Crowd marketing, as a strategy for interacting with the target audience in the online space, aims to increase interest in a specific product or brand. The main idea of this method is to create a positive impression of the company by posting unobtrusive reviews, recommendations and mentions on the platforms where the target audience spends their time.
Examples of crowd marketing include:
Social media reviews and recommendations: Companies can actively engage with users by responding to comments, asking questions, and offering useful information about their products or services.
Mentions on blogs and forums: Participating in discussions and debates on blogs and forums where your target audience hangs out can help increase awareness of your brand or product.
Reviews on review sites: Posting positive reviews on popular review sites helps establish brand trust and attract new customers.
Mentions in industry-relevant communities: Being active in online communities related to your industry can help create a positive impression of your brand among community members.
Answering questions on online services: helping users ask questions about a company's products or services on various online services helps improve reputation and build trust.
Crowd marketing, based on creating a positive experience of interaction with the target audience in the online space, is an effective tool for attracting attention to the brand and increasing the level of trust of potential customers.
Key Benefits of Crowd Marketing
Diluting the anchor list: Diversifying the link texts promotes natural perception by search engines and helps to avoid suspicions of artificial promotion.
Increased brand awareness and recognition: Active participation in various online platforms allows you to attract the attention of the target audience and strengthen the company's image.
Increasing website traffic: posting reviews, mentions and recommendations about the company on various platforms attracts the interest of the target audience, which leads to an increase in traffic to the web resource.
Increased sales volume: Positive reviews and recommendations about the company's products help increase the trust of potential customers and, as a result, increase sales volume.
Improving reputation: Actively participating in discussions and providing useful information on various platforms helps to strengthen the company's reputation as an expert in its field.
Improved search engine rankings: Quality crowd marketing can help improve a company's ranking in search results, as positive mentions of a company can influence its relevance to search queries.
To evaluate the effectiveness of a crowd marketing campaign, it is recommended to wait at least two or three months for results. At the same time, it is important to consider not only the quality but also the quantity of links placed. For example, in a niche related to selling pink elephants, 30 quality links may be enough to achieve the desired results, while in the more competitive mobile device space, at least 200 links may be needed to noticeably affect the campaign's performance.
The crowd marketing process includes the following steps:
Finding relevant online discussions or articles: This step involves analyzing various online platforms, forums, social networks, and blogs where topics related to the company’s products or services are actively discussed. By finding such platforms, you can determine where your target audience is.
Create organic content: Once you have identified the right platforms, you need to create content that will be interesting and useful to your target audience. This could be informative articles, reviews, recommendations, or answers to questions that maintain interest in the product or brand.
Publishing content with a link on the selected platform: After the content is created, it is published on the selected platforms with an emphasis on naturalness and organicity. Links embedded in the content should be natural and contextually relevant to the information presented in the article or comment.
Checking the posted links by search engines and their indexing: after posting the content, it is important to monitor the indexing of the posted links by search engines. This allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign and its impact on the positions in search results.
Example: Let's say a sportswear company decides to run a crowd marketing campaign. They search for forums and blogs where athletes and active lifestyle enthusiasts actively discuss their achievements and problems. The company then creates content, such as articles on proper nutrition before training or choosing the best sportswear. This content is published on selected platforms with links to the company's website. After that, the indexing of links by search engines is monitored to evaluate the results of the campaign.
The main tasks of crowd marketing
Increased brand or product awareness: Crowd marketing helps make a brand or product more recognizable and memorable to the target audience. By posting positive reviews, recommendations, and mentions of the product on various online platforms, a positive perception of the brand is created.
Attracting more potential customers: Crowd marketing helps increase the flow of potential customers to the company's web resources. This is achieved through the active presence of the brand on various online platforms where the target audience is located.
Improved website behavioral metrics: Crowd marketing also helps improve website behavioral metrics such as time spent on the site, number of pages viewed, and no bounces. This is due to the increased interest in the content provided on the site through crowd marketing efforts.
Link profile diversity: Crowd marketing helps to diversify a company's link profile, which affects its position in search engines. Posting links on various sites and forums contributes to the organic growth of the link profile and strengthens the authority of the site in the eyes of search engines.
Example: Let's say a startup that has developed a new type of sportswear wants to attract the attention of the target audience and increase sales. They use crowd marketing to publish positive reviews and recommendations on sports forums, blogs, and social networks. This helps to increase awareness and interest in their brand, attract new customers, and improve behavioral metrics on their website.
There are several types of crowd marketing
Mentions in specialized communities: the company actively participates in discussions and debates on various online platforms that correspond to its field of activity. For example, a sports equipment manufacturer may actively comment on publications about sports and fitness in specialized communities.
Blog Mentions: Company representatives can leave valuable comments on blog posts that relate to their product or service. For example, an organic beauty product manufacturer can leave expert comments on natural beauty and skin care blogs.
Mentions on forums: The company actively participates in discussions on forums where users are looking for advice and recommendations on products or services similar to those offered by the company. For example, a manufacturer of household appliances can answer users' questions about choosing and using appliances on relevant forums.
These methods allow companies to not only create mentions of their products or services, but also to establish closer connections with their target audience, which helps increase trust and interest in the brand.
There are several types of platforms where you can use crowd marketing without active links.
Online stores and marketplaces: users can leave reviews and comments on products, as well as share their experience of using the products. For example, a user can write a review about the quality and functionality of a purchased smartphone on the product page in an online store.
Industry portals and online magazines: In comments to articles and discussions, you can mention your company or product in the context of the article's topic. For example, a sportswear manufacturer can leave a comment under an article about healthy lifestyle and fitness on a specialized portal.
Question and Answer (Q&A) platforms: In addition to well-known platforms such as Quora or Yahoo Answers, many industry communities have their own Q&A sections where users seek advice and recommendations. For example, a representative of a tech company can help a user choose the right software by answering a question on the relevant platform.
Video hosting and streaming platforms: Comments and discussions under videos and streams can also be an effective crowd marketing tool. For example, a manufacturer of gaming accessories can actively participate in discussions under videos about new games on popular gaming channels on YouTube.
These types of platforms provide ample opportunities to interact with your target audience and promote your brand or product without using active links.
To conduct crowd marketing without active links, you can choose one of the following methods
On your own: This approach allows you to better understand the needs of your target audience, as you directly interact with communities and understand their dynamics. For example, you can actively participate in forum discussions or in the comments of blog posts, representing your company or product.
Freelance: Outsourcing your posts to a freelancer can be an effective solution if you don't have the time to do it yourself. However, it's important to choose your freelancer carefully and monitor the quality of the content you post.
Hiring an employee: Hiring a crowd marketer in the office ensures constant control over the process and high concentration on the work. This specialist can develop and implement crowd marketing strategies, taking into account the characteristics of your brand and target audience. Crowd marketing without active links requires the right strategy and a careful approach to choosing platforms for interaction with potential customers. Diversity in the choice of platforms and content helps to convey information about the brand or product to a wide audience, attracting attention and creating a positive impression of the company.
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