Digital marketing has definitely changed the entire marketing game over the past two decades. It has placed more control of product interactions and relationships in the hands of the customers. Because of this, data breaches are happening more often and people continue to find ways into databases, which can result in terrible consequences for marketers.
There is a way to make data significantly more secure so that customer confidence never becomes a deciding factor when they interact with your brand. That way is blockchain encryption.
In this article we will look at:
- What is Blockchain Marketing?
- The benefits of Blockchain Marketing
- Marketing Strategies for Blockchain Marketing
What is Blockchain Marketing?
Without going in specifics, blockchain is a ledger that records and time-stamps every transaction and online interaction between one party and another. Another name for it could be DLT, distributed ledger technology.
The strength of blockchain’s security is due to its decentralized data storage structure and is why blockchain has played such a huge role with cryptocurrencies. What makes blockchain revolutionary for the marketer is that every transaction recorded in the blockchain will be linked with other transactions around it and it will provide companies with a more definitive view of the customers. Blockchain will and can change the way industries operate and will defintely change the way marketers interact with customers.
The benefits of Blockchain Marketing
The internet brought people together regardless of geography and the same thing is going to happen with data. Every individual on the planet will have rights concerning who uses their data and blockchain encryption is the way that it will be made possible. It will not only give customers more say about how their data is used, but it will push markets to come up with new ways to interact with customers that enhances the shopping experience.
Improved Cost and Operations Efficiency
Blockchain gives brands a direct line to each customer and removes the need for third parties to be involve in transactions, email, or other kinds of advertising. Because of this, the speed that the transactions can be carried out digitally will greatly increase the number of transactions per second.
Boosts for the Brand
Data privacy rights will make brands treat customers with greater respect because a large part that blockchain supports is transparency. They will have to be more explicit about getting permission to collect data and what they seek to achieve for collecting it. Blockchain will make it possible for a marketing brand to breed trust and prove that all the data is transparent and independently verifiable. Companies like Pressfarm can help with this and more.
Innovations we haven’t thought of yet
No matter what the situation, there is always room for improvement. Blockchain is definitely keep improving once more and more people understand it and adapt it to fit their needs.
Smart Contracts
Smart contracts use blockchain to vet and authenticate every contract because it is already growing in use throughout the B2B environment. They use blockchain to link to every transaction related to that contact. It opens the way for cross-promition marketing between brands and can apply to social media channels where influencers play a big role.
Loyalty Programs
A major blockchain application would be in a brand’s loyalty program where retailers can create their own branded currency for customers to use in claiming rewards. Blockchain makes it possible for several retailers to use the same blockchain currency for each of their own loyalty programs and the rewards from one brand can used with other brands.
There is also great cost associated with building a loyalty program other than blockchain like adapting infrastructure and creating new consumer apps for simple blockchain use will have to be developed. But that is definitely not a reason to resist data encryption tech, so build your systems and starting getting the rewards in revenue and customer retention.
Incentives and Discounts
Many brands have challenges when it comes to figuring out how to get customers to respond to discount as well as figuring out what the “sweet spot” should be because if the brand offers too little, the customers will not put the extra effort to try and redeem any discount or coupon and if no one is responding, your brand is not collecting any customer data.
Blockchain helps with that as well because they can combine blockchain and mobile targeting to help retailers attract and keep new customers.
Paying Users to view Ads
Using Blockchain allows brand to actually pay their customers to watch ads and verify that the ad was delivered and viewed by a real person. It also optimizes the frequency of ads to ensure that you are not overdelivering ads and customers would be in paid in a blockchain currency that could be cashed in through a loyalty program.
Content Licensing
Blockchain also helps with other customer-engagement applications, like paying social influencer for use of any of their content, such as photos or videos that include your brand. It could also be extended to any copyrightable materials used in a campaign to ensure that creators of videos, images, or media have granted licensing rights and are conpensated for their work.
Verification Services
Verification services will pop up in addition to identification confirmation services using blockchain to verify things like email deliverability and that customers and social influencers are real people and not bots.
True One-to-One Personalization
Marketers should definitely be excited about having a robust and rich unified profile for each and every customers because blockchain links all transactions and online behaviors for each customers. Blockchain takes direct-to-consumer digital marketing even further than AI technology because it provides greater accuracy in targeting and personalization, it enables marketers to deliver the promise of marketing and achieve truly one-to-one interactions.
What Marketers Can Do Now
Companies that explore this type of technology now will definitely be frontrunners in the marketplace and really expand service and engagement. Even if you aren’t leading the market, your company can do things to be prepared and show that you’re looking ahead to the future.
The questions that you need to ask yourself during your data strategy is:
- Where do you interact with customers? What channels?
- How are you collecting data from your customers?
- Where do you store that data?
- How are you leveraging that data?
Conclusion
There is definitely be a high demand from consumers to control their own data over the next few years and blockchain is a great option with its permission-based access and hard-to-crack security. While it is a big part, it is not enough. It is only one part of a technological solution. Other compatible systems and applications will have to be created to make it possible to use blockchain encryption, but the important thing is that consumers will need to be educated about it.
When you combine technology and blockchain encryption, the potential is incredible. Blockchain has the power to transform society in terms of brand transparency and individual’s power. As mentioned before, blockchain encryption is going to rise up as a global security solution and individual customer demand is going to rise exponentially because they will have control over their digital profiles.
