I am tasked with making a product that doesn't exist, succeed. I couldn't be more thrilled. bitsian is a new brand. At that time of this writing--there is no product. (Update: it's 2019 and we have a product!)
We're a values based Cryptocurrency company that aims to build the next generation of digital asset solutions from the ground up. We have the benefit of decades of bank-technology experience, multiculturalism and a range of experiences.
My highest priority here is growing customer efficacy in our products.
- Be a customer advocate inside the business [product-built the right things]
- Build a clean notable brand [marketing-show how using those things, helps]
My role is Strategic Design & Delivery focused.
In the last two years of running M/IG I made it a priority to explain to clients why I needed holistic and helicopter view of their
Back into it
While reading this, consider mostly the Marketing Row of this strategy. I put it together in the first few weeks of building bitsian. We've evolved a great deal from here, but at our core we remain in this strategy (at least in marketing).
Step 1: Establish & Listen We worked with Markus White, a Visual FX designer that works with Hollywood Movie Studios to help them design amazing motion graphics for movies like The Avengers. Markus set us up with a logo, a typeface, a color kit and some basic rules for public imaging of the brand. It's worth noting that the visual identity was dependent on the social values, ethical identity and mission of the organization: a clean and simple crypto experience that would allow everyone access to financial services, finally.
If you're just getting a brand set up, take the time out to be intentional about what you want the brand to be: not just as a business, not just in its market, but as an entity in the world that takes up space--what role do you want it to play, what impact should it have on people that come across it, what should it be recognized as?
On the Listening front, we don't have the budget for social listening tools that R/GA and large organizations can bankroll. That means we do deep insights analysis by diving deep into the pages of 1) every group in the market 2) every competitor in the space 3) every customer segment. The aim is to build a rough idea of the conversations that are going on. My aim overall is to leverage Jobs To Be Done and build beyond Persona- Based frameworks. This has downstream benefits in Product & Marketing resulting in better UI/features & more relatable content and voice, respectively.
Customer Experience Reviews play a central role here (CXR/UXR) I'll write more with thoughts on Customer Experience & Product Structure/Process on the bitsian.io blog on our website.
Step 2: Participate We're on stage now.
We've spent a long time staying out of the spotlight. In part because we were deep in fundraising and building the product. The honest truth is that we understood the long term vision of the product, but in FinTech and a space like Crypto/Blockchain, regulators play a big role in product decision making. It was important to me that we didn't put anything on the door prematurely. We've gone laps around our product and regulatory process. Now we're deep into our regulatory strategy and we have software that is being shown to the public at The Trading Show in NYC this week.
It has helped that other players are now in the market. Watching them and seeing their tenacity and investment into brand, content and marketing (they have big budgets) asks me/us to be creative in our approach and strategy. One of the biggest strategies at the moment is around SEO and Content. A quick search of bitsian reveals the following
We are not even the first two search terms and the third is LinkedIn. I don't think it'll be tough to dominate the first page of search, but I do think it's important and I think it takes some thoughtfulness. Luckily, it's about the time when we need to be more vocal and present. We're pairing Participate a segment of our strategy that focuses purely on being apart of the conversation, educational branded content. Our team is full of insights.
We'll be using Strikingly's SEO tools, Google's Sitemap function & Strikingly's easy AMP integration for this. I've been using Strikingly since I was introduced to it/the team after college. I'm very excited to be utilizing their tech for this solution. They make it very easy.
Our Participate strategy will aim to mix content on the bitsian.io/blog page. We'll cross-post to LinkedIn most frequently (since our team has strong professional profiles and communities). My aim is to bring traffic from LinkedIn back to bitsian.io and to use the content in the blogs to drive traffic to bitsian.io, its search-ability and our overall position on the first page of the Google site history. Sponsoring influencer content, smaller blogs and being in communities is something I'm also excited about, but for the moment we're going to work on churning out some educational content and getting some visibility for bitsian's small and mighty team.
We've got a private beta in the books. I can tell you more about the Amplify part of my strategy sometime soon, for the moment we'll sit in Participate and aim to drive that part of the strategy to success. I don't have KPI's for it yet, but my highest OKR is to bring bitsian to owning the top three spaces on Google Search history for 'bitsian.'
Beyond that, I want to impact the broader searches for crypto trading tools. I’ll share on that once we’ve conquered the Page 1 of Google Search for bitsian.
Onwards & Upwards