Forum Advertising benefits/detractors

When we opened the shop we had some tools to get started. Those tools included our personal reputations, both locally and on enthusiast forums. Used properly we found that we could carefully manage our internet success with controlled doses of applied credibility. How the internet helped us is really amazing because our business, if we can call it a success, would have been completely unsuccessful even 10 years ago if we had applied the same marketing strategy, or business plan upon a non web savvy customer base.

There are forums for everything. Really anything. It's no surprise. I personally think that detractors included, they are incredible sources of information and entertainment. I'm not going to write a thesis on forums but I'd like to talk about relationship and reputation management on forums as a vendor. This vendor status doesn't have to apply only to the automotive industry, there are certain universalities that apply.

As a seller on a forum I could take several approaches to communicating with my customers. First I could apply a one way communication by posting an advertisement for service or a tangible item for sale. This will be met with mixed response depending on the poster's good standing in the community. My price could be bad, my shipping could be bad. A customer who had a bad experience with me over a completely different transaction could reply and my goal of selling a product could be dashed. It's a difficult line to walk when the dirty laundry is the driver for getting more eyes on your post.

A situation I try to avoid on forums is answering technical questions. This would be an example of a two-way communication. Sometimes I do it but most of the time I feel like it's a trap. As a shop we can demonstrate our specific knowledge and hope that it's an attraction but we can also expose a mistake, or spread false information by accident. If the information is good we are potentially giving away the "recipe" as it may be.

An example of this was in early 2004 when we started seeing ACD equipped Evo VIII cars in the shop. We knew before everyone else how to bleed the ACD without the Mitsubishi Mutt tool. We learned about it from a Czech Rally team. People were asking on the internet about it all over the place. We could have posted to show that we had cutting-edge knowledge but we would be enabling other shops around us. We probably only did 5 clutch jobs on ACD cars before the time came when everyone on the internet knew the trick. Which would have been more valuable, the exposure from being able to reveal how to do this or the 2 or 3 clutch jobs we did that might have gone elsewhere. An easier decision in hindsight perhaps.

I like using the EvolutionM forums as an example of these situations because it's very up-front. It's easy to see what shops are leading and which are following, Lately the biggest fad in vendor posting has been "testing" Which shop is the most deliberate, the most directed and methodological in both design and direction? "testing" manifolds, fuel pumps, cutting each other down on their own forums, copying designs, shots in the dark on the dyno, as users we've seen it all at this point. We can't trust anyone's dyno because they can be assuaged, manipulated and tweaked. The race for credibility can be literally done racing, it can be done on forums through technical showmanship (albeit risky) through hard evidence like dyno numbers (also now risky)


Through this journey in trying to find and keep customers (thanks Prof. McClure) we can accidentally discredit ourselves. So is it better to post about every move you make at the shop, every car you push out the door, every dyno run "with charts" or is it better to fly low and not post about anything? I'm not sure.