Audience overlap in the crypto space [ICO marketing series]

When you want to promote a product or service online, the first thing you will want to do is to research the type of audience that will be interested, and then find out what type of websites that audience already visits.

It sounds simple, but most don't usually study the websites their target audience is already on. For example, where did their traffic come from? Where will their traffic be moving next? Understanding this will allow them to place the ads before or after the target website, hence allowing to improve the campaign ROI.

If you hire an "ICO kit" company or a PR agency they will probably tell you they can publish your articles here and there but are you sure that those “famous” media publications are the best way to spend your budget?

At first glance, you might think that all blockchain and crypto enthusiasts can be put into the same basket, but can they really? When we looked at the traffic paths between the people who visited Ethereum.org and Bitcoin.com during November 2016, we found out that they come from and go to completely different websites.

Why does this matter?

You can look at it from two sides:

1.        Either you want to target only one side of the community.

OR

2.        You want to be sure that you place your ads on both sides evenly in order to understand which one converts better.

If we are promoting an ICO that talks directly to the Etherium community we would buy the keywords, use the visuals and set the communication tone that resonates with the websites shown on the left-hand side of the map.

 Audience Overlap problem

Blockchain and Crypto news websites can also be segmented according to the audience they share. They can share the same audience because they are particularly known in a certain country, share the same reputation per keyword on the same search engine, share back-links between them, etc...

With all these info, you are able to create an audience overlap map like this one:

At The BlockChain Marketing Agency, we use this information in multiple ways. We can use it to ensure that we do not saturate the same audience with the same ads, explore new target audiences, better pick the publishers where we place our client's ads or even optimize the cost-per-click.

If your ICO is targeting a very specific niche in the crypto community this approach is even more important. You don’t want to waste your budget targeting people that will not understand your project. On another side, if your PR agency is going to publish your articles in A, B and C make sure they are not cannibalizing each other by sharing the exact same audience.

So, when our clients ask us where we can publish their ads we can’t give them a simple, "press-play" type of answer. I mean, we could but the “data” would not like us to do that, and neither would our clients.

Note that an audience overlap map changes according to the time and players you pre-select. The maps shown above were created for November 2017.