Cryptopostman interviewed Alexander Khvoinitsky, a marketer from crypto startups, as well as the founder of PITCH-TECH consulting company, thanks to which several startups got into Y Combinator (a well-known startup accelerator), about how marketing works and what is the way to the industry
Tell us about your path in crypto marketing?
My path in cryptomarketing began, probably, in 2016. Then, when I went straight into cryptocurrency. Respectively, even earlier, in fact, in the 2014t year I was introduced to bitcoin. I had our own SMM agency, and we did every cool merch. Means teas are different, all in a steep package. We made the packaging ourselves hung up. Well, that is the premium gift segment. All sorts of teacoffees. Ordered them in Southeast Asia. A friend lived with me there. They scammed Western Union, they scammed wild commissions, 10-15-20% each. So, well, I mean for the entire Pipeline there, until it changes, something else. Well and
Then he says to me: “Listen, but let’s be short, you buy a cue ball, and I transfer bitcoin. And I say: “What is it?” And he’s like, “Listen, Here you go”. He explained to me, well, in general, in the 14th year, few people had a cue ball interesting. Well, in general, but the bitcoin locale existed. That’s why we calmly bought on Local Bitcoins. I translated for him, he cashed there on “Local Bitcoins”. And just like that, he brought the goods to us. Respectively…
well, we did something about this for several months, and then we have a little direction has changed. We have moved away from all this elite merchandise. Well somehow screwed up. Here, respectively, in 2016, at the end, a friend writes to me, asks: “Are you a bitcoin millionaire by any chance?” To which I answer him: “Well, actually, no, but why, could it be so?” And so he tells me about in fact, that it is not only a means of conveying values, but also a speculative asset, on which, in principle, you can make good money. But since, according to him, it is already too late to enter bitcoin, it was on that moment, 2016, he told me: “Try the air, this is a new gun.” But actually at first I took the classical broadcast. And he meant ATH, which just forex use. I took the classical broadcast, and then chethen he looked himself, studied and realized that no, not that, something shorter, you need to take ATH, and took ATH, and sold this classic. By the way, even a little picked up there. Well, not the point, these are trifles. In general, I took the air at the end of the 16th, as once in December, at the latest, or maybe even at the beginning of the 17th. Definitely not remember. Of course, you can look at the stock exchange, but this is superfluous. Accordingly, I took the ether, at the beginning of the 17th in March, the ether already cost 60 dollars.
I sold some part, a small one. Just feel like it or no. I didn’t believe it, honestly, because, well, I took $ 5 each, and now it costs 60. Well, what kind of nonsense? Sold in the same way to the cue ball, the cue ball to the locale. From local – cached. Received money on the card. And I was just unrealistically impressed, in moment, that is, joy knew no bounds. Well, naturally began to sink much deeper into the crypto market, also picked up various promising coins and not so much, as it turned out. But mostly promising. None ICO did not enter, because I already understood how to study a product, a project, and, probably, even then I saw that most of these ICOs are some kind of incomprehensible scam and fundraising. And this is “we will build an edge helicopter for moving opinions from planet to planet, just give us money.” Roughly like this, everything looked, so of course I didn’t go in in any case. Well actually I already knew the crypt quite well, and by the end of the 17th year, even before global decline, let’s say, on such a normal growth, I thought about that I want to join some crypto project, because in I have been in marketing and digital marketing in general since 2006. That is, I know in general, all the instruments and evolved with them. There is this clear confirmation. I decided to find myself. Actually, I started looking and somewhere in the middle of the 18th year and after a long search came to various projects, called and made offers. And when I went inside, I realized that it was, well, fierce scam That is, there will be no shit, it’s just taking money from the population. And for to do this, it was necessary to build a whole system, product infrastructure, what I stupidly didn’t want to take on, at least because it’s a scam, and how maximum, because it makes sense to do something useless when there is something that’s useful. So in the middle of the 18th year, well, almost already in the month of August I found a crypto project, the European Exchange. That is, the guys already had product, and they needed marketing. And they called me actually marketing director. I worked there for six months, practically nothing we never launched from marketing, due to the fact that investors have already fucked up to pay for product development and began to stop various marketing budget. Well, in general, in February the project was closed. That is investors stopped giving any money at all. CEO assured everyone that everything will be fine. And in the end I still worked there for a month and a half without money. And after that, in fact, he also took it, got ready and left from there. And met the founder of the Crypto Bank. Actually, joined the team as Marketing Director. They had then only the product. But he was already working and everything was fine.
That is, you just had to come and start advertising it. Actually, in April 19, I joined the team and started actually achieve some success, that is, literally in a month. From zero users, we have 30,000 users. We have begun quietly capture the CIS with a growth step of X3 per month. Well actually my whole career in Crypto Bank led to the fact that in Crypto Bank 400,000 users appeared. He became very recognizable in the territory CIS. Well, and also very well known in the Central Africa, India, Turkey and some Asia. This is how her career started cryptomarketing.
2 What’s important in cryptomarketing work?
The most important thing in building a marketing concept for crypto projects is understanding who needs your product in the first place. Without any let’s just say, people who, you know for sure that they need your product, or at least in theory it can be useful to them, to build a marketing strategy is completely pointless. That is, the first thing to do is to start with understanding who needs the product. Further, this understanding is necessary check, that is, check the hypothesis and understand how much the response is audience. And only after testing this hypothesis, when really a properly selected audience, as it turned out, needs to be built, to build specifically what points of contact, communication channels, how it’s all done right and so on. Because knowing to whom, you are everything you convey, it is much easier for you to convey the target meanings.
3 How to build bridges with media?
This means that relations with the media should begin to be built according to the strategy. That is, if a strategy is chosen, that we immediately start yelling from all the irons about our product, if our task, for example, is to quickly get there on IDO, we already have a finished product, and we just want to make some noise, here’s how once from the very beginning and it is worth building relationships with the media. That is, how can you start building? Well, in the crypt, of course, there are a bunch of different options, from paid releases, to just an insider journalist who will pick up all the new topics, stories about the company. Well it’s when the company is already established. Well, there, respectively, there are all sorts of menshens and etc. That is, start with press releases in major publications, paid, this is absolutely meaningless, because in the crypt now, as they say, any fool can, just come and deposit money and get a press release.
But at the same time, he will have a “paid” plate. And he don’t give a fuck about nobody really not really interesting. The best way to communicate with the media is through contributors, people who themselves write articles for major publications, you can contact them, let’s say, motivate them a little, give them a topic, a brief and get a cool analytical article, with one or two paragraphs about the product directly, which is woven precisely into analytical article. Due to the cost much lower than that of paid press releases, it turns out to be as comprehensive as possible, as natively, and this is probably considered the most adequate touch at the first steps to the avernos of the product. That is, you just need to fill it with menschens, well, eh look further at the situation. First the journalists themselves will begin come if there are any high-profile stories, really product, powerful, which can change the market, but also a little sometimes throw up paid press releases on mega-big, something like some Telegraph. If crypto marketing is considered.
How to build a marketing plan?
The hardest part of building a marketing plan is probably synchronize with the product plan. Because grocery development, well, and a marketing plan are 2 things that have to go synchronously. At least in our fast dynamic developing the world. Therefore, before building a marketing strategy, you need to clearly understand that the product strategy is really built, works, and that product updates will be released in a timely manner. Thus, it will be possible to bind, which will be constantly update our product accordingly. And, of course, build in parallel the processes of casting traffic, well, also for some really normal events. That is, the most literate, probably the hardest thing to sync with the product because you’re there you don’t sync with the product, but rather with the product team. If a everything is cool in the team and everything is synchronous initially, then no there are no difficulties in building a marketing plan, well, if you really a specialist, you understand what kind of product, what audience contact and so on. Well, that is, if with the grocery team in product plan has troubles, then the rating plan will also go constantly, and you will get some kind of improvisation instead of a clear planning.
The crypto industry segment is currently more interesting for the general audience is GameFi. Now the new GameFi hype. You can say 2022 is the year of GameFy because the previous one was the year of nft and even more the early twentieth was the year of DeFi. And right now, the twenty-second is like this hybrid year of GameFi. I don’t know how long this hype will last. Literally there, in December of last year, it seemed that this was some a new type of boom, super and generally a gap. Now having worked even on one of such, I understand that everything is very unstable, everything is very incomprehensible. illogical there are basically no cool players in this market who really come out with a gaming product and immediately collect specific money in order to people immediately started playing with their nft heroes or nft items. BUT people basically collect like we will do right now, make a super toy with help that you can . But just give us 10 million, we don’t have anything yet, and we will sit here sawing and soon let’s just let it out. Most GameFi projects are like this now. And with high probability by spring, probably, if common sense wins as they say, and the hype does not have time to gain momentum, then people will rather everything, switch from GameFi to something more serious, more structural, for example, web3 protocols and the development of web3 in general. That is GameFi now this is such a local hype, which can develop into global. And, nevertheless, there is something more interesting, which is more fundamental and even for the mass market it has, let’s say, significance.
Meeting by CRYPTOPOSTMAN