MLM SPOT

Marketing Research Information Gathering and Networking Through Forums

We talked last time about how you can use discussion boards in order to advertise your business and drive traffic to your website, but forums are not only for this. Their primary function is to get together people who share a common interest in order to exchange views and share information with each other.

Because of that function and the people they gather, your advertising is very targeted when you use them for that purpose. But if that function ceases to exist and become a place used for blatant advertising then participants would leave and so your chance for promotion. The owners know that and that’s why they try to enforce their rules with such a zeal. They know that members would leave if they can’t find no value there.

You should also know and practice that by providing value to the community yourself. Besides serving better your promotional purposes such an attitude, you also support the foundation which you use to drive traffic to your site, so it’s a win-win situation.

A thing that many marketers tend to forget is that there can be more purposes for using a forum besides advertising. There can be used for marketing research, information gathering and networking.

Let’s take them one by one.

First, they can serve you greatly when it comes to marketing research. You can visit various forums in your niche and by following the discussions you can identify some common problems or questions that members have and are surfacing regularly. Once you know what bothers them you know how to connect them with your product. When you advertise it you now highlight how it can solve that problems increasing your chances to convert them to customers.

Furthermore, you may even decide to create an info-product like a report or an ebook on their problem that you can use it as funnel to your real product, which is much more preferable since you are building a list that way that you can monetize it with additional offers.

Be careful at that point to identify the real reason behind their questions. The real reason is always an emotional one. People usually use their emotions to take decisions and then they use logic to support the decision they took. As I told in previous posts people don’t want to just lose weight, they want to be healthy, desirable, more beautiful, whatever. There’s always an emotional factor behind what they seek and that’s what you should target if you want to make sales.

Further reasons derived from logic can also be used but only as supportive to the real underlying emotional one.

Photo by No Fixed Adobe

Second, they are a great source for information gathering. Although we all pose as experts in our niche for the sake of business, it is natural that we don’t know everything about it unless you happen to be a university professor with a lot of diplomas and year of experience, in which case I would be the last person in the world that you would be reading.

And since you don’t know everything, discussion boards is a good place to get information on your niche either by reading or by asking questions. If you don’t want to spoil the status of the expert that you have achieved you can use a second account for that purpose. There can be a lot of knowledge in places like that waiting for you to find it.

Last, and most Important, they are grate places for networking. You can connect with other individuals like yourself whether to exchange knowledge or more important to cooperate with them. As a person that you aspire to build a successful business you should know that there are a lot of things that you can gain by cooperating with others. Business is a team sport and you can always use the expertise of other people in exchange of yours.

You can start from the most trivial things like exchanging bookmarks to joint venture for product promotions or who knows, you may even become partners in building a business tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: Forum, Discussion Board, Marketing Research, Information Gathering, Networking, Traffic

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