Crowdsourcing is an Internet marketing buzzword, but do you know what it means? Crowdsourcing is not just hype; it is a concept with real substance to it. By combining the minds of multiple people on a specific topic, with crowdsourcing you can find yourself with solutions you might never have thought of alone, and once you understand what it is, you will realize it can make for some great results in your online marketing campaign.

Crowdsourcing involves outsourcing tasks to a diverse group of people, rather than giving these duties to a single person. This can be done online, offline, or a combination of the two. Unlike outsourcing, however, you are not sending your project to contract employees. Instead, this is a computation based off of human power, which can be a great tactic for an online marketing campaign.

Similar to the comment box at a restaurant, crowd sourcing presents a problem to certain users, and those users can present potential solutions. This can provide a business with unique ideas or in a sort of democracy, can allow a business to see which ideas work for a majority of its clients.

Crowdsourcing in online marketing

Types of Crowdsourcing

When you are looking to crowdsource, there are typically to routes that it can take: explicit and implicit. With explicit crowdsourcing, users work together in a groupthink to develop different tasks, like sharing ideas and editing one another’s work. Implicit crowdsourcing may involve standalone crowdsourcing, where users solve problems while accomplishing another task or piggybacking by taking information from a third-party website.

Usually crowdsourcing is done though the help of volunteers, which means your business receives the benefit of a team of interested people working on your problem without the cost of paying a crack marketing team. Loyal customers, even those who haven’t frequented your business often but are willing to help you in your promotions will probably be happy to help you for free.

To entice these volunteers, however, you may consider providing special deals or discounts to those that help your business develop a marketing strategy. You may even want to consider hiring crowd sources with actual payment, though this doesn’t necessarily have to be more than minimum wage, which is considerably less than what you might pay a marketing specialist. Just be wary of the crowdsourcing platforms that underpay their workers.

Share the Experience

Though customers or volunteers may not know much about marketing, they know what speaks to them, what brings them into a store or convinces them to purchase a good. And best of all, if they are current customers or people interested in your business, they have knowledge of what it is you do that the average marketing firm may not. Crowdsourcing is a means of getting your target audience to explain to you how to sell to them better.

Additionally, because the people likely to participate in a crowdsourcing platform will likely have more technological skill and engagement than the average test group, they will probably consist of large numbers of your ideal audience. This tactic can also help grow your social networks leveraging the power of your contributors.

Ascent Internet, a Utah Internet marketing services firm, provided this post. You can learn more about their services, including Web design, at www.ascentinternet.com.

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