Online Network Marketing: Pipe Dream or Pot of Gold?
The term online network marketing gets tossed around casually by different people meaning different things. No doubt you came across the term (and search for it) because someone told you that taking your MLM business online was a guaranteed path to success. We’ll let’s be realistic, there are no guarantees (especially not in network marketing), but there are a lot of positive thing happening with online network marketing that you should be aware of so you can figure out it that direction is right for you.The term online network marketing really encompasses at least 3 totally different realms – Products, Lead Generation and Social Proof – and we will explore each of these separately. Contrary to popular opinion online network marketing isn’t just for online products and services. If you provide a physical product or offline service, keep reading to understand how online network marketing factors into your lead generation and can be used to establish credibility.Online Network Marketing: Online Products and ServicesIf you provide an online product or service you already know it. For everyone else, the types of MLM products that we are talking about in this section are products such as discount programs, travel programs, financial services or training programs. All of these products and services are intangible. There is no physical item to hold, touch and smell.If you promote an intangible product, you can use online network marketing techniques across your entire marketing, sales and delivery process. You can generate the lead online, explain the product online, close the transaction online and deliver the purchase online. An online product or service allows you to build a truly virtual company that you can operate from anywhere and that doesn’t require your physical presence. If you are an introvert or are tired of home-meetings occupying your evenings and weekends, an intangible product is the right choice for your online network marketing endeavors.With a physical product, you can use online network marketing tactics for lead generation, education and transaction processing, but there will typically be an intermediate in-person step. No matter how much online education is available, almost all new customers will want to taste any edible products, try on any fashion products or feel and home decor products. Note that we say “new” customers in the previous sentence. For existing customers and are familiar with the product quality or taste, online network marketing can be highly effective for reorders or introducing a new seasonal product line.Online Network Marketing: Online Lead GenerationNo matter what product or service you are promoting, lead generation is universally the central focus of your online network marketing program. One 2011 study found that 900 million people access the internet from a PC at home and a whopping 1.6 billion active mobile phone subscriptions. In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama committed to providing 98% of all Americans with high-speed wireless internet access in the next five years. There has been no other time in history where a new, solo entrepreneur could use technology and a little savvy know-how to reach a market of millions from their home.The power of online network marketing is best applied toward lead generation. You put your offer in front of hundreds, thousands or millions of people, they self-select in our out. You’ve probably heard your upline sponsor refer to the practice of “sifting and sorting”. The internet is the most powerful way to automate the front-end portion of this process. Allow automated systems to screen prospects and pass you only the most qualified leads for further personal follow-up.Online lead generation applies equally to product and service sales and to finding new downline distributors. While the message and the offer will be different, the concepts and technical aspects of the online network marketing system are the same. Once you learn online lead generation you can apply it to any company and any product line.Online Network Marketing: Social ProofThe unique role of the internet as a validator of claims is often over-looked in discussions of online network marketing. When people encounter new information and aren’t sure whether to trust the information (or the source) they look for validation from sources that they DO trust. Trusted sources might include impartial newspapers, research publications, parents, long-time friends or credentialed experts. The more reinforcement of the central message they get from the sources they trust most, the more they believe the original claim.But does the opinion of one expert really outweigh the opinion of 1 stranger. How about 1 expert versus 100 strangers. What about a 10,000 ordinary strangers all saying the same thing? At some point the qualifications of the source become somewhat irrelevant and sheer numbers take over.The internet can make or break your company or product based on social proof alone. This has nothing to do with lead generation or sales, this aspect of online network marketing is about brand reputation. Even if you are not generating leads online or selling online, you need to be aware of the online chatter about your company and its products or services and whether it is trending negative or positive.Online Network Marketing: Getting StartedWe have looked at three aspect of online network marketing to give you a sense for its diversity. While there are a handful of networkers that succeed 100% online, the vast majority are using the internet for specific strategic objectives which support their offline efforts. Some might use the internet for lead generation, others for social networking, others for team training and yet others for record-keeping and administration. In fact, the most effective business systems we have ever seen, combine online and offline methods to reach the prospect through multiple modalities.That’s why we have one primary online network marketing training system that we recommend. The creators of this program a wicked-smart about all the advanced online tactics, but are keenly aware that they are most powerful when combined with offline print, radio or mail strategies. Also, the creators of this online network marketing program were beginners themselves not long ago and are able to teach as if they were in a beginner’s shoes. If you are ready for advanced, that’s in there too.
Internet Marketing Explained Part 3 – Marketing Tools For Your Online Business
So you have decided what your online business model will be. So now the question is, how are you going to get your business in front of consumers? The answer is the ever so talked about, internet marketing. The word internet marketing covers quite a bit of ground. So in this article I want to break down a few things that are all considered internet or online marketing. This is not the how-to, rather it is the what-can be done with internet marketing. Some of the things we are going to cover will work as supporting internet marketing tools, while other can function as a complete business for those who only do internet marketing like affiliate marketers for example. In part 4 of this article we will go into building traffic to your site, we will also discuss other aspects of internet marketing in parts 5, 6, 7 and 8.If you are ready to start looking at doing some internet marketing for your business you should have already done all the basic research. Your site should be up with all the basic marketing tools on them, and you will know what your target market is. Since I am going to assume that you do not have the marketing tools on there yet, I will go over a few of them as well.So what internet marketing tools are available for you to use, both on your site and as additional support. The basic ones that you should be aware of and hopefully have on your site is either a newsletter or auto-responder. This requires an opt-in form somewhere on your page that allows you to get a persons email address if nothing else. Most will ask for both a name and email since it allows you to personalize your correspondence with the user. Some other basic tools are of course your copy, images and other content that you can have on your site, but that is pretty much a given. Other tools that can be used on your website as part of internet marketing are for example auctions, coupons, membership areas and of course informational pages. Even though you are not selling the information, it can still be a very valuable tool. Another thing you can do on your site as part of your internet marketing is offer an affiliate program, which of course only works if you are selling something and you are not an affiliate marketer yourself.The next thing I want to mention as part of internet marketing is SEO. This is what makes the search engines deliver your website as a result when people do specific searches. SEO is a big part of generating traffic to you website, or should we say, it can be a big part if you do it right. SEO has two aspects that are both important and need to be done right in order for your internet marketing to be effective. The two aspects of SEO are on-site and off-site optimization. If you approach your marketing on the internet in a well thought out way, you will automatically be doing off-site optimization, but the on-site will require your direct attention, research and work. SEO does not happen over night and is an ongoing process on your behalf to make sure that your site is steadily climbing up the results on the search engines. If you do your research and understand SEO you will not need to focus specifically on it, rather it is something that is built along side your online business.Now here is a brief look at some tools that you can use that are not directly related to your website, or on your website. These are the internet marketing tools you can use in combination with your website in order to increase traffic, exposure, brand recognition and if done right you can use some of these tools to increase your turn over rate of lookers to buyers. A few marketing tool you can use are of course the obvious ones like plain advertisements. This can be PPC, PPM or banner advertisements. In addition you can use classifieds, paid registration with directories and local business registration with some of the search engines. This type of internet marketing can vary extremely in price and depending on what kind of investments you are willing to make, may be over your internet marketing budget. This form on internet marketing is extremely effective, if of course they are done right.Some other forms of internet marketing you can use are things like squeeze pages, social media marketing and email marketing. Squeeze pages are becoming very popular with internet marketers, because you can use them in several ways. This includes using them on your website and/or setting them up to work as a stand alone tool in your internet marketing campaign. A squeeze page or opt-in page as they are also known as is a fundamental tool that requires the use of either a newsletter or auto-responder. Without either of those a squeeze page is useless, because a squeeze page or opt-in page is really nothing more than a tool used to “harvest” names and email addresses of your users. This is done so that you can start utilizing email marketing and establish a relationship with your users, both those who did not buy and those who did buy. Another form of email marketing is buying an email campaign. This can be a very effective way to give your internet marketing campaign a boost. There are vendors out there that offer to do email marketing. This service is provided by companies that normally have spent years building an opt-in list of users that are interested in certain products or services. Email marketing campaigns are normally sold by millions of emails sent and have a pretty good response rate. This means that you can create an email that will be sent to several million users at a time, so if you only get a small fraction of people clicking through to your website it could potentially mean that you get several thousand users to take a look. The last part we want to briefly touch on is a phenomenon that had been up and coming over the last few years. Social media marketing has started to become an internet marketing field of it’s own, with companies often spending quite a bit of the marketing funds focusing on social media marketing. Social media marketing is the term used for internet marketing done on all social networks. A social network is anything that allows users to interact, either in writing, with videos or audio, so as you can guess the term covers almost just as much ground as the them internet marketing does.All of the terms and the tools we have covered in this part are extremely valuable tools. Even though this list is not complete and does not cover all of the tools available for internet marketers, an internet marketing campaign will consist of a combination of these tools. There are several variations that you can use in order to maximize your marketing efforts and I suggest that you educate yourself about how these tools can be used effectively. Once you learn how to use these internet marketing tools in an effective way, you could be the next internet success story.
Corporate Party Entertainment Will Not Only Make Your Audience Laugh
I dont know a thing about you but I believe that everyone deserves a break from everything and just have fun. Do you agree with that? In our world today, people are always busy with their responsibilities at home and from the work place. Christmas parties, anniversary parties, and other similar events serve as an individuals “break” from all the responsibilities but how will these effectively relax a person and get rid of his or her stress even for a short period of time? It is through entertainment. So, if you are organizing for any occasion for your company, remember to include corporate party entertainment as one of your top priorities.Before you can decide on what corporate party entertainment will be best, you have to consider several factors. First is your theme. Are there any themes or dominant ideas for your gathering? What party is it exactly? Is it a celebration for the holidays, or is it a “business party” where your clients will attend and where you must subtly sell your products? Next is who will be your audience? The party you are preparing, is it a family event, or is it strictly for employees only? Next, is how much is your budget? There are a lot of choices for a corporate party entertainment and these choices will range from a thousand to ten thousand dollars. Your budget will guide you in picking your form of entertainment. If you have a tight budget, do not worry. This would not mean that you will have to settle for less entertainment. As mentioned a while ago, there are a lot of options. You just have to look and select those that are right for your event and for your budget.Why do you have to be careful on choosing your corporate party entertainment? What are its benefits anyway? Good entertainment will definitely make your audience laugh and enjoy, which is probably one of your utmost priorities in setting up events like these. By the way, did you know that giving them a break and just letting them laugh and be amused with good entertainment will not only serve as a break and an immediate get away from the pressures, it will also give them motivation to attend more corporate events, and will somehow “recharge” them. Apart from that, giving them the fun they deserve will show that the company appreciates their effort and is willing to payback these efforts with fun times that they may either spend with their colleagues, families, or even both.So there you have it. Factors to consider when looking for the right corporate party entertainment has been listed, and the benefits of getting the right and the best one for your audience have been discussed. There are varieties of available entertainment out there, remember to choose what is most appropriate for your audience and for the event itself.