Crowdsourcing is really drawing the attention of independent, small, and medium sized businesses and allows them to get services like advertising and marketing that have previously been unavailable to them. Crowdsourcing is an approach that allows businesses to set a budget for their needs and have a crowd of professionals work towards the best solution. However, Crowdsourcing is different than traditional freelancing because participants actually need to produce products of some degree or collaborate together, rather than just providing a bid and a promise of work to be done.

Crowdsourcing is a good alternative for small business owners that may not have someone on staff that can manage or evaluate outsourced design professionals. This approach also takes some of the burden off of evaluating portfolios that may be in a completely different vein from what your business is looking for. The most valuable benefit, is that businesses will know what they are buying before they actually contract with a third party since the development has been done ahead of time. Businesses are also able to control costs by setting a budget ahead of time and not being subject to "add-ons," upsells, or missed deadlines from designers once they are under contract.

Results are better with crowdsourcing since it encourages healthy competition in creativity as well as price. Companies like Prova.fm specialize in helping businesses run a contest to crowdsource the design of marketing materials like logos, postcards, videos, or door hangers. With entries coming in from all over the world, businesses are exposed to a much larger pool of submissions and can choose something that really meets their advertising and marketing needs. With participants from around the globe, the quality of work received is greatly improved.

Independent, small and medium sized businesses are often tasked with finding professionals to fill in the gaps where their own skills are lacking or inefficient. By Crowdsourcing, these businesses have a much better chance at obtaining the highest quality services for the budget they have set rather than seeking quotes from individuals that they may have not worked with in the past.

Crowdsourcing can also give businesses a wider view of their marketplace. For example, if a business wants to develop a new product, it may use Crowdsourcing to gather opinions, get impressions, fine tune features, and gather criticism. Crowdsourcing is also used in politics to get the "pulse" of constituents about hot button issues that may influence voter turnout and preference. Companies like NetFlix have used Crowdsourcing as a way to boost performance of their own site, garner press coverage and get an unprecedented amount of free work done on their behalf.

Used the right way, Crowdsourcing can be an incredibly powerful tool in the business arsenal for everything from product development to advertising and marketing design.  To get a design crowdsourced with Prova, launch a contest, answer a few questions, & see how easy it is.

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