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Blockchain and Digital Marketing – Technological Influence and Expectations

Raja Sinha 1 September, 2018

Blockchain technology is not just any new arrival in town, it’s also an innovation that is poised to change the face of digital marketing forever. You probably heard or read a little about it in the recent years or months but now expect it to completely blow up as it continues to impress with its effective capabilities not only in terms of cryptocurrency but also in digital marketing. To help you transition to blockchain and digital marketing for your business endeavors in the future, go ahead and read this helpful guide that discusses its impact to business quality—and how you can actually use it to your advantage.

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What is Blockchain Technology?

Whenever someone mentions blockchain technology, most people instantly think about cryptocurrency but it actually predates this concept. In layman’s terms, blockchain technology is basically a peer-to-peer network system where every user can log-in, edit, and just navigate around a website. This model is similar to the algorithm used by Wikipedia and Google Docs. Editorial access is not limited to one person. It is a community built by people for the people. Everyone can get in, put in information, and nothing actually makes the network fail.

Its name is also a dead giveaway to its function. The information put into the server are stacked together and can form a block and they are linked together as if on a chain.

The only glaring difference between blockchain and peer-to-peer network system is that Wikipedia and Google Docs are still handled by a third party organization that makes everything centralized. There are still authorizations needed to be able to enter the network and write entries. Blockchain, on the other hand, is handled by all of its users alone and access can be granted through private key cryptography.

Blockchain and Bitcoin

Its convenient capabilities and independence make blockchain a fitting system to be used by companies that rely on decentralization to make business gains. And you can’t mention blockchain without mentioning Bitcoin, the very reason why it is invented in the first place. Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym used by an unknown individual, designed blockchain to act as a public register of cryptocurrency. With it, everyone who uses the digital currency is able to see their status information regarding credits, balances, and incomes. Monitoring and adjusting them are also part of the structure.

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Albeit a little obscured, Bitcoin remains to be a steadfast technology today and it’s all because of the blockchain. This alone proves that blockchain is very reliable in the long run. It is cost effective and ideal for businesses who want to maximize on being self-governing and on their connection to clients.

How Blockchain Technology is Relevant to Digital Marketing

Blockchain and digital marketing are polar opposites and that’s what makes the two perfect for each other. There are a lot of elements working together for digital marketing: there is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content, social media, email, and even mobile and it’s a challenge to fulfill them all and actually generate productive digital marketing. This is where blockchain comes in. With its system, you can cover all the bases without spending too much time and resources plus it builds organic branding and makes transactions easier for customers which are factors that will elevate your business to something more.

How Blockchain and Digital Marketing Actually Work Together

Now you’re probably wondering how one can combine blockchain and digital marketing. You can by taking a bird eye’s view of how your products and services work. Through this, you will know how to custom fit blockchain in marketing.

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Say, for example, you are running a fashion brand. You can use blockchain to help customer track the origins of a certain clothing in order to know if it’s authentic or not. Through this, customer trust is built. You can also apply this particular blockchain strategy to other businesses. Walmart is also now using this very same method, with customers having the privilege to learn where the products they are buying were manufactured.

In fact, most businesses can use blockchain and digital marketing together. If you are a musician wanting to sell your music, then you can easily use apps that use blockchain in marketing your products digitally and all property rights and incomes remain on your own. This is because no one owns blockchain, the middlemen that controls everything is eschewed. There are no interferences in your own idea of business and digital marketing.

Advantages of Blockchain Digital Marketing

Our technology is rapidly advancing and this is evident from transactions being done online with the use of digital currency. We’ve established before that blockchain looks to be a game changer to digital marketing and the following points should prove this claim further.

Information Stays with the User

Through apps and websites that use blockchain marketing, all of the information that your customers submitted can be removed at their own will. This is because blockchain networks only keep temporary records and there are no hidden logs to be worried about. If anything, this is a perfect digital marketing strategy as it gives customers freedom and if they find this element in your services then you can retain them. Apps that are perfect examples of this are Keybase and OneName.

Assets Are All Your Own

Whether you’re a digital marketer or a consumer, all of the assets that you put out on the Internet remain yours. Well, unless you are planning to sell some of them. When you go for innovations that use blockchain technology, all of the royalties will go to you and transactions are smoother due to digital currency.

This is because, as mentioned above, there are no middlemen that take the percentage of your revenues. How this plays out as a good archetype of blockchain and digital marketing, you say? Simple. As a marketer, you will have better chances of advertising what you offer genuinely and as a consumer, you can discover products and services that are trusted and legit and not recognized because it is boosted by middlemen organizations like Google or Facebook.

Ads Are Better Disseminated

With the help of a new browser called Brave and its ad platform Basic Attention Token or BAT, ads put out by marketers are now regulated more than before. With these, customers have the luxury to which apps they would like to be seeing and digital marketers will have to pay to show the ads. This method encourages a more controlled environment of ads and a stronger mutual agreement between consumers and advertisers which seem to have faded over time evident from an outpouring of ads that targets even those out of the business’ demographic.

SEO and Digital Marketing Will Be Disrupted but Changed for the Better

If you have noticed, there seems to be less involvement of SEO and the rest of digital marketing means to blockchain technology. This is because blockchain marketing aims to make things feel more direct and through the actual interaction of people. Search marketing will be greatly disrupted as Middlemen like Google will be phased out as advertisers and websites can work on their own due to blockchain’s ability to tell if users are authentic.

There will also be less reliance on words, images, and digital marketing tactics. Blockchain technology builds a community where there are fewer restrictions and a person’s needs are prioritized to give more value to digital marketing strategies.

But this is not saying that current digital marketing strategies are without merit. It is best to note that these methods are incredibly thriving but if it happens that blockchain permeates the industry then there will be a major overhaul. Since trust is an essential element when running blockchain in marketing, digital marketers will have to be more transparent when it comes to their services and with the content, they put out.

An upside though is through blockchain, a myriad of problems with digital marketing can be solved. Effective keywords can be easier to track and site analysis can be more comprehensive than we have today.

What Digital Marketers Should Expect

The blockchain is nowhere a revolutionary innovation, it is actually an amalgamation of tried and tested concepts. Still, it is a novel idea for many, especially those who are not expecting that it is already ingrained in many websites and applications that we use today.

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If you are a digital marketer, it probably is the best time to learn more about blockchain and digital marketing before it becomes an on-demand solution. Sure, it might be a total opposite of the traditional digital marketing strategies that force you to do extensive research, site crawls, and non-stop keyword integration but it also offers complex procedures that promise even impressive results.

A fair warning though, as it’s still on its early stages of testing out its effects in digital marketing, only time can tell if blockchain and digital marketing pair-up is really a worthy investment for your business.

Conclusion

For some, blockchain and digital marketing might sound like a strange combination but you should already know that the nature of this field is far from being normal. Sometimes, digital marketing opens new and even unusual channels for everyone’s benefit and its efficiency will show not through the system itself but how the people behind it will use it.

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Tags: bitcoin digital marketing marketing strategies online marketing
Author: Raja Sinha
I am the CEO and founder of RedKite Internet Marketing and Web Designs, we are a company that has been outsourcing SEO, web design and internet marketing since 2005.