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.