Daniel Martin
Author
When one hears the word blockchain, the first thing that comes to mind is cryptocurrency. But, blockchain as a technology is much bigger than that. It has much broader applications across various fields.
Blockchain is helping solve major issues across various industries. This is due to its transparent and immutable nature. When it comes to marketing, blockchain can bring about huge disruptions. It can help fix various marketing difficulties faced by businesses for a long time.
But first, let’s take a closer look at blockchain technology.
Exploring marketing difficulties that blockchain can fix. Source: pixabay.com
Understanding Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology is one of the biggest emerging technologies for business. It is set to become an integral part of industry 4.0. In simple words, blockchain technology is a decentralized, distributed ledger that helps maintain digital records of data. The data on a blockchain cannot be modified.
Now, read on to find out how blockchain will completely transform marketing by fixing critical issues in the industry.
1. Improving Marketing Campaigns
Businesses spend thousands of dollars on marketing campaigns. Thus, the marketing campaign needs to be successful to provide an ROI. Yet, sometimes the campaign can flop.
In such situations, businesses need access to data to understand what went wrong. But, the data can sometimes be inaccurate, leading to less room for improvement.
Blockchain can fix this issue. It provides access to accurate and trustworthy metrics. Moreover, businesses have access to data in real-time. This further helps track the marketing campaigns efficiently and accurately. Businesses can, thus, make adjustments to their marketing campaigns to make sure that they are a hit with their target audience.
For example, blockchain provides trustworthy data regarding the number of clicks on two different ads for the same product. Thus, businesses can determine which ad is working with the audience and which is not.
2. Enhancing Data Security
Data security is a big issue faced in today’s world, where the amount of data generated per second is limitless. Businesses need to keep data confidential. Data breaches can lead to various tangible and intangible laws, including legal complications.
Blockchain provides a solution to the problem. Blockchain is based on cryptography, decentralization, and consensus principles. It allows transactions to be executed and verified publicly. But, the nodes involved are completely anonymous.
If you want to know how blockchain is enhancing data security in marketing, you can read more on Coruzant.
3. Transforming Customer Interaction
Many businesses face the issue of low customer interaction with their marketing campaigns. It is because people feel ads are intrusive.
Blockchain is set to completely transform the situation. Businesses can provide rewards to users with blockchain technology for watching their ads. This can help drive customer engagement and interaction.
For example, the Brave browser provides users with Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). These are provided for the ads with which they interact. The tokens can then be exchanged for real-world money like US dollars.
4. Preventing Fraud
Businesses face fraud in their marketing operations. These are carried out through bots, click farms, and ghost websites. These fraud tactics add to the cost of marketing. But, it doesn’t increase the company’s exposure. Thus, businesses have a hard time getting a return on investment in marketing.
Blockchain can help prevent fraud by letting businesses know where their money is being spent exactly. It can provide details such as the marketing platforms, the number of ad clicks, and the customer location. This data is immutable. Moreover, it is verified by many users on the blockchain to ensure authenticity. This can lead to a considerable fraud reduction.
5. Increasing Trust
Nowadays, even customers want a ‘certificate for authentication’ for claims made by businesses. Only then will they buy the product or service offered. For example, customers want a certification stating that the product is really organic. Similarly, they want to know that a farmer is rightly compensated for their produce.
Blockchain can help increase the trust of the consumer by improving transparency. It can provide details right from the raw material sourcing to the availability of the product on store shelves.
Many businesses are already using blockchain to improve customer trust. For example, Bumble Bee Foods is using blockchain to let its customers track fish from the ocean to the table.
6. Providing an Alternate Payment Method
Payment issues are a common problem for businesses that outsource their marketing to agencies. Businesses can feel cheated if the marketing campaign doesn’t provide a good ROI. The marketing agencies can also face issues with forged checks or delayed payments.
Blockchain proves a lifesaver for both parties.
As mentioned earlier, blockchain provides accurate, real-time data about their marketing campaigns. Thus, they can verify whether their ads are reaching the customers as planned or not. This helps ease the payment process.
Cryptocurrencies can also be used as a payment method to make transactions more secure and transparent. This can help end the payment issues mentioned earlier.
7. Eliminating Third Parties
Marketing usually means the involvement of a third party. The third party can be a marketing agency or a platform like Google that helps businesses deliver their ads to the target customers.
But, the involvement of a third party brings along various issues like increases in marketing costs, risks of cyberattacks, and fraud.
Using blockchain completely eliminates the dependence on a third party. Blockchain awards users for creating content on their platform. This helps end the risks that come with using third parties in marketing processes.
8. Reducing Marketing Costs
Businesses have to pay a significant fee to third parties like Google to advertise their ads on various websites. Similarly, other platforms, like social media sites, charge businesses to display ads. This adds to the marketing budgets of the businesses.
As mentioned above, blockchain can help cut third parties. Thus, without the middleman, the cost of digital marketing campaigns can be reduced significantly.
Moreover, there are platforms that reward users with cryptocurrencies for creating and publishing content on their platforms. This proves beneficial for small and medium enterprises that have tight marketing budgets.
Some examples include Steemit. It provides users with STEEM cryptocurrency for publishing content on their platform.
9. Providing High-Quality Customer Data
As mentioned earlier, businesses don’t get access to accurate data. Moreover, customers have become more aware of data sharing and how their data is being used. This has led them to refrain from sharing it.
Blockchain ensures that businesses get high-quality, useful customer data by incentivizing the data-sharing process. Businesses can offer cryptocurrencies to customers in exchange for their data. This leads to customers sharing their data while also controlling the type and amount of data shared.
Businesses are also ensured that they are getting data that actually proves useful to them. It is because the data is sourced directly from the customer.
Parting thoughts
Blockchain is set to revolutionize marketing. It will help end all the major hurdles faced by businesses in marketing operations. We are already seeing applications of blockchain in marketing. As technology advances, we can see new use cases of blockchain in marketing. The future of marketing looks promising with blockchain.
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