There are a wide variety of ways that Blockchain is impact marketing and communications. The three items we mentioned above are only one of many. Blockchain is also helping combat fraud, identity theft, secure personally identifiable information and provide advertisers with more complete buyer person information than ever before.
Who knows how the future of digital marketing may be affected by blockchain, but the early indications are very positive.
1. Publicly Available Transparent Records of Products and Services
Public relations is about establishing trust with stakeholders. And, contrary to popular belief, public relations spin cannot polish up what is essentially bad business practice if a company decides to act unethically.
The innovation of Blockchain coded systems that measure the supply chain of products and services is set to be one of the newest tools used by public relations experts.
Companies are already using Blockchain to demonstrate ethical supply chains. Overseas tuna companies are using Blockchain to hold the industry accountable and combat illegal fishing.
Supermarkets are already looking at ways to attach transparent supply chain information to products. Coupled with natural language processing, it may be possible in the future to completely automate and personalise the story behind each product.
An example of this might be a piece of salmon. You might go on your phone or augmented reality device and view where it came from and how it got to you. The potential for storytelling and adding value to products is immeasurable.
2. Securely identifying Online Users to Prevent Fraud and Avoid Bad Data
Identify fraud is a major issue in the online world. Fake accounts, likes, comments, and even conversions, results in poor quality data for measurement and evaluation.
Blockchain, however, allows us to put a stamp on every piece of digital information. Identifying users online using Blockchain allows auditors to check for fraudulent behaviour online and identifying fake users.
The benefit of identifying users is that information can be used to better personalise targeted ads. The security of Blockchain also acts as way to avoid releasing personally identifiable information. The result is that users have greater control over how their data is used, while advertising companies are still able to learn more about them.
Blockchain may be able to provide a win-win situation in regards to the issue of privacy and data ownership for both companies and users.
3. Fundraising Opportunities
In the not-for-profit area of marketing and communications, fundraising channels are the most important target audience.
The recent inundation of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) has made the news. You may remember a flood of ICO advertisements of Facebook, before they were censored earlier this year in Facebook’s advertising platform.
ICOs enable entrepreneurs to sell their business concepts as tokens. The more tokens, the more support for the business and the more capital it has as it starts up.
For marketers looking for new ways to raise capital for charities and not-for-profits, ICOs may be a terrific new funding model. Given the lax registration and general hype around ICOs, it is still a Wild West out there for buyers of cryptocurrency.
Until regulation catches up, ICOs are certainly something to consider for your charity’s marketing and communication strategy.
