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Published: Oct 2, 2024
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7 min. read
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Matthew GibbonsSenior Data & Tech Writer
- Matthew is a marketing expert focusing on the SEO & martech spaces. He has written over 500 marketing guides and video scripts for the WebFX YouTube channel. When he’s not striving to put out some fresh blog posts and articles, he’s usually fueling his Tolkien obsession or working on miscellaneous creative projects.
Reddit. Quora. Stack Exchange. These are all examples of prominent online forums where people go to ask questions and talk about shared interests.
And they’re not new — Internet forums have been around since the ‘90s. Nor are they going anywhere. If anything, forums are more prevalent now than they’ve ever been.
For that reason, forums and community platforms can be a great place to market your business online. But forum marketing is very different from other forms of marketing, and it’s vital to know how to approach it before you dive in. That’s what we’re going to discuss on this page. We’ll cover the following:
Read on to learn more. And to dive deeper into other digital marketing topics, be sure to subscribe to Revenue Weekly, our email newsletter!
Why is forum marketing useful?
Let’s start by examining the benefits of marketing on forums and community platforms. What makes them good spots for promoting your business?
The answer is that both online users and Google algorithms put a lot of weight on forums. Let’s look at why they do that in more detail:
People trust forums to answer their questions
When people turn to the Internet to answer their questions, they typically encounter search results dominated by search engine optimization (SEO) content. And while some of that content may be helpful, let’s face it: A lot of SEO content is bad (or at least perceived that way). Plus, these days, there’s also a lot of AI-generated content floating around out there.
People tend not to like wading through bad SEO and AI content, so they turn to forums — somewhere they know they’ll get informative answers from fellow humans who aren’t trying to sell them something. In fact, a lot of searchers flat-out ignore any results that aren’t from community platforms.
Marketing on forums, then, is a great way to reach those people.
Google favors forums in search results
It’s not just users who like forums. Google does, too, especially in the past few years.
Part of that is the result of its deal with Reddit, which led to Reddit getting a huge boost in search results. You’ll now see Reddit ranking much higher than it used to. The other half of that Reddit deal was that Google got the rights to train its AI on Reddit content, so posting there can also give you a better chance of showing up in Google’s AI overviews.
It’s not just Reddit, though. Google has started giving more prevalence to forums in general. For one thing, many search results pages feature clusters of forum pages like this:
Google even has a “Forums” tab at the top of search results that users can easily click on to weed out all non-forum pages.
Considering all those things, it’s hard to deny the value of marketing on forums if you’re trying to show up in search results.
How to do forum marketing
There is very much a right and wrong way to market yourself in a forum. Taking the wrong approach could have consequences that range from being ignored to being kicked off the site, so you’ll definitely want to take note of the tips below:
Keep reading for more details about each one.
Figure out where your audience is
Step one is figuring out where your target audience is. After all, it won’t benefit you to start marketing yourself on random forums. You want to identify the ones where you can expect to find your customer base.
Reddit is usually a good option for this. That’s because Reddit is divided into a gazillion different community platforms — called subreddits — that cover just about every topic under the sun. You need to pinpoint the subreddits that are the most relevant to your business and market there.
Depending on your industry, there may also be some niche, industry-specific forum websites out there that you can market on. Those would be good to target, too.
Be transparent about who you are
Another important tip for community platform marketing is that you shouldn’t try to be sneaky about your identity. Be upfront on your profile about who you are and where you work. If anyone suspects you of being deceptive, it won’t go over very well.
There are a couple of ways to go about this. The first option is to create a profile using your company name. But a lot of businesses go for the second option, which is to make the profile using your own personal name. That’s because people on forums like talking with other individuals, not vague corporate entities.
That doesn’t mean people won’t know who you represent. You can still associate yourself with your business by noting it in your profile description, including it in your signature at the bottom of all your posts, or even (when appropriate) mentioning it in the body of the posts themselves.
Be an expert, not a salesperson
This step is probably the most important thing on this page, so take special note of it. When marketing in forums, stick to top-of-funnel, informational content. Don’t try to sell yourself or actively promote your business.
Why? Because as we already discussed, people go to forums largely to avoid being marketed to. They want to cut out all the corporate fluff and talk to human beings without a sales agenda. So, if you go in there trying to sell them something… well, I don’t think I have to spell it out.
And it’s not just that people won’t like you. Many forums have rules against trying to promote products or services, so doing it anyway could get you permanently banned from the platform. You can probably see by now why sales-driven marketing isn’t a good idea on forums.
Instead, focus purely on demonstrating your industry expertise. People will see which company you work for, and they’ll see that you know what you’re talking about. That’s all you need — leave it at that. The second you try to subtly (or directly) promote yourself, you’ll likely doom your marketing to fail.
How to do forum advertising
Before we wrap up, it’s worth noting that there is an alternative to organic community platform marketing. You can also run paid ads on many forum websites. If you want to promote your products or services directly, this is the solution.
The type of ad you can run — and the process for doing so — varies immensely between platforms. Some forums use display ads, while others let you promote “sponsored” posts with a similar format to regular posts. Some sites even offer options for both.
A few quick tips for forum advertising:
- Use a profile with your business name to run paid ads (which may be different from the account you use for your organic marketing).
- Be sure to target specific demographics and locations with your ads — this works in basically the same way as any social media advertising campaign.
- Track which ads are working (and which ones aren’t) and be prepared to reoptimize your campaigns accordingly.
Using forum advertising together with organic marketing is a good way to cover the whole marketing funnel, with your organic posts reaching top-of-funnel users and your ads reaching bottom-of-funnel ones.
Upgrade your paid advertising strategy with WebFX
If you need help getting the most from your community platform marketing and advertising, you may want to partner with a professional agency like WebFX. With over 29 years of experience, we know exactly how to get the best results from your paid forum ads.
When you partner with us for our paid advertising services, you’ll be able to let us handle all the work, but you’ll still have full control over your campaigns. No matter what industry you work in, we can create compelling ads that drive conversions and revenue.
Interested in working with us? Just call us at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!
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Matthew is a marketing expert focusing on the SEO & martech spaces. He has written over 500 marketing guides and video scripts for the WebFX YouTube channel. When he’s not striving to put out some fresh blog posts and articles, he’s usually fueling his Tolkien obsession or working on miscellaneous creative projects.
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