Blockchain is arguably the next big thing after the emergence of electricity and the internet. It has started transforming businesses at an unimaginable rate, and those who have not been using the technology are now trying hard to get acquainted, master, and apply it to their organizational processes.
Blockchain is very critical to the 21st-century business because it is a foundational technology with the potential to be tweaked in many ways to suit diverse business operational needs. This article is geared at helping you use blockchain to convert leads for your business.
- How is Blockchain Technology Used in Business?
- How can Blockchain Technology Improve your Digital Marketing?
- How Blockchain and Other Technologies are Transforming Leads Generation
- How does Blockchain Affect Business?
- What Industries will Benefit from Blockchain?
How is Blockchain Technology Used in Business?
Blockchain may have gained notoriety as the technology that provides the infrastructure for Bitcoin, but it’s playing a bigger role in business, including small and midsize businesses.
Read Also: How big Banks and Financial Institutions are Banking on Blockchain
At its most basic, blockchain is a more efficient way of storing information. What makes it more powerful than any other file-sharing service is that data isn’t stored from the point of view of any one participant, but rather from everyone’s point of view in agreement.
That means that two parties sharing a document will always be looking at the same exact copy of that information, eliminating the time-consuming back-and-forth that comes from ensuring that everyone has the same version of, say, a contract or an invoice. Blockchain creates an audit trail that everyone can see in real-time.
his is especially important for small businesses that are constantly looking for ways to streamline their operations, says Bill Carmody, CEO of Trepoint, a digital marketing firm. Here are some of the ways blockchain is enabling entrepreneurs to operate their businesses more efficiently and with greater transparency.
Better supply chain management
When a small-business owner places an order with a supplier, it’s clear who’s on the other end of the transaction. But the business owner may not know who the supplier’s suppliers are.
By bringing transparency into the supply chain, blockchain enables a business owner to see every company that’s had a hand in creating, growing or manufacturing any component of a product it sells or service it delivers. This kind of information is vital in the event of a product recall or if a company needs to identify ethical sourcing or to avoid purchasing counterfeit parts, Carmody says.
For instance, a bakery that markets itself as using only organic ingredients would be able to verify that fact through blockchain technology because it could see every company that provided ingredients for its products, all the way back to the farm. “Your vendor may promise you everything is organic, but without blockchain technology, there’s no way to verify his or her suppliers are using organic ingredients,” he says.
More transparent contracts
How many times have you hammered out the details of a contract or agreement with a client and then been delayed in starting the project until everyone has read and signed the final version of the document?
With blockchain, each team member always has the most current version. By eliminating version issues, SMBs can save time by not having to wait for approvals or signatures.
Faster payments
Because the need for reconciling documents like invoices and billing statements is eliminated with blockchain, payments can be made almost instantly. This can have a significant impact on SMBs’ cash flow, including those that rely on insurance reimbursements.
For example, with blockchain, a small dental practice could submit a claim to a patient’s insurance company. If both the dentist and the insurance company are using blockchain, the insurance company would know exactly when the visit took place and what was done, and be able to put through payment to the dentist that day.
And because the insurance company can pay the dentist almost instantaneously, the patient will know the co-payment or co-insurance amount even before leaving the doctor’s office, or shortly thereafter.
Quicker background checks
Carmody says he can envision a day when blockchain technology can be used to verify a potential employee’s work history. Rather than undertaking the time-consuming task of having HR folks call previous employers to check out a job candidate’s work history, blockchain could be used to verify tenures, job titles, and other important qualifications.
He says this could save small businesses a tremendous amount of time and prove that a potential employee has the skills and background he or she claims to have on a résumé or LinkedIn profile.
Blockchain can be a game-changer for SMBs, saving time and streamlining operations. It’s time for smaller companies to begin exploring the myriad improvements blockchain can make in their businesses.
How can Blockchain Technology Improve your Digital Marketing?
Advertising is a multi-billion dollar global industry. Companies pay a dearly to acquire potential customers. But there is no guarantee that this will help them convert leads into sales numbers. Also, nearly 50% of traffic is generated by online-bots which deliver no actual value.
When you integrate your digital marketing efforts with blockchain, you can solve many problems associated with traditional platforms and advertisement methods.
1. Verifying Online Ads
As brands become more concerned about their security, they are pulling away from heavy online spending. The idea of implementing blockchain for ad-verification can prove to be valuable for marketers.
Blockchain can help marketers in building a mechanism for brands through which they can know where their ads are placed on the net. Also, considering how expensive auditing of ad-delivery can be these days, blockchain-technology can provide an alternative – decentralized-ad-auditing, at a fraction of a cost. You can take ad-deliveries from the server and deliver them to mining machines, which will do all the hard work and let you know about any fraud.
Adchain, a platform based on the open protocol in Ethereum, was launched by MetaX and the Data & Marketing Association in June 2017. It tags a piece of information and also follows it on the net to ensure the desired ad-delivery to the target point and shows what action was taken on the ad.
2. Eliminating the Middleman
Middlemen have been part of the chain of digital marketing for as long as anyone can remember. But because of these intermediaries, companies get perhaps only half the value they invest in advertising. Blockchain technology can be a solution to this issue, generating much better value for ad campaigns.
Rather than communicating with the website through these intermediaries, Blockchain would enable you to communicate directly. Blockchain can help validate the users, as well as providing click-through data. This function can be utilized by the website owners as well as those who are interested eliminating the need of signing any agreement with any mediator.
Ultimately, blockchain-powered digital marketing is helping to decrease the overall costs involved in ad-deliveries, thereby, increasing your profit margins.
3. Providing Transparency
Nowadays the most prominent problem companies face is user-trust. Customers are skeptical of many things. For example, they can be concerned about where the raw material of their food was sourced, and what conditions it was stored or processed in.
One job that a marketer has is to build the trust between customer and brand that is essential to make a successful sale.
With blockchain, companies can be more transparent in the use of consumers data. They can provide the consumers with insight on how their informational data is being utilized. Also, as blockchain is a decentralized peer-to-peer technology, data stored on the network can’t be modified or altered.
Companies can assure their consumers that the information they hand over can’t be tampered with. This transparency will also ensure consumers that the data they have provided will not be manipulated.
4. Branding
Just to start, companies which accept cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, as a payment method, are considered forward-thinking. Continuing on the same track, implementing blockchain based digital-negotiations can work in your company’s favor.
Not only does it make the whole system more secure, but it also helps in branding from a marketing perspective. Companies that incorporate emerging technologies are termed as innovators. Other brands follow their lead rather than the other way around.
Indeed, one can also gain a lot of coverage on the topic by dedicating a PR strategy just for that. This will help the businesses be the topic of timely conversations, and attract attention to your brand.
5. B2B Smart Contracts
In the era of influencers and bloggers on social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, this makes for an efficient B2B cross-promotional marketing opportunity. Interacting with these influencers can be fruitful for your marketing campaign. However, it comes with its own set of challenges.
Since there is a lack of any standard or any third party to regulate the terms of the contract, there is a need for such a function. Because of this, cost variation is huge and depends entirely on the individual you sign a contract with.
With Blockchain, obligations from all the involved parties are enforced automatically to ensure that amount is transferred to the concerned party only after the terms of the contract are met.
For example, a contract between a company and a blogger will only get executed by smart contract. So, for example, the blogger will get paid only when s/he publishes an article about the brand on social media. The terms are followed step-by-step and eventually when all the contractual terms are met; contracts get executed automatically.
6. Providing Accountability
Spending cash on a counterfeit product can be the worst and most frustrating thing for a customer. Blockchain can aid in verifying each step of the supply chain, and thereby improve the merchant’s accountability. Blockchain provides a tamper-proof digital-ledger system that facilitates transparency.
Customers can also utilize such a service to track whether a product is genuine or not, know where it is bought from, and other additional details. In short, it empowers the user and facilitates in improving his or her purchasing experience.
There’s no doubt that blockchain is a powerful and robust technology. For innovative marketers who aren’t afraid to jump onto the platform, it provides endless possibilities. Blockchain can do wonders in the field of digital marketing if implemented correctly.
This technology has already been adopted more widely than many people realize, and it would be a brilliant idea to grab the opportunity right now to make the most of Digital-Marketing
How Blockchain and Other Technologies are Transforming Leads Generation
Organizations around the world are using several new and popular technologies to improve operational efficiency, generate more leads, and optimize sales outcomes. However, using a sales technology alone can’t solve the challenges of sales leaders and CSOs. They have to find the maturity and potential of these technologies to know clear business benefits.
Gartner’s 2019 Hype Scale for CRM Sales Technology reveals the 4 notable technologies that every sales leader and CSO should invest in.
- Blockchain
- Digital adoption solutions
- Sales engagement platforms
- Conversational engagement analytics for sales
Blockchain technology has the potential to enable sales organizations to provide the highest quality and most current leads, according to Gartner.
The blockchain is now entering the sales world and is transforming the way sales organizations generally source leads and contact information. The distributed ledger technology enables the exchange of personal and business information on the basis of crowdsourcing data collection techniques. This helps in providing users with quality leads.
“Rather than source from unreliable third-party databases, users can instead partake in a network sharing system supported by blockchain infrastructure to source leads and contacts that fits their organization, while selling leads that do not match their ideal customer profile to other companies that may be in the market for such a lead or customer,” said Adnan Zijadic, senior principal analyst in Gartner’s Sales practice.
Apart from this, blockchain technology allows enterprises to monetize their data so that it can generate revenues, while taking care of the data protection policy.
Sales organizations that use blockchain for lead generation are also able to minimize the costs related to data intelligence solutions, as the technology removes the middle man.
“Despite all its potential benefits, it will take time for organizations to take notice of blockchain for lead generation due to its embryonic stage,” said Mr. Zijadic. “Sales leaders should seize the opportunity to learn more about blockchain’s potential use cases while preparing for an increase in the vendor landscape.”
Whereas, digital adoption solutions can help in improving the adoption of multiple solutions across the enterprise. These solutions can allow new sellers to get on the board faster, while enabling tenured sellers to focus more on selling instead of task execution. This can significantly improve productivity.
Gartner says that sales engagement platforms have the potential to boost sales enablement capabilities. These platforms use information about buyer and seller engagement to provide better sales results.
The main benefit of sales engagement platforms is that it allows organizations to measure the level of engagement of prospects on the basis of the way they download content and communicate with sales representatives.
Conversational engagement analytics for sales tools are powered by AI algorithms to analyze audio conversations and provide insights into the quality of interactions with prospects and customers. This technology can prove to be very useful for enterprises that want to optimize B2B inside salespeople.
How does Blockchain Affect Business?
Blockchain could have serious implications for the future of business. From accounting to operations, the growing consensus among industry leaders is that it’s likely to impact every major area of work – and the shift is already starting.
Blockchain is a technology that allows consumers and businesses to track transactions from start to finish without having to consult a central authority tasked with preserving the transaction or encrypting the data. By compartmentalizing these transactions, it provides transparency of what’s going on in the history of transactions and also makes these transactions more secure.
This technology is allowing innovators and disruptors to flip the script on typical business processes in a number of exciting ways. Some of the organisational effects of blockchain include:
Supply chain tracking
Blockchain and business go hand-in-hand when it comes to transparency. Business owners often don’t have oversight of who their vendor’s suppliers are, but technology could help put this to an end by bringing more openness to the supply chain.
For example, in the food industry, it’s extremely important to have solid records that trace each product to its source in case something goes wrong. Because of this, Walmart uses blockchain to keep track of their produce, where it came from, where it was processed and stored, and what its expiry date is. Unilever and Nestle also use blockchain for similar logistical tracking.
Bringing transparency into the supply chain also helps in verifying things like the authenticity of parts and ethical sourcing. By harnessing this technology, a company can also provide digitally permanent, auditable records for stakeholders and investors.
Lowering operating expenses
Blockchain allows businesses to send and receive payments through a programmatic set of rules called “smart contracts’’. These take expensive brokers, escrow agents, and other financial intermediaries out of the equation.
Smart contracts are self-executing computer programs that can carry out the terms of a contract as laid out by their creator. They enforce this contract with cryptographic code, making it unbreakable as the terms of the contract are automatically actioned.
As all actions related to a particular smart contract are transparent and recorded, this could also reduce the cost of tracking and reconciliation. This is promising for global corporations as basic administrative functions like payroll management could be executed seamlessly across different countries.
Asset protection
According to Cyber Security Ventures, cybercrime damage costs are predicted to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021. But blockchain could bring some relief to this.
Since blockchain transactions aren’t bound by a centralized storage system and can’t be tampered with or changed retrospectively, they’re arguably safer than the current systems in place. Blockchains store data using sophisticated math and software rules that are almost impossible for attackers to manipulate.
Each block added onto the chain carries a hard, cryptographic reference to the previous block. That reference is part of a mathematical problem that needs to be solved in order to bring the following block into the network and the chain. This creates a uniquely encrypted digital fingerprint called a hash, making it secure and virtually tamper-proof.
Cutting out the middleman
If you’re a professional involved in banking, contracts, settlements, or any part of business that involves servicing as a third-party to a transaction, your role may be affected by the increasing adoption of blockchain. With this kind of technology, cryptology replaces third-party intermediaries as the keeper of trust.
By using mathematics instead of middlemen, it can help reduce overhead costs for companies or individuals when trading assets or can quickly prove ownership or authorship of information.
Providing new possibilities
Blockchain may be the backbone that allows cryptocurrency transactions to occur, but Bitcoin and Ethereum are just the starts of what could be possible in the future.
According to Dr Michael Yuan, Chief Scientist of CyberMiles, a foundational blockchain designed for commercial apps, “Future applications of this technology [could include] e-commerce marketplaces and applications, peer-to-peer finance and insurance transactions, content distribution, healthcare data exchanges, B2B accounting applications, supply chain, and customer service applications.” It’s a brave new world for businesses who are willing to embrace it.
For early adopters and evangelists, the impact of blockchain is limited only by the imagination and effort of the visionaries who will use it to transform their organizations.
What Industries will Benefit from Blockchain?
What began as the basis of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, blockchain technology — essentially a virtual ledger capable of recording and verifying a high volume of digital transactions — is now spreading across a wave of industries.
Blockchain tech has gone far beyond its beginnings in banking and cryptocurrency: Annual global spending on blockchain applications has almost tripled since 2017. Annual spending on blockchain solutions will reach nearly $16B by 2023, according to CB Insights’ Market Sizing Tool. Industries from insurance to gaming to cannabis are starting to see blockchain applications.
Bitcoin’s popularity helped demonstrate blockchain’s application in finance, but entrepreneurs have come to believe blockchain could transform many more industries.
Ultimately, the use cases for a transparent, verifiable register of transaction data are practically endless — especially since blockchain operates through a decentralized platform requiring no central supervision, making it resistant to fraud.
As companies use blockchain to drive greater transparency and veracity across the digital information ecosystem, they’re boosting awareness of the technology in sectors ranging from infrastructure to public policy. Here are the latest innovative ways companies are harnessing the power of global blockchain.
1. Banking
Banking is just the beginning. From a macro perspective, banks serve as the critical storehouses and transfer hubs of value. As a digitized, secure, and tamper-proof ledger, blockchain could serve the same function, injecting enhanced accuracy and information-sharing into the financial services ecosystem.
Swiss bank UBS and UK-based Barclays are both experimenting with blockchain as a way to expedite back office functions and settlement, which some in the banking industry say could cut up to $20B in middleman costs.
In May 2019, Barclays invested in Crowdz, a blockchain-based B2B payments startup that helps companies collect payments and automate digital invoices.
Blockchain is also growing as a solution aimed at reducing the cost of cross-border transactions, which accounted for 27% of global transaction revenue in 2017. Blockchain company Ripple has partnered with financial institutions like Santander and Western Union with the goal of improving the efficiency of cross-border payments.
Blockchain startup BanQu is working with AB InBev to facilitate payments to cassava farmers in Zambia. BanQu’s platform tracks the farmers’ products through the supply chain and then provides digital payments to farmers via their mobile phones, even if they don’t have bank accounts.
JP Morgan is also entering the blockchain space with the JPM Coin, which it intends to use to facilitate transactions between institutional accounts.
2. Messaging Apps
Encrypted messaging app Telegram raised $1.7B from private investors before canceling the public sale of its planned $1.2B initial coin offering (ICO). Around a year later, the company launched the test client for its blockchain-based TON (Telegram Open Network).
Telegraph’s TON Labs has also partnered with Wirecard, a European financial services entity, to build a digital banking platform. However, the SEC filed a complaint against the company in late 2019, saying that Telegram’s ICO was an illegal securities offering.
Chat platform Kik has raised over $100M via an ICO for its in-app currency. And Line, Japan’s most popular message service, is reportedly planning to expand into cryptocurrency trading.
3. Hedge Funds
Backed by names including First Round Capital and Union Square Ventures, Numerai is taking the hedge fund model — employing a bunch of traders and quants — and decentralizing it. Numerai sends its thousands of disparately located quants encrypted datasets and asks them to build predictive models, and the best contributors are rewarded with Numerai’s token called Numeraire.
Then, Numerai takes the strategy and creates a meta-model to make trades. In some ways, it’s a blockchain-based spin on Quantopian‘s model for rewarding data scientists, except it’s less a competition and more an invisible collaboration.
4. Voting
Elections require authentication of voters’ identity, secure record keeping to track votes, and trusted tallies to determine the winner. In the future, blockchain tools could serve as a foundational infrastructure for casting, tracking, and counting votes — potentially eliminating the need for recounts by taking voter fraud and foul play off the table.
By capturing votes as transactions through blockchain, governments and voters would have a verifiable audit trail, ensuring no votes are changed or removed and no illegitimate votes are added. One blockchain voting startup, Follow My Vote, has released the alpha version of its stake-weighted end-to-end blockchain voting solution.
Agora aims to develop a blockchain-based method for casting votes. The technology aims to prevent election fraud by using a custom blockchain record. The platform was tested in a limited capacity during elections in Sierra Leone in 2018 and showed results close to those from official tallies.
5. Internet Identity & DNS
In the current web, it’s difficult to establish your true identity, and your personal information lives on company servers for apps you use with little inter-operability (even using Facebook as a log-in only gets you so far). Platforms like uPort think there’s a future where your identity can be easily carried with you around the internet.
IBM has also released a blockchain-enabled identity management tool called IBM Verify Credentials. The decentralized system allows certain trusted organizations to issue credentials to users, who can then use the credentials to prove their identities to other organizations, enhancing personal privacy and streamlining the verification process.
6. Ride Sharing
Ride apps like Uber and Lyft represent the opposite of decentralization, since they essentially operate as dispatching hubs and use algorithms to control their fleets of drivers (and dictate what they charge). Blockchain could inject new options into that dynamic: with a distributed ledger, drivers and riders could create a more user-driven, value-oriented marketplace.
Startup Arcade City, for example, facilitates all transactions through a blockchain system. Arcade City operates similarly to other ride-sharing companies but allows drivers to establish their rates (taking a percentage of rider fares) with the blockchain logging all interactions.
This allows Arcade City to appeal to professional drivers, who would rather build up their own transportation businesses than be controlled from a corporate headquarters: drivers on Arcade City are free to set their own rates, build their own recurring customer base, and offer additional services like deliveries or roadside assistance.
7. Internet Advertising
The internet as we know it emerged with ad hoc solutions for advertising. In aggregate, ads add tons of mobile data usage to loading web pages, and both advertisers and consumers suffer from any lack of protocols.
In 2017, Brave crowdfunded $35M in 30 seconds during its Basic Attention Token (BAT) ICO, geared towards compensating advertisers and users. Instead of a middleman like Google or Facebook’s ad arm, advertisers will list directly onto Brave’s blockchain-based browser. Users who opt-in receive fewer, but better-targeted ads without the malware. And advertisers get better data on their spending.
Snovio is another option that lets people sell their personal data and gain SNOV tokens.
8. Crypto Exchanges
One way blockchain reduces conventional cybersecurity risk is by simply removing the need for human intermediaries — thus lessening the threat of hacking, corruption, or human error.
Ironically, some of blockchain’s most successful companies are fairly centralized middlemen, and many new projects are “dogfooding” the buying and selling of blockchain-based currency by putting the whole exchange on a blockchain.
One high profile project here is Enigma, which claims MIT and Flybridge Capital as supporters. Enigma is the developer of Catalyst, an off-chain decentralized exchange and investment platform that works without the need of a third party to act as a clearing house.
Another high-profile decentralized exchange is Ethererum-based 0x.
9. Car Leasing and Sales
The experience of leasing, buying, or selling a vehicle is a notoriously fragmented process for stakeholders on all sides of a transaction, but the blockchain could change that.
In 2015, Visa partnered with transaction management startup DocuSign on a proof-of-concept project that used blockchain to streamline car leasing — transforming it into a “click, sign, and drive” process.
With the Visa-DocuSign tool, prospective customers choose the car they want to lease and the transaction is entered on the blockchain’s public ledger. Then, from the driver’s seat, the customer signs a lease agreement and an insurance policy, and the blockchain is updated with that information.
If the technology were to be implemented in practice, it’s not a stretch to imagine that a process of this sort might be developed for car sales and registration as well.
10. Cloud Storage
Enterprises that offer cloud storage often secure customers’ data in a centralized server, which can mean increased network vulnerability from attacks by hackers. Blockchain cloud storage solutions allow storage to be decentralized — and therefore less prone to attacks that can cause systemic damage and widespread data loss.
Dubbed the “Airbnb for file storage,” Filecoin is a high-profile crypto project that rewards the hosting of files. This could help create a decentralized version of S3 from Amazon Web Services.
The company behind it, Protocol Labs, has garnered investment from Union Square Ventures, Naval Ravikant, and the Winklevosses, among a number of prominent names. But Filecoin is just one of many projects in this area, and other token names in storage include Storj and Siacoin.
Storj offers a blockchain-enabled cloud storage network to improve security and lower the transaction costs of storing information in the cloud. Storj users can also rent out their unused digital storage space in a peer-to-peer manner, potentially creating a new market for crowdsourced cloud storage capacity.
Summary
Good marketing is vital to every business. But with the number of businesses competing for attention today, it may be difficult to get yours to stand out to potential consumers. I’m sure you’re already familiar with using social media posts, billboards in high traffic areas, TV commercials, newspaper advertisements, and direct mailing as methods of promotion. However, blockchain may make your marketing efforts even more effective.
Read Also: Essential Guide on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
Blockchain can be used by marketers to keep track of client information and consumer behavior. With this data, skilled marketers can craft clever campaigns that bring greater ROI. Any changes made to your campaigns or other media releases during development can also be identified with ease.
If you encounter a mistake down the road, you can use the blockchain to find out who made it and when. Finally, blockchain allows marketers to verify that the traffic they attract is from real people. When your marketing stats are not inflated by bot activity, you get a much bigger bang for every buck you spend on marketing.
It is evident that blockchain technology will soon take over many of the everyday processes that businesses undertake. Why not stay a step ahead (and put some money in your pocket) by trying it out?
It is already a reliable option for a number of traditional businesses in the banking and insurance fields. Even if you’re a budding entrepreneur, by harnessing the power of the blockchain you can get an immediate leg up on your competition.
