Forum Marketing and Group Marketing Dilemma
I recently joined a forum and suggested a link there. I wasn't trying to spam or anything, and made sure to use my real identity to avoid misleading anybody. Consequently, the admin deleted my post and banned my account for "advertising". A failed attempt I admit and justly acted on, in my humble opinion. I would have done the same thing.
As an internet marketer, I find these perplexing:
- You can't pitch to your own forums/groups, for a client, because they are the wrong target market. i.e. Pitching "indian food cookbook" to your fellow marketers.
- You can't tell your clients to pitch to their forums/groups because they are the wrong target market. i.e. Pitching "indian food cookbook" to their peers/competitors doing the same thing they are doing.
- You can't join a new forum or group that is not related to your field or interest. That would be just an obvious ploy to sell them something. I've seen many of you internet marketers claim to and seen do this.
- You can't wait to build a "relationship" with them and maybe cunningly "drop" a mention of your pitch in the conversation. Nice try, marketer! Plus, your client wants results some time this year. ;)
- You can try paid advertising to bring new traffic in, but we all know that "when you stop paying, the ads stop showing."
- SEO, article marketing and directory submissions takes a long time and often a hit/miss situation.
So what do you do? Do you rely on paid ads to quickly bring in new targeted traffic and/or do you take the long road of building lists and have your clients start blogging to grow their "tribe" for them to make their offer to? Noticed how I didn't say "sell to". ;)
I'm convinced that the only effective method is creating "trust" and "brand loyalty". Everything else is just noise. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Rommel C. Caibal
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