Why Forum Marketing Is A Good Idea To Get Leads

There are forums for any kind of niche out there, and if you are not taking advantage of them as a marketing tool then you are missing out on potential customers. Forum marketing when done effectively can bring in very targeted leads that allow for high conversions, and the preselling that you can do on the forums can go a long way towards improving the quality of the leads that you get.

Build a Reputation

In order to get anywhere with forum marketing you must first build a reputation as a valuable member of the community that can be trusted with the information that you put out. If you expect to gain the trust of forum members quickly then you will only push them further away. Only after establishing yourself as an expert can you begin to market products to them in a way that will not make you look like just a salesman.

To build a good reputation you must answer questions that other members of the community have in a very useful and extensive way, and from time to time create threads where you share very good tips on overcoming some common problems that are related to your niche.

Make Sure You Find the Best Forums Out There

You will be unsuccessful in your forum marketing pursuit if you fail to find a great forum, you must find one that is specific to your niche and has many active forum members. If a forum is popular in your community it shouldn’t be too hard to find, and an expert from About.com suggests how you can do it:

Look for popular forums that cover your niche topic. Start by asking your employees, suppliers, and customers which online communities they hang out in. Also try searching forum hub sites such as Board Reader, Big Boards, and Board Tracker using niche-specific keywords.

However, don’t participate on too many forums as you will be spreading yourself to thin, try out one to begin with and once you are successful with it then move onto the next one. Furthermore, make sure your forum does not have any limitations that will prevent you from marketing your services. For example, if live links aren’t allowed in the signature portion of the posts then you will have a hard time marketing anything. Also, some forums do not allow anything of a commercial nature to be present in the signatures, and if this is the case then you can avoid the forum altogether.

Professional Username and Avatar

One thing that you do have control over right away is your username and avatar when you sign up. This can be used to your advantage by coming up with a username that hints at your business. For example, the username could be your business domain name and the image could be your company logo; this will get some branding in without breaking any forum rules. Your domain name must be short and catchy for this very reason, because if it is long and hard to remember then it will look awkward in the eyes of the other forum members.

Don’t Make Empty Posts

Some people make posts that basically add no value to the forum, they only exists for the purpose of the signature that advertises what they have to offer. These types of posts are very clear to a lot of people and it will work against you if you do this. An expert from Famous Bloggers suggests that forum posting for the wrong reasons is not worthwhile:

One of the worst mistakes that you can make is to think that forum marketing has anything to do with link building. This might be the most common reason why people fail at it.

Also make sure that your posts have no spelling or grammatical mistakes, this would go down very badly with your potential leads, and it could be the cause of less people clicking on your promotional links.

It Will Take a Long Time

The saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day” applies here because it will take time to get a good enough reputation to get the trust of the forum members. When forum members evaluate the trustworthiness of a fellow member they look at the join date and the number of posts made. Relying on these two pieces of information to trust someone might seem a bit extreme but that’s how it is. An expert from Valued Marketer explains the importance of trust:

The more you give to other people, the more credibility you get from them. Your goal is to nurture relationships and gain the trust of members of the forum. Then they will check out your signature and website.

Therefore, forum marketing is not a short term strategy, but a long term one, in fact it might be that it will take you months or even a year to get any traction, but once you do the results can be quite phenomenal.

Create a Great Signature

Even after all the great posting that you do and the trust that you get from the community you still need to come up with a very good signature that will get a lot of people clicking your links to your website and landing page. If you aren’t a copywriter then perhaps it would be a good idea to hire the services of one, because the difference between a well written signature and a poor one can be the difference between a successful forum marketing campaign and a woeful one. An expert from Tips Make Money explains why signatures are important:

This is where you can link to your opportunity, your website or blog. The only place where you can toot your own horn. So make it interesting for people wanting to know more about you or your business.

Look at the signatures of your competitors to get an idea of what a catchy signature looks like. Don’t copy because that will not go do well with the community, simply get some ideas and create your own spin on them.

Tips On How To Create A Successful Sales Video

Online one of the most powerful Internet marketing techniques that can be implemented is the use of a sales video. You can use it on your landing page, on Youtube and other video sharing websites, on Facebook, and anywhere else that will get it in front of the eyes of your potential customers. However, creating a sales video without giving it much thought might prove to be useless, so here are some considerations to make before you move forward with your project:

The Title Is Important

The title of your video is extremely important, because if it is not catchy then your potential customers might never get curious enough to see the video and what it has to offer. It is like when writing an article if the headline does not grab the reader’s attention then the body of the article does not have a chance at being looked at.

One, a great title can instantly grab a viewer’s attention. Two, when you use the appropriate keywords in your title, you are more likely to show up on search engines when people are searching for your topic.

Don’t feel pressured into thinking you must come up with a killer title straight away, you can do some split testing in order to arrive at a title that gets the most views. Split testing can take a lot of trial an error so be prepared for this when launching your video.

Include Multiple Calls to Action

When making a sales video the crucial thing to remember is that it must have a very clear and effective call to action. This is the portion of the video that tells your potential customers what it is they must do in order to receive what it is that you are offering. For example, you could include annotations in your videos, or you could have a URL that is constantly displayed at the bottom for the video. Another effective technique is to say in person what must be done in order to get the service or product. This is very effective because the message can be very personal. As expert from Imforza.com explains the high level of traffic experienced by websites due to good quality calls to action:

Very rarely will come you come across a website that generates a good amount of leads or sales without a strong call to action or two. This is because website visitors need to be enticed, engaged and led down a conversion path.

With a strong enough call to action you can get most of your sales video viewers to get them to do exactly what you want, be it complete an e-mail capture form or buy a product.

Hire a Video Production Company

If you want a professional looking video then you will need to hire the services of professionals. They can put your message into a concise form that will be easy to understand for you potential clients. Without such services you might struggle to make your video effective and as a result not enough people will listen to your call to actions.

Furthermore, finding a location to shoot your video and getting the equipment to do so can be rather expensive on your own. A video production company can handle such things on your behalf. The investment you make by hiring a video production company will pay off in the form of increased sales figures. Think of it as an investment that needs to be made for your business to be successful, a well-made video can be used for years and years to draw in a flood of sales on a regular basis.

What You Should Know About Marketing Through YouTube

Youtube YouTube is one of the many social media sites that have become focal points in people’s professional and personal lives in the past couple of years. More and more businesses are being told that they need to incorporate social media into their marketing plans in order to stand a chance of competing in an ever increasingly competitive market, but is this really necessary? Can a business really fail if it fails to market through YouTube, and if it chooses this direction, what benefits can the business look forward to gaining?

Is It Enough To Be On YouTube?

Most people assume that if “they build it, they will come”, but this is far from the case. Just because you are publishing content on YouTube, this doesn’t mean that people are going to be watching the content, not even if you start posting the videos all over Facebook. Some of the biggest brands are struggling to make an impression on this site, and this is because, among other things, they just don’t know how to market what they put on the site. As the experts of Adweek put it;

Acting like a publisher means deciding whether your brand should entertain or inform. If consumers are gravitating to How-to videos on YouTube in a particular category, don’t fight that trend by doing something entertaining, she argues.

That’s right; you shouldn’t even need to think about marketing to them, since people have just about had enough of advertising. You need to make this about your viewers, and you need to do it in the right way, or you’ll stay invisible, no matter how much you try to be heard.

Before you make a decision either way, take some time to look at what consumers are searching for within the category of your choice. Use the trends to your advantage instead of trying to force your viewers to do what you want them to do; this will most likely work against you and take up a lot of time and effort in the process.

Demonstrate Your Products

One of the ways that you can use YouTube to your advantage is to demonstrate your products. This falls under the section of “informing” your viewers and it is, once again, a way of making your videos all about the user. Of course, some businesses will use this tactic more than others. The official Business and Industry portal of Queensland, has this advice to give;

This is particularly useful for companies with limited physical distribution channels, including those who mostly sell over the internet. Businesses that use YouTube to allow customers to see their products in action before they buy include toy manufacturers, theme parks and theatre companies.

Companies without branches where individuals can interact with employees can use this medium to interact with their clients instead, without forcing them to grow faster than they are able to.

Create Your Own Community

Establishing a brand identity is, in part, all about establishing a community around your product or service. Your business becomes the focal point for this community and YouTube provides you with the opportunity to start interacting with those that want to become a part of this group. Everyone who is associated with this community can share information, speak to each other and the business and even provide each other with advice concerning your products and services. It is this sort of interaction that actually aids businesses in strengthening brand loyalty; something that will not only keep clients coming back to the channel, but also to the brand itself.

Establish a Reputation

Customers want to know that they are purchasing from experts in their field, so when businesses are establishing a presence for themselves on YouTube, they need to do so in a way that helps them cement their place as authorities within their field of interest. Businesses can accomplish this in a few different ways, including by providing tips via videos and offering tutorials. Linking to other experts in the field is a great way to expand the community of viewers and add some credibility to a channel.

Do You Have Something To Offer?

Because you post something on YouTube, you need to make sure that it is going to help your business, not hinder it, and this means you need to think about whether it is helpful or entertaining. If your video is neither, you could end up hurting your brand name.

This raises the question as to whether everyone will benefit from marketing via YouTube, and the answer to this seems to be varied. Some experts believe that you can market through this channel no matter who you are, or what business you are running, while others do not believe this to be the case. As the experts of Moz.com put it;

No matter how users get to YouTube – through Google universal search, via social media or by navigating directly to youtube.com in their browser – the intent is the same: watch a video.

This basically means that if you don’t have something to offer within this format, you’re better off marketing through a different medium. Before you post anything on YouTube, take some time to think about your viewer and whether they would appreciate seeing the video. If you are doing it solely to market your business, you are most definitely not on the right track. If you are doing it solely for the benefit of your viewer, you are headed in the right direction.

Start Integrating

Once you have taken the leap into YouTube marketing, it’s time to start integrating it into your other social networking platforms, since they all work together to help you in promoting your business albeit in different ways. Take the time to learn about each one individually, as this will help you in putting all the advantages of each one to work for your business.

YouTube is only one of the many avenues that people can use when it comes to promoting their business, but just as with any other form of marketing, you need to do it right to benefit from this option. The more you know about it, the easier YouTube marketing will be.

Effective Tips For Improving Your Professional Webinars

Webinars are great ways to get information across to third parties, and the popularity of these tools has only been increasing in recent years. Webinars do not require that individuals be in a specific location to receive the information being presented; they can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection, and they can be created just as easily. Basically, a good webinar is a way for a speaker to reach out to more people than they usually would have been able to, although this is not without its downfalls. As the experts of eLearnmag put it;

A great speaker in a face-to-face environment can easily crash and burn in a webinar setting if he or she isn’t prepared for the unique challenges and needs of that environment.

This basically means that even experts within the field of webinars need to make sure that they understand how to tackle this industry if they want to make it work for them.

Is It Being Recorded?

Before putting together a webinar, it is generally a good idea to ask yourself whether it is going to be recorded, and this is because this could affect the information that you present in the webinar. In unrecorded webinars, people tend to be much more relaxed and informal, as well as more cavalier about personal information. Recorded webinars, on the other hand, need to be much more carefully scripted.

Choosing Your Design

It doesn’t matter what information you have to share with people, if the presentation of the webinar isn’t up to scratch, you’ll have a difficult time capturing the interest of your potential viewers. Experts spend many hours on the layout of their presentations long before they even begin researching the content because this is what will help them gain and retain interest in the webinar. It is not enough to simply pick the design of the presentation; you need to choose the medium through which it is going to be delivered, including whether you want to add additional materials such as mind maps or live demonstrations.

Engage Your Audience

One of the biggest benefits of webinars in this day and age is that they allow people the chance to communicate with others, whether they are in the same building or half the world away. For this reason, experts recommend that individuals make the most of this opportunity by engaging with their viewers. Ask your audience questions and make sure you do so once every 6 to 10 minutes. It is better to pick direct questions than to inquire whether anyone has any queries with regards to your webinar, since this will rarely elicit much of a response.

Make Sure Webinars Are The Right Choice

No matter how much effort you put into your webinars, you won’t get much out of them if they’re not the right choice for you, so make sure you put a considerable amount of thought into this. Techsoup.org puts it this way;

Webinar software can be a powerful training and outreach tool, but, like all technologies, the decision to use it should be subordinate to your strategic objectives and the needs of your audience.

If, for instance, you intend on addressing a very small group within your business, it might not be worth your time or effort to go through the process of setting up a webinar. On the other hand, if you intend on addressing a large audience, or audiences, locating around the world, this might be a very effective tool indeed.

Webinars, just like many other online educational tools have opened up endless possibilities for students and teachers alike. It doesn’t matter whether you are using this tool as a medium for change within a business, or a way to attract clients, making the most of them will help you in effectively reaching your goals.

Blogging Greatly Improves Your Internet Marketing Campaigns

Blogging With all the great blogs out there, you may find yourself with an abundance of competition in your market, and you need to know how to make your blog stand out from all the rest. Danny Brown at For Bloggers by Bloggers says,

While the Internet and social media has made business transactions easier, we still prefer face-to-face contact. It helps build trust between partners we find out more about each other, and we can see what we’re buying – your blog can do the same.

Whether you choose to hire someone to write your blog for you, or use software to create the best one that you can, blog internet marketing is a great tool to help your business make the money that you know it is capable of. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you gain the readership you need to make your blog a success.

The Basics

You will want to choose a domain name that will center your blog on your brand. Using your own name, or business name is a great way to keep it unique, and something that your readers will remember. If you come across a host that will not allow you to use your own domain name, it might be best to look elsewhere.

Use a reliable platform such as WordPress, but make sure in advance that the host will allow you to use it. WordPress is quite popular, user friendly, and has an array of plugins and templates to help you customize your blog in the manner you see fit.

Also make sure that you do your research on keywords. There are many tools online to get started looking for keywords to frame your blog around. You can even buy keyword tools that will give you better information. Optimize your blog for the search engines. Meta tags, descriptions, pinging are all great ways to optimize your site.

One other idea is to join a site for blog advice, as those are the ultimate resource for building a respected blog. If you are looking for a model to build your blog from, one of those sites would be a great place to start.

Frequency

So how often should you blog? Jodee Jernigan at The Whole Brain Group offers this tip;

Aim for at least one new blog post a week. 2 or 3 posts per week are even better. Consistency is key – don’t start a blog and abandon it. Keep feeding the new content to help your search engine ranking.

Most experts recommend blogging up to 4 or 5 times a week since this can help drive traffic to your blog as long as you have quality content relevant to its main topic. Work with other blog writers to get backlinks to your site, and you should be quick to give compliments to anyone that posts an article of yours. Don’t be afraid to mention names of other bloggers when you post and even post other articles or have guest writers if it’s appropriate.

Profits

Greg Sterling, an Internet and media analyst for market research firm The Kelsey Group, offers this advice,

Depending on your business, starting a blog could be a low-cost method of boosting your profile with potential customers and the media and even helping your Web site’s ranking in “organic” search results.

Many online entrepreneurs are branching out into the world of internet marketing as a low cost means of maximizing profits. The draw of global reach, faster responses from visitors, cost effective measures of online marketing and widespread space on the web and most of all availability of broad range of marketing techniques are hard for advertisers to pass up. But it can be overwhelming for advertisers to choose the right path for earning profits with all the limitless opportunities out there today.

Keeping Up With the Latest Trends

Semidoppel.com states,

No matter how a great idea is produced, no matter how good the product may be, its benefits or effectiveness is nothing when you don’t have a group or people, a team or an ally to work with to attract potential customers, and blogs are one of the most powerful allies you will have.

The best option is always to choose the most popular and up to date method of conveying messages to your target market, and you should do a little research on how other business are communicating with their audience, and how effective it is for them. The reason blogging is so trendy right now is because it allows writers free reign to use any format, pattern and type and size of files to communicate with any group of people on the web. It’s little wonder then why blog marketing is quickly becoming one of the most profitable way to get results.

Interviews

One great tip for maximizing readers for your blog is to set up interview sessions with the section of your audience that is interested in blogging. When you do this, you can post the interviews on your site, giving you even better results. In order for this to be effective, however, you will need to ensure that the interviews you are conducting actually pertain to the products or market you are working in. One example would be if you are selling products for pets, you would only want to interview people that are either interested in purchasing pet products, or those people that sell them.

Keep It Up-to-Date

Lastly, another great idea is to post breaking news, hot buzzes, and the most up to date information about your products and services to your blog. Most people like to search the internet for breaking news, and if it is offered on your blog, your readers will be enticed to read the news, as well as any new product information. Becoming a reliable source for this knowledge can be a great marketing strategy for increasing your readership and traffic. And people will mark your blog as a go-to site for many things they like to read about.

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