ForkLog Consulting: marketing agencies sell inefficient services to cryptocurrency projects

More recently, a special project was launched on BlockchainJournal in a new format with an emphasis on multimedia and interactivity. BlockchainJournal Consulting , which is a separate structure and has only indirect relation to BlockchainJournal, worked on the creation of this special project. BlockchainJournal editor-in-chief Tanya Otter spoke with BlockchainJournal Consulting Vladislav Lihuto to find out exactly what this company is doing and how it differs from standard marketing agencies operating on the crypto market.

Tanya Otter: As it turned out, most of our readers do not know that, in addition to BlockchainJournal magazine, there is a separate company, BlockchainJournal Consulting . So what are you doing there?

Vlad Lihuta: BlockchainJournal Consulting provides marketing and consulting services to blockchain projects and individuals. In addition, we do market analytics. In 2017, a report on the legal regulation of cryptobusiness and a report on the use of blockchain in the banking sector were issued, and in 2018, a large-scale study on steakbloins . For a while, the company was even called BlockchainJournal Research, because it was originally planned to focus on research.

Tanya Otter: Why did you move away from the original plan?

Vlad Lihuta: BlockchainJournal was created in 2014, and as early as next year, we began to turn to us for expertise, both domestic and foreign cryptoprojects. We placed ads, but did not participate in the marketing campaigns of other projects. What is this independent publication that actively promotes blockchain projects? That would be dishonest to readers.

Tanya Otter: As chief editor, I fully support this position. So you decided to isolate the marketing direction in a separate structure?

Vlad Lihuta: Yes, it would be foolish to ignore the demand for client work, and at the end of 2015 Anatoly Kaplan founded BlockchainJournal Consulting, an independent service company. The BlockchainJournal Consulting team provided marketing services: packaged customers' products, helped with PR and even engaged in SMM.

The first year we acted intuitively. Even the name was not – only ideas. The team was then small: someone moved from BlockchainJournal, someone was attracted to work from outside. There were more customers, and not enough trained staff. Therefore, we were looking for people of the same spirit, and among them we were raising specialists in the blockchain industry.

Tanya Otter: Tell the readers how you became part of the BlockchainJournal team?

Vlad Lihu: I joined the team in spring 2016, and after that we hired a few more people. He did different things: he wrote presentation materials, led client social networks, collected data, did market research and prepared analytics. The rest of the time he understood the regulation of cryptocurrency and blockchain. I have a legal education, so I became interested in the legal nuances of blockchain technologies. Then it was a new direction: lawyers knew almost nothing about distributed technologies. And only a few understood how the blockchain works. What can we say about regulation!

I remember how Anatoly Kaplan proposed to prepare a report on the regulation of cryptobusiness. He sketched a list of jurisdictions for me, and I went to write.

We have prepared a draft report in the summer of 2016. Then they decided on my position in the company – Legal Research Analyst. In Russian, it is something like a legal research analyst. At the same time, I went for an internship at Axon Partners, a law firm that contributed bitcoin to share capital. After the internship, they offered me a job as a remote lawyer, and I worked at Axon Partners for almost a year and a half.

In February 2017, in cooperation with Axon Partners, BlockchainJournal Consulting released the first Russian-language report on crypto-business regulation. More than 200 sources, including English-speaking, have worked for the document.

Tanya Otter: At this time, you became the head of the marketing department at BlockchainJournal Consulting. Why did this happen?

Vlad Lihu: Not exactly. I released the report as Chief Communications Officer in BlockchainJournal and BlockchainJournal Consulting. Earlier, in December 2016, we realized that the magazine lacked a sales department. We constantly received incoming requests, and there was no one to process them. I volunteered to help.

At first, he was engaged in sales only on BlockchainJournal: he processed incoming applications and lined up cold sales. Immediately after this, I launched a cross-selling service for BlockchainJournal Consulting. And after some time I suggested expanding the list of services: we entered into partnerships with a large number of English and Russian-language media, tried crowd-marketing, wrote white papers and other presentation materials. In addition, I went to China, met with potential partners and customers, and as a result we decided to help blockchain projects with marketing in this country. However, after the ICO ban in China, this direction had to be curtailed.

By the spring of 2017, we formed a pool of basic services and a team, but there was no understanding of the corporate structure. In September 2017, Anatoly Kaplan conducted reforms in BlockchainJournal Consulting. We have two departments: marketing and research. Kaplan offered me to head the marketing department. So I became a leader.

At the same time, I continued to work as a lawyer with a focus on cryptotechnology at Axon Partners. Combining has become more difficult. I also wanted to create my own media product – a magazine about the regulation of new technologies in English. The network has very little quality content on this topic.

Tanya Otter: As far as I know, you still launched the magazine. Tell me why it was important to you? And for whom this magazine was created?

Vlad Lihuta: Yes, in the end I left Axon Partners, and a little later we launched lawless.tech, a media about technology regulation in English. Target audience – lawyers and geeks. We developed lawless.tech as a side and hobby project, we did not earn it.

In November 2018, Kaplan suggested that I take the position of the head of BlockchainJournal Consulting. It has become even harder to work on both projects equally well. For this reason, we plan to pause lawless.tech from December.

This is a good reason to take stock and make work on the bugs. We are considering writing more about space. We are very interested. And this is a promising direction. Perhaps, based on the results of the work on the mistakes, we will do something more from lawless.tech.

In any case, we got an excellent experience in organizing the work of the English-language publication. I am proud of our content, this is a good portfolio. Not everything needs to be measured in money. The experience and skills gained are more valuable in the long term than fleeting profits.

Tanya Otter: Let's talk about today: what is happening now at BlockchainJournal Consulting?

Vlad Lihut: We focused on promoting blockchain projects on the Russian-speaking market, and also on packaging and developing commercial products for BlockchainJournal. Recently, our team launched the first special project in the new format on BlockchainJournal.

Tanya Otter: Tell me about the team, after all: what kind of people are they, how did they end up at BlockchainJournal?

Vlad Lihu: The team we have is cool and creative! We have a zoologist, astrophysicist, mathematician, international lawyer and several lawyers.

Tanya Otter: I hope the zoologist is well versed in the blockchain?

Vlad Lihuta: Yes, you can be sure that all employees are well versed in blockchain technologies. We have been working in this area for several years, during this time everyone has gained considerable expertise.

Several positions: author, researcher and designer. But this does not mean that the author is only engaged in writing materials, and the researcher – analytics. In general, the future for multi-functional specialists. Therefore, our reseller can work with the community, and the author can do project management or prepare marketing recommendations.

We want everyone to do what they like, but at the same time take into account the strengths of employees. One riser from us is now studying for a developer. He also writes smart contracts for a new special project on BlockchainJournal. The second – carried away by graphic design. By the way, he draws all the scenery and illustrations for lawless.tech. But at the same time, they are doing excellent research.

I read somewhere that a good employee is one with whom you can drink a glass of beer after work. I like this approach. I have great colleagues! And we have almost no turnover.

Tanya Otter: I will support the beer too. So with what projects your team managed to work during this time?

Vlad Lihu: We have a large list of clients, more than 30 for sure. We worked with AdEx, Aeternity, Chronobank, Cindicator, Decent, Edgeless, Golos, Flixxo, iEx.ec, LockChain, Matchpool, Ripio Credit Network, Qtum, vDice, Waves Platform, Wings and others.

And in cooperation with partners from the Element Group, we helped with native advertisements in runet such projects as Blockchain Capital, BLOCKv, SENSE, Shivom, Storj, Tierion, Wax, etc.

Tanya Otter: Do you somehow select projects for cooperation?

Vlad Lihuta: We are interested in working with infrastructure projects. Our client is not a plant that holds tokensale, but a crypto-exchange, wallet or blockchain platform. These are the projects that develop the industry.

Recently, we continued cooperation with aeternity , for example. They make blockchain platform with support for scalable smart contracts and decentralized applications. The protocol is based on oracles that pull information from the real world into the blockchain. This solves the problem of the practical application of smart contracts. We are interested in working with such projects.

Tanya Otter: Can you name the main difficulties in working with projects?

Vlad Lihuta: Marketing tools that worked several months ago now do not bring the desired result. The main difficulty of working with projects is to learn how to solve customer problems. Marketing agencies, instead of reconsidering their approach to work, continue to sell inefficient services. Outsourcing masters marketing budgets of product companies, and this is bad.

We refused some services simply because they were unsuccessful, although there is still a demand for them. It is better to leave a few effective services than to be sprayed on ten unproductive. Customers appreciate it.

Tanya Otter: You recently launched a new format of special projects. It looks completely different than everything that was done on the BlockchainJournal before.

Vlad Lihuta: Yes, we launched a pilot special project in a new format. Together with B2Broker, we prepared three materials on how to create a blockchain project: a crypto-exchange, a broker, and cryptocurrency payment processing. B2Broker is engaged in the development of these products.

The client shared his expertise with us, and we were responsible for the entire production:

1. Invented the concept of a special project.
2. Wrote texts. Added expert opinions of the sponsor and the mention of its products in the text.
3. Made interactive checklists.
4. We developed the visual style of the special project in accordance with the identity of the client’s company.
5. Prepared graphics and page layouts.
6. All impaled. They shared special projects on social networks, news digests and BlockchainJournal mailing list.

They called a special project “Startups do not belong here: how to create a cryptocurrency business.”

Tanya Otter: Do you think this experience was a success? Will you continue to do such special projects?

Vlad Lihu: Yes, we will continue. Special projects are useful to both sponsors and readers. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and other mainstream publications have long used this format. It allows you to go beyond corporate identity and agenda. We are experimenting to more interestingly open the topic and achieve the best marketing results for the partner of the special project.

Previously, they made mostly text special projects. Now there will be more interactive, illustrations and scenery, expert opinions. We will also continue to work on the form of presentation of materials and design.

The community appreciates such content and shares it with pleasure. In addition, the reader connects the partner of the special project with BlockchainJournal. This increases the brand awareness of the client. And we focus on interactivity, so the target audience of the client interacts more with such content.

This is confirmed by statistics. Readers reviewed the special project “ Fundamentals of Crypto Trading ” 200,000 times in four months. And the game “ Cryptobol ” was played for 130 hours.

Special projects have always been an effective format for native advertising. The last special project is no exception. His CTR was 8.7% with 8,300 views in 3 weeks.

By the way, now we are forming a list of special projects for the next year. On the BlockchainJournal website, you can order a special project or suggest an idea.

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