Proposal: Amazon Advertising

[grams]

Bitcart
Amazon Advertising​

https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Amazon-Advertising

Bitcart has hit a milestone by completing the development of v4.0 this week with a launch date set for this Friday, 25th of August. This enters Bitcart into Phase two of our Roadmap with Dash which is to scale up. We are currently trading in the region of $100,000 per month. We aim to increase the volume of orders and number of Bitcart users by implementing version 4.0. Phase two will automate much of Bitcart allowing streamlined purchases and more Dash to be transacted. To accommodate for the ever growing demand of Bitcart and Dash we have decided to run an advertising and marketing campaign. This will commence in September and run until December 2017.

Dash have exclusivity on Bitcart meaning that any promotion of Bitcart will directly benefit Dash. This benefits the Dash ecosystem by requiring people to adopt Dash in order to be able to shop on Amazon with 15% discount. The entirety of Bitcart’s assets and capital is stored in Dash. This dedication to Dash has lead to Bitcart’s decision to not trade any profit it makes. Therefore Dash remains in the ecosystem. Our cashflow shows 3-years income, all of which will be in Dash and all wages will be paid in Dash as a company policy.

Utilising digital and print promotional methods it will be vital for Bitcart to target not only Amazon customers but Dash users too. Dash has exclusivity on Bitcart so it is the only cryptocurrency that is accepted. Crypto exchanges where Dash is sold would be an ideal location for the online promotion of Bitcart. Analysing alternate Dash touch points would also present opportunity for Bitcart promotion where appropriate. In relation to the Amazon market segment, the amount of target market research and analysis required would be relative to the size of the market itself. A budget for market research will reveal more about this demographic’s behaviour.



Expected Outcome: To advertise Dash as a service to purchase on Amazon with 15% off. The outcome of this is to turnover of more than $100,000 equivalent in purchases with Dash per month/ $1.2 million per year for this service and thus increasing exposure and adoption for Dash which has exclusivity on Bitcart.



Total Budget Request: 117 Dash for 3 months (performance-based)


Bitcart Cashflow 2017 - 2019


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Amazon Demographic
Approximately 60% of households in the United States have Amazon Prime memberships and 82% of this number earn over $112,000 per year. Customers are therefore highly valuable for Bitcart and Dash.

https://www.recode.net/2017/6/8/15759354/amazon-prime-low-income-discount-piper-jaffray-demographics



Online Marketing Strategies
Online channels include Exchange banners and newsletters, Social Media strategies, Media Outlets. Keyword Strategies, Search Engine Optimization methods and Paid online advertising.

Exchanges
The largest crypto exchange place supporting Dash is Bithumb. There is a pending Bitcart and Dash advertising campaign which will be hosted on Bithumb. Because of this, we would prefer to use the budget for other means. Other large crypto exchanges trading Dash include Kraken, Shapeshift, Poloniex and Bittrex. Research and investigation into these alternative exchange places supporting Dash could lead to more promotional opportunities, albeit not a priority for now.

Media
Coindesk are the largest media outlet reporting on blockchain-only news. Online banner advertising can be purchased for up to $5,000 for 3 months and special advertising can be acquired for amounts over this.

Forbes magazine have the largest readership out of any mainstream media outlet covering blockchain news, with millions of online and printed readers globally. Bitcart CEO was featured in Forbes in an interview with senior editor Laura Shin announcing Dash exclusivity. Given the regular coverage and kind of readership, Forbes magazine would be an excellent outlet for an advertising campaign. The Korean market is the largest for Dash and increasingly for Bitcart. Forbes Korea is the cheapest Forbes to advertise. Back page advertising for one issue is $25,000. Bitcart have a partner in Seoul, Korea who is assisting us there. Bitcart's second largest market has always been South Korea and since we exclusively switched to Dash in April 2017 all our customers adopted Dash for it's low rate compared to bitcoin, which suffered high margins at the time.

SEO
Utilising methods of Search Engine Optimisation such as adwords, keywords / longtails and meta tags will be essential in exposing Bitcart to an ever increasing target audience. We have partnered with Google EU Headquarters based in Dublin, Ireland, who work with high potential advertising partners in the EU, to assist us. This resource will be invaluable for insights and customer behaviour. From this we can gain a deeper understanding in the behaviour of Amazon shoppers and create good content and keywords based on this.

Keywords
Amazon ranked 9th in ad spend on the non-branded grocery keyword group, spending $134,000 from June 2016 through May 2017, while ranking 9th in clicks with a 2.8% click share. Whole Foods ranked 18th in ad spend with $51,000 spent on the keyword group over the last 12 months—a decrease from the $57,000 the company spent on the same keywords from June 2015-May 2016—and 19th in clicks with a 1.2% click share.

https://www.adgooroo.com/resources/blog/grocery-paid-search-ads-amazon-whole-foods/


This market in groceries will soon be dominated by Amazon given it’s investment in this industry and its interest to disrupt.


Offline Advertising
Prior to acquiring Wholefoods in 2017, Amazon were among the smallest advertisers in the grocery market. This trend will predictably change with their $13.5 billion acquisition into the grocery industry which is valued at approximately $700 billion. We will research opportunities to advertise in an industry that Amazon will undoubtedly conquer for years to come. Targeting the grocery industry, specifically Wholefoods and competitors to Wholefoods in Seattle, is a priority. Example of supermarket ads are trolley’s, floor advertising alone aisles, external advertising. We will explore every option and dedicate a budget to making a big impact in at least one supermarket in Seattle to show 15% savings when you shop with Dash.


Overall
The exposure is worth hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea and Seattle with the aim to shop on Amazon with 15% using Dash exclusively. This will increase the perceived value of Dash and will drive interest to Dash for Amazon customers.


Further Resources

Bitcart Development Roadmap

Slack Channel

Twitter

Screenshots// bitcart v4.0

 

[Stealth923]

@grams

You say in your proposal " Dash has exclusivity on Bitcart so it is the only cryptocurrency that is accepted."
In your trello board of things to do "Add Ethereum Payment method for selling gc" - please explain????

https://trello.com/b/xAiOedAi/bitcart-40-roadmap

 

[Super8]

@grams

You say in your proposal " Dash has exclusivity on Bitcart so it is the only cryptocurrency that is accepted."
In your trello board of things to do "Add Ethereum Payment method for selling gc" - please explain????

https://trello.com/b/xAiOedAi/bitcart-40-roadmap

Well spotted @Stealth923

.... I look forward to their answer. The proposal still looks very promising tho..

 

[grams]

@grams

You say in your proposal " Dash has exclusivity on Bitcart so it is the only cryptocurrency that is accepted."
In your trello board of things to do "Add Ethereum Payment method for selling gc" - please explain????

https://trello.com/b/xAiOedAi/bitcart-40-roadmap

Sorry, this roadmap was created before we partnered with Dash. Since May, Dash secured a 12 month exclusivity deal with Bitcart and we deleted Ethereum from our payment methods. We used to accept Bitcoin and Ethereum before the exclusivity. We no longer have Ethereum or Bitcoin on our platform. I've removed the card from the Trello to prevent confusion. Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[Dashmaximalist]

awesome stuff , are you a competition to purse.io if not try to beat them at their game, they are so slow to adapt and evolve ...cheers

 

[grams]

awesome stuff , are you a competition to purse.io if not try to beat them at their game, they are so slow to adapt and evolve ...cheers

We were founded in 2015 after initially selling on the Purse platform and finding lots of problems with their service. Now they refuse to accept Dash. The community made attempts to convince them. Now I say we don't try and fight them. Instead we will replace them.

You can find an interview of mine where I go into the difference between Purse and Bitcart and how I think we will overtake them:

 

[grams]

 

[greenspeed]

Re: Bithumb - @grams have you seen this at bravenewcoin DOT com (sorry, link posting limited)

Fourth largest Bitcoin exchange. Bithumb, hacked for billions of Won

The largest bitcoin and ether exchange in South Korea by volume, Bithumb, was recently hacked. Monetary losses from compromised accounts have started to surface, and are quickly reaching into the billions of won.

With a reported 75.7% share of the South Korean bitcoin market volume, Bithumb is one of the five largest bitcoin exchanges in the world and hosts over 13,000 bitcoins worth of trading volume daily, or roughly 10 percent of the global bitcoin trade.

 

[grams]

Fair point. Nonetheless it's a lot of people coming into Dash in South Korea and they will want somewhere to spend it. I see amazon.com as one of the most useful places to do so.

 

[grams]

Day 2

 

[grams]

Day 3: Video Update Big Annoucement

Thanks to everyone who's voted and given feedack. This feedback is invaluable to us improving our service. Today around midnight Pacific time we will launch Bitcart v4.0 Beta for you to try.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Okay, fair enough, but I thought you also flirted with pivx.. or was that before May?

 

[grams]

Thanks for the reply. Bitcart and Dash have made an exclusivity agreement in May. We are constantly in talks with Dash core about advancing this agreement.

 

[5kmi]

I would love to see Bitcart advance but why is there so much focus on increasing advertising when orders aren't even being fulfilled for current patrons? I placed an order 5 days ago now and have not received any GCs or a refund. I've now send 3 emails in the past 3 days, only the first one was answered, and all that was said was "sorry for the delay." I requested a refund yesterday and again today and have still not gotten any response. The website says GCs within 24 hours, if this is not true maybe that line should be removed from the site as to not mislead potential customers. I have cancelled my order via the link provided in the confirmation email. Please send me back my Dash if you can't provide GCs.

Update: 6 days now. No communication, no refund, no GCs.

Update 2: 11 days and I have received ~1/3 of my order.

Update 3: End of day 11, one more installment. Have received ~1/2 of my order now.

Update 4: day 12, have received 99% of order. I'm glad it finally worked out but sure wish communication was clearer and processing was faster.

 

[joemoraca]

Have you ever provided an update on this proposal? Like how the funds were actually spent and how it impacted your business and what it may have done for Dash.

 

[Beru]

Thanks to do the follow up, Joe

 

[grams]

Have you ever provided an update on this proposal? Like how the funds were actually spent and how it impacted your business and what it may have done for Dash.

Thanks for your question, Joe. This is a personal passion of mine as my first startup and exclusive partnership with Dash. Bitcart is where it all began for me, so I am only too happy to discuss it!

We placed a proposal to the network in August to do a marketing and advertising campaign in Seoul, Korea and Seattle, USA. We completed the first phase of R&D immediately after our first round of the proposal was accepted by the Masternode holders, and my graphic designer and I flew out to Korea in September to conduct market research. Our trip was very productive as we contracted a project manager local to Seoul who could consult with us and speak the language. We met the VP of and the head of Marketing of Bithumb, the largest exchange in the world and we made an initial agreement to begin advertising on their platform. This was followed up with an initial agreement by them to list Dash on their sister exchange Bitholic in Singapore so we achieved more than what we went out there to do.

Since we came back, I've been to the US once on a separate trip and collected some market research on Wholefoods and Amazon. With a recent update on Bitcart we now allow users to purchase Whole Foods gift cards with their Dash so the food industry is another area we are exploring for advertising with Dash.

With the completion of our R&D we spent about $10,000 of the $100,000 granted by the proposal which concluded on the 2nd of this month. Our proposal was to advertise in Forbes Korea and our research concluded that nobody reads Forbes in Korea, so we saved making a huge assumption. With our project manager on the ground in Korea we are adapting the marketing campaign to be culturally appropriate and we have narrowed down our scope to Bithumb and Bitholic exchanges, bus advertising and Kakao Chat (the Wechat of Korea). We are currently in R&D for Seattle and are yet to make a conclusion on the marketing campaign there.

With the recent focus on development for the website, we are going to complete phase 2 development in January and continue phase 2 marketing then. A website that scales will be important for the influx of new customers so this must be done in tandem. There was a setback of about a month with development due to a contract we have been working on with Dash Core Group, which was just sent off today to the Core office in Arizona. Once our foundation for Bitcart is much stronger with phase 2 development, we can then continue with the marketing campaign. With this out of the way we will continue to utilise the $90,000 remaining budget for bringing Bitcart to S. Korea and the food industry in Seattle. We are very excited about the prospects of this marketing campaign and are very optimistic going into the new year.

Thanks for your support and all the best from the Bitcart team