Up until recently, prospecting with the traditional network marketing method, the 3 foot rule, proved to be really challenging for many people. The major barrier was that you had to find some warm contacts, or basically, “bother” your friends, relatives, acquaintances, and those friendly looking people in the grocery store check out line, coffee shops, to tell them about the wonderful opportunity that you’ve just found. Often people got discouraged with this approach, and stopped pursuing their dreams by quiting the network marketing business altogether.

Can you imagine how much easier network marketing would be if you didn’t have to go around bothering people? Wouldn’t it be nice if your network marketing business worked for you, even when you are busy? Wouldn’t it be great if interested people actually came to you, instead of you having to chase after them? Not only would you have more targeted prospects, you would know that they were interested, or they wouldn’t have contacted you. Thanks to the internet, all the above items are made possible these days!

Today with the internet, Network Marketing is just exploding! This phenomenon is called the Internet Network Marketing. Several years ago most people who got introduced to network marketing were introduced by a friend or relative. Through the internet you can now market your products and/or your Network Marketing business to so many people from around the world without having to travel or to “bother” your friends, family, and acquaintances. As a Network Marketer, you can now bring to your prospects articles, audio, and video that are related to your business right away, no matter where you are located in this world.

However, being able to market your products and/or Network Marketing business to so many people around the world is NOT the only reason why I think Internet Network Marketing is far more superior than the Traditional Network Marketing. There are other reasons for this. I would like to present those reasons by comparing the Internet Network Marketing with the Traditional Network Marketing.

A) INTERNET NETWORK MARKETING ENABLES YOU TO TARGET YOUR MARKET IN AN EFFICIENT MANNER (SAVE TIME)

Traditional Network Marketing:

We are taught to approach our friends, family, relatives or anyone we know personally. We are also taught to approach random people in random places to “share” about our network marketing products and/or business opportunities. This is a very tedious process, as most of the time, we have to approach them ONE by ONE. Moreoever, with this marketing approach, the chance of you getting any targeted prospects is really slim. A target prospect is a prospect who needs you, your products and/or your business opportunity to help them resolve any problems that he/she has so that he/she can lead a better life. For example, let’s say you have a health juice product that according to the product label, can boost the energy level. How do you plan to market this juice with the one to one approach? Would you just start asking people around about how they feel, out of the blue, at whatever places you go to, and hope that they would answer you with: “yeah…I’ve been feeling down lately, I think I need some energy boost?” If that’s the kind of answer you get most of the time, GOOD FOR YOU!

Let’s say you have a goal of approaching 100 people (from friends and relatives to random strangers at the mall, grocery stores, etc.) per week. That means, you will have to talk to about 20 people every day, provided that you work for 5 days per week, 3-4 hours per day. If out of those 100 people, 2 people either buy or join your business, this would mean you have a 2% conversion rate (2 out of 100), which is considered to be a standard conversion rate in sales. This means, each month, you will have 8 people who either have bought your product or joined your business. This is the best case scenario (2% conversion rate is not bad at all!!!). The worst case scenario is since most of our prospects are skeptical about network marketing, if you don’t have the right sales and marketing skill, what may end up happening is after approaching 100 people, you’d end up with 0 prospects! How about those 98 people that you talked to? Either they are not interested with what you have to say or they dont’t really need your product and/or business opportunity. In either case, wouldn’t it be nice if you know this first-hand before you spend your time and energy talking to these people? This is what it means by targeted marketing. Targeted marketing allows you to only talk to those who have shown deep interest in you, your product and/or your business. If you’re just starting out and run on a shoetring budget, it is almost impossible to do targeted marketing in the traditional network marketing.

Internet Network Marketing:

Thanks to the power of the Search Engine like Google, Yahoo, MSN, to name a view, and the Pay Per Click, you can have your business website viewed by hundreds (and even thousands) of prospects that are looking for your product and/or business opportunity at the same time. Let’s compare this with the one to one approach that’s always being touted in the traditional Network Marketing.

Let’s say you have a goal of approaching 100 people per week. That means, around 15 people have to visit your website every day for a week. Is it doable? Absolutely! Do you have to work 5 days a week, 3-4 hours per day? Absolutely NOT! In the first few weeks, when you are in the process of setting up your website, its content and marketing, you may have to work for 5 days, 3-4 hour per day. However, once your website already has the right infrastructure (the website itself, its content & marketing) to market yourself, your product and/or business opportunity, there is no need to work 5 days a week and 3 hour per day anymore. Why? Because your website and its infrastructure will do the marketing work for you! If out of those 100 people, 2 people either buy or join your business, this would mean you have a 2% conversion rate (2 out of 100), which is considered to be a standard conversion rate in sales. This means, each month, you can have 8 people who either have bought your product or joined your business. You may even end up with higher conversion!

Moreover, you don’t have to deal with your prospect’s skepticism one by one. I’m not saying that you don’t have to deal with any skepcticism at all. There will some level of skepticism over your product and network marketing business online, BUT, your website infrastructure will do its job in sorting out the 98 people who are not interested with what you have to say and dont’t really need your product and/or business opportunity. This is a sample oif targeted marketing at work!

From this illustration, it is clear that to achieve the same end results (i.e. 8 customers/team members each month) the Internet Network Marketing offers more benefits compared to the Traditional Network Marketing approach.

B) INTERNET NETWORK MARKETING ENABLES YOU TO BUILD TRUST WITH PROSPECTS MORE

Traditional Network Marketing:

All my posts below are the reasons why the Network Marketing/ MLM business has a bad reputation in the business world out there and why I think it would be more challenging to build trust with your prospects with the traditional network marketing:

1) Why the 97% failure rates in Network Marketing?

2) I’m in the Network Marketing Biz! What’s wrong with that? What’s with the Renegade Network Marketing?

3) All the 7 Great Lies posts

Internet Network Marketing:

It is easier to build trust through the internet than through the traditional network marketing. However, marketing your business online would require a TOTAL MINDSET CHANGE. If in your traditional network marketing, your business platform is “RECRUIT…RECRUIT…RECRUIT” everywhere you go, in the internet network marketing, your platform should be “VALUE…VALUE…VALUE” everywhere you go online. But why, you might ask? Because using the internet to market your network marketing business doesn’t just mean that you transfer your “RECRUIT…RECRUIT…RECRUIT” mentality over to the internet! Your prospects are smart people and they will be able to smell this right away! Once you change your mindset from “RECRUIT…RECRUIT…RECRUIT” to “VALUE…VALUE…VALUE”, it would become easier for you to build trust with your prospects using the internet. This mindset change will prompt you to relentlessly provide valuable information to your prospects, over and over again, even if it’s for free. This will improve your relationship with your prospects as your prospects will see you as someone who gives valuable information freely and lavishly first before you present to them your product and/or business. Providing valuable information lavishly will also position you as a thought/education leader in your industry as hardly anybody is doing it In the industry that’s full of hype, the fewer value providers there are out there, the better positioned you will be to be a thought/education leader, because you will stick out like a sore thumb! If a prospect feels that you are a person that they might like to do business with, then they will buy because they feel that you have offered them some value for free. If they are considering your network marketing venture then they will come because they know that you will be the one to help them have a better life or increase their income. The deal is you must be more of a consultant and less a salesman.

In order to consult you should know the product and know how to allow the prospect to sell themselves on what they are buying. In the early days, Internet marketing was all about building a website or putting up banner ads on other websites. A website with appropriate text content, image inclusions and audio/video features is an excellent option of reaching out to a world audience and informing them about a company’s products/services and their features. Remember, in Network Marketing (in fact, in most businesses) you must remember that people usually buy based on their emotions, not because they like the product or the company necessarily but because they like the presentation and the presenter.

After all, which one would stand out among the full of hype crowd and which one would you trust more:

a) Somebody who right off the bat slams you with sales pitches - Buy my stuff! Join my business oppportunity! My product is the best! Let’s make money by recruiting..recruiting…recruiting! OR

b) Somebody who right off the bat slams you with lots and lots of valuable information for free before he/she presents his/her product and/or business?

C) INTERNET NETWORK MARKETING ENABLES YOU TO GENERATE YOUR OWN LEADS IN AUTOMATIC MODE

Traditional Network Marketing:

One common way to generate lead is to speak to your friends, family, relatives or anyone you know personally. This is a very tedious process that has to be done manually. You have to approach your prospects one by one and mannually write down their contact information in a small notepad.

Internet Network Marketing:

You can approach (or BE APPROACHED) by 100s, if not 1000s of prospects online, 24/7, provided that you’ve built your website infrastructure correctly. The world wide web never sleeps!

D) INTERNET NETWORK MARKETING IS MORE ECONOMICAL THAN THE TRADITIONAL NETWORK MARKETING

Traditional Network Marketing:

With the traditional network marketing, there are several marketing expenses that need to incur. They can be really costly especially if used towards marketing to non targeted prospects (i.e. not interested prospects).

1) Gas expenses

Imagine having to drive around to your prospect’s residence one by one, over and over again until your prospect turns into your customer/business team member. What if you have 100 people that you want to talk to?

2) Meeting room rental fees

If driving around to your prospect’s house one by one is not an option due the rising gas price, how about renting a meeting room in some hotel? Rental for a meeting room in a 3 star hotel would normally be costly as well.

3) Marketing pieces

Marketing pieces like company magazines, CDs, brochures, postcards etc. can be very costly if sent to uninterested prospects (i.e. not doing targeted marketing).

Internet Network Marketing:

With the Internet Network Marketing, there are several low marketing expenses that need to incur.

1) Hosting fee for your website / blog (around $10 per month)

2) Domain fee for your website / blog (around $10 per year per domain)

3) Internet Network Marketing training (at the beginning stage of your Internet network marketing)

E) INTERNET NETWORK MARKETING ENABLES YOU TO MONETIZE YOUR MARKETING EFFORT

Traditional network marketing:

“Monetizing my marketing? Is this person taking non-sense?”

Up to the time of writing of this article, I am not aware that you can monetize your marketing effort through the traditional network marketing.

Internet Network Marketing:

If you have a website or blog, you can monetize your marketing effort through several different ways:

1) Google AdSense

2) Affiliate marketing

3) Getting paid blogging (with blogs)

4) Contextual advertising

5) Selling advertising space to other vendors/marketers

Each of this monetization method will be discussed in my later post.

What do you think? Stick with the Traditional Network Marketing or Go with the Internet Network Marketing?

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