The one word common to both internet marketing and network marketing is, of course, marketing. It’s the way that prospects and potential customers will eventually find out about you and your product or service.
Even if you have some success with off-line network marketing people these days will expect you to have a blog or website. Marketing is simply another word for advertising and the wider you can spread your message the more leads you will get and the more income you will earn.
Set Up a Blog
Setting up a blog for your business is not difficult; the hard part is consistently marketing yourself to your target audience, with the aim of building relationships.
This means not just pitching your opportunity or product but helping others understand how your opportunity can benefit them. This also means becoming involved with people on social media, forums and other related blogs and websites. It will take a consistent effort to build traffic. That traffic will only sign up to your list if you can keep them engaged with helpful information.
Remember to interact with people who leave comments on your blog. In the beginning you probably won’t get many constructive comments, just people looking to find backlinks for their own sites. Don’t let it get you down, trash them and wait for the day when you have a consistent flow of visitors when people will start leaving questions and constructive comments. Be sure to interact with them, answer their questions and build a relationship. They’ll keep coming back.
List Building
The primary aim of your blog should be to capture qualified leads and build a substantial email list. It’s not sufficient just to add content to your blog, content must also be in the form of email messages. Staying in touch via email with prospects will eventually pay off.
Emails must also be carefully constructed, helpful, not too frequent and with attention grabbing titles. If you send out an email two or three times a week don’t alienate people by pitching and pushing your product every time. Emails should be upbeat and positive which will pique a prospect’s interest, enough for them to think “well if she can do it so can I”.
Without getting a consistent supply of leads from “warm”, interested prospects every day you are not going to be able to build a successful network marketing business. That’s the plain truth; your aim should be to find and attract qualified prospects every day. It will take a list of hundreds, even thousands of names before you can start making a substantial income.
In effect you are marketing yourself, just as if you were building a business off-line. Online the only way to build a relationship effectively is to be seen as an expert and a helpful human being. You’ll still be knocking on doors in effect, but online those doors will be found in social media sites, forums and other blogs.
Self-Branding
Self branding is just another way of becoming recognized and trusted. You may follow certain internet or network marketers online yourself. Many are instantly recognizable because of their names and photographs. They spread themselves around and so should you. This takes a concerted effort.
Too many people start out on the internet with high hopes but lose interest after a few weeks, mainly because they’re not making any money. If you’ve been told it’s easy and you’ll be making thousands within a couple of months, you’ve been duped my friend. It may take many months of hard work before you start to see results. Keep at it.
Continue to Build
After building a substantial list of at least a few hundred names and you are still positive and passionate about your business then you can start investing in other ways to promote yourself and your product. By this time you should have already begun to make videos and done some regular article marketing.
You will also have identified where your best prospects are coming from and areas where you have had poor results. Concentrate on your best sources and perhaps try different tactics in the areas that are not performing.
There are tools to use for finding where the traffic to your blog is coming from (e.g Google Analytics). Always monitor everything you do so you can stay ahead of the game, keep adjusting and trying new tactics.
What are your Goals?
Planning a business is important and setting realistic goals will help spur you on, because some days you may feel you’re getting nowhere.
After you’ve set up your blog perhaps make your monthly target 100 new subscribers, perhaps doubling that number the second month. Daily goals should be to produce content for both your blog and every couple of days submitting an article to a number of different article directories. You’ll soon get into good habits and a routine, and that builds a solid foundation for a successful business.