Why I think blockchain will revolutionize small business marketing

[Willchen319]

I am working on a blockchain startup to help small businesses with marketing. I am looking for feedback about my logic and idea so please help me out!

To start, I think there are some strong commonalities between a successful business and a thriving blockchain project:

Commonality #1 — Solution Focused
Business: Any successful business needs to be solving some sort of problem for a group of people. It can be as simple as “I want a coffee shop at this corner on my way to work” or it can be “I want to get survey results faster”.
Blockchain: Time and time again it has shown how institutions have failed us. The lack of transparency and their drive for self-interests at others’ expenses left all of us feeling frustrated or even betrayed. Blockchain aims at solving that problem and eliminates the middleman.

Commonality #2 — Trust Earned
Business: No one would trust a restaurant that constantly causes people to feel ill nor will we trust brands that violate their own value. Earning trust from others is difficult but highly rewarding when obtained. Unfortunately, trust can be lost easily when things go wrong.
Blockchain: It is the first real alternative that has shown potential in solving the trust issue with centralized institutions like banks or government. Through the use of smart contract within the blockchain, users no longer have to trust another human being to handle their transactions.

Commonality #3— Network Growth
Business: Throwing money at advertisement can only go so far. It is normally the referrals and returning customers that will ultimately make or break the business. A business that has already earned customer trusts can acquire returning business much easier than from a brand new customers.
Blockchain: A highly involved network of users is key to success. There are contributors and then there are beneficiaries. Sometimes it takes just one person’s influential action to get it going. It wasn’t until someone bought 2 slices of pizza with 10,000 Bitcoins that people realized this “digital money” can actually be used and have value.

Current Non-Blockchain-Based Marketing Options
There are so many options for businesses to consider. Aside from social media, there are e-marketing, print media, radio, TV, billboards, direct mailing, and all sorts of other ways. And in each categories of marketing methods, there are countless companies trying to compete with each other. While I doubt that blockchain can truly disrupt all the ways of marketing, I believe it does have some unique advantages that businesses can benefit from.

Our Answers to Use Blockchain to Benefit Business Marketing

• Blockchain makes cryptocurrency possible and it can be a unique reward system that stands out against thousands of loyalty program out there
• Blockchain's decentralized mechanism allows us to implement a platform-wide user contribution process that connects them with businesses, which in return can potentially give them lots of exposure

For more detail, you can read the original content from my full article on Medium -> https://hackernoon.com/what-can-blockchain-do-for-small-business-marketing-7a1458f1784c

Thanks for reading and please feel free to comment below. I love to hear what this community thinks and if we are on the right path.

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[Marcel555]

The blockchain technology has been identified as a means of supporting and boosting upstarts and small businesses. The open source protocol, transparency, and peer-to-peer interactions makes it suitable.
Your idea looks good on paper. Time to get to work.

[LeGaulois]

I am not sure to understand, from a company point of view, why a company should implement a cryptocurrency instead of the traditional loyalty program. And the same, from a customer point of view. Why a customer would prefer a cryptocurrency instead of the loyalty program.

Are you talking about a cryptocurrency that could be listed on an exchange? Or just a token usable on the site only. Because in case it's about a crypto I see a problem in. Let"s says the token triple or more within months, the company will so start to see reduced profits and so losing money.

[lephuqui]

I am working on a blockchain startup to help small businesses with marketing. I am looking for feedback about my logic and idea so please help me out!

To start, I think there are some strong commonalities between a successful business and a thriving blockchain project:

Commonality #1 — Solution Focused
Business: Any successful business needs to be solving some sort of problem for a group of people. It can be as simple as “I want a coffee shop at this corner on my way to work” or it can be “I want to get survey results faster”.
Blockchain: Time and time again it has shown how institutions have failed us. The lack of transparency and their drive for self-interests at others’ expenses left all of us feeling frustrated or even betrayed. Blockchain aims at solving that problem and eliminates the middleman.

Commonality #2 — Trust Earned
Business: No one would trust a restaurant that constantly causes people to feel ill nor will we trust brands that violate their own value. Earning trust from others is difficult but highly rewarding when obtained. Unfortunately, trust can be lost easily when things go wrong.
Blockchain: It is the first real alternative that has shown potential in solving the trust issue with centralized institutions like banks or government. Through the use of smart contract within the blockchain, users no longer have to trust another human being to handle their transactions.

Commonality #3— Network Growth
Business: Throwing money at advertisement can only go so far. It is normally the referrals and returning customers that will ultimately make or break the business. A business that has already earned customer trusts can acquire returning business much easier than from a brand new customers.
Blockchain: A highly involved network of users is key to success. There are contributors and then there are beneficiaries. Sometimes it takes just one person’s influential action to get it going. It wasn’t until someone bought 2 slices of pizza with 10,000 Bitcoins that people realized this “digital money” can actually be used and have value.

Current Non-Blockchain-Based Marketing Options
There are so many options for businesses to consider. Aside from social media, there are e-marketing, print media, radio, TV, billboards, direct mailing, and all sorts of other ways. And in each categories of marketing methods, there are countless companies trying to compete with each other. While I doubt that blockchain can truly disrupt all the ways of marketing, I believe it does have some unique advantages that businesses can benefit from.

Our Answers to Use Blockchain to Benefit Business Marketing

• Cryptocurrency can be a unique reward system that stands out against thousands of loyalty program out there
• Blockchain's decentralized mechanism allows us to implement a platform-wide user contribution process that connects them with businesses, which in return can potentially give them lots of exposure

For more detail, you can read the original content from my full article on Medium -> https://hackernoon.com/what-can-blockchain-do-for-small-business-marketing-7a1458f1784c

Thanks for reading and please feel free to comment below. I love to hear what this community thinks and if we are on the right path.

Your views are very good. But there are too many barriers to using blockchain. Since the technology has not really been applied, there are no laws and many countries have not really recognized.

[Gozie51]

Commonality #2 — Trust Earned
Business: No one would trust a restaurant that constantly causes people to feel ill nor will we trust brands that violate their own value. Earning trust from others is difficult but highly rewarding when obtained. Unfortunately, trust can be lost easily when things go wrong.

This is a very good advantage of bitcoinchain. I think a sincere government or society will welcome blockchain because of this transparency and trust that it builds. With blockchain, you don't have any doubt about any transaction. Sometimes, when you are even making a transfer transaction, even without total confirmation, you can see the transaction already in motion and you are assured of no manipulations.

[hugeblack]

Your logic is mostly correct "although I did not understand the third point" but you have to rephrase it to be attractive.

Commonality #1 — Solution Focused

For example, you can set up a coffee shop and use Blockchain to ensure transparency.
The coffee was grown on day X, using the equipment x, and then harvested using x, packaged x, and made by x, all these steps checked using blockchain to ensure the highest quality.

Commonality #2 — Trust Earned

High transparency leads to trust, as the customer will ensure a high-quality product with the accents requested, leading to confidence in the store without the use of trademarks.

For the rest of the points, I think you confuse the concept of "Blockchain" and "Cryptocurrency," correct me if I am wrong.

[yalcin38]

check storiqa.

storiqa is a E-Commerce for small sale products.

[Willchen319]

The blockchain technology has been identified as a means of supporting and boosting upstarts and small businesses. The open source protocol, transparency, and peer-to-peer interactions makes it suitable.
Your idea looks good on paper. Time to get to work.

Thank you for your encouragement! We are working hard on the product now. We have done market validation and it returned an overwhelming 60% acceptance rate by small businesses. Now, when I introduced the product to them, I barely mentioned blockchain because my experience tells me that will confuse them like crazy. It'll be best when the product is done so I can show them how blockchain will benefit them.

[OlyaWorking]

And don't forget about more particular examples like smart contracts. For example, I follow closely SciDex. They are creating a new type of smart contract generator for complex transactions. So that even regular businesses that need legally binding contracts can be on the blockchain. That’s improving the whole blockchain ecosystem, if you ask me.

[Willchen319]

I am not sure to understand, from a company point of view, why a company should implement a cryptocurrency instead of the traditional loyalty program. And the same, from a customer point of view. Why a customer would prefer a cryptocurrency instead of the loyalty program.

Are you talking about a cryptocurrency that could be listed on an exchange? Or just a token usable on the site only. Because in case it's about a crypto I see a problem in. Let"s says the token triple or more within months, the company will so start to see reduced profits and so losing money.

These are really good questions. In fact, I've asked them to myself and the rest of the team a number of times. Below is what we have came up with that helped us to solidify the use of blockchain for our solution.

First, we want to utilize blockchain's ability to gather consensus from all users for marketing purposes on an immutable and transparent ledger. Nodis.io allows businesses to post up Challenges for people to participate and receive crypto as reward. Upon completion of a Challenge, participant will submit the proof (image, video, etc) on our website for validation. This is where blockchain comes in. We will open up to all users on our platform to validate the submissions. Majority side of the voters will receive a small portion of tokens as reward for the effort. All votes will be tracked and recorded for transparency. This community validation process will give businesses significantly more exposure. The best part of all is that this whole process can be automated. All businesses have to do is post a Challenge and done. This can potentially solve the lack of time issue. And when participants/voters are paid in crypto, it'll resolve the lack of money issue. The only cost is that businesses are required to post up discount vouchers for exchange with tokens.

As for the token pricing fluctuation issue, that's truly a tough one. We will be listing on an exchange as we are looking to do token sale. Our current option is to have a fiat-to-token conversion calculator so that people know how much token to pay for each voucher.

I hope these explanation helps!

[Willchen319]

Your views are very good. But there are too many barriers to using blockchain. Since the technology has not really been applied, there are no laws and many countries have not really recognized.

Yes, this is totally still a new frontier. Legislators and governments are still trying to figure out what to do. I live in Canada and they recently published regulation about token sale. The window is definitely tightening but I think that's a good thing. At least this can help eliminate many of the questionable blockchain projects out there and help the good ones to be exposed.

[Willchen319]

This is a very good advantage of bitcoinchain. I think a sincere government or society will welcome blockchain because of this transparency and trust that it builds. With blockchain, you don't have any doubt about any transaction. Sometimes, when you are even making a transfer transaction, even without total confirmation, you can see the transaction already in motion and you are assured of no manipulations.

Totally agree. When you have immutable ledger and transparent system, the overall process can become automated. We no longer need to rely on a few elite middleman to help us validate each transaction, everyone can participate (and be rewarded) during the process.

[Willchen319]

Your logic is mostly correct "although I did not understand the third point" but you have to rephrase it to be attractive.

Commonality #1 — Solution Focused

For example, you can set up a coffee shop and use Blockchain to ensure transparency.
The coffee was grown on day X, using the equipment x, and then harvested using x, packaged x, and made by x, all these steps checked using blockchain to ensure the highest quality.

Commonality #2 — Trust Earned

High transparency leads to trust, as the customer will ensure a high-quality product with the accents requested, leading to confidence in the store without the use of trademarks.

For the rest of the points, I think you confuse the concept of "Blockchain" and "Cryptocurrency," correct me if I am wrong.

Thank you for the feedback! I love your examples and how easy you make it connect. I will be thinking about your logic to better my message in the future. THANKS!

As for your comment on confusing blockchain and crypto, I probably didn't explain it properly. I meant to say... "Blockchain makes cryptocurrency possible and it can be a unique reward system that stands out against thousands of loyalty program out there". Hope this is more clear!

[pinkflower]

I am not sure to understand, from a company point of view, why a company should implement a cryptocurrency instead of the traditional loyalty program. And the same, from a customer point of view. Why a customer would prefer a cryptocurrency instead of the loyalty program.

Are you talking about a cryptocurrency that could be listed on an exchange? Or just a token usable on the site only. Because in case it's about a crypto I see a problem in. Let"s says the token triple or more within months, the company will so start to see reduced profits and so losing money.

These are really good questions. In fact, I've asked them to myself and the rest of the team a number of times. Below is what we have came up with that helped us to solidify the use of blockchain for our solution.

First, we want to utilize blockchain's ability to gather consensus from all users for marketing purposes on an immutable and transparent ledger. Nodis.io allows businesses to post up Challenges for people to participate and receive crypto as reward. Upon completion of a Challenge, participant will submit the proof (image, video, etc) on our website for validation. This is where blockchain comes in. We will open up to all users on our platform to validate the submissions. Majority side of the voters will receive a small portion of tokens as reward for the effort. All votes will be tracked and recorded for transparency. This community validation process will give businesses significantly more exposure. The best part of all is that this whole process can be automated. All businesses have to do is post a Challenge and done. This can potentially solve the lack of time issue. And when participants/voters are paid in crypto, it'll resolve the lack of money issue. The only cost is that businesses are required to post up discount vouchers for exchange with tokens.

As for the token pricing fluctuation issue, that's truly a tough one. We will be listing on an exchange as we are looking to do token sale. Our current option is to have a fiat-to-token conversion calculator so that people know how much token to pay for each voucher.

I hope these explanation helps!

Proof of Completing Challenges lol. It might work, might not work, but it would depend on having people solving the challenges. What about the nodes? Does each challenge solver have to run one, or can they join a pool?

How do you protect the system from 51% attacks? The challenge solvers might collude and hard fork the project.

[Willchen319]

And don't forget about more particular examples like smart contracts. For example, I follow closely SciDex. They are creating a new type of smart contract generator for complex transactions. So that even regular businesses that need legally binding contracts can be on the blockchain. That’s improving the whole blockchain ecosystem, if you ask me.

Love that idea. Blockchain has so much utility in this day of world. We just need to make it so that non-techy average joe can easily use it. Just like WhatsApp or Messenger, once installed, even my parents can use. (my dad had difficulty figuring out how to copy-and-paste file from one folder to another)

[cabron]

I am not sure to understand, from a company point of view, why a company should implement a cryptocurrency instead of the traditional loyalty program. And the same, from a customer point of view. Why a customer would prefer a cryptocurrency instead of the loyalty program.

Are you talking about a cryptocurrency that could be listed on an exchange? Or just a token usable on the site only. Because in case it's about a crypto I see a problem in. Let"s says the token triple or more within months, the company will so start to see reduced profits and so losing money.

Probably not. If it involves cryptocurrency then its not going to be very good for small businesses as it will be manipulated. But if its just for the product manufacturing, accounting and licensing and whatever, this blockchain technology will be one of the greatest of all as it can be traced back down to where and who the product were because of transparency.

[Willchen319]

Proof of Completing Challenges lol. It might work, might not work, but it would depend on having people solving the challenges. What about the nodes? Does each challenge solver have to run one, or can they join a pool?

How do you protect the system from 51% attacks? The challenge solvers might collude and hard fork the project.

We are considering to build the solution under NEO blockchain so I don't think we will have enough volume to over take the platform. So Challenge participants will just simply sign up the Challenge that got posted. Then when they complete, they are rewarded with tokens. They won't be having nodes nor voting power under this structure.

That being said, we have considered to build our own blockchain in the future. In fact, our co-founder is investigating the idea now as we suspect it may cost a lot of GAS for the community validation mechanism when we are scaling. We prefer to have registered businesses to be nodes instead just anybody. We are targeting specifically at small business owners, which mostly aren't techy/interested enough to coordinate a global 51% attack of a blockchain. Business owners will have to option pay tokens to post Challenges so should be in their interest to be a node as well.

[Willchen319]

Probably not. If it involves cryptocurrency then its not going to be very good for small businesses as it will be manipulated. But if its just for the product manufacturing, accounting and licensing and whatever, this blockchain technology will be one of the greatest of all as it can be traced back down to where and who the product were because of transparency.

I agree with you that crypto manipulation could be a serious risk for this idea. I am really looking forward to here the experts about this subject. I will be grateful to learn how people have dealt with it.

[wuvdoll]

I am not sure to understand, from a company point of view, why a company should implement a cryptocurrency instead of the traditional loyalty program. And the same, from a customer point of view. Why a customer would prefer a cryptocurrency instead of the loyalty program.

Are you talking about a cryptocurrency that could be listed on an exchange? Or just a token usable on the site only. Because in case it's about a crypto I see a problem in. Let"s says the token triple or more within months, the company will so start to see reduced profits and so losing money.

What you do not understand is that data has become the main backbone of businesses and most of this information is not easily acquired. It is certainly not just about cryptocurrency but for the fact that adopting the blockchain technology into one's business would help in revolutionizing some of these processes that have always been lacking in the traditional way of doing things.

The idea of the distributed ledger is something that brings about transparency, let alone when it comes to the idea of cutting out the middleman, verifiable data which would even help commerce industry businesses a lot, and I believe all these on its own are a very huge benefit.

Already market giants started adopting blockchain technology whereas small business are now studying the possibilities of adopting it for their better tomorrow. OP must be very much right as blockchain technology will revolutionize our daily life through every business we do deal from early morning to late night in our routine life.

[pinkflower]

Proof of Completing Challenges lol. It might work, might not work, but it would depend on having people solving the challenges. What about the nodes? Does each challenge solver have to run one, or can they join a pool?

How do you protect the system from 51% attacks? The challenge solvers might collude and hard fork the project.

We are considering to build the solution under NEO blockchain so I don't think we will have enough volume to over take the platform. So Challenge participants will just simply sign up the Challenge that got posted. Then when they complete, they are rewarded with tokens. They won't be having nodes nor voting power under this structure.

That being said, we have considered to build our own blockchain in the future. In fact, our co-founder is investigating the idea now as we suspect it may cost a lot of GAS for the community validation mechanism when we are scaling. We prefer to have registered businesses to be nodes instead just anybody. We are targeting specifically at small business owners, which mostly aren't techy/interested enough to coordinate a global 51% attack of a blockchain. Business owners will have to option pay tokens to post Challenges so should be in their interest to be a node as well.

Why did you decide to use the NEO platform if it would make your tokens easier to he listed in exchanges if it was an ERC20 token issued in the Ethereum platform.

Have you considered less known but time tested platforms like Burst maybe?