As more and more MLMers discover the power and leverage of using the internet to market, you may find the internet feeling a little crowded these days. I know I am daily getting multiple requests to join this company or that company, and people I don’t know at all love to pitch me their business. They are simply following that old-school rule of playing the numbers game. Yes, the more people who you present your business to the more likely you will succeed, but it is all about how your present your business. I know that the people with the “send out enough SPAMey emails about my MLM and someone will show an interest” attitude are likely to never get very far marketing their MLM on the internet.

There is one simple rule to follow that will help you stand out from the crowd.

Make sure you are playing the RIGHT numbers game.
Online it is not about present your opportunity to as many people as you can, it is about presenting YOURSELF. People work with people, not companies. Rare is the person who goes out, finds a company, and then decides who to work with. Most people pick a company that does fit with their values, but it is usually because they believe the sponsor they are talking to is someone who can assist them to success. It’s about NETWORKING not advertising. In old school methods it was always about creating a relationship first, presenting the business second. First the person needs to know you are someone they want to work with, then if they like your company you have a match. If you try to do it the other way (business first), well, people are pretty smart. They know when they are being advertised to so very few will actually look at your opportunity. Those that do are not simply going to join off the link you sent them. They don’t have a relationship with you, they have no reason to believe that you can help them in any way. And the simple fact that you use a marketing technique that comes across as desperate demonstrates to them that you don’t know how to market and wont be able to assist them. If they have any interest in your opportunity they will probably search for a leader in your business and shop around for someone who can help them to success.

If you were marketing your business offline would you take leaflets or pamphlets that gave your prospects ALL the information on your business and just hand them out to people? Or would you use dropcards, flyers, and ads that showed people the benefits of your company and then invited them to contact you?

Too many people think Internet MLM marketing is just about driving traffic to their company overview page and forget about the basic principles behind network marketing. The same rules still apply. You must first create a relationship and demonstrate to your prospects how you can help them and be a leader to them. Then you let them see your opportunity and give them a chance to join your team.

Now, how do you play the right numbers game?
You promote yourself everywhere. Don’t lie or misrepresent yourself. Just take the time to gain knowledge and education that you can use to assist others. What kind of information is your target market looking for? Create content daily that will actually help people and then be everywhere. Use the Automatic Article Submitter to submit your articles everywhere, use something like OnlyWire to syndicate your content to social networks, create videos delivering the content in a different medium. It is often said, it’s easier to build fast than slow. So build fast, work hard, get education and get leads who actually want to know what business YOU are in.

One type of advertising that more and more Network Marketers seem to be using these days is negative campaigns, or trying to steal business from other network marketing companies by releasing negative information about them and then at the end suggesting that the reader instead join their company.

There are several reasons why I believe this is just a terrible way to market your business, not the least of which being that if you are just putting out negative energy all you get back will be negative energy. But leaving energy out of it, let’s look at this from a strictly logical perspective. Negative campaigns actually often backfire and hurt you.

Negative campaigning seems to be taken straight from politics…the old smear campaign. If you make your opponent look bad then you will look like a better alternative and you will be able to steal their votes this way. This may work in politics, but that is only because usually the race is between two individuals. If enough people believe your opponent is not a good person they will have to vote for you as the only alternative. But this is not the case in Network Marketing. There are hundreds of alternatives out there for people who decide that a particular company is not for them. So you are not the automatic fallback for the person, and if they found you through searching for reviews or information on a company they were looking into they are more likely to do the same thing about your company. And guess what, they may find negative campaigns about your company as well.

Now, think about what those people are looking for when they go to research an MLM company. They are looking to see if it is genuine (they don’t want to be conned out of money), and they are looking to see if they can be successful at it. The person searching usually thinks they are more concerned about finding out if it is genuine, but really they deep down care most about whether they can be successful. If they are only looking out of curiousity then they are not going to start with any company, but if they are looking to see if they are going to be successful they are truly looking at the industry as a whole. They want to know that people do have success and that makes them know that they can too. What they are looking to see is, does this business model work? Is this a good industry to be in?

When the first thing people come across is negative campaigning “I left X company, and now I’m making billions in Y company,” they tend to see the whole industry as negative. Their confidence in their own ability starts to waiver, they begin to feel nervous, and when nervousness overtakes excitement people go back to basics. Back comes the employee mindset and suddenly going to their job and watching T.V. when they get home doesn’t seem so bad after all. The truth is people can really accomplish so much if they have excitement about the possibilities ahead of them and belief in their own ability to succeed. When you negatively campaign against another company you shake peoples’ belief that they can succeed in any company.

Now, if you have been negatively campaigning you may have seen some results from it, but in the long term you’re cutting off the legs of your business. Real long term businesses are built upon integrity and trust. When mud-slinging starts to happen you get covered in as much of it as anyone else.

Let’s take a real look at Network Marketing. You and I know that it is a wonderful way for people to go into business for themselves without needing high start up costs and much risk. It also enables people to start in a business where they are rewarded for being of service to others (help your team and you are financially rewarded). From my experience in the network marketing and MLM industry nearly all the companies I’ve come across are good and ethical companies. Not all the people involved are so ethical, but these people always fail in the end. They are exposed by their team for not delivering leadership, or kicked out of their companies for not following the rules. But the truth is, the business model is a remarkably good way to make money, and most people have the intelligence to find a good and genuine person to sponsor them and a company they can believe in.

You have to also realize that you are not just a part of your company, but a part of a whole industry. And the way people view the industry really does matter. If people run around slamming other MLM or network marketing companies they are contributing to negative press about the industry as a whole. The result: People decide to avoid the industry altogether rather than try to wade through the mess to find a good company.

Imagine this industry without the negative campaigning. Many more people would see the strength of the business model, that there are genuine success stories, and would then just have to pick a company with the type of payplan that suited them, and a product or mission they could believe in, and most importantly: A leader they could follow.

If you contribute not just to your own success and your team, but to the company as a whole, and even to the industry you will be guaranteeing your own long-term success. This industry grows by more people seeing the strength and potential of network marketing.

This is why I do, what I do. I believe that the only major problem many MLM companies have is a lack of marketing knowledge. When people don’t know how to properly market they will not be successful in any business. Therefore, by providing detailed and in-depth internet marketing training for network marketers I am increasing the number of successes out there. I can improve the success ratio, and contributing to my industry as a whole. If people are successful in other businesses it improves my own business because it improves the network marketing industry.

So if you are going to review a company, or discuss another company that you are not involved in, pick a company you admire. It’s ok to point out the areas they could improve, but never try to market a company by trying to turn people off another company. If you don’t think a company is very good, just don’t write about them…trust me, they won’t last. Only companies with good compensation plans and infrastructure last any number of years. If you are contributing positively you will be a leader in the industry. And people will join you because you are a leader they want to follow, not because you tell them another company isn’t good. When you are truly a leader people won’t care about which company you are in, and which product is better than which other product. They will want to work with you and be on your team whichever company you are with. And this only works when they can believe in the industry as a whole.

From time to time I write reviews of other Network Marketing companies, but always in a positive light, and I never try to tell anyone who is interested in the company that they should not join. I only ever do reviews with the intention of helping people who are in or looking at the business achieve success by providing them with useful information about how to succeed in their company (again contributing to the success ration in the industry).

Trust that if you have selected a good company and products that you yourself believe in, you can attract people to you business positively. If you pick people up off the back of a negative campaign, they are likely to be the type of people to continue to jump from company to company never with any belief in themselves and their ability to create their dreams. Attract people who also believe in your products, who are excited about your business, or about working directly with you.

I hope you will join me in contributing positively (and ALWAYS honestly) to your industry and your own leadership.

There are many social marketing tools out there, and we have already discussed some in previous articles, but for MLM recruiting nothing beats LinkedIn. I learned these techniques from Larry Beacham, the “King of LinkedIn”.

Now as always, you first have to boil it down to who uses it, and what they are looking for. You can’t go on LinkedIn with the idea that you are going to tell everyone how great your business is and they’ll all jump on board. You can’t invite strangers to connect with you, because they will send up red flags against you.

LinkedIn is for business professionals to network. So the people who are on LinkedIn are looking to connect with other professionals to grow their business networks, and find people who can assist them in their business or career. Think about the mindset of someone using LinkedIn. They want to learn strategies, tools and tips for success. You must always, in any type of marketing, position yourself and your marketing based on what people using that platform will like to find. With that in mind here are a few success tips that will help launch your LinkedIn Network Marketing success:

Who are you Being?
Now on Facebook or Myspace it might be appropriate to put a photo of you on the beach, update your profile with the great lifestyle you are leading, but on LinkedIn you must always be professional. Have a nice professional photo on your page, discuss your background and business in a professional manner. You are establishing yourself as someone who can truly assist others in achieving their goals, so discuss your role as a business owner from that aspect. Who do you assist? What areas do you specialize in? It doesn’t have to be stiff and unfriendly, just professional.

What are you Providing?
As always, I’ll keep beating you over the head with this one: provide great relevant content! People on LinkedIn discussion boards are looking to learn. As a simple strategy, join several groups that are specific to your target market. Write one article every day that genuinely provides them information. Information they can actually take away and apply. Put that article as a discussion on each of your groups. It’s fine to have the same article on multiple discussion pages, as long as it’s good content. Sign your name, number and website at the bottom of your article, and let people come to you.

How are you Connecting?
It’s important not to rush to connect with people on LinkedIn. How you connect is very important. Many people just click on names and ask to connect, but they haven’t had any contact with the person before. Once you’ve connected to someone on LinkedIn you have access to their personal contact details and their network of people, so people are a lot more guarded about who they connect with. Always wait until you have had some form of conversation first. If someone comments on your article, then invite them to join your network and remind them with a personal note that you shared a discussion. This means that not only will almost everyone accept your connection, but once they do they are more likely to check out your profile, view your websites, and remember you.

Like everything the key here is consistency. Your online reputation is important and you are branding yourself as a leader. It is well worth the extra time to have leads that actually know you and want to work with you. If you do this everyday (5 days a week), you will become known to people as someone who consistently delivers high quality info and is a leader in their field.

Remember in Network Marketing, the leaders always win. Everyone wants to work with someone who can truly assist them in their success. Build a strong reputation (and it only takes a few weeks consistent work, I had several leads from this strategy the FIRST DAY I implemented it) and the rewards will be never ending.

Keep in mind: You MUST be actually delivering good content so you still have to educate yourself so that you have good advice and tips to give!

This is just scratching the surface of what you can do with LinkedIn. You can get access to the full FREE 70 minute webinar training that Larry Beacham himself did with our team just fill in your details below to join the newsletter.

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