3 Ways to Use Blockchain to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Even though blockchain is a relatively new technology, we see it change many industries. Among those industries is marketing, where stakeholders are eagerly waiting to see how the technology will transform the industry.

Blockchain’s main characteristics - security, accessibility, and transparency - certainly apply in the field of marketing. In fact, we already have the so-called “blockchain digital marketing,” which is essentially a strategy using decentralized platforms.

So why blockchain for digital marketing? If you’re looking to answer this question, here are the three great ideas.

1. Use Decentralized Marketplaces for Cheaper Digital Advertising

As we all know, blockchain is all about decentralizing systems, and this is something that digital marketers can take advantage of. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the best example here.

If a website owner chooses to show paid ads on their website, they often go with the Google Display Network. The biggest reason for this is that Google is a trustworthy source of ads that deals with transaction processing so the owner could get fair compensation for traffic generated by the ads.

In other words, Google is a middleman here.

Now, let’s suppose that you could do SEM without the middleman. In this case, there’s no need to go through Google Display Network or other sources because a blockchain-powered advertising platform would validate and verify trusted users. In other words, website owners don’t have to use Google, Facebook, or another middleman to advertise through ads.

As a result, the overall costs of digital advertising would be reduced.

There are already a number of decentralized marketplaces for digital ads, including SmartyAds and AdEx, and you should check them out.

Here’s how they work:

• Website owner buys an ad impression using blockchain-powered smart contract
• The interaction with an ad is established as an event and represented in the form of a “block” in the contract
• The block is distributed to become a part of the decentralized ledger
• Every time someone interacts with an ad, the contract approves the impression event automatically.

Combatting Paid Advertising Fraud

It’s a problem that many businesses encountered: some website owners provide inaccurate information about their traffic to entice advertisers to work with them.

Decentralized digital advertising platforms are a solution to this problem because, with blockchain-based smart contracts (more about them in the next section), entrepreneurs can sue unreliable vendors for failing to perform their obligations.

In the future, a database of unreliable advertisers could be created to help businesses connect with trustworthy providers of paid advertising.

2. Smart Contracts for Independent Marketing Contractors

Does your business hire outreach specialists, content marketers, copywriters, or other contractors to help with making marketing plans and conducting campaigns?

Companies often hire these professionals on the basis of a contract, i.e. to complete specific tasks like writing marketing materials, creating marketing campaigns, and designing PPC ads.

In some cases, the contractors don’t fulfill their obligations fully, and companies could be limited in terms of getting the most value out of their cooperation. This could change if you use a smart contract, though.

Simply put, a smart contract is a code stored and executed across a decentralized peer-to-peer network of blockchain. The fact that the code is stored on many servers makes it very difficult to make changes or delete something after the deployment.

The biggest advantages of smart contracts for companies hiring independent contractors are:

• Real-time verification of task approval based on contract conditions without interference from both sides. This means that if the contractor doesn't deliver, they don’t get paid
• Increased safety, as corrupting a blockchain ledger is almost impossible.

Many businesses are starting to warm up to the idea of having smart contracts instead of traditional ones.

“We have used smart contracts to directly hire translation specialists recently,” says Simona Retta, a talent acquisition professional at IsAccurate. “The project has been successful, as we cut paperwork by 95 percent and reduced fees by 20 percent by paying directly.”

If you’d like to know how to create such agreements as well, check out Top 5 Smart Contract Platforms to Watch in 2020.

3. Decentralized Content Distribution

“The conventional content distribution platforms like YouTube and Spotify, are centralized and impose significant fees and limits for content creators,” says Martin Sheborn, the head of the marketing department at Subjecto. “Blockchain-based platforms, on the other hand, introduce more transparency to the process of content promotion by eliminating the intermediaries.”

While many people think that this concept is far from being a reality, there are already a number of popular decentralized content platforms out there, including Content Blockchain and Vevue. They work on blockchain and enable transparent video exchange and payment in tokens.

Vevue, for example, is a peer-to-peer video network that allows users to define the price for watching their content.

Vevue is also known for distributing the first movie via blockchain, “No Postage Necessary.” This means that in additional theaters, the movie was also available to download using cryptocurrencies.

Jeremey Culver, the director of the film, encouraged other content producers to explore alternative distribution platforms.

“There are many advantages to blockchain distribution, including immutable proof of intellectual property rights, transparent royalty payments, and, since all data on the blockchain is resistant to duplication, we can now envision a world where films are no longer pirated,” CNet quoted Culver as saying.

If you’d like to take advantage of peer-to-peer payment and get rid of middlemen, consider promoting your marketing content on a blockchain-powered distribution platform in addition to traditional channels. They’re fairly easy to use and already have large international audiences looking for quality content.

Blockchain and Digital Marketing: Summary

Blockchain solutions like content distribution and advertising platforms are steadily growing in popularity. One reason is that integrating blockchain in a digital marketing strategy is really easy. As these three examples show, businesses are already taking advantage of this innovative technology.

There’s little doubt that blockchain has a good chance to become a disrupting factor in digital marketing in the next five years. The reason here is that content producers, entrepreneurs, and advertisers want to grow their businesses without involving middlemen but investing funds on more important goals.

Author Bio

Estelle Liotard is a talented part-time copywriter and blogger. Thanks to years of working as a content writer at companies such as WowGrade and TrustMyPaper, she is now a popular contributor for a number of well-known blogs. Her interests include content marketing and graphic design, and she is currently learning how to write an eBook about copywriting for web interfaces. Apart from her independent projects, Estelle also actively contributes her articles and best essays to SupremeDissertations and other websites.