Marketing Getting a specific geographic audience

[Bryn]

Although my forum has decent attention by visitors from all corners of the world from all the promotion and SEO stuff I've done so far, I would like to seek a targeted approach regarding more of that work, and that would be appealing to people from certain parts of the world. As someone from the UK, I'd like to see more British visitors flock to my forum and even for them to become members too (bonus points if they're from Scotland, so that I don't feel alone, haha) and maybe want the forum to appeal more to Europeans as well. I say this because I'd to see typical guest/member activity be constant as right now, not many people are online according to my timezone but somehow gets more from North Americans overnight. I had achieved this for an old forum I had before...

Even though I'd like to see more European visitors on average, I'd also like to appeal the forum to anyone in Estonia (as this is a very tech-savvy country, at least from personal knowledge, especially when that brought forth Skype).

But the big question is... how can I possibly do this? Would I have to submit my forum to specific search engines or something (like anyone else submitting theirs to Baidu and Yandex, to get themselves Chinese and Russian visitors)?

Hope anyone here can help with that because I'd much appreciate it...

 

[Cedric]

Have you ever tried paid advertising? I’ve had some good results with Reddit and Facebook. Both allow you to set geographic advertising.

 

[Cpvr]

You’ll need to find sites based in those specific countries with the .uk domain extension and try to build links from them. This will help you attract that specific audience.

You don’t need to submit your site to Yandex or Baidu, as they will list you automatically, like Google and Bing do. However, I’d recommend looking for directories in the United Kingdom, Estonia, or Scotland and submitting your site to them as well.

If there’s a forum or blog catering to those countries, you could join and try marketing to their user base. Reddit, Quora, and Tumblr would also be good platforms to advertise on, as they have a large international fan base.

 

[Bryn]

Have you ever tried paid advertising? I’ve had some good results with Reddit and Facebook. Both allow you to set geographic advertising.

No... I don't wish to part money with something like that, sorry to say.

However, I’d recommend looking for directories in the United Kingdom, Estonia, or Scotland and submitting your site to them as well.

I'll do this when I have the time

 

[Cedric]

No... I don't wish to part money with something like that, sorry to say.

Don't be sorry. Not everyone is comfortable with throwing money at their community. And you don't need to do that to be successful. But it makes everything a little bit easier.

 

[Bryn]

I think submitting it to directories would be easier for me, but to @Cpvr, I had researched on directories for these specific countries but most are really for businesses (including for Yell). How would a plucky wee forum of mine be seen amongst ads for driving instructors and whatnot?

However, I had came across "SubmitX", where you can submit your forum/site to 376 different directories, and some where you can submit to them manually (including for specific countries and categories). I'll give this a shot later in the month and I'll let you all know

 

[Shawn]

My Bike Southern Illinois forum is specific to southern Illinois cyclists. As a local forum, I mainly target a local audience. I'm marking with a local effort including using brochures offline that people can grab at local bike shops. I cold contact local cyclists and ask them to join, most of them know or know of me. I focus on local SEO. I promote on social and Strava in local groups.