Crowd marketing: what is it, how it works and how to apply it correctly in practice

Crowd marketing: what is it and where is it used

Business owners have come up with dozens of different methods to promote their brand and product, some of which are successfully used on the Internet. One of the methods that is often used to attract an audience is called crowd marketing. It is a kind of implicit product advertising. Crowd marketing is especially relevant for an online store.Sometimes crowd marketing and link building are identified, but it is wrong. Crowd marketing is just one of the link building methods. It is somewhat reminiscent of «word of mouth»: people share their impressions about the product, and the rest spread the word further. And link building, in addition to crowd marketing, includes other tools, such as content marketing.Crowd marketing can solve the following tasks:

1. Website promotion on search engines. Users see the link and follow it. Thanks to it, indicators are growing, which positively affects the trust level of search engines.
2. Growth in targeted traffic. The guests of the resource are people who are already interested in the product. That is, «warm customers» come to your site, which are easy to turn into potential ones.
3. Brand promotion. Through crowd marketing, your brand will be mentioned more often online and imprinted in the person’s mind. Therefore, when he chooses a company, he is more likely to choose your brand.
4. Increase loyalty and reputation. Users are more loyal to popular products on the Internet, as it is commonly believed that a popular product cannot be bad.

Crowd marketing examples

At first sight, it may seem that crowd marketing is an easy tool, but you should be extremely careful with it. Consider examples of crowd marketing in order to better understand what is good and what is bad in this area.

Good example

Imagine that a user left the following request on the forum: «I want to buy a gaming laptop, advise something». The ideal solution would be to place a response from a user marked as «master» (which instantly inspires confidence), where not only a link will be posted, but also personal impressions. In this case, it will be taken as friendly advice, and not direct advertising, which will play for your favor.

Bad example

If you simply leave a link as an answer, the user will immediately understand that it is an advertisement, so such answers should be avoided.

Types of crowd marketing

Crowd marketing is usually divided into three large groups.

Comments with an active link

These are regular posts with a link leading to the site. A crowd link can be direct or disguised as a hyperlink.

Posts on review sites

A review site is a resource where everyone can share their impressions about a product/service.

Mentions without active links

Such posts do not affect the link mass. But at the same time, they contain the name of the product or contacts of the organization.

Principle of operation

Despite the secrecy and unobtrusiveness of the method, crowd marketing functions quite simply. It is a simple but effective technology. It includes two main steps: finding a page with a discussion and writing a detailed comment with the obligatory mention of the product model or company’s name. The algorithm of actions will be as follows:

• Search for an authoritative thematic platform. It is important that the discussion post is fresh.
• Register because authorized users cause more trust among visitors.
• Write messages without a direct selling message in the audience’s language and place a crowd link.

The most important step is to choose the right sources. If these are forums, they must be «live», that is, have user activity. If an online store or another site, then one of the most popular, with a large number of visitors. It is desirable that the post should correspond to the site’s subject as much as possible, otherwise the moderators and users will immediately expose the «spammer».Keep in mind that crowd links are not exactly regular URLs, they must be directed to the promoted section, and not just to the company page. Let’s look at an example. You are an active correspondent on the forum dedicated to eco-products. In this case, a link to the section of the online store with eco-sweets will be appropriate. Then the forum regulars decide that they have a sincere recommendation and will express more confidence in the post.

Who provides crowd marketing services

You can engage in crowd marketing on your own, or you can order crowd marketing services from a freelancer or a special agency.

Freelance

The main difficulty is to find a good specialist who really understands crowd marketing. To find a specialist who will help with the site promotion, you must:

1. Register on freelance exchanges and get answers.
2. Submit a technical assignment.
3. Examine the portfolio of candidates, choose the right one.
4. Check the execution of the task.

Agencies

Many companies offer crowd marketing in Ukraine and in order to choose the best agency, you will need to:

1. Find an agency with a portfolio in crowd marketing.
2. Create a comparison table with the services of candidates.
3. Choose the most suitable one, clarify the details of cooperation and draw up an agreement.
4. Refine your results.

 Link exchanges

These are specialized crowd marketing exchanges where links are sold. Here you can order crowd marketing and choose the price by yourself. It is advisable to choose partners who provide an affiliate program and guarantees as well.

Where is it suitable to use crowd marketing and where it is not

Crowd marketing is a fairly easy and fast way to increase the amount of traffic on the site and attract a small percentage of a new audience. It would seem that the word of mouth method can work equally well for all business areas, but there are areas where the effectiveness of such an advertising campaign will be zero.The best niches to use are firms whose products are characterized by increased interest from customers. An excellent example is shops with cosmetic products, clothes, toys. It also includes supermarket chains, which are literally in every city, gas stations, banks, remotely working agencies.If the forum is focused on a specific city or region, it can promote local establishments and small organizations that provide services (medical centers, notaries, tailors, apartment repair companies or household appliances).Crowd marketing is an attempt to present a service in the most profitable and colorful way in order to arouse interest among potential customers. A good option would be to accompany the comments with photographs of the performed work (finishing a house or tailoring a dress) or goods. It will inspire confidence and interest people: after all, scammers will not take the time to take a photo. If the picture is beautiful, then interest will arise, and the person will follow the link to look for similar products. Crowd marketing will be less effective if it used to promote:

1. Offline points. Beauty salon, original candy store, shoe shop and everything within one block. They may have their own websites, but the time and money spent on marketing usually doesn’t really pay off.
2. VIP and establishments with expensive products. The main percentage of users of forums and sites are middle-class people. They cannot afford frequent purchases with a high average bill, and if it comes to buying a car or an apartment, then it is safer for them to contact a real company locally than to shop on the Internet.
3. «Fast» services. The service for the removal of a tow truck, transfer, taxi, courier delivery is also poorly developed through crowd marketing.

The main characteristics of organizations that can be promoted through comments are accessibility, demand and reasonable price. Even if a firm works remotely but offers low-cost services, customers will be willing to take a chance and test the quality of its work. Otherwise, it is better to pay attention to other methods of popularization: offline and contextual advertising.

Crowd marketing as part of SEO

What is crowd marketing? Attracting users to the site through an enticing description and links.What is SEO? Versatile optimization, the purpose of which is to increase traffic to a web resource and increase its popularity both for people and for search engines. Thus, marketing can be called a part of off-page optimization on a par with buying links. On the cost side, the price of crowd marketing is considered to be the cheapest of all the existing SEO methods, and with the right organization, you can get a good percentage of visitors for relatively little money. Before using the technology, it is worth checking how the site works and, if necessary, optimizing it. Therefore, before posting answers and comments, you need to:

• Distribute keywords throughout the site;
• Fill sections with SEO texts with other content;
• Register meta tags for each of the pages (especially the promoted one);
• Check for errors, correct them.

Referring from trusted external sources (other portals, social networks), you can increase your reputation in the eyes of search engines. But even professional crowd marketing cannot provide 100% traffic to the site, so it is advisable to combine different promotion methods.