A few months ago, I received an email from the folks over at IdeaDemocracy. This is a company that has created a sort of “marketplace” where companies can throw out challenges to their audiences and experts can lend their expertise to solve them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It seems like the new normal for a so many business venture with big ideas to seek capital through crowdfunding, or making money via crowdsourcing. And why not? Crowdsourcing is a great way to achieve a goal through the means of multiple people. In fact, these campaigns have been so widely accepted that a new form of this is taking flight \u2013 crowdsourced marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many people wonder how marketing can successfully be crowdsourced. It\u2019s not as difficult as you may think! Companies like IdeaDemocracy are making it easy for people to generate marketing ideas that help businesses grow, while at the same time giving independent contractors and \u201cidea people\u201d a chance to put forth creative ideas, receive recognition, and possibly be paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IdeaDirectory recognized that there are so many businesses in need of great ideas to promote themselves and market their products. Yet very often they have neither the access to the large advertising, design and consulting firms, nor the deep pockets required for traditional advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This online platform gives these small businesses a place to open a challenge and invite a community of advertising executives, designers, marketing professionals, web developers, and social media experts to submit ideas. The ideas are in the form of concepts and not finished artwork or working prototype. The business that put forth the challenge selects the idea with the most merit and that person receives a cash prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once an idea is selected the business owner then has the option to work with the person who submitted the idea to see it through, start a design challenge to invite others to submit designs to bring that idea to life, or alternatively, to execute the idea on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike crowdfunding platforms, the business that starts a challenge in IdeaDemocracy is not seeking money from contributors. It simply wants ideas or designs from the crowd. Think of it like Upwork<\/a> where the crowd competes to be the winning contractor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t