Marketers have often leveraged the internet’s large platforms like social media for marketing. Nevertheless, increasing competition, attributed to globalization, has significantly increased the role of marketers, not only in finding and retaining potential customers but also maintaining a competitive advantage over rival companies. Consequently, marketers have adopted the technology, including cryptocurrency, as a viable strategy of helping businesses to achieve competitive advantage, reduce operational costs, and improve productivity.
Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that has its production regulated by encryption techniques, without oversight from a central authority, making it a more transparent, reliable, efficient, and cost-effective manner of transacting (Chang & Friedman, 2016). In spite of being a relatively new technology, most experts from various industries perceive it to be a disruptive force that is likely to change how business is done. For instance, Bunjaku et al. (2017) stated that the adoption of cryptocurrency into marketing will impact not only marketers” access to consumer information, but also significantly streamline payment of marketers and maintain the integrity of consumer information.
Payments and data security
One of the opportunities of cryptocurrency in marketing is the use of bitcoin in payment because it offers improved data security (Wu & Vivek, 2015). Storing of personal payment information in the company or personal computer systems is likely to increase cases of data theft, which could lead to serious consequences in case of successful identity theft. Therefore, marketers can use bitcoin to avoid data theft and other related risks. This strategy positions them not only as trustworthy but also helps them negotiate better conversion rate because of perceived trustworthiness and security. Also, it portrays them as innovative and opens them to new audiences, especially those seeking privacy and savvy ways of transacting (Bunjaku et al., 2017).
Capacity to formalize digital transactions
On the other hand, marketers can benefit from blockchain technology, which powers cryptocurrency. Dimitri (2017) argued that the core competency of blockchain technology is its public ledger for formalizing cryptocurrency transactions, which marketers and the marketing sector could adopt to improve record maintenance and management, execution of transactions, and interaction between businesses and customers. Therefore, cryptocurrency offers marketers the capacity to formalize digital negotiations and transactions between businesses. In an age where concern for privacy is significantly increasing, the public ledger could allow marketers to use anonymous data sets to track user data and other insights such as consumer behavior -without much risk of exploitation- which is important in creating effective marketing ads.
Building customer profiles
Also, adapting cryptocurrency shields marketers from biased and inaccurate information, normally obtained from limited sources. Using cryptocurrency helps marketers to access relevant information, such as the age, gender, salary and general preferences of targeted audiences. Consequently, marketers can successfully build customer profiles directly from customers’ information shared on the public ledger (Walters & Bekker, 2017). Marketers can accurately appeal to customers’ needs. Therefore, using cryptocurrency does not only improve marketers accuracy in marketing to the customers’ needs but it is also cost-effective because it also helps cut advertising budgets by putting resources on customers likely to subscribe to advertised service or buy the product(s).
Public relations equity
Marketers could also use cryptocurrency to gain potential public relations equity. Cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin is the most trending and relevant technology that investors, experts and people from various walk of life is interested in (Chang & Friedman, 2016). Therefore, marketers could adopt bitcoin and then closely work with the media to gain coverage of their acceptance of bitcoin. This approach could go a long way in increasing marketers’ publicity by virtual of being part of the conversations about the digital currency movement. On the other hand, marketers can use bitcoin as an advertising strategy by incorporating it into their adverts and brands to evoke people’s intrigue and curiosity, consequently expanding their reach for untapped markets.
In conclusion, despite being a relatively new and largely untested technology, marketers are leveraging the core competencies of cryptocurrency like the transparency of its public ledger to build customer profiles for more accurate and productive marketing campaigns, centered on customers’ needs.
References
Bunjakz, F., Gjorgieva-Trajkovska, O., & Miteva-Kacarski, E. (2017). Cryptocurrencies – advantages and disadvantages. University goce delcev stip, faculty of economics.
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Chang, C. D., & Friedman, S. (2016). Blockchain in insurance: Turning a buzzword into a breakthrough for health and life insurers. Deloitte Development LLC. Available at www.deloitte.com/us/blockchain-in-insurance
Dimitri, N. (2017). The Blockchain Technology: Some theory and applications. The Maastricht School of Management. Working Paper No. 2017/03
Walters, M., & Bekker, J. (2017). Customer super-profiling demonstrator to enable efficient targeting in marketing campaigns. South African Journal of Industrial Engineering, 28(3), 113-127
Wu, C, Vivek, K. (2015). The value of bitcoin in enhancing the efficiency of an investor’s Portfolio. Journal of Financial Planning, 27, 44-52.
