coordinated attempts to ride the coat-tails of prominent twitter personalities and their tweets. ‘This tweet’s getting traction…jump on it and promote our coin!’

Marketing efforts are directed at ICO reviewers, YouTube personalities and cryptocurrency news outlets. In other words, marketers are only doing enough to get noticed by people who are already here. Most of this is done with the simple goal of making it successfully out of the ICO stage – like an independent movie producer pulling every dirty trick they can just to get a strong opening.

Can Targeted Marketing Help the Crypto Space?

As things stand, the default sales pitch of Bitcoin and/or cryptocurrency is that it has the potential to bring down the banksters, revolutionize the financial system, and put financial control in the hands of the people.

Maybe I’m not the best salesman, because when I explain it to people they rarely display the kind of enthusiasm described in the field-manual.

My point is not everyone wants to be a revolutionary – or even a libertarian. Rather than market the full terrifying potential of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to one and all, wouldn’t it be wiser to break it up into chunks and spread it around various advanced demographics?

Advanced Demographics of the Crypto Space?

Well, the animal lovers demo might already be sewn up by Cryptokitties; and it seems like Dentacoin has dentists covered for now.

But what about the demographic difference between the young and old? Rich and poor? Can cryptocurrency serve working class people more than middle class people? We know Bitcoin is adopted by people desperate to avoid taxes, but so too is it used by those who give to charity.

To push the point further, one can imagine immortal enemies Alex Jones and George Soros being equally enthusiastic about cryptocurrency, but for radically different reasons.

I suspect the early battles in the blockchain revolution will be won in the front end of the shop, through careful targeting of the everyday needs of specific individuals. The internet didn’t spread to everyone in equal time – its outreach never exceeded the applicability it held for whatever individual was next in line to use it.

The goal of cryptocurrency marketers must be to find those applications in the real world and magnify them to such an extent that they can’t be ignored.

Disclaimer: The author owns Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading.

Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Greg Thomson

Greg Thomson is a full-time crypto writer and digital nomad. He eats ICOs for breakfast and bleeds altcoins. Wherever he lays his public key is his home.

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