How to attract customers to your website using crowd marketing

I would like to share my experience with those who have a small business on the Internet, their own blog or the VKontakte group. I hope you will agree that we are all united by the desire to make money. Too much of our time is spent on small tasks or scaling, so we do not notice the obvious and simple ways to achieve what we want. One of these ways can be crowd marketing.

What it is

Crowd marketing (hereinafter - CM) is a guerrilla type of marketing that can be applied without a budget at all. You don't seem to be selling, but just share a good service, contact, information with another person. It is very natural and not defiant: they say, do not be alarmed, I am not selling anything, we are just talking.

Here's a good example for you: a user in Answers @ Mail. Ru asks: "Someone, tell me which sleeping bag to buy?" Model A or Model B? " Now the main thing is to appear beautifully. Speak confidently and with proof that “all the data of the model are not of very good quality, I would suggest you something like model C”, and add a link to your site with the product.

It is unlikely that this person will become your client. But firstly, with a high degree of probability, the page with the question will be indexed by the search engine and will be included in the search results (Yandex, Google, Mail. Ru). Secondly, on such sites / forums there is a sorting of questions, categories by which users are guided in order to communicate on a certain topic. And all this can be your target audience. If the product is really good, it will be remembered and bought later.

Who will benefit from

CM is very useful for a young blog with quality content to increase the number of users. And also for young Internet projects with low prices for services. To launch contextual advertising - while the toad is choking, because nothing is clear yet, the sales funnels have not been tested. And you want to know the effectiveness of the site.

After a high-quality CM, the first clicks to the site using links (and correctly configured goals in Metric), you can already identify people who will be traversed by the merciless machine of retargeted advertising from Yandex. Direct or Google AdWords.

Suppose someone is thinking, "I've tried it all, it doesn't work." But now look at this screenshot:

I'm talking about crowd marketing on an "industrial" scale. Not about a couple of posts with links that you “don't want to” published for the group about networking on social networks (we don't even talk about spam in the comments), but about real work.

You will have to sit for a couple of evenings and "advise" (that is, throw a bunch of links in the right places) to everyone. Your work will pay off in any case: the link mass for the site, formed by the group for targeted advertising, or (ideally) full-fledged clients. Link mass is all the links that lead to your site and give it credibility in the eyes of the search engine.

Who is hardly suitable

Do you sell high-value business goods and services? KM is not for you. If you offer ad hoc services - taxi, private ambulance, tow truck (everything that is usually needed suddenly and urgently) - also not.

If you have a very specific niche, for example selling charcoal or huge steel pipes, if you sell scripts, plays and other intellectual property with high value - crowd marketing will not work for you either. Although diplomas and term papers are difficult, they are progressing. I have experience.

Does the above not apply to you? Hmm, that's not all. Now it is important to understand whether you should spend your energy on KM: when selling something in a small town with low competition, even through a website, it is better to buy an advertising banner. The return will be five times more.

How to do it right

To begin with, determine which forums, websites and in which groups in social networks your target audience is sitting - those people who are most likely to need your services. It is a mistake to see your client in every "mimocrocodile". You won't sell snow to the North Pole, are you?

A normal businessman (or his marketer) must know this. But here are a couple of options for beginners to think less: "Answers @ Mail. Ru", thematic YouTube channels, blogs (where products are compared, their advantages and disadvantages are indicated). Do you dare? Just keep in mind: your "disruptive" methods will not work on sites with a high level of moderation. All your works will be deleted, and you will be banned.

You must, as an actor in a movie, play your part. You can not just suggest something, but also describe why it is better, you can use "your own experience." Preferably in great detail. You can prepare the text in advance and use it on different sites.

If you run your own magazine and want to increase traffic, then you can leave your opinion under the article of a popular blogger with a link to an article in your blog on a similar topic: “I only partially agree with your opinion, because … (give 3-4 theses here) … The rest is in my article … (place a link here). I am always ready to discuss and listen to criticism."

Of course, all this will require a certain context (the right situation can be found on thematic sites using internal search) and status. If you have never shown yourself to the blogger in the comments before (and did not even write to him in a personal message), you have never liked it, and then suddenly you have appeared and criticized … Nobody needs an unknown critic on their page, I personally have such a bathhouse in the blog.

On the same YouTube, you can always click on the username and see if he likes the video at all. And in "Answers@mail. Ru" there is a general rating, and the higher it is, the better for you. Other users and moderation will be more loyal to you.

Therefore, it is important to start earning a reputation for yourself - for a week in pleasure to answer different questions, comment and like - and only then do partisan work. By the way, a search engine can index and remember all this within a month, thereby raising your trust rating for certain search queries.

Good luck to everyone and business at maximum speed!