Multi Level Marketing Archives

June 15 2015

How to Make the Most out of Network Marketing

Michael BeebeAdvertising, Affiliate Marketing, Business, Business Strategy, Marketing, MLM Business, Entrepreneurship, FTB, Full Tilt Business, Michael Beebe, MLM, Multi Level Marketing, Network Marketing, Ownership, Small Business, Social Media Marketing, TheMichaelBeebe, TheMichaelBeebe.com

I know a big part of my audience is involved with various Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) organizations. Another name for an MLM is “Network Marketing.” The two are nearly interchangeable in every aspect, so I will just refer to them as MLMs since the word is shorter. This piece is directly related to that industry and ways to use multiple types of online tools to your advantage, but it will be of interest to any business as well. It is intended as a quick overview of what can be done online to help drive MLM style sales and use a generic MLM design for any examples. One thing that I do assume here is that you do understand how to use social media a little bit and know some of what I am talking about.

Overview.

First, what is Multi Level Marketing? A MLM is a group of people selling products or services in a higherarchy-style design that allows people to pass money from one level to another in exchange for these products and services. The people at the very bottom are the customers and at the very top are the owners. There are multiple commissions, again, paid out along this model. Each MLM is different, but they have a series of strict promotions based on benchmarks that a person must achieve. As you increase your level, you have to recruit more people to sell under you and build a team. The team building is typically done by a management-style pressure for lower level petiole you manage (called “downlinks” or “downlines”) to sell more and recruit new salespeople. Commissions are paid from the bottom to the top. The commission rates very and I know of one that allows a salesperson to earn six different commission rates at the same time. You can make some serious money in an MLM and most require the sales people to buy product in advance. Some (the good ones) simply give you a website or a link to promote so you get credit for your sales and the salespeople below you are catalogued into your commission rates. Just like any CEO, the top level makes the most money. My only critique of an MLM is that it doesn’t create new wealth, but simply passes wealth around. With that said, the bonuses paid to high performers and the amount of money some are making is amazing. A lot of people hate the idea of a MLM, but I have no feelings one way or another on the design and I think anyone who has a gift for sales and leadership should at least investigate being part of one, though my personal preference is affiliate marketing (which I will write a piece on for overview at some point soon). With that said, how do you market your product online?

Facebook (Business).

Normally I would post the Business Page after the personal page, but I’ll get to my reason for going out of order in a moment. Building a Facebook page is a simple task and if you need a quick overview on how to do it, please check out my tutorial at Tutorial 002: Build a Facebook Business Page. You can create just about any type of Business Page you want, but make sure you are choosing options that work best for the product you’re promoting. One of the best features of Facebook is the ability to schedule posts. That allows you to post things whenever you like for up to six months in advance of the posting.

Now why did I switch the Personal and Business Page order for just this section? Because of IFTTT, a website and selection of mobile applications that allow for automation of a multitude of social networking (and other) types of websites. IFTTT means “IF This, Then That” and is a series of algorithms that allow you to have one social networking site create a cascade into other social sites. Since a Business Page is able to be scheduled, this can act as a master link to the algorithm, including adding an auto repost to your personal Facebook page. You can download IFTTT on your iPhone or Android and use the website at IFTTT.com. I highly recommend their services, even if they can seem a bit complex.

Facebook (Personal).

One of the most common way for a person to use their Facebook page to their own advantage and move product is a simple daily posting. This is easy to do and gives you a good cross section of friends that are potentially like-minded. The biggest obstacle here is your other postings. I have run for office a few times now and I do have political discussions on my personal Facebook page, but I have also referred to people as “douche bag” and “ass hat” before, with the latter being one of my personal favorites and it has worked its way into my personal lexicon for everyday life. A lot of people don’t take “that guy” seriously. Some of these are people you went to high school with and they remember you from those days. How does someone I went to college with take me seriously? When I first did a public announcement that I was running for office on my Facebook page, one girl I went to Purdue-Cal with immediately responded with, “You? You’re joking, right?” Never the less, I was running and had to overcome this obstacle and be seen as a serious candidate. How do you overcome that obstacle with people remembering you? You remember them too. Everybody was a dumbass in school and then they got older. Your parents were dumbasses and so were your grandparents. The perception of a person from their Facebook posts isn’t the obstacle a lot of people might think they are, provided there are no racist remarks or overly sexist jokes. If you have to ask yourself if you need to be “reborn” on Facebook, the answer is “yes” and you should delete the account and just start over. If it was simple dumbassery, don’t worry about it.

So now that being a dumbass is out of the way, post daily. Post something pertaining to your business every day. Most MLM’s give a gigantic resource of pictures, product videos, and product samples that you can get pictures of. You have a URL you can embed in your posts and they show the links pretty nicely.

Facebook (Groups).

The Facebook Groups are an awesome way to communicate ideas to large (yes) groups of people. Depending on what you are selling, you can find a group to fit your needs and possibly more than one. There are two options here. The first option is to start a group and add your closest friends that are sympathetic to your needs. Ask them to network and add their friends and create it as an “open” group so there is direct advertising to the group. Your other option is to comment in groups. Find the Groups that match your products best and push for sales. Now you can’t really just add links to sakes sites without pissing some (a lot) of people off and being “the annoying sales person.” The best advice is to find people asking questions and answer them with helpful answers publicly. This helps build up a relationship with the people in the group and this can help you make some sales.

If you remember the “push and pull” method I talked about in my piece titled Pinterest Strategies that Work. Use it the same way on Twitter. That’s how you get leads. Just follow the followers of your competition products. If you sell a product similar to Herbalife, follow Herbalife followers and expect a 20% to 30% follow-back rate. Growth is not immediate, especially is you have no substantial content.

By going to Facebook.com/twitter, you can link your Facebook page to Twitter and post directly to Twitter when you post on Facebook. You’ll have to link your accounts, which is explained pretty easily and your posts on Facebook will then post on Twitter at the same time. That’s another great use of the Facebook automation.

You can’t automate Instagram, which is very unfortunate, because it’s a great resource. As I pointed out earlier, many of the products you sell will give you a gargantuan supply of product pictures. Load them on your phone and list them on Instagram! Do this now! You can’t schedule posts, but you can post while taking a leak or ordering at a fast food place from the app on your phone. Also, you can link the app directly to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and FourSquare. There are a couple others you can link and they are in languages I don’t speak. When linking Instagram to another service, look at the automation you have set up first. If you link to Twitter and Facebook, your Instagram will go to Twitter, Facebook and because of automation, back on Twitter so you’ll have two tweets at the same time of the same thing.

Without going into any details, Pinterest is your target audience. There is one downside, though, is the lack of automation. Even with IFTTT, you can only send automation scripts from Pinterest, not to it, so while you can post things automatically that were on your Pinterest account, you can post from it. Don’t worry about this. You can post on Pinterest and reach your audience very quickly. With the various search options, you can easily target the group’s you want to attract and the mobile apps are freaking awesome. Post your information frequently and repin other people’s stuff. You’ll get people (eventually) letting you pin to their boards as well. Likes are good, repins are better. Try getting people to repin your pins.

Tumblr is a blogging site. I will be discussing it in-depth in next week’s blog, but it works pretty well to write about topics you know well enough to discuss and write blogs about. You can also post pictures, video, and links to your product page and once again, it is able to be scheduled for when you want to post. Just like my push and pull method, you can follow the followers of the competition. As a word of advice, focus on the people who reblog other’s posts in their own feeds. That will allow you the greatest growth.

LinkedIn (Personal).

The how-to of setting up the LinkedIn account is less important than doing it. If you are proud of your résumé and want to show your involvement in the MLM, this is a great place to do it. You can brag about your accomplishments and brag to your connections about them. This can be a valuable tool in building your team and showcasing your skills and talents. The time is longer to get noticed, but the target market for a lot of MLMs are the ever-coveted 25-45 year old crowd and they populate LinkedIn in droves

LinkedIn (Business).

Like Facebook, you can set up a business (company) page. If you like what you do, do this to promote it. Make it personalized since an MLM is so large and you don’t have full rights to the company name, but you can make your own fan site that promotes a product you are selling with supplied product reviews, testimonials, and images.

Google+ (Personal).

This is analogous to a standard personal Facebook page, but more boring. This attracts a more no-nonsence crowd, so you (fortunately) won’t see many “grumpy cat” photos. Make frequent postings on this as you do with your personal Facebook page. It’s less cluttered with crap. Use this to your advantage and post away on Google+. It will add more legitimacy to your product and to you as a salesperson. By doing this, you can target your friends who otherwise dismissed you. It ties into your Facebook account if you set it up to do so and allows you to find contacts from there or people you have emailed from your Gmail account, so you should have no problem finding your already existing friends. I will warn that it has a slightly higher learning curve than Facebook, but you will get used to it.

Google+ (Business).

This works a lot like Facebook Pages and includes an automation system that allows for scheduling of posts in advance. That is a great design, but when coupled with IFTTT, it can move your posting up to the next level. Important areas to note are the clientele and the design. The clientele is totally different than the regular Facebook user. With this, in mind, they are usually more business-minded and that’s the information they are looking for in the site. The design is also a little different (insert the word “boring”) and that goes back to it being more business-minded. It’s very functional and no frills.

I was half tempted to add this as a subcategory under Google+, but I was talked out of it with the thinking that it is used as a separate entity, so it has it’s own separate area in my piece as well. YouTube is freaking huge! Everybody knows YouTube so it sells itself. It allows you to post videos of whatever you want. Get permission from your MLM that you work under and get hard video to upload. It will be branded as the company video, so they maintain the credit for it, but you can embed your own sales links into it. Product demonstrations are big right now with the most views and this could truly drive your sales with an infomercial-like strategy. In addition, you can monetize YouTube. You know those fifteen second commercials that play before every third video you watch? The person who’s site that commercial plays on (in its entirety without the viewer collapsing the screen) gets paid. Some get paid more than others, but they get paid. If you get a big enough audience and following, you can make a side income from these commercials.

I’ll keep this short. Check in on FourSquare. Set up your home as an official FourSquare site (it costs $1 on a credit card) and that’s it. Make sure you check in every time you get home. Yes, your home is now a public place that people online see, but your name is in the phone book and you are a business owner, so suck it up. Instagram and Facebook will both integrate in various ways to FourSquare, so your checkins are also posted on Facebook and your Instagram photos can be easily geotagged for location. This helps you on Instagram because when you go out to eat you can share a photo to Instagram and check in to the restaurant at the same time. That puts your photo (of the products you are selling) directly on Foursquare when strangers look at that restaurant and check in there. It’s a whole new marketing outside of your personal network.

Forums can be a great if you have an intimate knowledge of the products and services you are selling. To get started, type in a google search for “Business Forums” and replace “business” with whatever word you want that works with what you are selling. When you set up a profile, you can include a link to a website. For that space, include the website for your sales linkage. Many times, you can also add your personal LinkedIn account. Do so! Now search the topics that people have posted and help them. Just talk to them and offer advice. Do not go for a hard sell immediately. Answer a few questions in a few different threads. Advertise your product, but not overtly. Make sure people can contact you and do so directly, not just through the forum messaging system. This will help propel your target audience to your site more frequently.

The main goal of this writing was to show my readers what they can do to promote their product or service while spending just twenty minutes a day (at most) actively engaged. Not all aspects will work with synchronicity in both directions for automation, but by pre-scheduling posts, a lot of the issues can be dealt with easily and allow you more time to handle other aspects of your new career path. Each one of these listed sites will be the subject of a future video tutorial, starting with setting up a Facebook Business Page and other blog pieces with some descriptions of each of these setups. I may have to skip video on Instagram and Foursquare since they are designed primarily as mobile applications instead of websites with applications that simply accompany them.

Take care and be creative with your sales and promotions. You have to promote your product so a single potential buyer sees the product seven times in an eighteen-month period of time. This isn’t just me throwing a dart at a number or pulling it out of my ass. It’s an actual statistic and you can feel free to look it up. So for you to make your first sale, you have to have that person see your product seven times on Facebook in their newsfeed or in a combination of multiple feeds that they see.

As a final note, I would like to apologize to any grammar Nazis out there. I wrote nearly this entire piece in the notepad of my iPhone with a tiny keypad. It’s 3,000 words long, so give me a break and just read the damn thing for what it is.

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.