Network Marketing Online--Why Do It Any Other Way?

As a network marketer, I do about 99.9% of all my marketing online. With the Internet, it's just a no-brainer. Network marketing is a people business, and where can you reach more people than the Internet?

Offline marketing is just so time consuming. I remember the hours spent on the phone calling numbers from a list I'd purchased. If I did get through to the person I was trying to reach, which happened about 3% of the time, they were usually rude, said they hadn't requested any information, and would appreciate it if I took them off my list.

What a waste of time!

Another offline technique I'd used was the 3-foot-rule. You know, that's the one where you strike up a conversation with anyone coming within 3 feet of you, and snaking your business message in there somehow. I used to go to the grocery store, solely for that purpose. Oh yeah, that one really brought me a lot of business (not!).

Still another tactic was placing or handing out flyers. I was taught to go to apartment building parking lots at 2am and put flyers on all the cars. This one felt sneaky, almost dirty, like I was ashamed of what I was doing. No wonder so many of us quit this business.

The discomfort factor really plays into it, as well. Unless you have incredibly thick skin and a "sales" personality, offline marketing can be quite intimidating. You experience it the very first time you try to make a cold call. If you're like I was, your mouth becomes the Sahara, and the phone suddenly weighs 700 pounds. You make every excuse you can think of to put this off until another day.

With offline marketing, it's also difficult to target prospects. Face it, handing out flyers at Walmart is not going to net you many serious prospects. Neither will placing an ad in your local newspaper.

Another downside to offline marketing is their training, or lack thereof. Training usually consists of going to meetings, either in a hotel room or somebody's home. If the meetings are held Thursdays at 7pm and you work from noon until 8pm, then where does that put you?

That's a double whammy, because offline marketers tend to get beat down more than online marketers. Because of this, they actually need that training, just to stay focused and motivated.

If you're thinking about marketing online, you will need at least some training in online advertising and marketing. If you don't know much about autoresponders and capture pages, for instance, those are two aspects of online marketing you will need to become familiar with.

One very positive aspect of online marketing is that it's very easy to target your prospects. Safelists, traffic exchanges, and keywords for search engines provide just some ways to take aim at your market.

Probably the biggest selling point for me, however, is that online marketing doesn't require any sales skills or outgoing personality. And honestly, network marketing is not set up for just those kinds of people. It's all about duplication, and just because you might be a sales type, doesn't mean that everybody in your downline has that type of personality. How, then, would they duplicate your success?

As far as training goes, you can train and motivate your downline daily, with all the online methods available. Is a downline member struggling? Shoot her an email with a link to a motivating website, or maybe to some training she needs to overcome a problem.

Personally, I see little reason to market any other way.

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