Cryptocurrencies have taken the world by storm since Bitcoin first arrived on the scene in 2009. Its pseudonymous creator and main developer, Satoshi Nakamoto, is still unknown to this day. However, the impact that Bitcoin has had on the world unto the creation of literally thousands of digital currencies which have been launched since, has perhaps changed the future of business and global finance forever.
Some Bitcoin And Cryptocurrency Info Before Looking At Impact On Digital Marketing
In order to comprehend how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have impacted the digital marketing space and the role of marketers everywhere, it is necessary to first comprehend digital currency from its earlier days. Bitcoin was the first digital asset launched. BTC is the token ticker which Bitcoin is known and referred to by.
On a lighter note, some people refer to multiple BTC coins as Bitcoins, and some leave the ‘s’ off. Either is acceptable and understood. There are other nuances involved with Bitcoin and the greater crypto community for sure, but don’t stress. We will cover everything as we navigate forward, and by presenting information systematically and chronologically, enable the organic gelling of the concepts of crypto and digital marketing to occur for the reader.
Now that those few housekeeping items are out of the way, we can get further into the background of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in order to begin to comprehend their role and impact on digital marketing, even crypto marketing in specific.
Saying The Right Thing The Right Way
In SEO there are fundamentals involved, referred to as pillars. These fundamental principles and structures combine to ensure that a brand reaches the intended audience in an expectation and pushes to attain ROI through effective and quality conversion points.
The first of the three principles is on-page content which references all information published on the project or business’ main website and connected social media profiles. Implementing the proper keywords and phrases intended to reach the designated target audience is based on a technical science founded on identifying what the ideal audience is actively searching for on Google and other search engines.
Off-page content, or link building, is the art of using third-party media and traffic sources aimed to link members of the target audience to the brand’s online conversion platform, whether main website, active promotion or other hub designed to capture and convert traffic driven towards it. It is of high importance for the crypto business to leverage the skills and expertise of an effective crypto marketing firm well-versed in SEO tactics specific to the industry.
The third and equally important pillar is content. Content is king, and choosing the most relevant keywords, tone and structure for content is a science that is best taken on by professional marketers. This can be even more vital in crypto marketing, which is known for having a particular type of audience that may be best reached through a balance of optimized content disseminated through specific channels consistently over time in order for results to be accomplished in many instances.
The Emergence Of Bitcoin And Cryptocurrency
If you spend enough time in the Bitcoin (BTC) exclusive community and hear conversation and dialogue between individuals known proudly as Bitcon maximists, you’ll quickly learn that they prefer BTC not be confused with the terms crypto or cryptocurrency. Digital currency or even calling BTC a digital asset could work, but steer clear of calling the first digital asset ever a cryptocurrency around hardcore BTC maxis.
The reasoning does have validity if you’re open to listening objectively and considering the perspective or viewpoint of another. Either way, digital assets have been around now officially since 2009 when Bitcoin made its way to the public sector and began breaking significant ground later in 2011. From then on, there have been several thousands of coins and tokens developed and deployed. This all has relevance on the impact which cryptocurrency has on digital marketing and why many marketers have started giving attention to the digital assets market and its effect on the industry.
The popularity of Bitcoin and crypto has worked like any other concept that has become more integrated into the public and business sectors. As BTC and crypto have become more readily used and common in certain markets and global industries, the desire and demand for crypto, and crypto-based platforms and products has simultaneously increased. This has in turn, caused businesses to increasingly pay closer attention in order to remain relevant now and into the future, a hugely important task to any competent business owner that plans to grow and/or scale.
Why Bitcoin And Other Currencies Are Relevant In Digital Marketing
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many other of the most popular digital assets play a major role in digital marketing for an overlapping set of reasons. Since Facebook, Google, and other large data companies began compiling users’ data and categorizing them by interests, hobbies, likes and so on several years ago, digital advertisers, marketing agencies and crypto seo professionals have been able to better pinpoint and manage target audiences that they wish to advertise their products and services to.
The above point is important to understand because any particular marketer is empowered with users’ gathered data provided by the platform directly at a cost of course. The data can in turn be utilized to target pretty much any audience imaginable, including those who may be interested in blockchain and cryptocurrencies already. Also, depending on the aim of the marketer or agency, the decision could also be made to incentivize the target audience with an offer that invites them to participate with cryptocurrency or blockchain propositions for instance.
Cryptocurrencies Are Still Breaking Into Social Media And Digital Advertising
It is important to note a few particulars since crypto is still very new in many ways. Crypto is especially green and yet underdeveloped with regards to being governed by an official set of regulatory limitations to date. Only a handful of countries have set any rules at all around cryptocurrencies for its citizens and business entities to have some degree of official guidance.
Even among the handful of territories and nations which have made steps to establish crypto guidelines, the official rules are still being actively cemented. This means that even the established rules are subject to sudden, unforeseeable changes and developments at a moment’s notice.
Why Regulatory Concerns Still Affect Cryptocurrencies And Digital Marketing
How the lack of regulations affects most businesses and companies actively running digital marketing ads is mostly associated and related to the social media platforms. Social influences a lot in the marketing space today. Larger platforms such as Facebook, which owns Instagram and others, and Google, which owns YouTube and others, have restrictions in place. These restrictions can dramatically affect an agency’s ability to deploy crypto social media marketing advertising campaigns.
This is important to note since the two mentioned massive corporate networks, between all of their interconnected social media and technology interfaces, house billions of potential customers. Actively engaged users are scrolling and interacting within the social media platform ecosystems on a daily, or at least weekly frequency without fail.
Since rules are still unclear in many nations, the larger corporate entities like Facebook and Google want to stay in the clear and not compromise their business operations. This is something they could certainly become guilty of by allowing advertisers or businesses possibly operating outside of compliance, to gain access and advertise to its users.
The social media companies themselves are permitted to operate based on trust extended from regulators and licensing bodies which hold them responsible for protecting individuals from potentially harmful exposure to misinformation and bad actors. This is actually a responsibility that should not be taken lightly, so it is understandable that the proper licenses and certifications would be needed for marketers to earn the right to campaign for instance and deploy crypto google ads that can reach the platform’s active user base.
The Birth Of Competition
Since the incentive for advertisers to reach target audiences on social media and other online platforms and channels has dramatically increased the competition to legitimize for many crypto and blockchain focused entities has also increased. Earlier we referenced how Bitcoin was the first of many digital asset ecosystems. Ethereum is the second most popular of the digital assets at the time of writing.
The following may be useful to help see how digital marketing has been impacted by increased competition. Each digital asset is related to its network when it exists as a fundamental business with real world utility. Like any business, competition in innovation and the development of business systems is what drives the industry.
Bitcoin itself is mainly promoted as a digital payment alternative powered by the blockchain technology which supports it. Bitcoin and other networks that enable payment solutions powered by the blockchain have replaced some older methods already. Ripple Labs is another payment network, yet with a private aspect of its B2B proposition. The privately owned company has been involved in an ongoing court battle initiated in 2020 by the SEC. Ripple Labs manages the XRP coin which is the associated network coin used to process payments on the private Ripple distributed ledger network.
Ethereum has upgraded to a Proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain consensus mechanism in an attempt to enhance the efficiency and other aspects of its network, while memecoins like $DOGE, $SHIB and others race to develop real world attributes into their ecosystems. The thing to understand is, crypto and the blockchain have demanded increased attention because the blockchain is changing the way business and finance is done everywhere.
Since the attention has shifted to the digital plane at a monumental pace, digital platforms with digitally-aligned solutions only make sense. The Internet of Things (IOT) will require cryptographic codes in order for the technology to interact and perform automated functions. Businesses and companies that have taken time to study where social and business life has gotten to and is only going towards with more certainty as the digital age continues, understand that they all but have to align with the blockchain in some capacity.
The Change Has Already Been Occuring
Early adopters are usually the ones who benefit and even capitalize from major shifts in regional and global markets and industries. There is no difference with crypto and the blockchain. Digital advertisers and marketers have made adjustments at record pace over the past 1-3 years.
Prior to these times in which we are now, doing an active Google search for a crypto PR agency for instance would have brought possibly zero results. Now the results are competitive enough that crypto and blockchain focused marketing agencies pay to populate in earlier Google search results for the opportunity to capture some of the search volume which such relevant topics draw. Now more than ever before in history businesses which weren’t even focused on online or internet marketing are hiring specialists in crypto and blockchain specific marketing, crypto web developers and more.
So How Has Cryptocurrency Changed The Face Of Digital Marketing?
Put plainly, cryptocurrency is desirable. Now that people are beginning to understand crypto more, and want crypto more, there are ecosystems that have popped up such as Brave. The main draw of the Brave platform is as a decentralized web browser. What this means is that users engage with advertisements on the platform willingly by submitting their interests into the platform in order for relevant advertisers to reach and find them.
The Brave platform is a good example of how decentralization, which is what is enabled largely by crypto and the blockchain, works to incentivize users, advertisers and the advertising company or business. It could be said that cryptocurrency is working to level the playing field for users and digital marketers altogether. Greater transparency is required since users have the ability to monitor and monetize their own data and web practices in many of the crypto-related platform designs and network setups.
And How Will Digital Marketing Be Affected In The Future By Crypto?
One can never say with certainty what the future of any business, market or industry will be. It can however be said with confidence, that the available metrics clearly reflect the relevance of cryptocurrencies to be growing steadily year by year. With that, more traditional and also progressive businesses alike, are actively integrating with the blockchain and crypto. For this reason, advertising to blockchain and crypto users is only anticipated to become a more sought after feat undertaken by today’s businesses looking to remain relevant, be seen, scale and evolve.
Crypto-specific digital marketing for business and organizational interests should continue to become more and more competitive as these things take place. As regulations and governmental involvement continues to become clearer, it could probably be expected that guidelines for companies and marketing agencies will also become clearer, and with the clarity, the race to market on the digital social media platforms where billions of eyes and ears are tuned, should only increase.
