Marketing is perception management, not reality.
With this in mind, I think it might be beneficial to do away with the word “forum.” When people think of forums, they have a lot of negative preconceptions. I think you should call it something like a “neoforum,” implying that this is “like a forum,” but a “step up” in terms of accessibility. “Oh my gosh, this is something new!”
Just a thought.
You are right in a way as people often think of the word forum to mean an old and messy style of communication they’d rather forget about. The word community is better as it has more positive connotations.
That’s what Discourse is. A new era of ‘forums’ 
We try and make that pretty clear in our marketing. 
I’ve seen but I think the word forum itself holds back the marketing. Because people aren’t really willing to hear you guys out about your software; the word forum kills it.
After the infamous video game crash of 1983, Nintendo couldn’t get retailers to listen to them about their new console – even though it was far superior to what had come before and had a solid library of games. So they had to market it as an “entertainment system” that controlled R.O.B. the Robot. (The games were just a bonus).
American launch vs. Japanese launch. Both consoles are functionally identical.
“Neoforum” is the perfect word. It makes people go “Hm, what is new about this kind of forum?”
Neoforum implies that the medium is so fundamentally different from a conventional forum that it’s its own thing. I would define it as a forum with social media elements.
In my own perspective, we can imply that this is on open conversation for better service. It’s like a an ear that’s ready to hear every single opinion for better. My opinion only, hope it will helps.
Are you referring to discourse.org?
Whilst its true the word forum is used in combination with the word community on Discourses’ homepage, they clearly showcase their customers, features and testimonials which are very important in the consumer decision making process. I agree with Hawk here - it is quite clear.
If I was an individual that needed a community I would be convinced by the website and if I still wasn’t sure I could make use of the free trial.
Back to your point about marketing a ‘neoforum’. Like I said before, I believe that Discourse had already reinvented forums as that’s the whole purpose of Discourse: to make discussion on the internet a better place.
I’ve thought of some things you might want to change from a clunky old forum and expect to see in your neoforum. Then see if Discourse does it already.
