It’s unfortunate, but there is a lot of old information out there that isn’t relevant to Network Marketing Today. In an age where everything seems to evolve at a breakneck pace, why so many people are helplessly hanging on to outdated strategies is beyond me. If you want to be successful in today’s market, you’ll need to re-examine everything you’ve learned.
Chances are, you fall into one of three categories: You’re brand new to MLM and are getting all sorts of advice from your upline, random strangers and so-called gurus on how to get started; you’ve been in network marketing for a while, but are struggling to earn a substantial (or any) income; or you’re doing just fine.
This particular post is written for all of those categories. So regardless of where you’re at, hopefully you’ll learn something new. And hopefully it’ll help you build an even more successful network marketing business.
With that, let’s talk a little bit about what you need to stay competitive in today’s network marketing environment:
Network Marketing Today: A Website
You need a website, it’s that simple. If you take nothing else away from today’s little lesson, take this: without a website, you’re dead in the water. Sadly, many new MLM sign ups are told not to build a website by uninformed folks. “It’s a business of people,” you’ve probably heard them say. “You can’t make that personal connection with a website.”
Wrong. While there is some truth to the idea that you can’t sit down and look a person in the eye through a website, the cold hard facts are that our society is online almost all of the time. That’s where we turn to first for entertainment, news, information and yes, even network marketing. (For more about this topic, read Why You Need A Website).
Think about this: If I were to ask you what time a movie was playing in your city, how would you find out? Most of you would answer “I’d look it up online.” What if I needed you to come up with 10 recipes for crawdads? Or even “Network Marketing Tips?” My guess is that 98% of you (including me) would go straight to Google or Yahoo.
If you don’t have a website, build one. It’s easier than you think (read Build A Network Marketing Website for more information). But most of all, if you’re not online because people are telling you not to, forget about them. You’ll see them later on down the road while you’re bringing in paychecks and they’re still hassling people in bookstores.
Network Marketing Today: Social Media
This one kind of follows the boot straps of my first point, but you need to stay connected to your network. And the best way to accomplish that in today’s network marketing atmosphere is to start an account at one of the popular social media sites and ask your downline to join you.
With an account with a social media website (like Facebook or Twitter), you can stay in contact with your downline, be available for questions and help and generally show that you do care – and that last bit goes a long way, as we all know.
It’s easy and free to become a member, so go out and get an account. Then tell your downline about it, so they are connected to you as well. Then you’ll have an immediate method of getting out time sensitive information, updates and more.
Network Marketing Today: Be Visible
Successful network marketers though out history have been very visible in the public eye. They gave speeches, did charity work, joined community organizations and so much more. The reason was, the more visible you are, the more people will become attracted to you, and therefore will sign up.
That’s still true today. You must be willing to put yourself out there. The internet helps here, because you can be visible with an online presence without driving all over the country side every hour of every day.
Even so, the most successful network marketers do both. They are very visible online and they are very visible in real life.
Network Marketing Today: Work Hard
In earlier years, for every 10 new recruits you signed up, you could count on 2 of them jumping in with both feet and working very hard, which makes them successful and you successful. In fact, if you prospected 100 people per year, there was a very good chance that 20 of them would be die-hard MLM folks, hastily building you a bigger and bigger downline.
Those days are long gone. That crazy 20% number is more like 2 or 3% at best. You might still get 20% signed up, but the overwhelming majority of them will fizzle out within the first year or earlier.
It’s a simple numbers game these days. If you can get your presentation in front of 100 people, you can conservatively count on one of them working very hard for you for the long haul.
If this sounds depressing, it’s not meant to be. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Think about it this way, for every 100 people you present, you’ll find at least one that will put your business into hyper drive. It makes the math really easy. And, for each time someone says “no” or doesn’t work hard, think of them as one person closer to the one who will.
Conclusions
Network Marketing Today is vastly different from the way it was decades ago, yet some people are so stuck in the old way of doing things that they’ll never adapt. And without adapting, you’ll fade away. So forget what you’ve heard about modern technology and put it to use in your home business. If you plan on being successful in network marketing today, start now.