What is crowd marketing? The most complete guide and 9 specific tips for effective use
If you are the owner of the site, especially young, or you work in the field of SEO-promotion, then you probably faced the following questions:
All these issues can be solved with the help of search engine promotion.
Getting to the TOP = constant arrival of “warm” customers who are interested in your product.
But taking top positions, especially in a competitive niche, is not an easy task.
One of the most effective solutions to this problem is reference promotion.
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But only if earlier it was possible to simply purchase links on the exchange - and you are already in the first positions in search engines, now such actions will lead to a completely opposite result.
But! Links will continue to work in 2018. As a confirmation, you can cite data from a study conducted by referr.ru.
Most experts in the field of link promotion prefer a tool such as crowd marketing. The reason for this is its safety and low cost compared to alternatives.
Consider more.
Crowd marketing is attracting the attention of the target audience by posting advisory comments on forums, Q & A sites, blogs, and also in other places where people communicate.
With it, you can create a positive field around the company, give naturalness to the reference profile, increase the reach of the audience.
The term “crowd marketing” in the CIS appeared about 4 years ago. Its creator and distributor was the famous Ukrainian marketer Yuri Titkov.
If experts are engaged in their placement, then crowd-comments are no different from usual ones. They are suitable for projects in various languages. Here are some examples.
For English-speaking sites:
for Runet:
Important! You can not just leave a link. The comment should bear some benefit for users, solve their problem. Otherwise, it will be regarded as spam.
The specialty of the crowd is that it can be attributed to both SEO and marketing tools. It not only enhances the position of the site in search results, but also contributes to an increase in customer turnover.
Increasing the site link weight
The more backlinks leads to your site, the more authoritative it becomes for search engines. But it is also important that not only classic rental links, but also non-ankorn ones make up the reference mass. This can be achieved with the help of crowds.
Growth in search engine rankings
Getting into the TOP leads to a sharp increase in site traffic. The fact is that most people, when searching for any query on the Internet, stop at the first 3 results results sites, without even looking at the rest of the pages.
Secure link building
Now everyone is afraid to fall under the filters of Yandex and Google, and this is quite reasonable. New search engine algorithms detect purchased links and lower such sites in the issue.
In this case, an excellent alternative are crowd-links, which are left by ordinary users in the advisory key, and are accepted by search engines as natural.
Inflow of targeted traffic to the site
Crowd links placed on relevant sites will bring to your site not just random users, but specifically the target audience. But for this you need to choose the right site.
Work with negative
If there are a lot of negative comments about your product / service in the network, then with the help of crowds you can significantly improve the situation. Positive comments will block negative ones, and due to this, the overall image of the company will look much better.
Viral crops of brand references
The more sites you work, the more links you leave, the more people will know about you. So then you can become your customers.
Creating a positive company image
If you have just recently started an activity, then, most likely, there are few or no reviews about your product. As you know, there is always such a problem as “the fear of the first comment.” Crowd marketing allows you to push your customers to write a review. After all, if you have already posted a few comments, then leave your much more comfortable.
Work against competitors
Now crowds are popular, so it’s likely that your competitors could already test this tool. In this case, you will need to find a site where there are no links to competitors. But! If you have a good product that surpasses competitors, then it can be placed on the sites developed by competitors.
Over the 4 years that there is crowd marketing, different strategies have emerged for its use. Depending on the chosen strategy, the implementation technology may differ significantly.
Consider the algorithm of actions in the implementation of classic crowd marketing:
It seems to be simple, but when it comes to the implementation itself, a number of problems arise. Therefore, we have prepared several tips that will help you achieve maximum effectiveness from crowd marketing and avoid unnecessary mistakes.
Let's start!
Before proceeding directly to the implementation of a crowd marketing campaign, you should first decide who it will target, who you see as your potential customers. When determining the target audience, different parameters can be taken into account, it all depends on the goals that the company sets for itself. Here are the main ones that you can navigate:
In many ways, the effectiveness of crowd marketing depends on the sites on which links are placed. Therefore, the choice of sites should be approached as responsibly as possible. First of all, you should pay attention to:
Topics of the site itself and topics at the discussion level
The theme of the site should match your product. A variant of the general mathematical platform is also possible. Also, pay attention to what people talk about in discussions. There are frequent cases when the theme of the site is the same, and in discussions there are discussions on completely different topics.
Region
If you, for example, are the owner of an online cosmetics store in Astana, it hardly makes sense to post on English-language forums. In this case, the all-Russian and Astana forums will do. Pay special attention to this criterion if you are limited to shipping only to one region.
Trust and spam rates
The trust demonstrates how authoritative the site is in the eyes of search engines. Spam allows you to find out the level of site littering with external links. Both parameters can be checked on the CheckTrust service.
For forums and platforms for commencing, a trust is considered to be higher than 40, spam is less than 20. But for some topics these indicators may be lower.
Traffic and development dynamics
When forming a crowd-marketing task, many customers focus on trust and spam rates of sites, completely forgetting about the dynamics of development and traffic. But these parameters are no less important. Should be monitored by the constant growth of traffic to the site.
Sample graphics with positive dynamics of direct transitions
Activity
There should be activity at the discussion level. If there is none, then the link left is unlikely to bring many customers to your site.
Involvement
The link, left in the right place, will be able to interest potential customers and, most likely, they will go to your website. If, however, place even a large number of links on random sites, the probability that they will bring the expected result is very low.
Example of poor quality crowds:
If the first two comments look quite natural, the third is completely advertising:
Proper design is one of the decisive factors affecting the effectiveness of a crowd marketing campaign.
Before you start promotion, first make a beautiful website so that the person following the link will want to stay with you. Otherwise, all the results of the crowd marketing campaign can be nullified.
Properly compiled technical task - the key to success. It really is. All further work will be focused on TK. Therefore, all your wishes must be prescribed initially, so that later you don’t have to deal with the consequences.
An example of a typical TK:
Detailed TK looks like this:
When selecting sites, many experts are guided by such parameters as trust and spam. But they are not always decisive. There are equally important indicators that should be oriented:
Work out young sites, track the dynamics of their development. Often, it is from them that more customers come than from popular ones.
Refuse automatic placement
Wanting to save money, some companies order automatic posting of comments. This option is cheaper than manual implementation. The table shows the cost of 1 link posted manually and automatically.
If the link placed manually costs about 200 rubles, then the automatic placement will be 30-50 rubles (for runet).
But! Ordering automatic placement, you risk getting under the sanctions of search engines.
Also, you will not be able to work on personal parameters and there are no guarantees against deletion. Therefore, in some cases it is more profitable to invest a little more money, but to get a good long-term result than to get under sanctions and go down at all in search results.
People will follow links to the site only if they are interested in your offer. Therefore, it is important to correctly compose the text of the commentary so that it conveys the necessary information to the users, but at the same time it does not look like an obvious advertisement.
An example of an advertising comment in social networks:
An example of a correctly composed comment with an anchor link:
The effectiveness of the crowd increases on the eve of big holidays, when everyone is puzzled by the search for gifts. With it, you can bring to potential customers information about your special offer, thereby significantly increasing sales.
Most likely, you use several tools at once to promote the site. In this case, it is necessary to monitor both the general dynamics of the site development and the effectiveness of individual tools. You can check them using the services of Ahrefs, Majestic and others. So you can understand what to invest a large part of the budget, and what should be completely abandoned.
Topic: relocation services in Moscow
For advancement, an integrated strategy was used.
The implementation of the crowd-marketing campaign allowed us to achieve the following results:
Guest posting and links to articles made the site more authoritative in the eyes of the PS, which is indirectly monitored by Ahrefs Ranku:
As a result, we got a secure link profile, backlinks are from different sources:
After a month of work, it is quite difficult to track the effectiveness of crowds, since this tool focuses on the long-term effect. And most often the most productive are the campaigns from 3 months. Why is that? It takes time for the links to be indexed by search engines. In addition, the more sites developed, the greater will be the effect.
This is perfectly demonstrated by this case.
Subject: cryptocurrency.
Duration: 3 months.
State at the beginning of work:
What tools were used for search promotion?
What got in the end:
To get the maximum result from the crowds, the best option would be to transfer the work to an outsourcing.
Crowd marketing is uniquely effective for promoting service sites. But its effectiveness depends on how well you know how to use it. We hope that these tips will help you avoid unwanted mistakes. If you also know some kind of lifehacking of crowd-marketing, we suggest to share them in the comments.
- How to safely promote a site?
- How to attract new customers?
- How to increase sales?
All these issues can be solved with the help of search engine promotion.
Getting to the TOP = constant arrival of “warm” customers who are interested in your product.
But taking top positions, especially in a competitive niche, is not an easy task.
One of the most effective solutions to this problem is reference promotion.
')
But only if earlier it was possible to simply purchase links on the exchange - and you are already in the first positions in search engines, now such actions will lead to a completely opposite result.
But! Links will continue to work in 2018. As a confirmation, you can cite data from a study conducted by referr.ru.
Most experts in the field of link promotion prefer a tool such as crowd marketing. The reason for this is its safety and low cost compared to alternatives.
Consider more.
What is this tool about?
Crowd marketing is attracting the attention of the target audience by posting advisory comments on forums, Q & A sites, blogs, and also in other places where people communicate.
With it, you can create a positive field around the company, give naturalness to the reference profile, increase the reach of the audience.
The term “crowd marketing” in the CIS appeared about 4 years ago. Its creator and distributor was the famous Ukrainian marketer Yuri Titkov.
What do crowd comments look like?
If experts are engaged in their placement, then crowd-comments are no different from usual ones. They are suitable for projects in various languages. Here are some examples.
For English-speaking sites:
for Runet:
Important! You can not just leave a link. The comment should bear some benefit for users, solve their problem. Otherwise, it will be regarded as spam.
Benefits of crowd marketing
The specialty of the crowd is that it can be attributed to both SEO and marketing tools. It not only enhances the position of the site in search results, but also contributes to an increase in customer turnover.
SEO effect
Increasing the site link weight
The more backlinks leads to your site, the more authoritative it becomes for search engines. But it is also important that not only classic rental links, but also non-ankorn ones make up the reference mass. This can be achieved with the help of crowds.
Growth in search engine rankings
Getting into the TOP leads to a sharp increase in site traffic. The fact is that most people, when searching for any query on the Internet, stop at the first 3 results results sites, without even looking at the rest of the pages.
Secure link building
Now everyone is afraid to fall under the filters of Yandex and Google, and this is quite reasonable. New search engine algorithms detect purchased links and lower such sites in the issue.
In this case, an excellent alternative are crowd-links, which are left by ordinary users in the advisory key, and are accepted by search engines as natural.
Inflow of targeted traffic to the site
Crowd links placed on relevant sites will bring to your site not just random users, but specifically the target audience. But for this you need to choose the right site.
Marketing
Work with negative
If there are a lot of negative comments about your product / service in the network, then with the help of crowds you can significantly improve the situation. Positive comments will block negative ones, and due to this, the overall image of the company will look much better.
Viral crops of brand references
The more sites you work, the more links you leave, the more people will know about you. So then you can become your customers.
Creating a positive company image
If you have just recently started an activity, then, most likely, there are few or no reviews about your product. As you know, there is always such a problem as “the fear of the first comment.” Crowd marketing allows you to push your customers to write a review. After all, if you have already posted a few comments, then leave your much more comfortable.
Work against competitors
Now crowds are popular, so it’s likely that your competitors could already test this tool. In this case, you will need to find a site where there are no links to competitors. But! If you have a good product that surpasses competitors, then it can be placed on the sites developed by competitors.
Execution technology
Over the 4 years that there is crowd marketing, different strategies have emerged for its use. Depending on the chosen strategy, the implementation technology may differ significantly.
Consider the algorithm of actions in the implementation of classic crowd marketing:
- we find fresh discussions;
- register a new account (if there is an existing one, use it);
- we pump over the account (we enter into discussions);
- we analyze the problems of users in the right branch;
- we publish the comment with the link.
It seems to be simple, but when it comes to the implementation itself, a number of problems arise. Therefore, we have prepared several tips that will help you achieve maximum effectiveness from crowd marketing and avoid unnecessary mistakes.
Let's start!
1. Determine the target audience
Before proceeding directly to the implementation of a crowd marketing campaign, you should first decide who it will target, who you see as your potential customers. When determining the target audience, different parameters can be taken into account, it all depends on the goals that the company sets for itself. Here are the main ones that you can navigate:
- floor;
- region of residence;
- age;
- solvency;
- other.
2. We evaluate the relevance of sites
In many ways, the effectiveness of crowd marketing depends on the sites on which links are placed. Therefore, the choice of sites should be approached as responsibly as possible. First of all, you should pay attention to:
Topics of the site itself and topics at the discussion level
The theme of the site should match your product. A variant of the general mathematical platform is also possible. Also, pay attention to what people talk about in discussions. There are frequent cases when the theme of the site is the same, and in discussions there are discussions on completely different topics.
Region
If you, for example, are the owner of an online cosmetics store in Astana, it hardly makes sense to post on English-language forums. In this case, the all-Russian and Astana forums will do. Pay special attention to this criterion if you are limited to shipping only to one region.
Trust and spam rates
The trust demonstrates how authoritative the site is in the eyes of search engines. Spam allows you to find out the level of site littering with external links. Both parameters can be checked on the CheckTrust service.
For forums and platforms for commencing, a trust is considered to be higher than 40, spam is less than 20. But for some topics these indicators may be lower.
Traffic and development dynamics
When forming a crowd-marketing task, many customers focus on trust and spam rates of sites, completely forgetting about the dynamics of development and traffic. But these parameters are no less important. Should be monitored by the constant growth of traffic to the site.
Sample graphics with positive dynamics of direct transitions
Activity
There should be activity at the discussion level. If there is none, then the link left is unlikely to bring many customers to your site.
Involvement
The link, left in the right place, will be able to interest potential customers and, most likely, they will go to your website. If, however, place even a large number of links on random sites, the probability that they will bring the expected result is very low.
Example of poor quality crowds:
If the first two comments look quite natural, the third is completely advertising:
- contains two links at once;
- written by a newcomer (registred user only);
- does not contain any useful information;
3. Properly make out the site
Proper design is one of the decisive factors affecting the effectiveness of a crowd marketing campaign.
What should be on the site?
- easy navigation;
- delivery methods;
- detailed information on the main page about what service / product you offer;
- company information with contacts for communication;
- designed design.
Before you start promotion, first make a beautiful website so that the person following the link will want to stay with you. Otherwise, all the results of the crowd marketing campaign can be nullified.
4. We make detailed TZ
Properly compiled technical task - the key to success. It really is. All further work will be focused on TK. Therefore, all your wishes must be prescribed initially, so that later you don’t have to deal with the consequences.
An example of a typical TK:
Detailed TK looks like this:
5. We consider site traffic and attendance
When selecting sites, many experts are guided by such parameters as trust and spam. But they are not always decisive. There are equally important indicators that should be oriented:
- attendance;
- traffic;
- development dynamics;
- the presence of fresh threads of discussion.
Work out young sites, track the dynamics of their development. Often, it is from them that more customers come than from popular ones.
Refuse automatic placement
Wanting to save money, some companies order automatic posting of comments. This option is cheaper than manual implementation. The table shows the cost of 1 link posted manually and automatically.
If the link placed manually costs about 200 rubles, then the automatic placement will be 30-50 rubles (for runet).
But! Ordering automatic placement, you risk getting under the sanctions of search engines.
Also, you will not be able to work on personal parameters and there are no guarantees against deletion. Therefore, in some cases it is more profitable to invest a little more money, but to get a good long-term result than to get under sanctions and go down at all in search results.
6. No spamming!
People will follow links to the site only if they are interested in your offer. Therefore, it is important to correctly compose the text of the commentary so that it conveys the necessary information to the users, but at the same time it does not look like an obvious advertisement.
An example of an advertising comment in social networks:
How to write a quality comment?
- analyze the topics of discussion;
- prepare the text of the comment;
- check for errors. Always competently written comments have more confidence than posts, where there are 3 errors in each word. Some themes may have small typos, but the key here is small.
- Add a link to the promoted resource in the comment text. It should look organic and not cause suspicion of advertising;
- We use bezankornye links. For ordinary users, it is much easier to make Ctrl C + Ctrl V, rather than insert a link into the words. And we want the link to look as natural as possible.
An example of a correctly composed comment with an anchor link:
7. Consider the seasonality factor (if services suggest seasonality)
The effectiveness of the crowd increases on the eve of big holidays, when everyone is puzzled by the search for gifts. With it, you can bring to potential customers information about your special offer, thereby significantly increasing sales.
8. Evaluate the effectiveness
Most likely, you use several tools at once to promote the site. In this case, it is necessary to monitor both the general dynamics of the site development and the effectiveness of individual tools. You can check them using the services of Ahrefs, Majestic and others. So you can understand what to invest a large part of the budget, and what should be completely abandoned.
Case
Topic: relocation services in Moscow
For advancement, an integrated strategy was used.
The implementation of the crowd-marketing campaign allowed us to achieve the following results:
- set the dynamics of the appearance of backlinks to the site, which is shown on the chart:
- eliminate perespam commercial anchor links:
Guest posting and links to articles made the site more authoritative in the eyes of the PS, which is indirectly monitored by Ahrefs Ranku:
As a result, we got a secure link profile, backlinks are from different sources:
9. The best result is the implementation of a crowd-marketing campaign of 3 months.
After a month of work, it is quite difficult to track the effectiveness of crowds, since this tool focuses on the long-term effect. And most often the most productive are the campaigns from 3 months. Why is that? It takes time for the links to be indexed by search engines. In addition, the more sites developed, the greater will be the effect.
This is perfectly demonstrated by this case.
Case - project growth from 0 to 300 thousand people per month
Subject: cryptocurrency.
Duration: 3 months.
State at the beginning of work:
- age: zero domain;
- lack of traffic (less than 15 people / day);
- no backlinks to the site.
What tools were used for search promotion?
- crowd marketing;
- advertising publications in niche media;
- Outreach, guest posting, links from articles.
What got in the end:
To get the maximum result from the crowds, the best option would be to transfer the work to an outsourcing.
Crowd marketing is uniquely effective for promoting service sites. But its effectiveness depends on how well you know how to use it. We hope that these tips will help you avoid unwanted mistakes. If you also know some kind of lifehacking of crowd-marketing, we suggest to share them in the comments.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/348638/
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