If you’ve been following the news or opening X this fall, you’ve likely noticed Polymarket.
It’s that prediction market for politics (and beyond) that has spread everywhere lately. I’ve followed their rise over the past twelve months, from a nameless passion space making a betting market to $1 billion-plus assets to watch – with the CEO on the cover of Forbes and the presidential candidates behind them they mention in speeches.
Right during Polymarket’s upward push, I turned out to be delightful with some people from their growth promotion staff right here in New York. And the one question I keep asking them over and over again is, “HOW ARE YOU GUYS EVERYWHERE????”
Exactly, here’s what I discovered.
A breakdown of Polymarket’s promotion methodology
Promotion of screenshots
The main place most people come into contact with Polymarket is not their website or app.
Most often this is a screenshot posted on social media or in data. And you will have to check any screenshot of Polymarket, you will see their name and branding.
This placement once was no accident, I promise you.
While speaking with their staff, I noticed that they once ran a lot of A/B tests to make sure their brand appeared on almost every possible screenshot.
Every time a screenshot is shared across the internet, from X to LinkedIn to TikTok to Reddit, Polymarket is right there.
The logo and contact are light grey, so it’s not too in your face for what you’d like to crop it for. They’re smarter than that. Instead, the logo is discreet enough to be noticed, but undoubtedly doesn’t take over the rest of the transparent image.
This is an ingenious method created for the social media age that couldn’t have existed long before.
In fact, there is even a period of time for this style of marketing: it is called screenshot advertising and involves the use of screenshots to make your promotion in reality even more natural.
It’s like sending screenshots of any individual’s messages to a group chat. It’s juicy. Intriguing. And in the age of AI images and Photoshop, screenshots are unfiltered and raw.
Polymarket lives and breathes screenshot promotion. $23 billion cybersecurity vendors like Wiz do it. And I’ve used screenshots to make dozens of circumstances go viral.
In advertising, you always want to be as authentic as possible, and there’s nothing more authentic than sharing a simple, unedited screenshot alongside your following, like you might do with your friends in a group chat.
Founder-led promotion
I am a firm believer in the organization that every startup should do founder-driven advertising.
Whether or not you are Elon or an 18-year-old AI founder, you should always be your company’s biggest voice and advocate. If the founder doesn’t talk about the company, no one else will.
Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan evidently believes in the importance of founder-led promotion.
He’s built his audience to over 26,000 fans on X and keeps his content on a strict diet of 100% Polymarket-related tweets and retweets.
When Polymarket hit #1 in the App Store this October, Shane tweeted a simple screenshot (*cough cough* promotional screenshot) showing their good fortune.
Since there have been a lot of questions and focus on Polymarket’s bet versus common polls, Shayne wrote a tweet to address this concern.
You should understand how small the difference is in the probability of 50% and 53%. It’s microscopic.
It’s not the equivalent of 53 to 47 in the polls: it’s a probability.
With the top focus on Polymarket, we want to make sure we educate as many people as possible on how it actually works.
— Shayne Coplan (@shayne_coplan)
October 9, 2024
When Shayne spoke with noted political pollster Nate Silver, he tweeted the podcast to share this perspective on building Polymarket.
Nate Silver and I keep in touch on prediction markets. I grew up a big fan of 538, so this comes pretty close.
Check it out if you want perspective on why I’m building Polymarket.https://t.co/wSWalsou9W
— Shayne Coplan (@shayne_coplan)
October 10, 2024
Shayne is locked up!
All Polymarket 24/7. No selfies alongside your dog. No photos of his Lamborghinis. Not even a photo of his staff. All trade always. And that business is making billions on the Internet. You have to recognize it.
Social proof
Typically, when we think about social proof, we think about buyer ratings.
Alternatively, for Polymarket, it’s a little different.
A little more than consumers “review” Polymarket, their social proof method revolves around two issues:
- Amplify concept leaders talking about Polymarket.
- Sharing massive new bets on Polymarket (thereby normalizing the act of placing a bet on Polymarket).
When other business leaders reference Polymarket, they repost and publicize it.
When Polymarket hit #1 in the app store, Shayne tweeted a photo of himself. When a presidential candidate discussed Polymarket’s speech everywhere, they tweeted about it.
Alternatively, staying in touch is cheap.
What is also very important for them is to demonstrate that people actively invest money in the platform. They continually tweet screenshots of huge bets and share spherical updates.
(We move with the screenshot promoting again!)
Exploiting the “supply issue”
Most people’s attention shifts like Charlie Sheen going in and out of rehab tactics. Do you consider it? Oh yeah, it’s been a while since The Provide Issue.
You see, with the upward push of the 24-hour data cycle, there’s always a brand new supply problem. And despite the supply issue, other people can’t get enough.
The Polimercato is born totally to take advantage of the supply issue.
Whenever something happens within the data, Polymarket starts a betting market for it, which then creates content material to promote it. It’s the best cycle. And during election season, there is regularly a brand new supply problem.
Right here, you will see their publication on the latest swing state odds which keeps other people updated with the swing state supply issue. When a huge, brand new movie comes out in theaters, they’ll create a market for that too.
Since the supply problem is ever-changing, there is actually an endless stream of good content, topic ideas, and materials… which also comes close to an endless stream of memes to be created.
Meme promotion
The staff at Polymarket are probably the most perfect memelords on the Internet.
For starters, I became friends with the growth promotion staff at Polymarket because they are consumers of my meme promotion software, Memelord Applied Sciences.
(If you haven’t already been made aware of my latest HubSpot post on meme advertising, check it out.)
While Polymarket is a major company with billions in assets to watch, they actually have a staff of stupid viral memelords on staff – and many more meme pages and freelancers on a consultancy basis.
That’s because when leveraging The Provide Issue, memes are the #1 tactic. They’re loose, quick to make (and great for time pressure), and, by nature, can simply be shared and go viral.
The tactic that really blew me away, even assuming, once was how their social media intern placed Polymarket merchandise on the same old memes. In truth it is exactly this kind of hack right. You’re taking a simply recognizable meme and putting your brand assets into it. Easy.
Even assuming the most efficient section is that they simply don’t use memes for their content material. Memes are integrated into the UX and philosophy of their product.
They are not very effective they send memes then again they create stupid memey not serious making a bet on the markets regardless of the supply problem. It’s like betting on whether or not presidential candidates will say “skibidi” or “brat” before the election.
Those stupid people making bets on the markets are a great recipe for virality. Money + Absurdity = Virality.
How you can market like Polymarket
Obviously, not all other people want to talk about politics in our promotion.
And despite the fact that we do, most other people are not capable of working artistically.
Alternatively, that doesn’t mean we can’t incorporate features, and regardless, the supply issue is in our strategies.
Every industry has its own supply problem: whether it’s OpenAI’s exodus of staff from Silicon Valley startups, the Met Gala in the fashion world, or probably Black Friday for the e-commerce industry.
Look for the supply issue and address it as soon as possible. Regardless of whether or not it is using my daily email of recent viral memes, X’s new pattern finder, or Hubspot’s developments, you will definitely need to incorporate new features into your promotion.
BUT…
… That said, you won’t simply rely on features.
Even me, being the guy who promotes memes, I don’t assume that you will simply rely on memes or leverage The Provide Issue for your promotion.
Sure, I wrote a book called Memes Make Thousands and Thousands, then again they can make you tens of hundreds of thousands more effectively if you have an excellent product and message.
This is what Polymarket has achieved so cleverly.
These are not simply memes, characteristics and knowledge that become obsolete 24 hours later.
It’s Shayne who clearly explains why he’s building the Polymarket. It’s Shayne who does podcasts with industry leaders like Nate Silver.
It’s the social proof of retweeting other people like Elon Musk talking about Polymarket.
They are the most and most up-to-date screenshots of the political markets. It’s the cover of Forbes and the billions in underlying assets to watch.
Polymarket promotion totally blends the capitalization of the supply problem and the use of timeless ways of promotion. It’s actually nice to witness.
Watch out for others: I think we’re seeing the beginning of a generational company.
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