People don’t care about the transparency of payments — many blockchain businesses have fallen into the trap of believing they do and are now receiving the consequences of it.

The blockchain businesses that succeeded in both bear and bull markets understood they must quickly master 3 things:

Market

Are there enough people that need your service?

You’ve got to conduct market research and also do several actions to obtain a proof of concept (POC) — this is receiving confirmation of your idea, and it’s done by:

• Creating an MVP and getting feedback from a test group.
• Website marketing and see how many people sign up for the newsletter.
• Crowdfunding (IEO, ICO, etc.)

Issue of Trust

When there is a notably evident one, blockchain solutions become more appealing and demanded. Bitcoin, for example, wouldn’t be as popular if its inception didn’t begin during the 2008 recession.

Incentive

This is more important than it seems as incentives are the hidden driving force for blockchain businesses. Blockchain services tend to offer complicated UI for the end-user, and this can be gradually offputting. Incentives encourage the end-user to learn the system as there will be a reward at the end.

Now that you understand the 3 elements your blockchain idea must be rooted in, it’s time to discover other relevant aspects affecting your blockchain service.

Choosing a Blockchain

As cliche as it sounds, it’s usually done incorrectly.

Many blockchain services miss out on benefits because they choose to root their service on a blockchain that is more popular instead of better (for their use case).

Ethereum is picked through unconfirmed bias rather than critical comparisons — this is partly due to the number of learning tools and resources Ethereum has online is strongly influencing the direction of blockchain apps. However, learning platforms such as IvanOnTech are producing development tutorials for other blockchains such as EOS and Stellar Lumens.

Perfecting Your Business Model

When the bear market comes, cash flow is the only thing that will keep your business alive.

Right now, there are 3 crypto business models which have been creating successful blockchain businesses:

Ecosystem-Backed Crypto

It involves creating incentives for end-users to hold your crypto for some time while you receive revenue from your service (subscription, ad revenue, on-demand, pay-per-use, etc.), which covers your operating expenses.

This makes your crypto business a self-perpetuating economy that will grow and stabilize your crypto while keeping you profitable long-term. Crypto.com, Nexo, and Wirex are good examples of this model.

Product-Backed Cryptos

There aren’t enough crypto solutions that utilize physical products. This makes your project immediately stand out and allows you to be an originator (the first to create something in the blockchain world). Pundi X became noticeable by creating the first blockchain-based POS device called XPOS.

Leverage

If you already have a service with a big audience, you can adopt blockchain technology by introducing a cryptocurrency that solves an issue of trust or delivers excellent incentives. This is a fast way for new cryptos to become attractive.

Blockchain Marketing

Your Twitter presence matters as the majority of influencers and key players interact there regularly. Therefore, do engagement practices on Twitter to build an audience — competitions and retweet incentives will help you grow even quicker.

Aside from Twitter, your crypto business needs content to educate users on service. Medium.com is usually where top crypto companies host their content, and they would use Blockchain News or CoinTelegraph for PR content.

Also, get in touch with a copywriter early as they’ll find the words and phrases that translate well to your blockchain audience. This ensures the traffic you receive from content isn’t wasted.

Automating Everything

The talent pool for blockchain services is getting significantly more abundant as it’s now trending technology. It’s easy to find professionals willing to do one-off jobs. Crypto.Jobs is a popular place to host crypto jobs.

Once you’ve outsourced your graphic design, programming, marketing, and copywriting, you can now focus on what you like to do. For consistency, it’s best to build a reliable team around you by using the same people. This prevents you from having to find new talent periodically.

As you will be engaging in B2B communications, it’s smart to use a virtual assistant to handle your admin work other tasks such as telephone answering, setting up meetings, and customer support.

Leveraging The Bull Market

This is a marketing approach for your business to receive much more coverage.

Whenever bitcoin rises, the google searches go up, and users become more engaged with blockchain content. People anticipate another rise and have a fear of missing out due to the bull run in 2017. Some crypto companies have been leveraging this opportunity to have more people interact with their crypto.

Here are some of the ways:

• Releasing news such as partnerships and updates
• Listing their crypto on an exchange
• Blockfolio signals

Collaborations and Partnerships

This can make your service more accessible, and it provides an opportunity for your business to be in the news. Partnerships ensure the growth of your business as it’s easy for blockchain services to become cloned due to a lack of patents or open-source apps/data.

Also, to professionalize your business, it’s a good idea to use a virtual office as they make you appear more significant than you look, which could influence the decisions top companies make to work with you.