advertisement


Product Positioning - Forum Marketing

Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I'm not convinced Ashley has the available funds to employ a PR agency to keep his threads alive. I doubt whether John W does, either, and even if he does, I don't get the impression that his company is the sort which uses such techniques.

I'm sure it goes on, but not necessarily in this field. The cost/reward equation for the piddling little backwater which is specialist hifi looks likely to make it uneconomic, at best, in this industry. If it happened, I might point the finger at various other, rather bigger, companies which have been known to employ aggressive marketing techniques in the past, before I point it at the (with due respect to them) tiddlers.
Click to expand...

You dont even need a PR company. If you can write the replies yourself or have a few people in-house, you then just need the bodies to do the sign-up and posting. In this day and age, rent-a-crowd isnt problematic and also very cheap, try googling "crowdsourcing".

http://www.clickworker.com/en/ (amongst many many others...)
 
Dan K said:
PR and customer service are not quite the same. Were the DACs not given away to pfm users at a discount in the first instance? It's no wonder then that there are so many on here with nice things to say about them.
Click to expand...

That's a nice rewrite of history there. What actually happened was that john started a pre-order which included the originally announced price of the Mdac. Just before launch IAG put the price up (there's a nice story as to why) and John did his best to ensure that everyone on the list paid what they thought they would and not the new higher price.

There was no grand plan involved. With the best will in the world, John is one of the worst organised people I know, and I can assure you no one other than real people are keeping that thread alive. (I should know it was me who migrated the thread over here from DIY-audio.com in the first place).

I can't speak as to what tactics AVI might employ, we all know Darren was posting with multiple user names and talking product up on the Cyrus user groups and got caught.
 
There seems to be an awful lot of paranoia / conspiracy theory going on here. In my experience in the extremely rare times a company / person does try such things they are so mind-numbingly crap at it the whole thing backfires with usually great comedic effect - some of the most spectacular examples of bullet/foot interfacing in the history of this forum have related to flawed self-promotion attempts. The other thing that needs pointing out is this is a very small industry and forum owners tend to either know both each other and the main industry players personally - word travels pretty fast. I'm not saying such behaviour never occurs, I can think of a couple of minor companies who have tried it and been very publicly busted both here and elsewhere, but it is rare enough not to worry one's pretty little tin-foil-clad head about. By saying that I'm always contactable by PM or the post report function if anyone has evidence of coordinated spamming / shilling etc.
 
So...about AVI... :):)



Well how could I possibly resist against such dullard whinging.

Give it a rest chaps and simply follow the oft repeated good advice given here.

Don't read them.
 
Yet you admit you were trolling with the AVI thread, or at least being mischievous.
 
Yes, of course.

NOT trolling though, that's malicious avole.

And I'm a nice and splendid chap. As you know.
 
adiep

There are fanbois on just about every forum, at the moment the MDAC is flavour of the month (especially with those who like to tinker), other audio forums have their own fanboi products.

A few years ago PFM had much higher percentage of Naim threads (and probably as many as the Naim Forum!), then we had the Avondale fanboi's, today it's just the MDAC, it will pass.

On the whole PFM is very balanced, and I'm sure that at some point the main MDAC thread will be moved to trade discussion, where its exposure will lessen, but thats for TonyL to decide if and when.

Arthur has just been mischievous for the last few weeks, niggling away at some of the more outspoken forum members. At least he does own AVI speakers, but I'm sure he doesn't have much intention of buying ADM40's!! He'd have to give up that MDAC tinkering to do that!!

Mr Perceptive (who thinks that by the time you have bought an MDAC, MPAX, ADC for your vinyl, etc, you might just have well bought a decent DAC with all the digital inputs, an analogue input and an analogue volume control in the first place!!!)
 
adiep said:
Have forum numbers gone up since mdac and avi ?
Click to expand...

Neither has made any noticeable difference to the stats whatsoever. I've been doing this a very long time now, I learnt a long time ago not to get alarmed by short-term trends. There are always hot topics on any active forum, always have been, always will be, e.g. go back a decade or so here and it was Mana, Avondale etc, 5 years ago NVA etc. Some things remain a constant e.g. Naim, Linn, vinyl vs. CD, tube vs. transistors, cable debates etc. Some things are fairly new e.g. the strength of feeling in the subjectivist / objectivist debate, but really it just fills the void left by Mana or whatever, as do the M-DAC and AVI threads - the topic doesn't matter, just that there is some stuff being created by some folk that other folk find interesting enough to stay and enjoy the site. The long-term curves are all that matter to me, i.e. I'd worry a bit if I saw any shrinkage, but the site is still in year to year growth so no worries there. As I say I don't share your concerns at all - if there are professional shills here they owe me £50 a piece, so I'll certainly try and weed them out, but I have no issue with folk of all corners of the industry getting involved in any topic they wish. It all helps keep the place fresh and interesting.
 
Tony L said:
Neither has made any noticeable difference to the stats whatsoever. I've been doing this a very long time now, I learnt a long time ago not to get alarmed by short-term trends. There are always hot topics on any active forum, always have been, always will be, e.g. go back a decade or so here and it was Mana, 5 years NVA etc. Some things remain a constant e.g. Naim, Linn, vinyl vs. CD, tube vs. transistors, cable debates etc. Some things are fairly new e.g. the strength of feeling in the subjectivist / objectivist debate, but really it just fills the void left by Mana or whatever, as do the M-DAC and AVI threads - the topic doesn't matter, just that there is some stuff being created by some folk that other folk find interesting enough to stay and enjoy the site. The long-term curves are all that matter to me, i.e. I'd worry a bit if I saw any shrinkage, but the site is still in year to year growth so no worries there. As I say I don't share your concerns at all - if there are professional shills here they owe me £50 a piece, so I'll certainly try and weed them out, but I have no issue with folk of all corners of the industry getting involved in any topic they wish. It all helps keep the place fresh and interesting.
Click to expand...

Well said.

I'm not posting much but in a few months something will pop up and I'll have something to add again to pfm.
 
Exactly. The ebb and flow of a lively forum.

If a thread is genuinely of interest to many people it tends to self moderate and stay the right side of the line.
The ones where there is obvious hard sell or deliberate manipulation reveal themselves pretty quickly, and my advice with those is to ignore them or have some fun and indulge in a little leg pulling. There are the serious threads, and there are the noise/mischief threads. Both serve a purpose and the latter are fine so long they stay clear of insult and abuse.
 
adiep said:
Not really, these are the modern methods of marketing ... suggest you make yourself aware of them.


Have forum numbers gone up since mdac and avi ?
Click to expand...

The more you harp on about this then the more i think you do have some other agenda :confused:

I'm pretty certain all the posters in the m-dac thread are genuine.
 
There was a fair few posts on the Mdac thread in the run up to last Xmas which were obviously shop staff etc drumming up business but other than that it's been pretty much fair play.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top