When marketing online, two questions beg to be answered immediately. They are generally self-explanatory, yet I’ve seen so many marketers ignore one or the other.
The first question is this: Who are you going to market to? This is what we call your target market. Are you targeting stay at home moms, lower income people, or previously successful entrepreneurs? How you answer this question is crucial to your success.
In network marketing, there is only one group of people I’d recommend targeting. Why? Because it takes a certain kind of person to see the bigger picture in a network marketing opportunity. (And if you’re buying the whole “everybody is your prospect” line, then we’ve seriously got to talk.)
So who would your ideal target market be? Who understands network marketing requires work and discipline? Who has made their names list, done business presentations for their families and friends and, because they were taught to find a way to snake their business opportunity into every conversation, now find themselves not being invited to family gatherings and such?
Well, considering more than 95% of network marketers fail within three to four months, the answer should be somewhat obvious. The target market for network marketers is fellow network marketers.
I’m not saying to persuade those in other companies to join your opportunity. More than likely, that would also end in frustration. However, with a 95% failure rate, there are a whole lot of people out there who believe in network marketing but haven’t been given the proper support or training. This is where you come in.
If you target these disillusioned, but motivated souls, you’ll find a gold mine. By teaching them solid, no nonsense marketing techniques, many are likely to succeed, which translates into more success for you.
And then the second question: How will you market your products and/or opportunity? Depending on your product, there are several ways
If you have a decent-sized marketing budget, you should probably go with solo ads in ezines. I’ve found them to be quite responsive, and many people on my team have built their entire downline using only solo ads. They’re awesome, if you can afford them.
Another method is pay-per-click advertising. This is usually done with Google Adwords, and I’ve seen many people do quite well using this method. On the other hand, I’ve seen many more people go broke using pay-per-click as well.
If you do decide to use pay-per-click advertising, I’d suggest reading a book or two or even three, just to make sure you know what you’re doing. You can lose a lot of money really fast that way.
If your budget is limited, then you’ll want to take advantage of the free methods available. There are lots of free things you can do to promote your business, but keep in mind, most are very time consuming.
Firstly, I’d sign up for and use all the top-performing traffic exchanges out there. Start out with between 5 and 10. It will usually take some time before you start earning enough credits to make a difference in your business, but if your funds are low, you may not have a choice.
Another route you could go is to start a blog. If you’re like me, when you first start to post there, you find it’s hard to know what to say. A solution: Go to ezinearticles and use some of their articles on network marketing. It’s totally free, and as long as you keep the author’s information exactly as it is there, it’s legal.
Then, after you get 10 or 20 articles, go to pingomatic and have your blog pinged, so the search engines know you’re out there. Eventually your blog will start to draw in a lot of traffic.
Gregory McGuire is a successful network marketer and hypnotherapist living in Smyrna, Tennessee.
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