E-commerce Community Marketing

Word of Mouth (WOM) and Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) describes a variety of new and emerging sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues.

Ever growing in number and format on the Internet, CGM refers to any number of online word-of-mouth vehicles, including but not limited to: consumer-to-consumer e-mail, postings on public Internet discussion boards/forums, Usenet newsgroups and listservs, consumer ratings Web sites or forums, blogs (short for Web logs), moblogs (sites where users post digital images/photos/movies), vlogs (video blogs), social networking Web sites and individual Web sites.

Although influenced or stimulated by traditional marketers and marketing activities, online word of mouth is nonetheless owned and controlled by consumers, and it often carries far higher credibility and trust than traditional media, especially as media channels become more fragmented and less trusted. The growth of CGM’s influence poses challenges and opportunities for marketers.

Active Community Marketing – This engages forum members in discussions and asks the community for their opinion on your product and services.

Reactive Community Marketing - Reply to forum messages that ask for your product/service, that talk about your competitors, ...

Passive Community Marketing - Using forum messages solicit what other community members think about your product and service or what they expect from your company.

Community marketing is a delicate balance and if done improperly may backfire can be perceived as spam. That’s bad! Commerce helper understands how to utilize this technology to its maximum and promote your products and services as not to be misunderstood or written off as junk advertising. If community marketing is viable for your business, Commerhelper.com can utilize it properly.