By crowdsourcing a “Top tool” listicle, featuring contributions from experts in the field, MeasureMinds extended their reach by tapping into these experts’ networks.
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TL;DR
- The company: MeasureMinds, a digital analytics agency.
- The goal: Promote a new free tool, to grow brand awareness and acquire new leads.
- The tactic: Crowdsource a “Top tool” listicle, featuring contributions from experts in the field.
- The result: 997 tool uses, and tens of thousands of social impressions.
What’s the fast marketing tactic?
MeasureMinds had just built a new Google Tag Manager (GTM) tool, which they were offering for free, as a lead generation initiative.
To promote and rank the new tool, the agency crowdsourced a “Best GTM tools” article. They did this by:
- Reaching out privately to GTM and digital analytics experts via LinkedIn, asking for their opinions on the best GTM tools.
- Posting publicly on LinkedIn asking for contributions.
- Writing up the article using this user-generated content (UGC).
- Adding their tool at the top of the list.
- Publishing their article: Top 22 Google Tag Manager (GTM) Tools Used by Experts.
And it didn’t end there. Now that the article was published, it was time to promote it.
The team created multiple company and employee LinkedIn posts, making sure to tag every expert who contributed, and the tool they recommended. This led to a huge number of reactions and re-shares from contributors.
What was the result?
Despite being a relatively new agency, in just over a year this article helped the team bring in:
- 997 tool uses.
- Tens of thousands of social media impressions, driven by re-shares and engagement from contributors.
- Ranking in the top 3 results for several high-intent keywords, such as “best GTM tools” and “GTM extensions,” with around 140 organic visits per month.
- New professional relationships within their niche.
Why does it work?
This type of UGC article is a win-win for everyone involved. You get your article, while contributors get free promotion.
You also benefit from tapping into the reach of the experts featured in your article, as they share and reshare your content on social media (and beyond). This helps you generate many more impressions than you would be able to via your company and employee profiles alone.
You can take the same approach to promote a blog, newsletter, and much more. (Though you’ll probably want to stay clear of any articles that require you to list direct competitors.)
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