Crowdsourcing marketing is a great way to get your marketing stuff done without you lifting a finger. These ten sites and apps are a great way to get you connected to the crowd.
Crowdsourcing marketing is on the tip of every digital marketer today.
It is a fast and efficient way to get your marketing tasks delivered by the crowd rather than hired professionals. This is done by taking advantage of the billions of users accessible through the internet and digital devices.
Online crowdsourcing marketing platforms make it easy for you to get the little things done. This lets you focus on the big picture. Ever since Wired Magazine coined the term crowdsourcing in 2006, it has quickly trickled into the marketing world.
They defined it as:
“The act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated employee and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”
Wikipedia and American Idol are just some examples of crowdsourcing that use a ‘crowd’ to do their job for them.
Funneling the idea into marketing has created a new avenue for marketers to outsource marketing tasks to the public and better reach potential consumers through crowdsourcing marketing.
Using online tools and resources, companies can build and manage a crowd to perform all kinds of tasks that help market their product, service, or idea.
There are many apps and websites to help you, as a marketer, leverage crowdsourcing marketing, but we’ve rounded up 10 of the best to help you get started.
1. The Crowder
The Crowder brings together the best crowdsourcing websites to help you design accommodation, services, funding, content, and education.
They review and compare leading web solutions in all major categories to help you narrow down the best that serves your needs according to price, rating, fees, and basic features.
Crowdsourcing marketing for design and content is easy through their simple interface that lists and compares websites, instead of finding and hiring somebody to create a new logo design, packaging design, or a total redesign of your website.
The Crowder connects you with thousands of designers equipped with the resources and talent to fulfill anything you need.
Similarly, it lists crowdsourcing sites that put you through to a crowd of experienced writers that can create content in any form for your brand. The Crowder also notifies you of any special offers through coupon codes or ongoing promotions.
2. Gigwalk
Gigwalk is popular among users to make a little pocket money just by walking to the store and taking a picture of a shelf or something similar.
Businesses and digital marketers ask for information, and the GigWalker contributors collect them through a single or series of marketing tasks in exchange for a small amount of money.
It is crowdsourcing marketing at its best. When using the crowd, businesses can review their products’ retail placement, merchandising behavior, usage, and much more.
Market research through Gigwalk is an excellent way for companies to collect intelligence without leaving the office.
With clients like RedBull, Pfizer, Frito-Lay, and Adidas, Gigwalk has established itself as the leader in crowdsourcing marketing apps as a quick and easy solution to collecting market data. The app works in 4 stages:
- Create: Create projects and push them out to your field team or their 1.5 Million Gigwalkers
- Match: Match people to work based on GPS locations
- Execute: Execute on work efficiently and effectively
- Analyze: Real-time insight to make better decisions
3. Crowdsource
Crowdsource is an online platform that gives you a skilled workforce to complete your tasks, depending on your needs. They serve marketers, retailers, service providers, publishers, agencies, and industries.
For the digital marketer, Crowdsource helps “extend your marketing team and execute large scale content marketing and SEO projects without lifting a finger.”
A specialized and experienced workforce takes on online marketing projects that would take your in-house team days, weeks, or months.
The key advantage of using an experienced crowd in Crowdsource is that you save time on training outsourced personnel. Once you hit the green light on a task, they’re ready to get to work. Because of the high volume of workers available, they can handle a large amount of work and keep projects moving quickly.
Through crowdsourcing marketing, they offer services in:
- Copywriting (professional writers in articles, blogs, recipes, buying guides & product descriptions).
- Content moderation (protects your site’s reputation through comment moderation, image moderation, sentiment analysis & video moderation).
- Transcription (audio & video).
- And data solutions (complete large-scale projects through content tagging, data categorization, data cleansing, data deduplication, data enrichment, data tagging, image tagging, search relevance & video tagging).
4. 99Designs
99Designs uses crowdsourcing marketing contests to attract design ideas from hundreds of graphic designers. If you’re looking for a new design for your logo, website, packaging, brand, book cover, business card, or even T-shirt, you’ll find a large pool of designs exclusively created for you to choose from on 99Designs.
The number of designs and expertise level of the designers you get depends on the pricing package you choose. Four tiers start from $299 with about 30 designs by “good designers” in the bronze package.
It peaks at the $1,299 platinum package that delivers around 60 premium designs by “exceptional designers.”
These charges also include the prize for the designer whose design you choose at the end and fees and commissions. It’s worth pursuing, considering the website has a money-back guarantee.
5. Field Agent
Like Gigwalk, Field Agent gathers real-world information for you by forwarding all your marketing tasks to users using their apps on android and iPhone.
It helps businesses build market data by crowdsourcing marketing, which they can analyze and review to make strategic decisions.
Field Agent offers a wide range of services tailored to retailers, agencies, academics, restaurants, and companies that sell consumer packaged goods and beverages.
Their “agents” do a mobile audit of your goods by taking pictures and answering questions about how your product is used or placed in stores. Clients include Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, Kellogg’s, and Tyson.
6. Ponoko
This crowdsourcing platform stands apart from other platforms because of its unique business model. If you have ever thought of an idea that was difficult for you to bring to life, then Ponoko is your go-to place.
You can get your designs made by other creative people for free or upload your designs customized, finalizing the same at a range price that suits you well. With its vast distribution network of manufacturers, Ponoko is bringing ideas to life. Pricing starts at $1.
All you have to do is spark in yourself the idea of design with the available material on Ponoko. Add your design to one from many of their design templates and upload the same to get an online quote from the fantastic crowd of designers.
You can get as many designs made as you want, 1 or 100000. Ponoko will deliver it as fast as the same day as they try to source the manufacturer closest to you.
As a platform for designers, retailers, entrepreneurs, and manufacturers, Ponoko is adding another option to the digital marketing revolution. Clients include Disney, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and Apple.
7. Designhill
As the name suggests, Designhill is like a supermarket dedicated entirely to graphic designing. Be it designs for Business logos or otherwise, business cards, t-shirts, or even graphic designing for websites, Designhill is the one-stop-shop.
Powered by a massive community of business and owners, and designers, it is one of the most prominent crowdsourcing marketing platforms today.
Users that visit Designhill can get the best out of the most talented designers and freelancers in the trade. Additionally, it hosts design contests for crowdsourcing marketing to give the much-needed platform to budding designers worldwide.
8. Flickr
Flickr is another one of those crowdsourcing platforms that are making gathering content for your business easier. With Millions of images in high-quality, you won’t have to spend extra money to get pictures for your business if you choose Flickr.
The crowdsourcing platform will give you access to various pictures, symbols, and icons in the best quality. It has two goals:
- Help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them
- Enable new ways of organizing photos and video
From pictures of world-renowned celebrities, sports personalities, and historical icons to snaps of places and beautiful landscapes, you all kinds of pictures on Flickr.
However, there’s one thing that needs to be considered while sourcing the pictures you need from Flickr. Avoid using the pictures and graphic patterns for your website that are copyright protected.
9. Chaordix
This crowdsourcing site is where the entire marketplace comes together and exchanges insights into a business’s multiple aspects.
With Chaordix, collaboration is the way to go, and participation in the new brand. Whether you’re a new player on the business pitch or a veteran, Chaordix is tailor-made for you.
Building brand-identity, getting greater insight on brands and the ideas that fuel them, with Chaordix, an invaluable opinion is always just around the corner.
With this crowdsourcing marketing platform and its collaborative communities, you can get suggestions from more than a million employees and consumer participants on various branding ideas and problems.
10. uTest
Any software or application you design, usability is by far the most critical factor that determines the failure or success of your project.
With uTest, you can get your project tested and reviewed by a community of QA professionals and get valuable feedback from them.
All you need to do is upload your project for testing and let the developers get tested professionally. An early usability testing on your project will give you the insight you need or let you know about the shortcomings you can improve on.
From website design to mobile app design, uTest will help you in usability testing.
Christian has over ten years of experience in marketing agencies. Currently, he has been dedicating his time to a tech startup and also writing for major publications. He loves podcasts and reading to keep up with the latest trends in marketing.
I love this post! It’s so helpful and I’m excited to try out some of these tools!