[Urgent!] Clickbait in Crypto Marketing | Ep. 44

Ty Smith0:00

What is up? Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. I'm Ty Smith. With me is Liz.

Liz0:12

Hello.

Ty Smith0:13

Today we are going to discuss sensationalism in crypto and in general. We're going to discuss what sensationalism is, how it presents itself in the real world in traditional industries as well as crypto, as well as crypto marketing. We'll discuss if it works, especially again if it works specific to the crypto industry, where it works, and if it is appropriate for all brands or what type of brands will best implement a sensationalistic strategy or style. All right, first let's start with defining sensationalism. I'm here, I'm actually going to go ahead and just type in sensationalism in Google here. It is the use...

Liz0:58

Or your dictionary definition.

Ty Smith1:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the use of exciting or shocking stories or language at the expense of accuracy in order to provoke public interest or excitement.

Liz1:12

We never see anything like that.

Ty Smith1:14

No, that's only, that's only everything that exists on the internet now.

Liz1:18

Yeah.

Ty Smith1:19

So, all right, let's discuss exactly what that means, what people might be familiar with. Sensationalism is sort of like the dressed up word in my opinion. I just call it clickbait. I think most people are familiar with the term clickbait.

Liz1:32

Most are familiar.

Ty Smith1:34

But clickbait is kind of specific to the internet, whereas sensationalism is just in general. Who was it that we were talking about was the father of sensationalism that...

Liz1:43

Oh, Hearst.

Ty Smith1:46

Hearst. Okay, yeah.

Liz1:48

Hearst. He is, he is the father of sensationalism. He basically built his media empire on sensationalism.

Ty Smith1:56

And that was in what, like the '20s or '30s? That was a long time ago.

Liz1:59

Yeah, it was a long time ago. And so, there's also tons of things from the Hearst family that exist even still today. If you're in California, you can go up to San Luis Obispo and go to Hearst Castle. And he literally would pull people out of Los Angeles, out of Hollywood, bring them up to the castle and have these very curated events with celebrities, athletes, people of the media. And there were really strict rules that you had to follow when you went to Hearst Castle. And he would never even particularly participate in the festivities. He would be away working. And there was this huge movie theater where they would show breaking news at the time that was such a big thing. And that was kind of even sensational in how he would host that. If you've ever been to Hearst Castle, it's, I mean, it's so ornate and in your face and it's just sensational in itself. And he would have these big premieres for breaking news and he would sneak off during the premieres and people would watch breaking news. Like if a ship was sinking and I think there's some story that a ship was sinking or something and they sensationalized the whole thing just to make sure that they could capture readers. And that's so true to today and how people capture readers now online. And I definitely recommend looking up Hearst. He's like the father of sensationalistic news.

Ty Smith3:41

Yeah, I definitely, after we had that conversation, started looking into it a little bit more. But yeah, I mean, everything on the internet, not everything, but a big piece of the internet, especially what people actually click on is sensationalistic in some aspect. I think of BuzzFeed as a company that's basically built its entire business on clickbait. I'm trying to think of a good example, clickbait headline would be like, 'This marine came home from Afghanistan and you won't believe what happened next.' Something like that, that's clickbait.

Liz4:16

Yeah, yeah.

Ty Smith4:18

Yeah.

Liz4:19

Exactly.

Ty Smith4:20

In the world of crypto, I mean, you still see it very much everywhere. Not every brand is using that kind of strategy or, I'm not even sure if you would call it a strategy, it's really more of a style of marketing.

Liz4:31

Yeah, style of media and marketing.

Ty Smith4:34

Yeah. So here, I'm going to share my screen because I always think of the perfect example of like clickbait being crypto YouTube.

Liz4:46

Yes.

Ty Smith4:47

So here, can you see the screen here?

Liz4:49

Yeah, especially with the thumbnails and everyone has a facial expression because you're pulled more into something when you see someone looking like surprised or engaged or scared. There's an immediate pull of, 'Oh, what are they reacting to?' It's this very reactionary world in digital right now and it pulls people in. It totally works. Look at all their facial expressions.

Ty Smith5:21

Look at every single thing that exists on crypto YouTube. Let's read some of these titles here. 'The Crypto Market', all caps, yeah, all caps, 'The Crypto Market is Out of Control. Here's Why.' Next one, all caps again, '100x Gains Coming.' 'Best Time Before Rally', I'm not sure I understand that one from BitBoy. But everything on here, 'Bitcoin is Breaking Out Now', all caps, five exclamation points.

Liz5:49

I need to watch that 100x video when this is over.

Ty Smith5:53

I'm sure every one of these is fully baked in deep, deep thoughtful analysis. But the point is there was a time where I was early in my marketing career where I was against, I'm going to stop sharing my screen here, where I was against clickbait. I felt it was cheap. I felt it was almost manipulative in a sense. And then I just started seeing how effective it is. It's like a hack of human psychology in a lot of cases. So, is it the most, I guess, honest way of marketing? No, I guess not. But at the end of the day, marketing is about means to an end in a sense. And clickbait works for the most part. It depends on what it is. I think we should discuss does it work specific to crypto.

Liz6:47

I think it can work. But I think the definition of what work is could be subjective there.

Ty Smith6:55

Exactly. Yeah, and like everything in marketing, it's like an 'it depends' kind of answer. If you're trying to just get someone to click on YouTube content, like maybe you're doing a podcast like we're doing right now, if we slapped a very clickbaity title on this, I'm sure we'd see higher click-through rates than if we...

Liz7:13

What should we title it? Sensational media.

Ty Smith7:18

Yeah, I'll come up with something good and we'll do it. We'll do it. I'm also going to take a picture of myself after this with my hands on my face doing like that classic YouTube thing. And we'll see how it compares to other videos that we've put out. But the answer is it does work. It just, I wouldn't use it for every company. It's really brand specific. I would never recommend it for an exchange or someone that's storing your money. It's always hard to say where it works, where it doesn't work, where it's appropriate, where it's not appropriate. What do you think?

Liz7:56

For me, when it comes to sensational media, I think it depends on what kind of audience you're speaking to and that you want to pull in first off. And then also, what are you backing up that sensationalism with? Because it's really easy to pull people in, but what are you pulling them into? Like people don't necessarily like to be tricked. If you can find that fine balance of them getting the joke essentially or them getting the sensationalistic, I keep saying sensationalistic, I'm hoping that's a word. But, basically...

Ty Smith8:33

We're going to make it a word because I'm also not 100% sure.

Liz8:36

We'll make it a word. We'll submit it. But it depends who you're speaking to because there's people who really just are looking for information in crypto and it's such a new industry and there's so many new people coming in that a lot of what is put out there is taken as truth and as fact. And so when you're pulling in a new audience, especially when dealing with something financial, you don't want people to feel tricked. They're going to be really turned off from that. But if it's something that there's a fine balance in between where they can come in and say, 'Haha, like, oh, I get it,' and feel included in the sensationalism, I think that is the best way to have sensational content.

Ty Smith9:24

Yeah, like imagine if like JP Morgan put out something that said like, 'People are signing up for this savings account and you won't believe the returns they're getting.' Like, wouldn't that totally destroy all the trust you have for a bank?

Liz9:35

Oh, absolutely, especially right now with the returns that you're getting in a savings account. It's like abysmal. And so I would be so pissed off. I already am pissed off. I mean, what is a savings account? That right there is a whole other podcast episode about, should you have a savings account right now? And where should that be? But yeah, no, that would be, that would be infuriating and I definitely would not want to store my money with them.

Ty Smith10:08

Yeah, but they do employ it, like that's actually a pretty interesting example because a bank like JP Morgan would never do something like that that's so clickbaity. But what they do do is tons of affiliate marketing, which is one of the most revenue-driving marketing channels for traditional banking. So they'll go through like Investopedia or any of those Dotdash companies that just crush on SEO, that also do a lot of paid acquisition to their content that have referral links in it. And those guys will use a lot of clickbaity type content.

Liz10:44

Yeah, well, that's because the banks, they can only say so much with legal. But if someone else is talking about you, an influencer or an affiliate, you don't necessarily control what they say and you don't necessarily have to promote what they say either. It's kind of on them and it's this secret like wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And so maybe an affiliate could be really sensational in what they say and they might be like, 'Hey, if you sign up for this savings account, you'll get a crazy return.' What was that title on YouTube? '100x'?

Ty Smith11:22

100x incoming. 100x on your money in this savings account. You just have to wait 3500 years.

Liz11:31

Yeah. Your grandson can enjoy it. Yeah, great, great, great grandson.

Ty Smith11:37

I think audience is a big piece of where this works and where it doesn't work. I think, and product too. Well, let's go to audience first. I guess let's go to product first. Because institutional, I feel like I would never ever recommend something that's clickbaity for like an institutional product that's B2B.

Liz11:54

And legal would never let that pass. They would never let that to go out.

Ty Smith11:59

Yeah, I mean, you can be clickbaity without being wrong or deceitful, but it's a fine line. As far as audience, clickbaity stuff doesn't work as well on Twitter in my experience. It not only does it work on YouTube, it's required on YouTube, I feel like.

Liz12:20

Yeah.

Ty Smith12:21

Every popular YouTuber that I know, at least the successful ones, are heavily using clickbait.

Liz12:30

Absolutely, a thousand percent.

Ty Smith12:32

And it's not even something to knock at this point. If it works, it works. Even if it's a little bit manipulative, I don't know. At the end of the day, people are going to do what makes them successful. And if there's a flaw in human psychology that makes you click on something that has someone with their hands on their face looking surprised, then you'd be silly not to do it.

Liz12:49

Yeah. No, and as long as the video is something enjoyable and informative and maybe it isn't totally like a guarantee of 100x, but I imagine you're going to get some level of a return and some level of information.

Ty Smith13:09

But like, who knows? Who knows? Heck, heck...

Liz13:12

That's the thing too, is that clickbait leaves that little bit of room and that's why you have people who gamble and stuff. There's that little bit of room of like, oh, this could be, it makes you almost excited to click on it. Like this could be what it says it's going to be.

Ty Smith13:33

There was an article, I forget where it was published, but it was about crypto. It was published in, I want to say, Bloomberg or Yahoo Finance, it was one of those traditional finance publications. And the title was, maybe it was the New Yorker, whatever it was, it was during the last crypto bull run when people really started paying attention, more than this one. And the title was, 'Everyone is getting hilariously rich and you're not.' And it was about crypto.

Liz14:03

That's perfect.

Ty Smith14:04

Like, is that, does that not the ultimate FOMO like enticing clickbaity article?

Liz14:11

Yeah, and that's what I was trying to think of, FOMO. It's the FOMO of it. That works so well. It's like, hey, all these people have this amazing thing happening to them and you don't. So you better join and jump on board. And I think that really gets people. It's like going through your Snapchat or Instagram stories the next day and seeing this really fun party that you weren't invited to and you're like, 'I wish I could have been there.' And it doesn't matter if it was actually good or not, it just looked really good. And you still are going to have that feeling of, 'I wish I was there.'

Ty Smith14:49

It's such a powerful amount of FOMO too. It's more, because it hits you on multiple levels, that headline. It's, 'People are getting rich and you're not.' So that's like, I mean, who doesn't want more money? And then there's also this sense of everyone is doing this except for you and you're missing out because of that.

Liz15:06

Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's always crypto stuff like that of like, oh, me and my friends 10x'd on this coin and you weren't in this Telegram group to know about it. Actually, that's a perfect example. So many people have private Telegram or Discord groups that they try to bring an audience to because of course, let's be real, for advertising, people love to advertise in Telegram groups. It's such a niche place to put your product or your new project. And it's a very dedicated, loyal audience that you know are going to respond and you know are going to see that message even more so over being on Twitter. And so of course, you're going to want to drive traffic to your Telegram group for people to join. And so you're going to be like, 'Oh, I gave my audience this amount of info.' There's definitely been YouTube ads that say this too, and it's like, 'Join my Telegram group. I gave my followers this tip and they all like 20x'd their portfolio. You're not in the Telegram group, so you wouldn't know about it.' And I think that things like that are honestly pretty clever, especially if it does occasionally work. If it works, like is it so much clickbait then? That's kind of my question that I pose.

Ty Smith16:30

It, it is. I mean, clickbait is clickbait, not whether like based on the results, but, but is it, is it wrong to use clickbait if it works? And me being a marketer at the core says if it works, it works.

Liz16:44

Yeah.

Ty Smith16:45

I don't think, I don't think marketers should, should really feel, unless it's really manipulative and, and deceitful, but if it's just, if it's just gets people to click on something, I don't think there's like, if that's the cost that you're getting out of someone is clicking on something, I don't think you're really harming anyone.

Liz17:00

I think just making sure that you have a retention plan after, like if you have even an inkling that some kind of clickbait that you're going to put out is going to draw the attention that you want it to draw, I think just make sure you have a retention plan in place because it's one thing to bring an audience in, it's another to actually keep them there. And so I do think that, unless you're like a total troll or something, the whole point is bringing in the audience and keeping them. It's one thing to have 100,000 followers, but if none of them are engaged, what's the point? So I think that that's a big part of clickbait is what's your retention plan after.

Ty Smith17:45

Who, do we think using, let's, we started this episode saying sensationalism, we've basically turned it to clickbait, which is really the same thing. Who do you think in the crypto world, what type of companies would benefit most from using that type of content?

Liz18:04

Lolly, for sure.

Ty Smith18:06

Why, why do you say Lolly?

Liz18:07

I mean, they kind of already, I would say, do some level of that kind of content. But the person who they're marketing to is a retail investor, or not even an investor, it's someone who may just want to be dipping their toes. And so, if you join Lolly, you don't have to actually buy Bitcoin. You're just earning it on purchases you already make. And it's really easy to then be like, 'Hey, you don't even have to buy Bitcoin. You can just join.' And they can use that whole FOMO thing of like, 'You're missing out and you don't have to actually do anything. You just earn on what you already buy.'

Ty Smith18:52

Yeah, like a headline in some type of Yahoo Finance just saying, 'Everyone is getting 7% of their money back and you're not because of this Chrome extension.' Check out this hack that people are using to save 7% on everything they spend. People are getting rich off this Chrome extension. I could write clickbait headlines all day long.

Liz19:19

Yeah, I was about to say, we're going to have to actually talk after the podcast. Going to need some copy from you.

Ty Smith19:29

And then I think Elon Musk of course is very sensational. He really knows how to work his crowd and work his audience. And anytime he tweets anything having to do with crypto, it's always very, almost antagonistic sometimes to the community. And the way that people respond, it's like clockwork. It's so obvious at this point kind of what he's doing and people get really worked up though. And that builds and builds and builds. If Elon tweets, that's all my Twitter feed is filled with all day. It's someone being like, 'Ah, yay, we're going to go up now, 100x because Elon tweeted.' And then, someone else is like, 'Ah, fuck this guy. I can't believe he tweeted again, blah, blah, blah.' So, I think that sensationalism really gets people to also respond and engage because it plays on emotion. And that's something that really triggers people, whether that's good or bad, but it's definitely a trigger.

Ty Smith20:35

Yeah. Um, I mean, a lot of, this is a question that we'll, we'll wrap up on. Um, a lot of companies are afraid of using like sensationalist headlines, clickbaity headlines. Are they right to be skeptical? Is there brand damage that can be done if done incorrect?

Liz20:54

I think so. I mean, you just, again, you really don't want to trick people. You don't want to make people feel like they've been lied to because in crypto, you just have so many newcomers who are so new to this space. So if you tell someone that they're going to make a certain amount of money or have a certain guarantee, I would never use that language, especially for an exchange or a token. You're just really shooting yourself in the foot. And I think that it actually incurs legal issues as well. And so I would stay away from that when it's something that is a trick or kind of a lie or can be a little manipulative because you're talking to people about their money. And it's one thing to say something clickbaity about clothing or shoes, but when you're messing with people's money, I do think it's important to have some level of transparency and honesty there or else, like just like all the hacks that have been happening and pump and dumps for years, I would just be very wary of clickbait and how you're using that language for just exchanges and tokens especially.

Ty Smith22:12

Yeah, and I think there's different levels of it as well. I think there's really over-the-top, borderline misleading, and then I think there's just good ad copy, which is basically like a cliffhanger in the middle of your copy.

Liz22:25

Yes.

Ty Smith22:26

That you have to click through to find out what they're talking about. That I think is really the sweet spot of, you're not misleading anyone, you're not causing any brand damage, you're just getting people so intrigued by what you've written that they have to click through to see what else you're talking about.

Liz22:42

Exactly. Yeah, that's perfect. I just think when it gets to the point of like, is this a lie or like how manipulative is this?

Ty Smith22:50

If, if you're asking yourself, you're probably over the line, or if you're a financial product, yeah.

Liz22:55

Yeah. So just be careful because, you know, it is finance, there are like legal ramifications and just be aware.

Ty Smith23:05

Yeah. All right, on that note, let's wrap this up. Thanks for your insights, Liz. If you enjoyed this podcast, remember to rate, review, and recommend us. We're now on YouTube, so subscribe to the Coinbound channel. I'm on Twitter as well @TyDanielSmith. My DMs are always open. I've been getting a lot of positive feedback on Twitter DMs lately. It's been really encouraging. I guess I didn't realize how many people are interested in this stuff to the level that I am. I've always thought like, 'Oh, how niche is that, crypto marketing?' But there's a lot of people these days that are into it. All right, cool. On that note, let's wrap it up. Bye, guys.