It has been said that a brand is not real; instead, it “exists only in the minds of your customers.” The customer’s impression of your company is what truly matters when you’re considering business growth.
So how do you increase company awareness and grow your brand? Well, one of the strategies you should use consistently is network marketing.
In this article, we’ll go over the best network marketing strategies in play today. We’ll also give you a list of things to avoid in the process.
What Is Network Marketing?
Network marketing, also known as multi-level marketing or direct sales, can be described as:
“A business model in which a distributor network is needed to build the business. Usually, such businesses are also multilevel marketing in nature in that payouts occur at more than one level.”
Essentially, network marketing is a business opportunity for those who want to work part-time or create a residual income.
Depending on how your network marketing is run, affiliates – people who sell your products – will start by making a small investment.
They’ll give your company this investment in exchange for a “starter pack” of your products or services. Their mission is to sell these to their friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances.
Another way network marketing affiliates are useful is that they recruit others to do the same thing.
This is where the term “multi-level” gets its meaning. If they succeed in bringing a new sales rep on board, that person becomes part of the original person’s downline.
In most network marketing strategies, the more people an affiliate recruits, the bigger their downline is and the more residual income they earn.
Network Marketing vs. Pyramid Schemes
This can be tricky; the focus needs to stay on the products and services, not recruiting. If the best way to earn an income through your network marketing program is by growing downlines, it’s what’s known as a “pyramid scheme.”
Pyramid schemes are illegal and should be avoided at all costs.
There are many famous network marketing businesses. Avon, Mary Kay, Amway, Tupperware, and Scentsy can all be considered network marketing brands. They successfully market their products to people, turn some of them into affiliate salespeople, and have them sell their products as well as recruit more people to sell.
Network marketing strategies are similar to brand ambassadors, in which other people share your brand’s message. The sole difference is with brand ambassadors you don’t necessarily have to pay them.
With network marketing, you’ll have incentives, residual income, and commission from sales.
Don’t worry, this is a good use of funds. It normally doesn’t cost too much compared to the sales revenue you receive, plus it gives your affiliate salespeople more incentive to succeed with network marketing. Win-win.
What Are the Benefits of Network Marketing?
There are plenty of benefits to using network marketing strategies for your business:
Affordable Salespeople
Stay-at-home moms, part-time workers, entrepreneurs, and other types of people will love this opportunity. You’re giving them the chance to make an income from anywhere, selling products or services they believe in.
Low-Risk Marketing
This is a benefit for both sides.
As a business, you’re empowering somebody who actually cares about your brand and is excited to work for the company. As an entrepreneur, they have a trusted brand looking out for them and keeping them afloat in the early days.
The potential payoff for each – a successful entrepreneurial business and a ton of sales revenue – makes it worth the journey.
Gets Your Quality Product Out There
Network marketing lets your product or service get out to demographics or geographical locations it normally wouldn’t reach.
Allowing any and all individuals sell for you gives you a wide impact on the market.
Low Operating Costs
Training can be universal. Technology gives your affiliates the power to work on their laptops.
You don’t have to technically hire employees; instead, you compensate marketers who buy into your mission.
Create Lifelong, Loyal Customers
When people purchase products from their family members or friends, there’s an extra dose of trust in that exchange. They believe in their close acquaintance. They will continue to buy from them, as a personal representative for the company.
If they enjoy the product, they will become a loyal customer to your brand, whether they join the network marketing aspect or not.
In short, using network marketing strategies is a low-risk no-brainer. If you want to keep things simple in your business, spread your influence wide by empowering normal men and women into creating their own businesses of selling your products.
The Best Network Marketing Strategies
Now you might wonder how to get started with network marketing. To help you out, we’ll share some strategies that you can implement today.
Incentivize with Residual Income
Residual income is, for the most part, an incredible way to accumulate wealth.
Network marketing strategies allow anybody to create a business centered around residual income. And not just any residual income – that which can be achieved by all. Usually, residual income can be made through book royalties, rentals, or other types of royalties.
But in the network marketing world, you can create residual income in numerous ways.
How residual income works in network marketing strategies is pretty straightforward.
For your affiliates, they train to sell your product and recruit others to do the same. When they sell X amount of your product, you give them a certain amount of residual income. This income will come in month after month, forever.
The same can be done for recruiting. Once an affiliate has a specific number of people in his or her downline, they are rewarded with residual income. The more sales, the more recruits, the higher the residual income.
For those who get on board early, it’s a ton of upfront work for a huge payout down the road.
The same is true for your brand. You train a handful of affiliates, you experience little return revenue in the beginning. Once you have enough people in the pipeline selling your products – revenue will explode.
Train amazing affiliate salesmen, have them build their teams, have them sell a ton of products. This network marketing strategy should be at the core of your brand. It gives both sides a great incentive to put in as much effort as possible.
Use Network Marketing Software
Network marketing strategies are only as good as their marketing software.
There are multiple ways you can use software:
- Training software
- Prospecting and follow-up
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Marketing
All of this software is available to serve one purpose: to make sure your network marketing business is running efficiently.
Take a look at your brand. What section is lagging behind? Is it your social media, training, prospecting, or something else?
Find areas where your company could improve. Equipped with your answer, invest in quality software to upgrade those areas.
While it might cost a bit at the start, the value is worlds above the cost – your company will be running more effectively in the long run.
Whether it’s personal branding, email software like MailChimp, or sales funnel software, they are out there to keep your business running at peak efficiency.
Have a Quality Product or Service
This one should be intuitive, but it bears mentioning.
Your entire brand stands on how great your product or service is. This is what gets people to sell it, to get other people on board, to create a real need.
Without a quality product, your network marketing strategies won’t matter because nobody will want to be associated.
Hopefully, your business is already fairly successful in selling products. The trick with network marketing is getting people who aren’t within the company to sell the brand. In order to do this as easily as possible, your product should be able to be sold with zero marketing.
What’s meant by this is customers should clamor for your product. The need has been built up, the desire is incredibly high. All your affiliate salesperson has to do is provide a solution to a problem customers have.
Don’t ever let your product fall off the relevant bandwagon.
Continue to improve and tweak your products or services so that they serve a purpose to the community. This will make your network marketing strategies powerful above all else.
Give Free, Fun Training
Offering training for free has its perks.
For one, it becomes available to the most amount of people – a.k.a., anyone with a WiFi connection. For two, it allows them to test out the process, something that goes a long way with those who end up signing up for the affiliate program.
If you decided to go the other route and make people pay for training, you immediately throw some individuals off. Instead, give it out for free to the masses. You’ll get gobs of people flooding to your training, which will sift the dedicated people through better than if you made them pay.
Your goal is to get loyal network marketing affiliates. To get the best team, train them for success – no matter if they join you or not.
Keep Your Website and Social Media On-Point
Your social presence gives your network marketing affiliates a template to structure their businesses.
Why does this matter?
Well, giving your salespeople a guide to selling your products improves your sales from each of them.
Plus, your website should be simple and easy to navigate for your affiliates. This means quick access to their profiles, statistics, and sales. Also, you want your website to focus on the products while your brand serves as a platform for the sellable items.
As for social media, what you post gives your people samples of what works for their social media. Your product might resonate better on Facebook or Twitter – give your affiliates the ammo to succeed on the right platform at the right times.
When your brand’s social identity is on-point, it gives your affiliates an advantage to be working with a well-represented company.
Teach How to Sell the Product’s Benefits
By far one of the most important network marketing strategies is to make your product’s benefits top priority.
To be clear, this is not training to sell the features of your products, but the benefits. People care about how things will help them in their life. Therefore, you should care about that, too.
Train your affiliates to sell your products based on the benefits. This sets both your brand and your affiliates’ businesses up for increased success. Selling will be easier and teaching will be simpler because you’ll be training everybody the same exact thing.
Teaching how to sell the benefits works great with the earlier tip to offer free training.
It shows potential program members the values your brand stands for, which will result in more recruits. Then, when they start to recruit for their downline, they can recite how your brand focuses on helping their customers.
Again, this is one of the most vital network marketing strategies you can use for your program.
Focus on Selling, NOT Recruiting
Your desired result is to build the brand. This does not mean increasing the empire through the number of sales affiliates. What it does mean is increasing influence in the industry.
This equates to selling numerous products from loyal affiliates.
You have to train people in the program to sell products, not sell others to sell the products. If this happens, your brand turns into an illegal pyramid scheme, which is the absolute last thing you want.
Another way you can ensure you don’t slide into pyramid scheme territory is give better incentives for selling products than for recruiting others. Residual income should be higher for the number of products sold. This makes people automatically focus on selling.
This is one of those network marketing strategies that may not provide optimal revenue, but it keeps your brand safe from turning into something unsavory and illegal.
Network Marketing Strategies Will Skyrocket Your Business
Use one or more of these amazing tips for your network marketing. It will take your brand to a whole other level of awareness and popularity. Plus, it adds people to your marketing team with a minimal payout.
In 2015, over 20 million Americans were involved in network marketing, creating $36 billion in retail sales. This is a huge opportunity for both brands and individuals.
If you think your business would flourish with network marketing strategies, start researching how to begin today.
In case you want assistance in building your network marketing company, check out Yoobly’s lineup of high-quality marketing products!