Thriving With the Crowd: Marketing With (and Against) the New Influence Peddlers

Marketers face new challenges in the era of crowdsourced opinions, where sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp allow consumers to share opinions that may contradict marketing messages. This article identifies ten sources of influence that can sway consumers, four of which (social networks, opinion aggregators, recommendation engines, and price comparison services) have only gained prominence recently. With the shift from traditional marketing channels to digital realms, consumers now comprehensively inform themselves, loudly inform others, and make purchase decisions at their own pace. Marketers can take four approaches in order to gain value from the crowd. 1) Endorse the crowd: Bringing the “voice of the crowd” into marketing efforts can provide the credibility and authenticity that consumers seek. 2) Venture among the crowd: Engaging with consumers directly, e.g. through social media, can highlight a company’s transparency and build trust with consumers. 3) Listen to and learn from the crowd: Monitoring online discussions of user needs, desires, and trends can provide highly valuable data. 4) Invite the crowd inside: Companies like WebMD offer users a diverse portfolio of guidance and a useful forum in which to hold their own conversations.