by Cathy Yeatts
Are you working yourself dizzy trying to build your mlm business, but feel like you?re getting nowhere with your prospects? Maybe it’s time to pause, take a breath and rethink your approach.
The ability to answer the following questions and to effectively put those answers into practice is essential to achieving the growth you desire for your home business.
1. Who is my target group, and what are their needs?
2. What am I marketing?
3. How am I marketing this?
The answer to Question 1 really just involves some basics of human interaction. Everybody loves to feel understood. You’ll get a lot further with your target market if you understand what they’ve been through and what their needs are, but first, you must clearly establish who this target market is. Are they young women looking for the newest breakthrough in skin care that will help give them greater confidence? Are they those who have suffered with health problems and are seeking a new answer in nutrition? Or are they stay-at-home moms needing to earn money from home? Identify these things, and you can establish yourself as they answer they need.
It’s a good practice to put yourself in the place of your target market. What frustration have they met with? Try to empathize with what they might be feeling. Empathy is a wonderful tool, in life and in business.
Never undervalue the role that emotions play in buying and selling. Don’t worry that it is unethical to appeal to emotions in marketing. It is simply realistic. Actions almost always follow emotions.
How did you answer Question 2? If you said, “I’m marketing my company’s products and business opportunity,” you need to shift your thinking. You actually need to be marketing your number one commodity, YOU!
If you doubt that, consider that there are over 28.7-billion* people out there selling business opportunities right now. Your target market could just as easily go with any of them. So the important aspect in your marketing isn’t the product or the opportunity, but the why.
Give your prospects a reason to link themselves to you. Show yourself to be a leader in your field by providing authoritative content. Make yourself available by including your contact information on your site and on the advertising you put on the net. Be quick to return emails and phone calls. Isn’t that the kind of sponsor you’d like to work with?
The final thing to consider when setting up your marketing is, “How am I presenting this?” Well . . . that is a topic that would take many articles to write about! But I can give a few pointers here.
First of all, make use of all the free advertising space on the Internet. YouTube and Squidoo are just a couple of the avenues you can use to make your face, your name and your business familiar on the web. You could also invest in banner ads that appear on certain sites, or use a pay-per-click service, such as Google Adwords.
Articles are a great way to promote yourself and your business. As you’re writing, keep in mind the types of keywords your target audience might be typing into the search engine boxes and incorporate those words or phrases often into your text.
If article writing is not your cup of tea, outsource your writing projects using a service like Elance or Shelancers. (Yes, there are people out there who like to do the things you consider a drag.)
Disperse your content through the Internet using one of the many article directories available, like GoArticles, or EzinArticles.com.
Reassess your marketing techniques often and use these tips to give your network marketing business the jumpstart it needs.
*Statistic from the Direct Selling Association.
About the Author:
Discover more about
attraction marketing and learn how to apply the principles to your network marketing business. Cathy Yeatts is a business developer and small business blogger.