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How to Save Money and Draw a Crowd Feeling shorthanded these days? Wondering if your business is truly meeting your customers' needs? If you answered yes to either of those questions, have you asked all your customers to help you?Increasingly, companies big and small are doing just that. It's called crowdsourcing--enlisting the help of a large group of people to do company work or shape the company agenda, rather than delegating tasks to an employee or two, or perhaps an ad agency. The growth of social media has enabled crowdsourcing, making it easy for companies to connect with huge mobs of customers. A couple of the key benefits: saving money and making customers feel more connected to your company. A great recent example of crowdsourcing came during the Super Bowl earlier this year, when Doritosannounced a consumer video contest to create its Super Bowl ads. More than 2,000 applicants made their own proposed 30-second ad spots for Doritos and aired them online. Doritos gave out $5 million in prize money--likely not more than they would have spent having an agency design the campaign. And do you think any of those customers will ever forget how much fun they had entering the contest? Netflix has used crowdsourcing to engage the tech-geek crowd (possibly they stay home a lot and rent many movies?). This month they wrapped a contest to design better movie-recommendation technology for them, with a $1 million prize. Wins for Netflix? More engaged customers, and better movie recommendations for all its customers, without the expense of putting their own dedicated team on the task of improving their software. The company immediately announced another $1 million contest to improve on the company's "taste profile" software. Crowdsourcing can be as simple as Dell's IdeaStorm website, where customers can leave suggestions for new products or services they'd like to see. Rather than just a few engineers sitting around in a conference room, now they're tapping their entire customer base's brainpower. Some entrepreneurs are even building small businesses entirely from crowdsourcing. As a reporter, my favorite example has to be Peter Shankman's Help A Reporter Out, an online service that allows experts and PR people to see a daily feed of sources journalists are seeking. Through HARO, reporters can essentially ask a global crowd to answer their questions. All I can say is--it's beautiful. Experts get the press they want, and reporters get the best available source for their story. It's free so far, but I've got to believe that at some point, he'll start charging PR people a few dollars a month for these valuable reporter leads--and he'll be rich. For now, he's hooked a huge audience on using his service, and who knows how many ways he might leverage that in the future. Are you using crowdsourcing in your business? If so leave a comment and let us know about it. If not, consider whether there isn't a way for your business to benefit from crowd power.
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Hi Carol,
Great article on crowdsourcing. We've recently launched a business that helps business customers get a powerful advertisement designed via the crowdsourcing method. Our current community of designers love the system. It helps new designers get experience pitching their designs to real clients & helps experienced designers make a lot of extra money, doing what they love.
Our name is Prova Advertising (http://www.Prova.fm), & we fill the gap between designing your own ads & hiring an agency. Our first batch of clients have each received over 30+ unique designs. Plus it helps ease a lot of the stress with having to pick a designer/freelancer without knowing what they'll produce. Our system lets you pick the design, instead of the designer.
If anyone's interested in trying their own ad design contest, let me know, I'll help you out.
Get a quality advertisement @ the price YOU pick @ Prova.fm
If people are having fun entering then I dont see a problem. I admit i would like a percentage of the proftis however i wouldnt donate my information unless
A: I enjoyed the method of adding input
B: I Liked the product.
I think you make a good point, Noah! From free reviews to contests to make Super Bowl ads, companies are harvesting ideas for free that they'd pay handsomely for if they came from staffers. But nobody's making people do it.
Personally, I never participate in those free phone surveys so many research firms want you to do, because I've done marketing focus groups and got paid! And I realized my opinion is worth something.
America being a big country, there are still plenty of people who seem to enjoy offering their opinion gratis, and as long as that's true, I think companies will increasingly tap into that brainpower.
Carol Tice
Contributing writer
Hello,
I am using crowdsourcing to jump start a historic preservation business, called Save the Historic Houses.
I have just started developing this business in Annapolis to preserve some of the most beautiful structures from the past that are being lost to demolition and neglect. It is based on a residence club business model where members share the use of properties. All costs are split between members which brings the high costs of historic property restoration and maintenance down for everyone.
Right now I am using crowdsourcing through my Facebook page to get ideas on how to develop the business and to gain a diverse advisory group of professionals to offer advice. A next step is to use Google docs to have those individuals help me to develop the business documents for the club.
Crowdsourcing is a great way for start ups to bootstrap the development of a business and for market research. With all the social media out there now it is a great way to tap into peoples expertise and insights. I have gotten a lot of invaluable advice this way.
My website is http://www.savethehistorichouses.com
Charles
Hey, Carol. Kudos for the informative article. This is one post all business players who have ventured into social media territory will find really useful.
In my own point of view, I think that there are only two ways to fully harness the power of crowd sourcing: one is to create something that can lure lots and lots of people, and number two, make sure that the people are participating because they are enjoying it.
I think crowdsourcing is crap. Companies are getting richer off of people that donate ideas. While Joe Blow is scrooping ice cream part-time/minimum wage, he's giving (for example) Dell an idea that could make them millions. What does he get in return? Nothing. Not even something he can use on his resume. Why? It's not verifiable that the idea came from him. It's one thing if a company offers a million dollar prize. It's another when a company gets rich by using the public. Hopefully the crowd you're searching in, is dumb.