Just like a car engine that reluctantly starts on a winter morning, people often wonder how and where to start when it comes to digital marketing. Some think their small business is making money without digital enhancement, so why bother? While some want to but are unaware of the process involved.
Another challenge is the sheer scope and scale of digital marketing given the many great digital marketing techniques ranging from search and social to email marketing and native advertising – all in an attempt to improve the digital experience of a website.
Why is digital marketing important for business?
What you must understand is that your plan to take digital marketing forward in your organization doesn’t need to be a huge report. A strategy can best be summarized in two or three slides with clear basics and an end goal that is achievable.
From here, a good SEO consultant will improve your website by implementing the methods that are crucial for improving your visibility in searches, improving your chances for reaching potential customers, while reducing the amount of money you need to spend on marketing to achieve the best results.
Let’s look at a few statistics that can summarize the incredible growth digital marketing has established in the last 5 years.
- 61% of marketers say growing SEO/organic presence is a high inbound marketing priority (HubSpot, State of Inbound2018).
- Businesses that show up on the first page of search results get 92% of consumer traffic (Joal House2019).
- Google has a 92.42% search engine market share as of April 2019 (Stat Counter, 2019).
- Businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords (Google Economic Impact Report).
- In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Belgium, and South Africa, more than 38% of consumers said price and promotions were the factors that drove their most recent product choice (KPMG Global Survey: The Truth about Consumers, 2017)
SEO, though relatively cost-free, yields lower-ranking results due to slow optimization. With more organizations taking part in the race to be in the first five search results on the first page, many service providers have moved to more complex options available.
Paid search, for example, is one of those options. The true strengths of paid search are its speed and expansiveness.
With a PPC (pay per click) campaign, you can be on the first page for a multitude of targeted terms within a day. However, the terms can cost anywhere from pennies to thousands, also, for a PPC campaign to be done correctly, it’s usually best to hire a firm that can manage it full time.
This also means that PPC campaigns can get very expensive, but with more people opting for such services, the doors also open to the extreme risks involved. Data breaches are happening more often, and they’re getting bigger, with larger numbers of customer records falling into potentially dangerous hands. Hackers continue to find ways to get into databases, and the brands who manage these records show little confidence in their ability to protect their single most valuable asset: first-party data. Here, Blockchain Technology enters the picture.
What is blockchain?
Let’s assume you are the General Manager of a reputed MNC. You have a board meeting in 30 minutes and unfortunately, you forgot to send across a very important spreadsheet to the board the day before.
What do you do now?
You take the obvious route before you which would likely be to share the document through a Google Drive link which in turn is shared among different networks of computers through which everyone involved in the meeting has to copy. Now everyone can access that spreadsheet but thankfully, no third party can edit it.
This is Blockchain.
Just as a spreadsheet works with rows and columns, a blockchain works with blocks, which is basically a collection of data. The data is added to the block in the blockchain, by connecting it with other blocks in chronological others creating a chain of blocks linked together. The biggest aspect of blockchain technology is that it allows for decentralized communication between different parties, and, everything is documented and verified. To hack into the data, one would have to hack into every place where the data is kept.
How is blockchain technology helping to shape a new future in digital marketing?
Let us put this in into a technical perspective:
- One party requests a transaction
- Requested transactions are funneled into a P2P network and broadcast into individual nodes
- Each node receives the request and validates the transaction using an algorithm
- Approved transactions are represented as blocks and added to a public ledger
- Once the block is added to an existing chain, the transaction is complete
At its core, blockchain is a kind of ledger that enables transactions between two parties while recording and time-stamp and online interaction without the need for third-party verification.
1. Market transparency
Blockchain, the encrypted, decentralized database of distributed and interlinked nodes, is particularly suited for integration with digital marketing. Blockchain promises to solve many of the issues that come with digital marketing, including data privacy, security and content monetization. The transparent nature of blockchain data also makes consumers feel at ease because companies cannot manipulate their data.
2. Eliminates the digital marketing middleman
Without blockchain, if a company wants to offer banner advertisements on its website it has to do so through Google AdSense so that no sketchy businesses will take over your ad space. Here Google processes the transaction and charges a fee for its part in the deal. Companies won’t have the need to go through a third-party platform such as Google with the blockchain structure. That’s because blockchain users can be verified through their networks. People would know they’re getting what they’re paying for as opposed to potentially paying for clicks that aren’t genuine.
3. Gives the consumer control of their own information
Marketers will no longer be able to extract customer’s information without their permission, rather will have to earn the customer’s consent, blockchain technology also allows consumers to charge for their contact information and attention. Thus giving the consumers full control over their information.
4. Data protection and security benefits
With rigorous data protection regulations like the GDPR coming into effect across all major markets, marketers can also leverage the blockchain technology to store large volumes of customer data securely. Additionally, regulatory agreement to GDPR that will require marketers to take consent from their customers can also be managed through blockchain technology.
The application of blockchain technology can change the digital marketing world as we know it. Blockchain offers numerous benefits for marketers in terms of security, transparency, and performance, the possibilities are endless. Consumers will have more control over which companies can send them information and businesses will be held accountable for their actions and required to be more transparent.