System for managing marketing strategies and their ownership

Abstract

A system for managing marketing strategies and their ownership, which comprises the steps of providing selectable building blocks, each building block represents a distinct marketing action, providing a plurality of marketing categories, each building blocks being associated with a marketing category, and providing one or more selectable templates containing pre-selected sets of marketing categories and individual building blocks that together form complete marketing strategies. Also claimed is a system wherein building blocks are received from a third party. The blocks having a marketing action and associated metadata, cost, and effort information. Generating a unique hash of the contents of the received building blocks and storing the hash, metadata and block in a blockchain as a non-fungible token (nft). Then applying smart contracts on the blockchain to manage authenticity, ownership and / or interactions related to the nft.

Description

The present specification relates to managing marketing strategies and their ownership, particularly the creation of a marketing strategy, and the ownership and attribution of parts of that strategy. Start-up founders or others directing the activities of a new or established business who which to plan and execute a marketing strategy, but have little or no experience in that area, and faced with a steep learning curve. The planning and execution of a marketing strategy may thus cause delays, and may be implemented haphazardly. The Start-up founders may engage help from internet marketers, consultants, or other third party service providers. However this step in itself can be a complex procedure as many different parties may be involved, and gaps in the provision of services can cause bottlenecks in the execution of the marketing and growth of the business. It is also problematic for the third parties, who wish to be rewarded for their contributions and to be able to prove their contribution when being considered for future projects. The object of the present invention is to provide a system which addresses these problems. According to the present invention, there is provided a system according to claims 1 and 4. The invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the drawings, of which Figure 1 is a flowchart showing an embodiment of the asset creation and assignment of the NFT and smart contract; Figure 2 is a flowchart of an API request from a 3rd party platform, with the verification of authenticity and license terms from a smart contract, and assignment of attribution of the API request to the NFT owner; and Figure 3 is a flowchart of a revenue sharing model to NFT owners based on the usage of the NFT's within the platform. In the preferred embodiment of the system, a number of marketing categories and individual marketing actions are provided, the actions hereinafter termed 'Building Blocks'. Each building block represents the lowest level of marketing action, and the buildings blocks are ideally grouped into the marketing categories. For example, categories could include social media advertising, podcast marketing, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing. The building blocks within the category of Affiliate Marketing could be pay per sale, pay per click, pay per lead, pay per install, pay per call, two tier marketing, multi-tier affiliate marketing, coupon or deal marketing etc. Each category can have one of many such building blocks; it is possible too that a building block could be including in more than one category. There could be hundreds of different categories and thousands of different building blocks. The categories and building blocks could change or evolve in time. Each of the building blocks (actions) has meta data consisting of the cost and effort involved, a description of "how to" perform those actions, and where to outsource those actions to third party service providers if the user is not performing those actions in-house. Rather than the user having to generate a marketing strategy and the actions that make up that strategy, the system may provide templates, for example based on particular business sectors and target audiences, and / or different effort and / or cost levels, these templates containing pre-selected sets of marketing categories and individual Building Blocks that together combine to provide an overall marketing strategies. This allows a user to quickly access a suitable marketing strategy for their business. The user can though customise their marketing strategy, by adding or subtracting individual building blocks. The ability to add or subtract categories could also be provided. In this manner, a user can quickly configure a marketing strategy which meets their requirements. The building blocks could be set out in a relationship to each other, such as an order or network, and the user could alter these relationships. Since each building block meta data where to outsource actions to third party service providers, the user can very conveniently engage the required third party service providers, ideally through the system The building blocks may be created and provided by the administrators of the system. However, third party service providers could also be permitted to create and submit building blocks and other content, in particular by putting the Building Blocks onto the blockchain with smart contracts. Third party internet marketing experts are able to create Building Blocks within a specific category that will have unique identifiers within the blockchain to make sure the Building Block is distinguishable and not interchangeable and contain meta data to include the data required to integrate with the system, as well as providing other information including the creator information and links to the asset Referring to figure 1, an author 10, for example a third party service provider, goes onto the platform 20 share a Building Block. The author submits their Building Block 21 along with metadata 22 and associated data 23 on the platform. Once ready, the author publishes their content 24, which triggers the application of a hashing algorithm 25 to create a unique hash of the Building Block's contents. This hash, along with the Building Block data, is then stored 26. In order to provide proof of ownership and proof of content Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) may be used. An NFT is a digital asset that represents ownership or proof of authenticity of a unique item using blockchain technology. However, unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are fungible and can be exchanged on a one-to-one basis, NFTs are non-fungible, meaning each NFT is distinct and cannot be exchanged on a like-for-like basis. NFTs typically include metadata that provides information about the digital or physical asset they represent, including the title, creator, description, and links to the asset. NFTs often involve the use of smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts with predefined rules for the creation, transfer, and management of NFTs. For the storage process, the building block data is sent to the blockchain, where a non-fungible token (NFT) is created with the generated hash 31. A smart contract 32 is applied on the blockchain to manage the interaction. The building block data is also stored on the centralized data storage system 28. The smart contract 32 ensures the authenticity and ownership proof of the Building Block, while enabling various use cases for content sharing and revenue allocation. Smart contracts can be used to allow the third party service providers to publish a Building Block and include a mechanism to earn a revenue share where the Building Block is incorporated into a marketing strategy used by a user on the system. Furthermore, content creators will be able to use a device, a phone application, with an API to the blockchain to control the visibility of their Building Blocks on the system, allowing them to pause a Building Block, and to show the usage and revenue share on an ongoing basis A 3rd party platform may verify the authenticity and license terms from a smart contract of a building block using an API request, and also assignment of attribution of the API request to the NFT owner. Referring to figure 2, a 3rd Party Platform 40 initiates an API request 41, the system proceeds to determine the requested Building Block 42. It then accesses the associated metadata and assets 43 while checking the license terms stored in the smart contract 43 to verify compliance 44. If the requested Building Block complies with the license terms, a positive response is returned via the API 47 and attributed to the NFT owner 48. In cases where the Building Block does not comply with the license terms, an invalid response is returned 49. Thus proper attribution and compliance with usage terms is ensured. Revenue may be shared with the NFT owners based on the usage of the NFT's within the platform. Referring to Figure 3, as a first step, a determination of the total monthly revenue amount to be distributed to the Building Block authors 50 is made. Then, the system identifies the unique Building Blocks contained in live marketing strategies 51. For each unique Building Block 52, the system creates a local hash of the Building Block and accesses the license terms of the associated smart contract 53. It checks if the license terms are compliant 54, and if not, it returns to the loop for the next unique Building Block. If the license terms are compliant, the system attributes the count of that Building Block's usage in live marketing strategies and assigns it to an NFT counter 55. Once all unique Building Blocks have been processed (End of list 56), the system determines the percentage of the total monthly revenue for each NFT owner based on the NFT counter 57, which concludes the process. Thus, the system provides a method to decentralise the creation and development of the content and meta-data using a community of third-party internet marketers that can join the platform and create the content and receive a revenue-share or royalties in exchange for how the platform users consume the content. In order to build trust into the platform. The 3rd-party created content are digital assets that represent ownership or proof of authenticity of a unique item using blockchain technology. The content owner can control the accessibility of their content as well as track the usage on the platform. Asset and metadata can either be stored with the NFT on the blockchain or separately from the NFT in a centralised database. However, problems arise when storing the asset and metadata together with the NFT on the blockchain. Some assets can be potentially large in size and storing these on the blockchain can result in technical and storage issues, and can result in high costs and long transaction times. Problems also arise when storing the asset and metadata off the blockchain in a centralised database. While the NFT and the associated URL is immutable in the blockchain, the assets and metadata in a centralised database can still be modified as they are not immutable. instead use a cryptographic hash of the building block contents and assets once published by the author on the system platform, creating the NFT with the hash result stored on the decentralised blockchain, with the metadata and asset contents stored centrally in the system platform. The embodiments allow the contents and assets in each of the building blocks, together with the meta data including the author and proof of ownership, to be used in different ways. In some cases, the platform will provide a revenue share from subscribers to the authors of those building blocks on a pro-rata basis according to which marketing strategies have incorporated those building blocks, and use the hash comparison to ensure authenticity of the assets and contents against the proof of ownership. In another case, the platform will enable authors of the building blocks to sell the NFTs to third-parties on a secondary market, and use the hash to provide authenticity on historical usage, providing incentive for authors to create series of building blocks of high quality with long-term value potential for resale. In another case, the platform will enable the building block content to be consumed by third-party data feeds via an API on a pay-per-usage licensing basis and use the hash for authenticity and revenue allocation. In each of the use-cases described, triggering the respective use-case requires reading the asset and meta data from the centralised repository, generating a local hash of the local version using the same hashing process that was used to generate the original hash of the building block and NFT when stored on the blockchain, and comparing the local hash to the original hash to determine authenticity. In this specification an apparatus / method / product "comprising" certain features is intended to be interpreted as meaning that it includes those features, but that it does not exclude the presence of other features. Many variations are possible without departing from the scope of the present invention as defined in the appended claims.

Claims

1. A system for managing marketing strategies and their ownership, comprising the steps providing selectable building blocks, each Building Block represents a distinct marketing actionProviding a plurality of marketing categories, each building blocks being associated with a marketing categoryProviding one or more selectable templates containing pre-selected sets of marketing categories and individual Building Blocks that together form complete marketing strategies.

2. A system according to claim 1 wherein there is further included the step of allowing a user to customize their marketing strategy by adding, subtracting, or modifying individual Building Blocks or entire marketing categories, and enabling the user to alter relationships between Building Blocks;3. A system according to either previous claim wherein each Building Block, includes meta data including information about the cost, effort, instructions for performing the action, and recommendations for outsourcing actions to third-party service providers.

4. A system for managing marketing strategies and their ownership, comprising the steps of: receiving building blocks, each representing a marketing action and having associated metadata, cost, and effort information, from third-party service providers via a platform; generating a unique hash of the contents of said received building blocks using a hashing algorithm;storing said unique hash, the associated metadata, and the building block data in a blockchain as a non-fungible token (nft);applying smart contracts on said blockchain to manage authenticity, ownership proof, and / or interactions related to the nft.

5. A system according to claim 4 wherein there are included the steps of storing the building block data centrally in a system platform.

6. A system according to claim 4 or 5 wherein there are included the steps ofproviding revenue-sharing mechanisms for NFT owners based on the usage of the NFTs within the platform.

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