A busy professional has this question regarding branding and marketing:

What is the best way to advertise a forum on a niche topic?

I have a forum on a niche topic. I am advertising the forum via ads (Although some of the keywords have low quality scores, they are all very specific to this niche).

Thanks in advance for any help. I didn’t find the right answer from searching the internet.

Whether you are marketing your forum, book, website, product or service, you can use similar marketing strategies.  But a successful marketing strategy has lots of moving parts and tools.  I recommend doing a combination of things:

• make sure your “ads” are on brand with a consistent message
• create engaging and compelling content (blogs, articles, posts, videos, vlogs, etc)
• opt-in offers (valuable information through eBooks, white papers, webinars) to collect contact information of the people that you are attracting with your offers
• create a Facebook around your forum – to start engaging and creating your followers
• give speaking engagements about your topic with door-prizes to collect the contact information of the people that you are attracting with your topic
• keep your CRM (customer relationship management) up to date personally contact them with emails or newsletters
• with everything that you post or release – include links back to your forum

Find similar forums that share your target market

It will take time to create a following from scratch.  Therefore, investigate or go where your target marketing is already.  For instance, if your target market is parents, you might want to visit or guest speak at forums for single parents, divorced dads, and other topics that interest your same target group.

• investigate what your competitors are doing.
• reach out to complimentary forums and engage with those groups that share your target market/followers
• invite guest speakers to your forums that have already have their own followers. This will introduce you to their followers.

As you can see – there’s no 1 thing that you do. There’s a never-ending list of things you can do to market and expose your forum.

To help narrow your focus, clearly describe your target audience or personas.  By deciding the age group, interests, income, hobbies, and lifestyle – you can better focus your marketing strategies to get the bigger bang for your time and budget.