Blockchain Marketing Explained - Blissbranding Agency

What is Blockchain Marketing and How Does It Work?

If you’re looking for ways to improve your business’s online presence, blockchain marketing may serve as an excellent solution

Blockchain technology is a new and emerging trend in the world of marketing. Here, we’ll discuss blockchain marketing and how it works.

If you want to learn more about the remarkable potential of blockchain marketing, keep reading.

Marketing Is Changing, Again

Over the last ten years, marketing has changed drastically. Nevertheless, the field is about to go through another remarkable revolution. The latest entry into the online marketing space is blockchain marketing.

When it comes to marketing innovations, most of us are still catching up with things like big data and artificial intelligence. Still, blockchain marketing could serve as the most disruptive technology to date for marketers. What’s more surprising, however, is to learn who the top beneficiaries are of this new technology—consumers.

How Blockchain Marketing Is Changing Advertising

Already, technology has given consumers more power than ever before via online reviews and more access to information. Now, blockchain marketing promises to give consumers even more power.

Blockchain technology enables two parties to complete a transaction without the need for third-party verification. Most blockchain technology centers around cryptocurrency. However, the underlying technology could serve as a massive development in the marketing field.

Innovations like AI and data analytics have historically benefited businesses more than consumers. Blockchain marketing, however, promises to turn the tables. It could give the power of personal information in the form of data back to consumers.

Consumers Earn Yet More Sway

One of the most exciting things about blockchain marketing is that it enables consumers to cash in on the value of their data. Again, companies have mostly benefited from consumer data, until now.

Most major brands do a good job of collecting consumer information. This information might include:

• Addresses
• Buying preferences
• Email addresses
• Online browsing habits
• Phone numbers

What’s more, companies sometimes require consumers to surrender this kind of information just to make a simple purchase, whether online or in person.

Ultimately, however, companies profit from consumer information. Either they use it to sell their products better, or they sell the information to third parties.

What’s in It for Consumers Now?

Blockchain marketing promises to change this paradigm. If the technology moves forward as anticipated, the practice of using customer data without reimbursement will come to an end.

For instance, the Brave browser is a perfect example of a company that’s diving right into blockchain marketing. The company doesn’t simply promote digital ads like other browsers.

Brave browser users must opt-in to ads. They’ll then receive Basic Attention Tokens (BATs) for each advertisement they view. This business model is a completely new way of advertising.

Blockchain marketing provides a great benefit to consumers. However, as usual, businesses will ultimately win in the end.

Here’s how.

What Blockchain Brings to Marketing

You might wonder why you would want to participate in blockchain marketing. Blockchain will change the online marketing landscape in several ways.

The following are a few fundamental ways in which technology will change the practice of marketing. They’re also reasons why blockchain is rapidly gaining popularity in the digital marketing field.

Decentralization

Typically, data flows using a centralized or client-server model. In other words, there are one or more entities called the server that holds all information.

In this scenario, consumers are the client. The clients must communicate with the server to get access to information.

Imagine, for instance, that you want to send money to someone over the internet. With the client-server model, you’ll have to go through a middleman. For instance, you might complete a financial transaction using the services of a bank.

Conversely, a P2P network like blockchain is decentralized. Now, imagine you want to complete that same transaction using blockchain. You can send the money directly to whomever you want without using a middleman or paying fees for the service.

Immutability

One of the biggest benefits of blockchain is enhanced security. The records created by blockchain are immutable. In other words, no one can change a blockchain record once it’s created.

Suppose someone tried to deceive a blockchain block. This deception would change the data that’s part of the blockchain code considerably.

Blockchain information gets verified with nodes. The nodes confirm each blockchain transaction.

Remember, however, that blockchain is basically information. This information will need to get verified a seemingly infinitesimal amount of times.

In order for someone to cheat the blockchain code, they’d need to alter the code across an infinitesimal number of checks. As you can imagine, this feat is nearly impossible, and although it’s not completely impossible, it would take an incredible amount of resources to do so.

Transparency

Blockchain is a digital distributed ledger. In other words, everyone has access to blockchain transactions. Now, you may wonder how this makes sense.

Bear with us.

Transaction information is available to all blockchain users. However, the identities of blockchain users remain concealed. Blockchain users can verify information easily without compromising their identity.

Benefits of Blockchain Marketing

Now, let’s get back to marketing. We’ll look at the strategies that you can use to take advantage of blockchain marketing in a moment. But first, let’s look at a few ways that the practice will benefit your marketing campaigns.

Better Efficiency

Business processes involve a lot of paperwork, even if it’s of the digital variety. At any rate, keeping track of work tasks can prove extremely time-consuming and tedious.

Imagine that you use blockchain to replace invoicing. With a regular invoice, you need to wait to receive payment. It also takes time for your financial middleman to process the payment.

Blockchain eliminates these kinds of problems. It enables you to process transactions in real-time.

In addition, both parties in the transaction use the same information to verify the transaction. As a result, there’s no need for each party to create separate records for it.

Enhanced Targeting

Like most marketers, you’ve most likely had a digital marketing campaign underperform. With money on the line, these kinds of results can prove especially disappointing.

You most likely worked on several aspects of your campaign. These aspects may have included:

• Ad copy
• Ad format
• Creative visuals
• Target audience

You may have also tried search engine optimization (SEO). You may have even invested in digital marketing education.

This list could go on indefinitely, but I’m sure you get the point by now. At any rate, despite all your hard work, your campaign didn’t work.

Blockchain marketing decentralizes the advertising ecosystem. In other words, it enables you to work directly with publishers. In turn, you can take your advertisements right to your audience without paying a go-between.

Using this method, you’d pay your audience when they view your ad. In turn, you’re assured that you’re getting the most out of your marketing investment.

Lower Costs

Again, blockchain is a decentralized P2P technology. This feature alone enables you to reduce an enormous amount of operating costs. The main benefit here is that you’re eliminating third-party operators.

With ad networks, for instance, you must pay a network provider, and they pay the advertisers. Networks earn profit by deducting their fees out of those payments.

Now, imagine replacing the ad network with a blockchain smart contract. Now, you’ll only pay for services if the terms of the agreement have been met.

Also, you’ll only pay the rate for publishers, freelancers, or other advertising vendors. You’ll no longer have to pay an agent to connect you with advertising service providers.

Leveraging Blockchain Marketing

Blockchain technology has already disrupted many industries. These industries include:

• Banking
• Financial services
• Healthcare
• Insurance
• Legal
• Media
• Real estate
• Retail

By now, you should start to understand how blockchain marketing can revolutionize the way that you build awareness about your brand.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding blockchain. Already, major brands like Apple and IBM have recognized the potential of blockchain and are taking advantage of the technology.

Still, you’re probably wondering, “How can I use blockchain marketing for my business today?” Let’s find out.

Affiliate Marketing

In 2012 alone, United States brands will spend more than half a billion dollars on affiliate marketing. Despite this investment, however, they continue to struggle with unethical affiliate operators.

Often, brands find that they’re wasting money on sites of no value. Other times, brands do achieve desired results. Still, they pay too much in commissions to receive an appropriate return on investment.

Blockchain marketing can curb this kind of waste. It can reign in affiliate marketing practices in several ways.

For instance, cryptocurrency can simplify the affiliate marketing payment process. On the affiliate side, the networks usually withhold payments until sites reach a certain threshold. Blockchain can eliminate this limitation.

On the marketer’s side, where you stand, you can replace affiliate networks with smart contracts. A blockchain smart contract can ensure accountability and reduce ad fraud. You’ll no longer need to rely solely on pixel tracing to track campaign performance.

What’s more, blockchain affiliate marketing is more than hypothetical. In fact, it might surprise you to learn just how many companies are already providing blockchain marketing services. You can get started with the practice today with service providers like Reftoken or Hoqu.

Influencer Marketing

Companies are investing big time in celebrity micro-influencers and major influencers on social media. However, influencer marketing isn’t working out quite as well as affiliate marketing.

The practice has a bit of a bad reputation among professional marketers. It’s difficult to track the return on investment on influencer marketing. There’s also a significant lack of transparency when using this marketing method.

Of course, there are malicious actors in influencer marketing, as there are with any other business. As a result, brands have also had to deal with a deluge of fake followers and engagement.

Again, blockchain marketing can remedy these issues. Once again, smart contracts can come to the rescue.

The contracts can facilitate payouts when certain conditions are met or the desired result is achieved. Again, this practice is not hypothetical.

One company operating in this space is indaHash. Even Patreon is getting in on influencer blockchain marketing as it tries to clean up its act.

Loyalty Programs

Customers join loyalty programs for a couple reasons. For example, a customer may already have loyalty for your brand. Also, many customers join loyalty programs because they want discounts.

Most households are part of about 30 different loyalty programs. On average, however, they only use about a dozen of them.

Typically, customers run into problems when they try to redeem their points. Other customers have problems keeping track of different loyalty programs. Also, some loyal customers have problems redeeming their points before they expire.

Again, blockchain marketing can solve these kinds of problems. You can use the technology to introduce a frictionless customer loyalty system.

What’s more, you can use a blockchain marketing loyalty platform to enable customers to redeem their points within a network of participants. For instance, BitRewards.network is one company that’s venturing into this kind of offering.

Are You Ready for Blockchain Marketing?

Marketing experts predict that blockchain technology will result in radical changes in the way that digital advertising works. It supports new kinds of digital advertising platforms.

With blockchain marketing, however, consumers own their data. They don’t simply surrender their data for the privilege of using popular free tools like social media platforms.

In other words, blockchain marketing enables consumers to receive direct compensation for their advertising data. More importantly for you, however, it enables you to use that data and push targeted advertising more accurately.

Team Up With an Expert Blockchain Marketing Agency

We hope our brief overview of blockchain marketing has shown you the potential this technology has for your business. However, like any other marketing vehicle, a new marketing channel can prove challenging to deploy correctly. We can help.

Bliss Branding is an experienced blockchain marketing agency. We can also help you with all your other digital endeavors.

Don’t go through another underperforming digital marketing campaign. Take advantage of our expertise. Please feel free to book your free digital marketing consultation today.