I am on a mission.  A mission to attract and retain more business to my agency.  I  have been in business 20 yrs.  I know what I am doing.  I have a professional, easy to use web site, and my clients use it.  But,  I need to attract more people to my site.  Not just any people mind you, but people in my community.  People that want and need my product.  People that know I can help them.   People that seek ME out.  Oh, and I don’t want to spend a lot of money.  Free would be good.  Is this a dream or a possibility?

I believe it is a possibility, and I think I have found the right path.  The road I choose is less travelled.  The front end work appears to0 be great, but the reward will be so sweet when the fruit of my labor is harvested.  I am talking about using forums as marketing tools.

What do I mean?  Message Boards.  Information Exchange Forums.  Creating a forum whereby people sign up to learn and/or share information with each other.  But, the beauty is the fact that you are the moderator.  You get to allow or decline membership.  You get to have each members E-MAIL.  You are the main contributor and if you can impart some intelligent thoughts about your niche market, you will get people to understand that you really do know what you are doing, and they will seek your counsel and expertise when they need it.

The key to marketing with forums is to become an active participant by answering questions and asking questions and building relationships with the other forum participants.  Also, forums allow what is known as a Signature within which you can put your website URLs. Whenever you put up a post, your signature shows at the bottom as clickable links and people following that post can click through to visit your website.

Setting up a forum is very easy.  I used Proboards.com.  The control panel is very easy to use, so I could customize my forum.  ( It is a new forum, so please bear with me).  I set the controls so that if people want to view my forum, they have to register.  This gets me their e-mail.  It also allows me to find out more about them.  Their demographics.

I realize that I am going to have to do a little more work to keep up with having new content, answering participant requests, and moderating posts, but I am hopeful the effort will be worth it.  The potential upside is great.

I am going to join each insurance forum I can, and place a  thread showing my forum is in action.  This is a direct form of forum marketing, kind of like spamming, but really not because I am pointing people to another more worthwhile forum.

I have google searched insurance forums, and there aren’t that may forums that are very good, moderated well, if at all, or truly on topic.  So, I know my forum is needed and timely. 

I will be updating this post as events warrant.  I know this is a different method, but I am resolved to see it through.