Blockchain Marketing Vs Traditional Digital Marketing: 4 Ways

Since its public release in 2008, blockchain has taken over the digital world.

From innovating how transactions are recorded to creating a platform for cryptocurrency, blockchain has permeated into industries around the globe. Nowhere is this more obvious than with blockchain marketing, which has now established itself as a new branch of digital communication.

Considering that the global blockchain technology market is expected to grow by 82.4% between 2021 to 2028, it’s no surprise that companies around the world are flocking to blockchain technologies. But, as blockchain marketing is still a fairly new breed, many blockchain businesses don’t know how to launch successful marketing campaigns.

In this article, we’ll walk through how blockchain marketing differs from traditional digital marketing, helping you to get a leg-up on launching your next campaign.

Let’s get right into it.

What is Blockchain Marketing?

Blockchain thrives on decentralization, providing an unalterable chain of digital transactions. Due to its unchangeable history, blockchain provides a stable, transparent, and secure method of sending and receiving payments.

While blockchain’s beginnings focused on monetary transactions, with the history of bitcoin being its first large-scale operation, the tool has now gravitated into other sectors. Considering the proliferation of blockchain throughout different industries, blockchain marketing has also risen to support these new applications.

Blockchain marketing is the process of conducting social campaigns that raise awareness within the blockchain community about a blockchain business or ICO (initial coin offering) project. It’s a longer form of marketing, with concepts like trust and building a stable community being the primary targets of campaigns.

Although there are some similarities between blockchain marketing and digital marketing, as time goes on, these industries only further deviate from each other. Marketing is one of the most important aspects of your business, if you ever need further assistance Toptal’s Marketing Services empowers businesses with world-class marketing talent to solve their most challenging problems. From building brands to launching new products and services to growing the company’s customer base.

What are the differences between blockchain marketing and digital marketing?

Considering the relative novelty of blockchain marketing, it is a much more dynamic form of marketing, with new key trends and tactics emerging as this industry continues to grow in popularity.

But the predictability of digital marketing in comparison to blockchain marketing isn’t the only thing that sets these two apart. In fact, there are four key trends in which these marketing forms diverge:

Blockchain makes use of different social channels.
Blockchain marketing’s primary goal is on building trust.
Digital marketing is fixed, while blockchain marketing is dynamic.
Blockchain marketing focuses on longevity rather than short digital marketing campaigns.

Let’s break these down further.

Blockchain uses different channels

2018 saw the rise of cryptocurrency scams, with ICO projects disappearing overnight and taking millions of dollars of investors’ money with them. Cryptocurrency scams were up over 400% over the year, with around $1.7 billion stolen throughout the course of 2018.

Looking just at cryptocurrency theft, there was still 3.6x more stolen in 2018 than 2017:

Due to this, high-profile social platforms like Facebook began to crack down on ICOs, banning them from advertising on any of their social sites. These actions started a rotation within blockchain marketing, with marketing managers having to find new avenues through which they could advertise. This also lead to the emergence of crypto heatmap platforms to provide easier crypto exchanges and investments.

Websites like Blockchain Marketing became a hub for marketers and businesses that operate in the blockchain industry, providing cultivated lists of social sites that were permitting blockchain advertisements, B2B resources for blockchain entrepreneurs, and guides for blockchain startups. Instead of traditional marketing sites like Facebook and Instagram, blockchain marketing turned to Reddit, 4Chan, and Discord.

Although Facebook partially lifted its bans on ICOs in 2019, blockchain marketing had already made the switch to alternative platforms. When running a blockchain marketing campaign, your main point of call will be these alternative sites that most traditional marketing I managers will never have even heard of.

Blockchain marketing focuses on trust l

Considering the rocky history that blockchain marketing has had with cryptocurrency scams, this industry places trust above all over performance targets. While traditional digital marketing agencies will focus on gaining new leads for a business, a blockchain marketing firm will first seek to ensure the blockchain community places trust in their brands.

The dubious past of blockchain marketing has altered the objectives of this industry forever, with trust being the very first social capital they seek to gain from their audience – even more so than generating a profit.

Part of how blockchain marketing agencies gain this trust is by focusing on creating free educational content around the subject of blockchain, helping audiences to learn instead of just directly trying to sell them a product.

This free content marketing strategy goes hand in hand with the alternative social sites, which are almost all free to post on.

Blockchain is still emerging as a marketing form

As blockchain marketing is a relatively new field of marketing, it’s constantly changing, diverging onto new pathways, and growing in different directions. Without set-in-stone strategies from years of operations, blockchain marketing has more spontaneity to it as a field.

This strange field of marketing places emphasis on building a community around a project rather than selling the product itself, something that would be unheard of in traditional marketing. A striking example of this community first approach is DogeCoin, something that began as a meme and then, with the help of Elon Musk’s twitter, gained an incredibly active community that led to increasing the value of the cryptocurrency significantly.

The novelty of these marketing forms has allowed top blockchain marketing companies to pave their own pathways to success. For example, MarketAcross, a leading blockchain PR and marketing firm, has developed a campaign strategy that facilitates passive community building into their public relations and content marketing building blocks, helping to build brand authority while raising both trust and awareness.

This new field breeds changes, with new strategies and fresh tactics being the backbone of blockchain marketing.

Blockchain focuses on longevity rather than shorter campaigns

With concepts like acquiring customer trust and building a community at the heart of blockchain marketing campaigns, they typically run for many more months than a traditional digital marketing campaign.

As blockchain marketing companies aim to boost their brand awareness and reliability, their efforts will focus on content marketing, aiming to help their community. In return for creating educational content, over months – or even years – a blockchain business will become familiar to the community.

With a longer strategy, the field of SEO (search engine optimization) has never been more important, with blockchain marketing firms using this focus to boost their clients up the SERP rankings over time. Just like how community support helps to build trust, a high position in the Google rankings provides a level of digital recognition that is hard to deny.

Once a level of trust has been reached, typically over many months, investments will then start to trickle in. Unlike digital marketing, blockchain marketing is most definitely playing the long game.

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In fact, you could say that blockchain marketing efforts never really end; the drive to collect more trusting members into the community is an inexhaustible pursuit.

Final thoughts on the differences between blockchain marketing and digital marketing

Digital marketing, with years to solidify itself, is rigid, lacks a level of creativity, and has set pathways to follow. On the other hand, blockchain marketing is spontaneous, with new tactics and strategies being invented by top firms every single week.

As traditional marketing focuses on generating leads and sales, blockchain marketing focuses on creating a community, boosting trust in their clients over time. If you’re considering launching a blockchain marketing campaign, be ready to utilize alternative social site streams, as well as hunkering down for the long run.

As this industry continues to grow year upon year, I expect that blockchain marketing will only further begin to revolutionize traditional marketing as some of its practices bleed back into the mainstream.

Have you noticed any differences in how blockchain marketing operates? Let us know in the comments down below.

About Rachel Bowland

Rachel Bowland is the content manager at Social Marketing Writing. She likes to write about marketing and design.

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