Blockchain technology is now used for more than just keeping track of cryptocurrency transactions. Blockchain is used every day for a wide range of things by telecom companies, transportation and logistics companies, retailers, healthcare providers, and media companies.
Now, the digital marketing field is getting the technology it needs. People who like blockchain say that it will cut down on ad fraud and keep customer data safe. They also want blog and news site owners to get more money for letting ads show up on their sites.
We’ll talk about what blockchain is, why people are excited about it, and four ways it could be used in digital marketing.
Let’s Take A Sneak Peek To Blockchain Technology!
A blockchain is a way to keep track of information in a database. Supporters of the technology say that it has two big advantages over a traditional database that make it worth buying:
Blockchain Databases are Transparent
Unlike a normal centralized database or ledger, the database is held by a number of different people who are not connected to each other. People can check more than one database to make sure that a certain data record is correct.
Blockchain Databases are Immutable
Once the information has been written into a ledger, it can’t be changed. If an error is made, a new piece of data must be added to the ledger to cancel out the mistake. Both pieces of information are in the ledger and can be seen on all copies.
Why is it Important for a Business to Use Digital Marketing?
What you need to know is that your company’s plan to move digital marketing forward doesn’t have to be a big report. The best way to sum up a strategy is in two or three slides with clear basics and an attainable end goal.
From here, a good SEO consultant will improve your website by using the methods that are most important for increasing your visibility in search results, increasing your chances of reaching potential customers, and decreasing the amount of money you need to spend on marketing to get the best results.
Let’s take a look at a few numbers that show how much digital marketing has grown in the last 5 years.
- 61% of marketers say that increasing their SEO and organic presence is a high priority for inbound marketing (HubSpot, State of Inbound2018).
- 92% of customer traffic goes to businesses that show up on the first page of search results (Joal House2019).
- As of April 2019, Google has 92.42% of the market share for search engines (Stat Counter, 2019).
- Every dollar a business spends on AdWords brings in an average of $2 in sales (Google Economic Impact Report).
- More than 38% of people in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Belgium, and South Africa said that price and sales drove their most recent product choice (KPMG Global Survey: The Truth about Consumers, 2017)
Even though SEO doesn’t cost much, it doesn’t get you high rankings because it works slowly. As more businesses try to be among the first five search results on the first page, many service providers have moved to more complicated options.
One of these options is paid search, for example. Paid search’s real strengths are how fast and wide it is.
With a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you can be on the first page for a lot of targeted search terms in just one day. But the terms can cost anywhere from a few cents to tens of thousands of dollars. Also, for a PPC campaign to work well, it’s usually best to hire a full-time company to run it.
This also means that pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can get very expensive, but as more people use them, the door opens to the very high risks that come with them. More and more data breaches are happening, and they are getting bigger, with more customer records getting into hands that could be dangerous. Hackers keep finding new ways to get into databases, and the companies in charge of these records don’t seem confident in their ability to protect their most valuable asset, which is first-party data. Here is where Blockchain Technology comes in.
What will happen to digital marketing because of blockchain?
Here are Four Ways showing how Blockchain will Affect Digital Marketing:
1. Keep Track of Keywords
Most of the time, what a person sees on Google is unique to them. What other searchers see will depend on where they are and what kind of device they are using. This makes it hard for marketers to track the rank of keywords.
If the search were to use blockchain, each page’s ranking could be stored on the blockchain, along with location and device usage data.
This information could help marketers figure out what they need to do to improve in areas and on devices where they aren’t doing well. Using the same data, it would be possible to figure out why some places show up in Google Local Pack results and others don’t.
2. Better Leads QualityÂ
If a customer gives you their information, it’s likely that they are interested in your business. This makes it much easier to get leads and sales since these prospects are already ready to be worked on.
There are different ways to collect data for marketing at the moment. Many marketers get information from different places, put it all together, and then use it to run a campaign. This method isn’t perfect, and a lot of campaigns run on data that is inconsistent or wrong.
Because blockchain transactions are decentralized, marketers have to go right to the source: the customer. One example is the company Brave, which made a browser that blocks ads. Even though that’s not new, it does show its users ads that it sells to companies using Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). The users get 70% of the tokens’ value, while Brave gets 30%.
How do Brave target ads? Users give the company as much or as little information about themselves as they want. Advertisers choose their audiences based on the demographic information that Brave has, but they never know who is seeing their ads. This could be a new way to do things in the future.
3. Tools for Tackling Ad Fraud
Fraud is common in advertising, which marketers know all too well. Verasity said that by 2023, ad fraud could cause advertisers to lose about $100 billion. Verasity’s VeraViews tool uses blockchain to look at first-party and third-party data to figure out how likely it is that a user actually saw an ad. This helps stop ad fraud.
Tools like these promise that advertisers will only pay for valid views and that publishers will get paid more and faster because the blockchain is fast, accurate, and can’t be changed.
4. More Transparency for Consumers
Any brand that wants to attract Gen Zers and millennials needs to be real. So is helping with things like fair trade and the environment.
For instance, a brand of hot drinks could use blockchain to make its supply chain public. If someone wants to buy ethically sourced coffee, they could look at a brand’s blockchain to find out who grows their beans and how much they get paid. They could find out when the coffee leaves the farm, how long it was on the ship, and where the beans were ground. People could even see the average temperature at which the coffee beans were kept on the ship that brought them to them.
Blockchain is clear and can be trusted because it can’t be changed. If brands were more efficient and had lower transaction costs, they would be better off.
How is Blockchain Technology Helping to Make a New Future for Digital Marketing?
Let’s take a look at this from a technical point of view:
- One party requests a transaction
- Requested transactions are sent to a peer-to-peer network and sent out to each node.
- Each node gets the request and uses an algorithm to check that the transaction is valid.
- Transactions that have been approved are shown as blocks and added to a public ledger.
- The transaction is done once the block is added to an existing chain.
At its core, blockchain is a kind of ledger that makes it possible for two people to make transactions and interact online without a third party having to verify them.
1. Market Transparency
Blockchain, which is a database of encrypted, decentralized nodes that are linked to each other, works well with digital marketing. Blockchain has the potential to solve many of the problems that come with digital marketing, such as privacy, security, and making money off of content. Since companies can’t change their data, the fact that blockchain data is clear makes consumers feel at ease.
2. Gets Rid of the Middleman
Without blockchain, if a business wants to put banner ads on its website, it has to do so through Google AdSense so that shady businesses don’t take over your ad space. Here, Google handles the transaction and charges a fee for doing so. With the blockchain structure, companies won’t have to use a third-party platform like Google. This is because users of the blockchain can be checked out through their networks. People would know what they’re paying for, instead of possibly paying for clicks that aren’t real.
3. Gives the Consumer Control over their own Information
Marketers won’t be able to get customers’ information without their permission. Instead, they will have to earn the customers’ consent. Blockchain technology also lets customers charge for their contact information and attention. So, the consumers will have full control over the information they receive.
4. Data Safety and Security
With strict data protection rules like GDPR coming into effect in all major markets, marketers can also use blockchain technology to store large amounts of customer data safely. Blockchain technology can also be used to handle compliance with GDPR, which will require marketers to get permission from their customers.
Final Thoughts
The world of digital marketing as we know it could change if blockchain technology is used. When it comes to security, transparency, and performance, a blockchain development company has a lot to offer marketers. The possibilities are endless. Consumers will have more say over which businesses can send them information, and businesses will have to take responsibility for what they do and be more open about it.
