There’s a new wave forming for marketers and advertisers: Crowdsourcing your companies marketing efforts. As companies get over the whole loss of control thing, many will embrace what seems to be a huge opportunity. From wiki’s to advertising campaigns companies jumped on this early gold rush hoping to save millions on their marketing efforts.

Almost all of these efforts fail. From failed ad campaigns, to countless abandoned corporate wiki’s, companies have been left scratching their heads why crowdsoucing happens constantly across the Web, even building startups like into multimillion dollar companies but corporate marketing seems unable to tap into the trend.

It’s Not About You. It’s About Them.

Most corporate efforts are focused on the companies needs. It’d be great to have a product wiki because we don’t want to spend the money building the resource ourselves. It’s be great to not pay very much for our design creative when there are so many talented amateurs out there.

That’s great for you but what do the people get out of it? At best you throw some small token at them like swag or maybe a little money. Woo-freakin-hoo. Pardon me while I hold back my excitement.

Always, always focus on the customer and you’re far more likely to succeed. Certain brands can get away with this because they carry enough clout that people  want to be associated with them. I have a sneaky feeling these brands fall into what Alan Wolk calls Prom King Brands.

What efforts work well? The one’s that solve the customers pain point. Can you enable the customers to do something they’d already like to do? Is there a resources the customer wants that you can help them build? Sometimes that will line up with your company needs and sometimes it won’t.

Your entire company exists to serve a market need. Why should your marketing be any different?

What about you? Are you looking to tap into the crowdsourcing wave? Have you in the past? Any tips you’d like to share?

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