Online forums can be an excellent way to reach out directly to new users of your app. If you can help the people you are communicating with and promote your app in the process, everyone wins.
In order to maximize your guerrilla marketing efforts, you should come up with a list of forums that cater to the market or interest group for your app, and then consider these factors (as well as others) when determining the right forums for your campaign:
- Member count and quality: A high number of members in a forum can be desirable, but the quality of the membership is just as important. By quality, I mean that you want to make sure the numbers aren’t inflated due to bots or because they reflect past rather than current usage.
- Drama level: Drama is when people start straying from the theme or purpose of the forum and go into personal or non-themed posts. The level of drama in the forum will help you determine to what level of success you might have with your app promotions.
When promoting your app on forums, it is important not to come across as someone who is there only for the purpose of marketing but rather as a knowledgeable expert in your field. Many people turn to forums for discussion and knowledge and can be hostile to those who are branded as spammers. Once you join a forum, you need to read the site’s rules, particularly about how they define spam. Also, remember that your forum comments will impact your product’s reputation (hopefully for the better) and that posts can remain online forever.
You might be surprised to learn that lurkers and trolls can actually help your marking campaign. Lurkers can become some of your best buyers, and trolls can attract more members to your posts and reveal unexpected support for your efforts.
In an upcoming column, I will go into what steps you can take to gain positive exposure immediately when you join forums and start posting. Let us know in this discussion how you market your mobile app.
Also read: Eight ways to get more eyeballs on your app
