The interesting thing about generating online traffic is that it is very easy to conclude that you basically have to create interest in whatever it is you are promoting. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what you are offering is something so new and so different that you have to go out of your way to create a demand for it. The truth is quite the opposite.
The
truth is that regardless of which niche you are promoting, chances are
there are already people online who are interested in whatever it is
that you are trying to market. In fact, they are not just interested;
they are actually expressing their interest about your niche product or
service. They are asking questions about it. They are networking about
it. They are trying to support each other in their efforts at finding
solutions regarding your niche.
In other words, there are specific
communities of people that already are interested in what you are
promoting. Isn’t this amazing? Isn’t this great news?Unfortunately, too
many marketers think that they have to re-invent the wheel and drum up
traffic out of the thin blue air. In reality, people already online are
congregating in special areas, asking questions and sharing information
regarding your niche. These specialized areas are called online message
boards or forums.
Regardless of what niche you are in and
regardless of how seemingly obscure your niche is, there is sure to be
at least one forum that specializes in that particular subject matter.
Even in the rare case that there is no one forum that directly
specializes in your niche, you can rest assure that there will be at
least one forum that would have a sub-forum where at least several
discussion threads are talking about your niche.Why should you consider
forum marketing? Why should you bother to market your niche product or
service in these areas online?
Here are just some basic benefits
that you get. This is just a partial list. In fact, the longer you
engage in forum marketing, the more you would be surprised as to how
many benefits forum promotions bring to the table.These are just some of
the basic benefits that easily come to mind. You really have to engage
in forum marketing for an extended period of time to get a full
appreciation of its complete list of benefits. These benefits are the
ones that materialized for most people trying their hand at forum
marketing.
Niche Specificity
To make money
online, you have to really do one thing:You need to get the right
message in front of the right eyeballs at the right time. In other
words, everything has to line up for you to generate a sale. It all, of
course, boils down to trust. You cannot simply market something that
people are not interested in because they will not trust you, and they
would have no need for whatever it is that you are pushing.
Niche
specificity will help you solve a lot of your marketing problems because
you can put your offer in front of the right eyeballs. These are people
who are actually already talking about the particular niche product or
service you are promoting. These are people who already expressed their
interest and concern about your niche product or service.
This
tight fit between the subject matter of the product or service you are
promoting and the interest of the people within a particular community
increases the likelihood that people would pay attention, and people
would want to know more about your product. Depending on how everything
else goes, the more they know, the higher the likelihood that they may
build enough trust in the content that you are sharing that they would
then take the next step and buy your product or service.
Topic Specificity
If
you have been trying to sell stuff online, you probably already know
that simple niche specificity is not enough. Simply going to a place
where people are interested in your product or service is not in of
itself enough to generate sales. You have to do something more.This is
where forum marketing blows away lots of other traffic-generation
methods. You can go to a forum that already deals with a specific set of
problems and issues your particular product or service addresses and
look for even more specific discussions. In other words, you get topic
specificity.
Topic specificity is extremely important because as I
have mentioned earlier, to sell anything online, you need to get your
offer in front of the right eyeballs at the right time. Topic
specificity is all about timing. When people post a question regarding a
particular issue, people who click on that link are actively interested
in that issue.In other words, they care in the here and now regarding a
particular issue that they need a solution for. They are not looking
for a solution way into the future.
They are not interested in the
issue on a purely theoretical basis. They need an answer now.This is
extremely important because if they know about your solution, then
chances are good that they may take you up on your offer. Why? The need
already exists in the here and now. It is present. It is not
theoretical, it is not something that could happen, but it is actually
something that they already have.
You can Shape Discussions
Another
great thing about forum marketing is that you are in the driver’s seat
as far as directing people’s interests. As long as you know what you are
doing, you can shape the discussion in a forum in such a way that it
benefits you. Of course, you have to do it in a very subtle way. You
cannot just say to people that they need to buy whatever it is you are
offering immediately. That is not marketing. That is spamming. I hope
you know the difference. That is also an abuse of your power to shape
discussions.
Forum marketing enables you to createopen-ended
discussions that are specifically engineered to lead to more and more
specific discussions. This is important because if you know how to line
up your ducks properly, you can orchestrate your replies so that it
leads to people opening their minds regarding a specific set of
solutions. Once they open their minds to those solutions, then the
particular solution you offer would look better.Of course, it all
depends on how you play the game. Again, you cannot be blatant about it.
You cannot just drop a link and leave.
That is spamming. It is
like an intricate dance. Regardless, the power to shape discussions is
one of the most powerful benefits of forum marketing. You do not have
this power with other ways of generating online traffic. You shape the
discussion and this also brings a lot of power to direct the discussion.
You Get Multiple Opportunities for Building Credibility
To
sell anything online, as I mentioned earlier, you have to focus on
building trust. This is very easy to understand because nobody will buy
from you if they do not trust you. Likewise, nobody will trust you if
they do not feel that they like you. Finally, people would not like you
if they do not feel they know you. All these processes work hand in
hand. You have to start with the know stage and end up in the trust
stage. Only once you get people to trust you would they buy anything
from you.
Unfortunately, a lot of marketers have it all wrong.
They think that the moment they talk about a particular solution, people
will just click on their link and buy. It does not work that way. That
is like somebody coming off the street, somebody you do not know,
offering you to buy stuff. Would you buy from that person? Probably not.
Why? You do not trust that person.If that is how your mind works, then
why do you expect other people’s minds to work any differently? Just
because we are dealing with the internet does not mean that we are going
to think differently.
What works in real life works the same, as
far as decision making is concerned, in the online world. You have to
build trust. Forum marketing enables you to build a tremendous amount of
trust because it gives you a lot of opportunities to share
trust-building content. It gives you a lot of opportunities to shape
discussions and direct discussions in such a way that it builds a lot of
trust. This book will step you through the process of using your forum
accounts to build trust and credibility, so you can sell more online.
