Marketing with BBS

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BBS original intention is electronic bulletin board, namely kong-based Board BAE abbreviation. Along with the development of network technology, now called BBS has far beyond the simple electronic bulletin board function, each website also has different name for it, such as BBS, BBS community, Community, Forum, Technical Forum and so on, but there is undeniable that BBS has become an integral part of every website now. At the same time, because BBS is the main form of the current domestic network forum, so many times it is also regarded as the pronoun of the network forum. What does BBS mean? Perhaps for most people, especially those who love the Internet, it is a place where they can transcend the boundaries of time and space and communicate and communicate with strangers who have the same hobbies or similar needs. That's it?

If your answer is yes, then you underestimate the value of BBS. "World manager Weekly," said Mr. Dinghaisen, the top 3 in China's BBS community value of more than 1 billion yuan, ranked in the top 10 BBS community value of more than 100 million yuan. After a long period of research, the world's it laboratory concluded that: a comprehensive web site of the news part of the value of the total value of 30% or so, the transaction part, including text messages, business and so on to provide the value of about 30%, and the rest is basically all by the BBS community to provide.

The great value of BBS is evident from the above data. At present, the use of the value of the BBS is mainly embodied in attracting netizens, others are not fully played out, especially in the field of marketing.

Why BBS can be used to do marketing

1, BBS gathered the crowd is a precise breakdown of the market. From the marketing point of view, BBS is a network platform for customer interaction, a group of goods, a brand, an event, a problem or a certain way of life have a common interest and hobbies or have some common characteristics of people together to communicate and exchange. Therefore, the BBS participant is actually a market which is subdivided by some interests, hobbies or some characteristics as subdivision variables. BBS as a network marketing tool The biggest advantage is the goal is clear and the scope is small, so that the enterprise's marketing activities will be more targeted, can really close to the target consumer group, nature can also achieve better results.

2, more netizens will be more inclined to professional websites and BBS. Visitors from the Web site, the general class portal visitors are mostly novice, as their online skills and experience accumulated, they gradually began to enter a number of professional websites. With the improvement of network technology and the gradual popularization of broadband, the increase in the number of integrated portal visits will be more and more slow, which has been proved in the United States, on the contrary, some specialized websites dedicated to a particular subject have been more and more popular, especially those in the industry. On these professional websites, they can easily find the information they need. At the same time, in some professional websites, BBS is a very important tool to attract and retain netizens. In BBS, netizens can easily find topics of interest to them, and discuss and communicate with people with similar interests extensively and deeply. BBS This netizen interacts with the place, Netizen can learn from each other, exchange information, and then produce some kind of trust and dependence feeling. Sociologists ' research also proves that BBS is a very important aspect of Web site to attract and retain netizens. At the same time, for some of the views and information posted on BBS, the acceptance degree and trust degree of other netizens are generally higher. Therefore, the correct use of BBS to these netizens to marketing can play a multiplier effect.

3, from the Network marketing practice, search engines, Internet advertising, e-mail and Internet Yellow Pages as the most commonly used network marketing means of the effect is also more and more unsatisfactory. Data show that stockpiles users will only look at the first 10 results when using a search engine. Pop-up ads, spam is not only not the formation of marketing results, but also to arouse the resentment of consumers. The number of yellow pages used is very small. One of the most important reasons is that the target customers are not clear, which is exactly the advantage of BBS.

4, in fact, BBS has become a frequent use of internet services in China, which provides a realistic basis for the use of BBS marketing. According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) issued the "14th China Internet Development Status Statistics Report", in the user most commonly used Web services, BBS Electronic bulletin board 8.4%.

Second, how to use BBS to do marketing

(i) Service to customers

For traditional enterprises, providing services to customers is one of the goals of its website. Through the fixed plate to provide some common problems and their answers in an orderly way online, for customers to refer to the query, is the traditional FAQ, the main disadvantage is the programming, are some of the most common problems, static, single, lack of interaction. In a growing emphasis on business interaction with customers today, the FAQ is difficult to meet the needs of customers. Excellent enterprise to do is beyond the FAQ, to provide customers with timely interactive way, which may be the site of many enterprises have BBS reasons it. In the BBS of Enterprise website, customers who encounter difficulties can post their own problems, some familiar with these issues, and very enthusiastic customers can respond to this or make suggestions, customers and customers to exchange interaction, and enterprises can also grasp the initiative to make an immediate response to these issues. In addition, the use of enterprise products between customers in the BBS on the use of experience, insights and experience and so on to carry out a wide range of in-depth discussion, while customers can also in the BBS to the enterprise to express their dissatisfaction, suggestions for improvement, as well as the idea of product improvement and so on. With BBS This exchange platform, enterprises can more timely and comprehensive understanding of the user's feelings and opinions, and targeted to take corresponding measures to solve. This interaction between customers and customers, customer and enterprise interaction between the way, can greatly improve the use of the enterprise products of customer satisfaction and reduce the cost of customer service enterprises. More importantly, the enterprise can collect more customer information through BBS, know more customers ' opinions, and develop the product of customer need and satisfaction better.

Data show that enterprises through BBS to provide services to customers can reduce the percent of service support problems, this part is mainly through mutual help to solve. Second, BBS provides the new channel for the customer to the enterprise feedback information, simultaneously also greatly enhances the enterprise to the customer reaction speed. Finally, a good return on investment (ROI), many successful enterprises in the formation of Web sites and BBS in the first year can achieve a 100% return.

(ii) Real-time monitoring and maintenance of corporate and brand image

The spread of information on the internet has been far beyond the limits of time and space, and it is feared that even some companies that are called High-tech are not fully aware of it. As early as 1994, Intel's Pentium chip floating-point error event was due to a lack of awareness of the spread of the network, with a hint of luck, Intel company to the latest findings of the professor's report ignored, and finally led to online Internet users comments, including a lot of sharp irony to Intel, This has a huge global negative impact on Intel's corporate image. There is an old saying in China: "Good things do not go out, bad things spread thousands of miles," with the increasing number of netizens and the gradual popularization of the Internet, this point on the Internet on the performance is particularly obvious. Many netizens will put their own experience of the use of some products, products or services to the opinion or evaluation of the relevant BBS above, in order to express or vent their feelings, and some netizens will be the relevant posts in different BBS spread. Because BBS is a market segment, and gathered in the relevant industry professionals or related products use groups, they are more trust each other, on the BBS every post they will give a certain degree of attention and some recognition, so there is no thing on the internet the size of the points. A small negative evaluation of a business or brand may also have a significant impact on the corporate or brand image, such as Intel's Pentium chip floating-point error events. Some of the corporate or brand image of malicious attacks on the evaluation, the impact is even greater.

What companies have to do is first time to find those words that are bad for the corporate or brand image. Facing the vast network world, attention to every corner is unrealistic and impossible, enterprises can focus on monitoring some industry or product-related well-known forums, correct treatment of negative speech and timely response. If what is said in the negative statement is true, if it is in the forum of the Enterprise's own website, the relevant personnel of the enterprise should make the explanation to the user in time, and promise to improve, in order to restore the customer's trust; if it is in the public forum, the enterprise can be in the negative comments followed by some positive posts or directly send some positive comments To weaken the impact of negative speech, but also to allow the reader of the post to doubt the credibility of negative statements, which can also reduce the post is reprint to other forums of the possibility. Keep in mind, however, that when you are in the post, make the reader feel that you are also a user, an equal user, to gain time and opportunity for the improvement of the enterprise.

In addition, through real-time monitoring and closely watching the forum on the Internet users of the relevant comments, you can understand the customer's corporate or brand image of the real perception, so that enterprises targeted to make improvements. For example, Mazda and HP have been using Buzzmetrics to monitor various postings on their companies and products in online forums to get a fuller and more realistic picture of what users and potential users are really thinking about their businesses and products.

(iii) Internet advertising

Many companies have put a lot of money into the portal home page and other pages of pop-up ads, few companies have been concerned about the role of advertising BBS. As mentioned above, BBS is like a segment of the market, the use of BBS advertising will make the target audience more accurate, rather than cast a net, to spend a penny to achieve a penny effect.

Of course, advertising in the BBS is different from other forms of online advertising, not put up on the line. The cultural tradition which the BBS forms, is fastidious is the development, the freedom and the non-commercial, therefore the enterprise does not have the illusion to use the pop-up advertisement or that kind of to appear in the big advertisement. BBS advertising to pay attention to the way and methods, can not use forced-style methods, to let netizens want to see, to let the ads unknowingly affect netizens, so that netizens feel that these ads are carefully prepared for them, rather than to promote a certain kind of goods. Many of the sites because of the fear of commercial advertising will affect the members of the Forum, most of the method is at the bottom of each post with text ads, these words with a company with a super connection. However, its shortcomings are mainly related to the post is not strong, not vivid, can not be very good to arouse the attention of the post viewer and interest, the effect of natural will not be good. In fact, BBS advertising is to be related to the theme of the post, those related and the performance of vivid advertising is usually very good to attract the attention of the post reader.

In many enterprises there are examples of this, such as in the community of Taobao Http://forum.taobao.com, following the post generally use small vivid banner ads, usually the ads and its content has a certain degree of relevance. On the other hand, this kind of advertising can make the color of the Web page more vivid, full of vigor, change the former BBS Web page monotonous situation. Of course, the best way to do this is to use the "mention marketing" technique, which tracks the banner ads that appear on the user's words. If a user enters the word "display", the "mention marketing" technique will detect and place banner ads with the display vendor or manufacturer at the bottom of the post. This greatly increased the relevance of information and advertising, not only will not let the reader of the post is disgusted, a lot of time to make them feel very convenient and interesting. On the other hand this way will also increase the incentive for the post, will encourage more people to post, increase the popularity of the site.

Finally, enterprises can be their own site BBS advertising site and related sites of the BBS advertising to exchange, increase the links between each other, thereby expanding the visibility of corporate websites and attract more visitors.

(iv) Mail marketing

The regular network mail marketing obtains the mail address is buys from other company, its shortcoming mainly displays in the pertinence not to be strong, such many mails after sends out unceasingly does not have the effect, will also cause some consumer's aversion, causes the negative influence to the enterprise. But enterprises can use their own website forum members registered e-mail address, combined with modern web site access tracking technology can be more accurate analysis of the possible needs of netizens, so targeted use of e-mail to provide information to these netizens. In addition to some of the enterprise's products related to the professional web site to buy its BBS registered members of the mail address, although the lack of tracking analysis of netizens, its accuracy will be more than the traditional approach higher.

(v) Word-of-mouth Marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing More and more people pay attention to, but the traditional Word-of-mouth marketing has two hardest to solve the problem: first, it is difficult to find a real opinion leader, the second is due to geographical constraints, even a good reputation of its spread of the scope is very limited. But this is not a problem on the Internet, first of all, the spread of the Internet is not affected by geographical constraints, information can reach anywhere in the world, and secondly, BBS is different from our verbal conversation, BBS records for us to accurately and quickly find the opinion leader provides the possibility, And its effects are much more time-sensitive than traditional verbal communication.

On a BBS, there are several members worthy of the attention of marketers, one is the core members of the BBS, about 10% of all BBS members, they have provided the whole bbs90% about information. The second is the disseminator, also some will call it pollinators, these people often shuttle between multiple BBS, and a BBS post reprint to multiple BBS up. The existence of these two kinds of members allows us to conduct word-of-mouth marketing online. We can analyze BBS posts to find core members, these people can be said to be BBS this small segment of the market opinion leader. We can use them for Word-of-mouth publicity by providing them with information about businesses and products and some internal information. Those who carry the message are to transfer the information to more BBS work. Some academics have suggested that it should be done in private in the case of information provided to these people, and that there is a need not to pay these people, or else they will be disgusted by them.

In addition, we can also in some related BBS to publish some information about enterprises and products of the post. Need to be aware of is not online direct hawking, this way will usually be kicked out of the forum, not only will not have the effect will affect the image of the enterprise. This should be done in a more secretive manner, can be disguised as a consumer publishing experience, feelings, can also be short articles, cases of the form to introduce enterprises or products.

For enterprises, the use of BBS to do marketing is far more than these, such as online research. Although the number of BBS is much less than the portal site, but each member may be a customer or potential customers, won them we won a market. On the other hand, we should also note that BBS's freedom, the development of cultural characteristics, so that we use the Internet forum for marketing to be more cautious, a small mistake may destroy a long time effort or even more.