Forum marketing is the act of using web forums to gain traffic to your website. Using forums to market your site can also result in more sales of your products or services, depending upon what type of website you are promoting.

The key to utilizing forums as a promotional tool is to do it in a subtle manner. More and more forum administrators are becoming open-eyed to spam users who exist solely to promote their website in their signature.

For this reason many forums now require you to have a certain number of posts before you can add a link to your signature. This is a fair compromise and gives you a chance to post and build up a positive reputation before you start exposing your link to other forum members.

Forum marketing is a very powerful promotional method when carefully executed.

Why are forums so effective?

Forums contain a high concentration of people interested in a certain topic. If you have a website related to the forum niche, you are immediately exposed to a large group of people on the forum who may be interested in your website.

You can also gather information from forums such as problems people are having, and then use this data to create new products to address the needs of the community.

How to do forum marketing

Forum marketing must be undertaken with the utmost care. First, it is vital to have at least 50 quality posts before you even think about promoting or mentioning your website - even if the forum allows signature links before 50 posts.

Get a reputation, make some friends and then you can subtly introduce your website either in posts or in the signature.

All your posts should be of high quality, not too short, and have an aim to help people. Start by just replying to other posts with helpful responses.

Signature files

Signatures should be interesting rather than written as a sales pitch. Arouse curiosity by telling your readers about a secret that is revealed on your website. Or mention a free ebook offer - this is a great way to get visitors and have them sign up to your mailing list too.

You have much more chance of making forum marketing a success if it looks like you are helping people rather than selling them something. For this reason, your website itself must be relevant to the forum niche and contain useful information.

Results of forum marketing

You can have amazing results by using forums to promote your site. It can result in traffic, newsletter subscribers, joint venture partnerships, expert recognition and trust building that is hard to gather from any other source.

Forum marketing is a highly effective way to get exposure and traffic to your website. Once you have established yourself as a valued member on a number of different forums in your niche, you will be able to promote your website in a more upfront manner without upsetting anyone. This can result in great increases in traffic and of course, increased sales.