MLM/Network Marketing – why Personal Marketing is still important!

Now I know it might be very unfashionable to say that personal marketing (or face-to-face marketing, or belly-to-belly marketing, or marketing involving actual contact between real people) is an important part of Network Marketing – but I believe that at least some of your Network Marketing activities have to involve personal marketing!

This is of course not entirely true if you belong to an online-only MLM/Network Marketing business opportunity.

So let’s qualify this – I’m talking here more about Network Marketing business opportunities involving trade of actual products, such as health or beauty products (which is a common product field for Network Marketing companies). Inevitably stock of this nature means some personal trading.

One issue is that of just starting out in Network Marketing. Picture a newly recruited rep that you are training/mentoring on the business: How will you train/mentor that person to start making their own contacts/sales/recruitments if they don’t speak to real people, and real people they know – at least to start with, in order to get up and running with some customers, some sales and some rep recruiting?

Now you need to know that I’m not only a strong advocate of Internet Marketing, but also an Internet Marketer and Internet Marketing trainer and consultant. So I believe strongly in the power of distance marketing across the internet…..

But, for Network Marketing, I still don’t think it will be easy or even entirely relevant for a new distributor/rep to start doing all their Network Marketing activities over the Internet. It takes time to establish an Internet presence, and time for them to build up the credibilty and SEO of their websites sufficiently enough for them and their websites to be found easily on the Internet. In the meantime they can be generating income and business on the ground. 

So ultimately there must be a balance – some personal marketing interspersed with internet marketing, where relevant.

There are simply some things that are still better done face-to-face, and these are:

• meeting people,
• establishing rapport and trust,
• really listening to their individual issues and showing you care,
• contacting them to follow up if your solutions worked,
• and attending training with other company reps that can very motivating.

But the Internet can of course be a very powerful tool or medium which can significantly add to your Network Marketing efforts in the following ways:

• reaching people that are simply nowhere near you geographically,
• reaching many more people than would be physically possible for you to do personally,
• adding value with information, training and advice which can enhance strangers’ lives and businesses,
• adding to the growing database of online resources with a broader spectrum of all sorts of information around your products/services, business opportunities, online marketing, network marketing, and so on,
• and similarly, training and educating yourself on a much wider range of issues than would have been relevant for just face-to-face marketing. 

Even with Internet Marketing, personalized and customized contact is better than sending out bulk generic messages which really do miss more than they hit. People like to deal with real people, even on the Internet, and you will need to find ways via your Internet Marketing messages, websites, articles, videos and posts to be real, to be individual, to stand out from the crowd, and to add personal value to others’ lives, even though you’ll probably never meet those people/strangers face-to-face.

Please note that I will no longer be updating this blog. Instead please visit the new home for this blog, http://AztecInternetMarketing.com, for all these articles, plus many more recent articles and updates. See you there!

Belly image acknowledgement: http://tos8.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/rubbing-belly-2-belly-2/

Man with items in jacket graphic acknowledgement: http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/tags/school+fundraising/default.aspx

Periodic Table of the Internet graphic acknowledgement: http://www.rsc-northwest.ac.uk/acl/eMagArchive/RSCeMags2007/July07/012eMagazine/internet_periodic_table.html