Crowd marketing as a way to promote

The term crowd marketing means a set of technologies of hidden type of marketing used in the global network. The list of tools of this method includes:

• communication on forums as participants;
• detailed recommendations on the websites in the format of questions and answers;
• comments in the news and thematic articles;
• publication of comments and feedback on a particular product, service, or material (photos, videos, etc.).

In other words, crowd marketing is a modern and managed version of the “grandma on the bench” expert service or sundress radio. Information about the characteristics and benefits of the object of promotion come from experienced consumers.

That is, competently posting information about the website on services such as “question-answer”, in comments to blogs or websites on relevant topics, forums, or websites with reviews, you can remove the effect of imposition. This type of advertising looks like a recommendation of a friend or well-informed person but not interested in selling the person.

Types of crowd promotion

For SEO promotion, it is essential to master the art of creating (receiving) links and their competent placement. Because, contrary to the expectations of beginners, “more” does not mean “better”.

About links, the search engine looks at the circle in which you communicate as a prudent potential business partner. As a great website, if many questionable websites recommend you, you are unlikely to inspire confidence. And a completely different reaction will be caused by several business recommendations from significant reliable sources.

A small number of quality links from trusted websites with similar or related topics to your business will give an order of magnitude better results than dozens of links from little-known resources. In this case, the website will gain increased trust in search engines, which will improve rankings and valuable additional traffic, which will also affect the position of your website. It is the purpose of crowd marketing.

1. Forums

When you need to find a cluster of target audiences interested in a product or service, you can and should pay attention to the forums. This is where the user is ready to share the problem, get a recommendation, or find a like-minded person. And competent crowd marketing will give a significant increase in traffic and ranking weight due to such websites.

A quick trick will allow you to quickly find a resource with the right topic among the current variety of forums. The most popular keyword phrase enters the search bar, and “in url: forum” add.

With all the advantages, forum websites have their pitfalls that can seriously ruin the result:

• The complexity of the search – due to the dynamism and activity of correspondence on resources of this type, sometimes it takes a long time to find a branch with the right topic and a very lively discussion of issues.
• It is vital to get strictly into the conversation and not “burn”, because messages that are even veiled advertising delete quickly. The same fate awaits comments that do not fall into the topic of conversation.
• Regulars of the forums are pretty careful in communicating with newcomers, as they suspect them of advertising intentions. In addition, speedy answers to inaccuracies in the comment are possible. As a result, instead of a positive recommendation, you can get negative advertising.

How can this be overcome? Here are some practical tools:

• You need to find an active, regularly updated branch of messages, the subject of which corresponds to the desired.
• When publishing a review or recommendation, you need an active account, registration, and the first comments made at least a few months ago.
• You need to take an active part in discussing your topic. When comments from other users appear under the post, you should answer questions and explain while supporting the conversation.
• Written should be clearly in the subject, without spam and verbosity.

2. Question and answer websites

Resources on which users ask specific questions, wanting to get a few detailed answers – one of the best platforms for crowd marketing. Searching for this kind of website is simple – just enter the search engine the type of websites that interest you.

On such websites, you can act both as an expert and as the author of the question. In the second case, the recording should start not with the direct question “Where to buy?”, But with the indirect one. Great options would be: “How to choose”, “Which is better”, “Share your opinion about the name of the product or service”.

Several nuances are essential to pay attention to when working with the following websites:

• Posting links to third-party resources are also not very welcome here – there is a high probability of deletion.
• It is more complicated than it seems to come up with a relevant question to the desired topic and product, and therefore the work may take longer.
• It is necessary to create a provocation to start an active discussion. You can post contradictory but not adverse facts.
• To make the placement of a crowd link easier and faster, it is crucial to provide information through the prism of a life situation. You will need to come up with a story in which each user could find himself. This will attract more readers from among the target audience.
• To be able to ask questions, answer, and comment, you should create several active accounts.

3. News, thematic articles

Articles commenting on articles of a thematic or general nature often have an article commenting feature. In this format of communication, conversations can occur, where you can place links.

Finding such discussions takes a long time. But this tool can, among others, be used as part of a general marketing campaign.

4. Review websites

Recent marketing research suggests that contemporary customer choices are based on trust in the product. The consumer is willing to pay a higher price and a proven and reliable product from a responsible seller. More than two-thirds of customers carefully check product and company reviews before making a purchase.

Thus, you can inform the target audience about the company by posting feedback from the consumer’s point of view on the relevant website. These are review websites that gather users’ opinions about different products in one place.

In the Ukrainian market, these are, in particular, such resources as otzyvua.net, revizion.ua. On these websites, each consumer can leave their impression of working with different organizations. These platforms can seriously damage a company’s reputation. Positive will increase demand, negative – to fall, and quite noticeable. In itself, registration on big review websites is good for the company also because it simplifies receiving feedback from customers.

5. Aggregators

Not less than the number of reviews are rich websites that work in the format of a price aggregator. Resources that present products of the same category but from different sellers allow you to compare prices, terms of service on one page.

As everywhere, here buyers leave their impressions of using the product. Therefore, the potential customer will first pay attention to the store with the most significant reviews. And most likely, that’s where he will make the order.

Therefore, creating an account for your store on such websites will also benefit you. The seller’s page fille in, as required, and information about the product was extremely detailed.

It only remains to fill the pages with goods and reviews from “different” customers, written under different IP addresses.

This tool also has a downside. In the case of intense competition when creating an account on the website of the price aggregator, it can be attacked by ordered negative feedback from other market players.

6. Social networks

Social networks, as a platform aimed at establishing connections and building relationships in society, can also be helpful as a tool for crowd marketing. There are also active comments under the records of any subject. Therefore, if you competently post a comment and provide an active discussion in the reviews, you can get great advertising.

It is important not to confuse this with a separate area – SMM. The basis of a crowd-marketing program is conducting work in comments (feedback, questions-answers). This is communication directly between consumers, where there is no place for the seller.

The choice of topics on social networks is so wide that you can easily find the right record with the greatest concentration of the target audience. Search forms and special services have been created for this purpose.

It is also essential to understand that you need quality accounts to work effectively — filled and active pages. Plus, you should refrain from direct and open advertising, as well as spam.

How to kill the main brand request of your website with a crowd

• We find a forum with the appropriate regionality.
• We participate in discussing our topic and leaving a link with a branded anchor to our website.
• Done – in two months, despite all expectations, the picture of the position in Google on the main query will upset you.

And as if comments on a subject and regionality approaches. So what’s the matter? The main rule miss: check the quality of the website. It turned out that DDoS attacked the forum where the linked post.

As expected, attempts make to delete the comment, but this feature break on the website. It is also impossible to contact the website administration. They simply do not get in touch. It only remains to add this website to the GSC exception through the Disavow tool and hope that Google will stop taking it into account.

Conclusion: pay close attention to the quality of the website, the ability to edit and delete the posted post. Read about how to get quality links to your website at the link.

A few more words about crowd marketing

The posting process is very similar to creating a review. But here, the place is chosen more precisely – websites where there is the most significant number of potential consumers. Particularly subtle is the art of making a mention (a comment that does not contain links on the website) about the product or organization in discussions (posts, forums, blogs). In this case, only the brand (product, company) mention in passing. Given the interest of resource users in the topic under discussion, such a message is often impressively effective.

Today’s model of the behavior of any consumer is such that the order or purchase of products (services) is preceded by a study of reviews, comments, and recommendations online. And crowd marketing, in this case, allows you to unobtrusively direct the buyer to your website, product, or service.

When applying this approach to promotion, there are a few unobvious points to consider. This will help in achieving better performance:

• Don’t overdo it. Search engine does not look the massive number of links on the web to a new product as a natural, and therefore the website is ignored. The best option would be to communicate in several forums, related groups, and communities. After all, the essence of crowd marketing is to get a soft promotion in the conversation. It is permissible to involve social networks, video and photo websites, news portals, online magazines, blogs (comments under the posts).
• Use accounts of relevant topics. The account under which reviews, comments, answers-questions, and other information publish should correspond to the subject of the product. For example, user Kateryna is a graceful nature who used to look for fascinating novels, beautiful paintings, and cute animals. Now she has started posting on various forums about, say, tools or repairs. The logical reaction of the search engine will be to ignore the new information because, most likely, Katya was either paid to publish the reviews or her account hack for the same purpose. Promotion is unnatural.
• An empty user profile signals the same unnaturalness as a sharp change of interests. A newly created account that does not have detailed profile information and message history is not trusted. The search engine will ban the information. To avoid this, your profile must have a query history related to the topic you want.

Who will not help the crowd

Several companies are unlikely to benefit from a crowdfunding promotion campaign:

• Organizations whose goods or services have situational application. For example: after punching a wheel on a large road, the driver will finally climb on the forum to get a recommendation for the best nearest car service from experienced motorists.
• Companies with a narrow profile of work. If the organization offers rare goods or services, they are unlikely to benefit from hidden advertising. The target audience, as a rule, finds such sellers.
• Businesses focused on large orders. Yes, factories that produce industrial equipment or heavy machinery are unlikely to get their customers through forums and comments on websites.
• Regional enterprises whose activities are aimed at meeting the needs of local residents. For example, a shop or hairdresser in the sleeping area.
• Manufacturers and distributors of essential and frequent use products (bakery products, water, and others).
• Companies with “bad” or outdated websites. Before attracting visitors to your resource, you need to make sure that they linger on its pages.

Conclusion

Summing up, it should note that with proper planning, a crowd-marketing program can achieve impressive results:

• Significantly increases traffic within the specified queries.
• The recognizability of the company (brand, trademark) improves, a positive image of products or services form.
• When posting records with a natural story style, a sincere impression of the product, the potential customer will show interest in the brand. A particular product will explore the website described. After all, we should not forget about reducing the failure rate, which is the most critical factor in the ranking.
• With the right organization of selecting websites for publication, there is a safe growth of positions in the issuance of Google.

Pitfalls

Even taking into account all the existing advantages, the method has quite noticeable disadvantages. These dangers should be known when developing a crowd marketing strategy:

• All procedures are manual work, which is almost impossible to switch to automatic mode. Accounts are pumped and published manually.
• There is a high risk that the audience will bite the advertising secret of reviews or comments. Then the effect will be the opposite of what you desire. Subtlety is essential in crowd marketing.
• There is a danger of reducing search results if you deviate from the rules for placing links.
• Significant time spent on program implementation. The correct operation of crowd-marketing activities requires constant work on finding websites, creating and pumping accounts, posting links.