Use Forums To Improve Customer Relationship
Management
Jeff Walters
Forums are great for learning, sharing of ideas, and generally masterminding
with peers, but give some thought to the impact they can have on your lead
generation efforts, as well as on your customer relationship management
activities.
Joining an active forum can significantly accelerate your rate of learning –
whether you are a newbie or an experienced practitioner.
For newbies - even if you merely ‘lurk’ in the shadows and don’t post on
your forums - you will learn a lot by reading questions by others, and the
helpful replies by experienced forum members.
The benefit for the experienced members can be thought of as a web version
of masterminding - ideas can be shared and validated, and various techniques
can be discussed with peers – often on different continents and in different
time zones – something not nearly as feasible in the physical world.
Apart from the information sharing and networking that forums offer, they
have the potential to both positively and negatively impact your marketing
efforts, levels of customer satisfaction, and the overall sentiments towards
your customer relationship management.
The remainder of this article will give you some ideas as to how you can use
forums in a positive way to improve your marketing initiatives. A follow-up
article (Forum Perils for Customer Relationship Management) will cover how
to avoid the negative impact forums can have on your business.
Forums can positively impact your marketing strategy and initiatives in the
following way:
* Conduct Market Research / Investigate Market Reputation
Search engines make it so easy to research what is being said about both
your products, as well as those of your competitors.
Simply type in the name of the product of service you want to research,
followed by ‘comments’, ‘review’, ‘scam’, or any other relevant term. Within
seconds you will have a list of website reviews, blog postings, and forum
comments.
Ignore the first two (many are by affiliates just punting the product hoping
to earn a fee) – the ones to read are the forum conversations, where you
will invariably get some pretty honest feedback – good or bad – about the
product.
If you get some glowing comments in public/membership forums for your
products, contact the individuals to see if you can post these as
testimonials. Negative comments should also be reacted to – once again,
contact the individuals and see if you can rectify the situation. Often a
‘fixed’ bad experience can convert a vocal detractor into a fan – most
people can tolerate a mistake, what makes them irate is when you ignore
them, or pretend that no problem or grievance exists.
* Customer Relationship Management – use for Satisfaction Tracking
If your business markets a product to quite a large user base, it makes
marketing sense to set up a product-specific forum, and actively promote the
forum to your customer base.
Once active, the postings by your customers will give you a good indication
of the overall sentiment towards your product, as well as your service
levels. Prospects can also use the forums as a gauge of product popularity
and level of active support.
Your forum will also provide you with a communication channel to your
customer base. You can use it to conduct quick polls – essentially a free
customer relationship management alternative to paid-for satisfaction audits
by market research firms.
* New Product Ideas / Launches
Whether your website has a forum or not, it is worthwhile to join a couple
of the more active forums related to your market. By monitoring questions,
complaints, and cries for help, you can possibly identify the need for new
products or services. A forum can also be a no-cost way to launch a pilot
for a new product or service. You can get some early sign-ups/purchases
without a major investment in marketing, and at the same time use the
opportunity to get some quick testimonials.
* Positioning As An Expert / Attracting Traffic
Beyond merely identifying needs, you can use these forum questions as an
opportunity to position yourself as a helpful expert. To do this, you need
to monitor the most active threads (gets the most readership), and where you
have the expertise, provide quality responses to posed questions. This will
help grow your reputation over time.
If you ensure that your signature includes your website address – preferably
with a short tagline indicating your USP – this can prove to be a very
useful method for lead generation, and importantly, one that delivers
qualified prospects.
If you notice frequently repeated newbie questions, consider setting up a
FAQ section on your site, and then direct the enquirer to the page, rather
than providing a comprehensive answer in the forum.
* Finding JV partners
Monitoring active forums has another positive marketing spin off - it will
help you identify potential JV partners. In the same way you are being
assessed as to your expert know-how, you can use the postings by your peers
to identify those with whom it would make sense to explore setting up joint
ventures. This could get you access to mailing lists that you currently do
not have, and in so doing, significantly broaden your marketing reach.
If you are adding an online component to your offline business, or starting
to investigate an online business opportunity, consider how you can
incorporate the points listed above. For those suggestions that have a nice
fit with your market, make a decision to take action and include them in
your marketing activities. By actively and consistently applying these forum
tactics you will find that both your lead generation and customer
relationship management initiatives will be far more productive.
© 2005 Intellinova (Pty) Ltd. - All Rights Reserved
For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters has been transforming raw business data
into profit-producing strategic information in various data intensive
sectors- banking, insurance, gambling, medical, government.
He has lead several data-to-information projects:
ABC Costing, analytical CRM, datamart /data warehouse development, and
Balanced Scorecard.
Jeff can be contacted through: www.IntelliNova.com, or
www.SystematicDirectMarketing.com
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