The Newest Tool in Your Marketing Stack: Your Payment Gateway

The year was 2017, the height of crypto’s initial coin offering craze. Anyone who was anyone was building - or, more often, talking about building - something related to blockchain. You couldn’t leave your apartment in San Francisco without tripping over an insane, unnecessary, batty crypto idea.

My favorite part was the meetups - so much free beer.

These meetups were often billed as community-building but were always, almost without fail, later revealed to be run by some new crypto outfit who would use the registration list to shill their ICO.

What a time to be alive.

Another constant at these meetups was a speaker who would stand at the front of the room and talk about how they were working on the PayPal or Stripe for crypto. They would talk about how the exchanges were doing a fine job but it was their solution - and only their solution - that could bring crypto to the passes. Everyone would smile. Some would clap. No one would ever hear from them again.

Things changed. The ICO bubble burst, the crypto space (broadly) chilled out.

That was a good thing. Less noise, more signal.

And we started to see some actual, real deal building. Even the much talked-about PayPal or Stripe for crypto.

Embarrassingly, I missed it until a recent experience helping build a new direct-to-consumer e-commerce site at Commerce Media Studio. And even though it was in front of my face, I instinctively tuned it out - I had heard the pitch too many times and been left disappointed.

I was wrong to do so because the future is now with crypto payment gateways like NOWpayments actually delivering with plugins for all major e-commerce platforms. That represents a huge marketing opportunity for your shop and not in the way you might expect.

The opportunity isn’t in accepting bitcoin or ethereum, but in accepting one (or more) of the more than 160 cryptocurrencies you can accept with NOWpayments.

If you operate a shop that sells gaming accessories, imagine the boost that could come from accepting a token issued as a video game reward. Suddenly, all of those users have a tangible use for the token they were previously selling or holding on to.

And what do crypto projects love more than anything? B2B adoption. If you scratch the back of a crypto coin working to stand out and help them achieve their goals, they’re likely to help you with your goals - eyeballs and sales.

Given the right partner, that opens up the possibility for the rare triple-win.

How to Find the Right Partner-Cryptocurrency for Your Shop

After installing the payment gateway, scan the list of available currencies and see if any catch your attention. If none are obvious, CoinMarketCap does a good job of providing a tool to parse through thousands of cryptocurrencies - look for a key term for your shop like “gaming” or “sports” and cross-reference candidates with your payment gateway.

With a list of potential candidates, it’s time to dig a little deeper. After ensuring there’s enough volume and that it’s a viable coin, use CoinMarketCap to check out the community.

This is perhaps the most critical step for choosing a partner. Not only must you confirm the community is active and legitimate - try to confirm they aren’t using bots to falsify activity - but you want to make sure their core community platforms are workable for you (and your team, if applicable).

If the coin has an active Twitter community and Twitter’s a core component of your marketing plan, you’ll have a much easier job engaging with all of your new friends. On the other side, an active forum where they discuss technical details will (probably) be a heavy lift for your shop marketing effort. At minimum, have creative assets for your shop optimized for their preferred social media channel.

Finally, consider reaching out to the project or company management directly. Direct coordination on marketing efforts could open a world of possibilities - and even if not, it cannot hurt to open the lines of communication with a group that can move meaningful traffic your way.