Blockchain — Changing the Game of Digital Marketing
Since its inception, blockchain has been a mover and a shaker; primarily a shaker due to how it is expected to disrupt industries such as banking and insurance. In reality no industry is safe from the revolution that blockchain technology is bringing upon us. If your industry deals with data or transactions, you will be affected.
Take a business like digital marketing. Most would assume that blockchain technology would not create a big shift in such an industry right off the bat. However, dive into the details and you’ll see that the rise of blockchain has had an undeniable impact on the marketing world. The main pivotal areas can be summed up through changes in trust, customer experience and branding.
The trust and transparency between brands and their consumers has drastically shifted. On both consumer and company sides, blockchain has begun to transform the way that business is performed. From a company lens, the way that ads are purchased could radically change with the implementation of blockchain technology. Companies may soon be able to buy them directly and only pay once they actually reach their target consumers. Technology is becoming available to create specific tokens to track consumer interaction with an ad. In addition, the charge could be based on the mental effort or quality of attention the customer gives the ad. Using blockchain, companies can mitigate the risk of advertising to fake accounts or bots on various social platforms and target only real consumers. This alone can save companies millions of advertising dollars.
As for customers, the blockchain’s extensive data management capabilities will enable products to be tracked from all stages of the supply chain process. From a customer’s perspective, this creates massive transparency and brand building. Marketers can leverage this transparency to build trust among their target consumers.
All digital transformation is about improving customer experience. If you drill down, it is all about customer targeting, right? Every company should have their target profile of a client. Currently, companies can only get bits and pieces of the profile from various sources. Does this build a true and accurate customer profile? Who knows. With the use of blockchain, there is potential opportunity for companies to get a more accurate profile from a customer in just one simple transaction.
To up the ante, customers could actually charge companies for their information. An example of this could be when a customer signs up for a newsletter. Perhaps they set the rate at which the company can purchase their data, which would then be paid to them through a select cryptocurrency. By being compensated for their data it is a win/win for both parties. This process will enable the company to create a more accurate picture of their target customer and be able to better craft the experience tailored to them. It will also save plenty of money that would have been wasted marketing to those outside of their target.
Everything a company does will affect and create aspects of their brand. Take the use of blockchain to create digitized and agreed-upon goals in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), or perhaps just the acceptance of a company to recognize Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies as legal tender for purchases? These actions that leverage the technology create brand trust and paint a picture of a modern, forward-thinking and frankly a friendlier, and trustworthy organization.
Right now, change and advancement go hand-in-hand with blockchain technology. Considering how fast these changes can happen, it is important for digital marketers to become aware of the technology and impacts that it could have on their career. Marketing professionals should consider brainstorming ways that their organization can get ahead of the curve and leverage these tools to increase trust, customer experience, and ultimately their brand as a whole.
