What is Crowd Marketing? 4 Cost-Free Methods to Explore
When we look at a holistic approach on marketing, crowd marketing comes to mind. It features a broad range of principles and practices, with the aim to drive brand awareness well above the initial investment. A typical company earns $18 for every dollar invested in crowd influencer marketing.
So the big question: what is crowd marketing?
Crowd Marketing is a form of digital marketing that targets a large group of audience, with the goal of increasing sales and generating interest for a particular business service or product. While 'influencer marketing' can be coined under the subset of crowd marketing, crowd marketing techniques and concept go well beyond the scope of simply influencer engagement. It encompasses content creation, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and social media marketing that results in quality lead generation.
Benefits of Crowd Marketing
Crowd marketing allows you to narrate the story of your business, and partaking in engagement with real people on various platforms. When well-executed, this marketing concept brings about the following key benefits:
1. Increased Brand Awareness
When you engage influencers to share about your services or products, you get exposure on their platform and more eyeballs on your brand. Impressions come as the top of the funnel – it is important to get huge impressions, to get more conversions.
2. Traffic Growth
With more impressions and reach, you get more traffic to your business pages, which puts you in a better position for conversions. This can help you in generating quality leads for your brand, which is crucial if you are focusing in B2B.
3. Brand Recognition
As you focus on the brand story and narrative, while being mindful of public relations, you can establish yourself as an industry key player, against your competitors. This puts you ahead of them in terms of brand recognition and recall.
4. Stronger Engagement
While this is an obvious statement, an increased engagement to your brand (in terms of likes, comments, shares) can inspire your target audience to convert as customers through desired and targeted messaging and promotions that sweeten the deal along the way.
How do I execute a crowd marketing strategy?
There are many techniques and ways to engage in crowd marketing. Here are the top 4 cost-free ways that we find useful:
Embark on influencer marketing campaigns
More than 90% of marketers understand the impact of social media influencers and rely on influencer campaigns to drive awareness. They offer an organic, reliable and personable promotion of your brand. Engage in influencers that you believe can bring value to your brand through payment or sponsorship, in exchange or social media exposure. Likewise, you can hire a social media or public relations agency to execute the work.
Identifying your key communication channels and leverage on them
Know where your audience are and engage with them consistently. The quality and format of content for each communication channel matters. Apart from the common EDM, Website, Instagram and Facebook, spearhead new initiatives like TikTok, Telegram Channel, or Facebook Community, where user engagement is higher and you may gather thoughtful insights for your brand.
Producing quality and relevant content
Think like a new customer going through your owned channels and the information they are looking for. Create and curate content that are relevant to your audience, and are of value to them. This process, while improving engagement for your brand, also works to improve your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in the long run, with relevant content increasing your brand awareness and search engine ranking.
Managing your reputation
Building and managing a reputation sounds intangible, but it is important to have a stronghold on this, to project authority and becoming a thought-leader in the industry. Externally, you can control and push out your brand narrative on earned media channels (eg. publications, social media influencers, online portals). You should also be visible as a business on relevant ranking portals. For example, in the food industry, you should project positive sentiments on Google, Foursquare, HungryGoWhere and Burpple, or at least have a strong crisis management to minimise negative sentiments. Internally, you can promote certain types of values and beliefs that match the expectations of the target audience as a brand. This can include taking a stand or being outspoken on social issues.
Crowd Marketing – A Strategic Long Game
Crowd marketing is a long thought-out process that does not happen overnight or within a short campaign frame. The endgame of this marketing strategy is to ultimately increase sales and generate interest for your business service or product, with a halo effect on lead generation, brand recognition and recall in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Crowd Marketing Campaign & Strategies
If you're interested to find out more about crowd marketing campaigns, feel free to reach out to our team for a quick coffee chat. We offer free brand consultation, to see how we can elevate your brand together.