What is crowdsourcing and how can it help market my business?
This video by Jeff Howe explains crowdsourcing and dispells some of the myths.
Text Version from YouTube:
“Crowdsourcing” has, virtually overnight, generated huge buzz, enthusiasm, and fear. It’s the application of the open-source idea to any field outside of software, taking a function performed by people in an organization, such as reporting done by journalists, research and product development by scientists, or design of a T-shirt, for example, and, in effect, “outsourcing” it through an open-air broadcast on the Internet. Crowdsourcing has already had a huge impact on big companies like Procter & Gamble, as well as start-ups like Threadless.com, which rapidly became the third largest T-shirt maker in the United States. The fuel sparking the crowdsourcing flame is the potent combination of more highly educated people working in fields other than those in which they were trained (think of the art historian peddling financial advice at Merrill Lynch) with the greatest mechanism for distributing knowledge and information the world has ever seen: the Internet.”
Some additional ways that we feel Crowdsourcing can help your business:
1. Reduces Marketing Costs – rather than spending thousands (or more) on marketing to the masses, and hoping you have the right message, you can have the consumer / client/ customer give you feedback on what they like BEFORE you launch the marketing campaign.
2. Eliminates Need for Test Groups – what better test group than the actual target audience? Engaging the audience in your marketing efforts and plan can help to eliminate the need for costly (and often biased) test groups.
3. Real Answers for Little to No Cost from your Targeted Audience – your target audience is who you are truly trying to reach – so why not ask them for their input in what they like about your product or service and then USE that valuable information to make your marketing that much more effective.
More on Crowdsourcing:
5 Tips on How to Crowdsource effectively – summarized from our friends at Mashable.
1. Be Clear
2. Offer Incentives
3. Don’t Overwhelm the Crowd
4. Be Ready for Response
5. Crowdsourcing isn’t Unprofessional
For the entire article by Todd Wasserman, click here.
