Hi!

Develop new ways to reduce the distance from the market has been always a business scope. If you do not know what your consumer is expecting for, you are not doing business.

Companies are always searching for a new strategy to reduce the distance from their consumers and to acquire others. In the era of the web, distance is a relative measure. Everybody, in every place of the world, is in the network, is connected and can act with a multitude of individuals for a multitude of purposes. Among this, financing new projects: crowdfund new ventures.

Initially, the financing from the crowd was a completely spontaneous phenomenon, and most companies did not understand his potentiality as a business tool. In these last years, the global growth of crowdfunding has attracted also the companies’ attention. In fact, some innovative companies did not hesitate to try to integrate this tool into their business.

What are the benefits for big companies to use crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding has a big potentiality for companies, is a very flexible tool to achieve different goals at the same time. Simply asking the crowd, companies can:

• Build a strong brand awareness by engaging customers – actual and potential – that will become ambassador of the brand;
• Discover new and innovative ideas from the community, that could be new products, new services or new applications;
• Conduct a market research and test ideas with a quick direct test that ensures to save time and resources (read money);
• Receive feedback from a targeted audience, and take smarter businesses decision.

Hasbro, launched a challenge to discover the next tablet top-game. Mr. Toast is the new innovative game that won the contest and that soon will be in the store available.

General Electric has launched two products via crowdfunding, Paragon Induction Cooktop and Opal Nugget Ice Maker. The results is 10,000 new customers, with 3$ million along the way.

Heineken has launched in 2016 an initiative to reward crowdfunded projects in five cities looking to improve local communities.

All these big companies are experimenting crowdfunding  potential with different scope, and the crowd seems enthusiast of this engagement considering the results. The Enterprise Crowdfunding is a win-win strategy: companies can profit engaging a targeted audience; the crowd benefits from sustaining the launch of the wished projects on the market.