Forum marketing is a great place for advertising your business. However it needs to be done carefully or you could get banned from the forum. Make sure that you always read the forum rules before you start your marketing campaign.
Once you understand the rules you can begin to advertise. There are two ways that you might be able to advertise on a forum – indirectly and directly.
First of all let’s talk about the indirect method.
Most forums allow you to add a signature to your profile. This is usually a sentence or two that describes something that will be helpful to people on the forum. It might be a helpful quote for example, or it might send visitors to a helpful or funny video. However as a marketer you need to use this signature to indirectly advertise your business.
So how can you do that? You can use your signature to give away something that people on the forum will want. In order for them to get that free gift they need to sign up to your email campaign. Once they are in your email campaign you can then promote and advertise your products as well as providing ongoing help.
Therefore you are using your signature to indirectly advertise your business and this method works very well with forum marketing.
Now let’s think about direct methods. You will find that some forums in your niche allow forum members to advertise on the forum. This might be in the form of a banner or a text ad. You will need to pay for this type of advertising and therefore you need to consider whether it is worth doing.
If you have built up a good reputation on the forum and people begin to recognise your name then advertising in this way could work well for you if you make it clear that the banner or text ad is connected to you – so you put your name or username on it.
There are also forums that have a particular section dedicated to promoting offers. Again you will probably need to pay to promote your product but it can be a very good way of making sales as well as building your list if you have an opt in box as part of your sales process.
I would recommend using your signature first of all to indirectly advertise your business and as your reputation increases and you become known as an expert in the forum you can then begin to advertise using any direct methods that are available to you on that forum.