Buying Forum Ads: 5 Strategies for Forum Traffic Success
Have you considered buying forum ads instead of social media or search engine-based ads?
This is especially beneficial for generating traffic to a message forum. By relying on other ad purchasing sources, you may be targeting the wrong people to join your forum. Buying forum ads will help you gain more members but also helps with the forum creator economy, which is an essential matter for all of us in online community management.
In this article, I will show you five different strategies to drive forum traffic using paid forum ads.
Strategy 1: Start Buying Forum Ads from the Right Forums
The first thing you need to do is choose the proper forums to buy ads from.
There are millions of forums on the internet, even if the online community is declining. Buying ads from any message forum isn’t a good strategy. It would help if you chose forums that are somehow related to your forum’s niche.
I would focus on message forums directly related to the niche, partially associated with the niche, or general forums (general forums usually have a more comprehensive range of audiences who like different topics).
Strategy 2: Create a Budget for Buying Forum ads
The only way advertising works out is if you advertise with a budget made for advertising.
If you can’t afford an ad budget, you might want to stick with free methods of promoting your forum; otherwise, what little you spend may not be worth paying. A reasonable forum ad budget would leave you spending at least $50 a month to start. That amount should get suitable ads (pending the forum size) and give you an idea of how to strategize your forum advertising campaigns.
Remember, you get what you pay for, and that same principle applies to any online ad purchase.
Strategy 3: Focus on Banners when Buying Forum Ads
You want to make sure people notice your ads on the forums you’re purchasing them from.
If the forum only sells text links, you might want to skip that because it could be deemed as a penalty from Google, which you don’t want. Focus on the forum where you can buy banner ad space because an elegantly created banner will be viewed quicker than a text link. You also want to know where the ad will display because if it’s down in the footer, no one will ever see it.
Make sure you are spending some time making the best noticeable banner ad you can make.
Strategy 4: When Buying Forums Ads, Advertise a CTA
Most forum owners advertise their forum homepage when buying forum ads, and that is the wrong thing to do.
Instead of advertising your forum homepage, try advertising something with a CTA (call to action) within it rather. I like the idea of making a visitor topic that explains what the forum is, the best features of the forum, and why a visitor should join the forum. The CTA should be a little more encouraging for visitors to join than just a simple registration block that most forums have.
When buying forum ads, you want to do whatever you can to get the most value out of your ad purchase.
Strategy 5: Don’t give up on Buying Forum Ads
Many of you who are buying forum ads are giving up too quickly at the first sign of failure, which isn’t a good thing.
Advertising is and has always been an experimental sort of digital marketing strategy. You have to do some A/B testing and investigate what works and what does not. People and their intentions are constantly changing, and how we advertise to them will also always have to be changed.
Don't give up if you fail at forum ad purchases; keep trying until you find your sweet spot.
And there you have it – 5 great strategies for buying forum ads. One final tip on the budget is to start small but not too small and gradually increase the funding as you see more success and get used to more strategies. The strategies above will surely help you, but you’ll also find yourself developing your own, and that’s a logical thing to do. Please share this article if you have enjoyed it, and we look forward to your discussions on Forum Promotion.
