According to Wikipedia, network marketing began back in the 1920s or 1930s. In a lot of ways it hasn’t changed much since then. Regular people look for customers to sell product to and new sales people to join their teams. Most of the people that I know in network marketing still use the same face-to-face techniques too. They can be very successful and still not use the modern communication tools that we have available now, like the Internet. I prefer to use the Internet in my network marketing business. I call it Internet network marketing. But if they are so successful offline, then why Internet network marketing? Why not stick with what has worked for almost 100 years?
Network Marketing is Sales and Connections
I see network marketing as unsalaried sales. Better yet, you’re a regional sales director so you get a bonus based on how well your “region” performs. In this case your “region” is the team that you recruited and trained regardless of where anyone actually lives.
If you sell product, you have to find customers. You need people who want to join your team and start to earn an income for themselves too. That means finding people, and you find people by going where the people are. Traditionally you went to networking meetings, coffee shops, and news stands and struck up conversations with people. You build connections that lead to more connections that eventually lead you to your customer and your prospective teammates.
Where Are the People Now?
Why Internet network marketing? According to InternetLiveStats.com there were more than 3.4 billion people online in 2016, or 46.1% of the world population. That’s a lot of people. Where can you find the people you want to talk to now? Online – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Internet in general.
Why Internet Network Marketing
That the people you want to talk to are online is a huge reason why you want to build your network marketing business online. There are many more reasons too. Some have to do with people while others have to do with technical advantages.
Since we’ve already started out talking about your audience, the people, let’s continue with them.
Location Location Location
Location is everything when you build a brick and mortar business. You need to be somewhere that your store will get traffic. A traditional network marketing business has no location whatsoever, unless you want to hang a sign on the front of your house. I’ve seen that done once or twice but I don’t recommend it.
The Internet gives you the ability to have a location. When someone asks you where they can buy your product you tell them you’re just down the road from Amazon.com and give them the address to your website. That’s one reason why Internet network marketing is the way to go.
Market
With traditional network marketing you are pretty much limited to your own geographical area unless you want to spend all of your time at the airport. You have access to a lot of people if you live in a large city, but if you live in an area like I do you have to go through a lot of cows, chickens and corn fields to reach your next prospect.
This is one of my favorite reasons for building my business online. The Internet lets you reach the whole world. No traveling necessary (unless you want to). I can just as easily recruit someone from the UK, Canada or Mexico as I can from my own area. OK, maybe not Mexico because my Spanish isn’t very strong, but you get the idea.
Why Internet network marketing? Just consider the numbers. Depending on where you live you might have access to anywhere from a couple thousand to a million people face-to-face. The Internet potentially lets you reach more than 3 billion people. Which would you rather have?
Technical Advantages of Internet Network Marketing
I used to go to my upline’s meetings back when I started my network marketing business. If 20 people showed up to the meeting there would be 18 distributors and 2 guests. All of that work to try to educate 2 people.
Many people found it too hard to get people to the meetings. The meeting would be after work when your prospect’s only thought was to get home, have dinner with their family, watch some TV and go to bed.
I heard stories of distributors who would invite people to a Bible study only to turn it into a recruiting meeting once the people showed up. I doubt very many people came back from one week to the next.
Butts in Seats
Whether a small in-home meeting or a large hotel meeting, the challenge is always with getting people to show up. You rehearse your speech, you have your slide presentation in order, you get on stage and find your audience is only a handful of distributors. You’re essentially preaching to the choir, and a small choir at that.
The Internet lets you do your presentation once and make it available for anyone to see at any time. You make it more convenient for your prospects. They can watch it when they have time and don’t have to be there live.
With a blog I don’t have to worry about getting my audience there in advance. I can get my presentation, my blog post, just right and published then figure out where to find my audience afterward. Another great reason why Internet network marketing is better than offline.
I also don’t need everyone to show up at the same time. In a live presentation there is always that one person who is 30 minutes late because they got held up at work or stuck in traffic. They missed the best part of your presentation, right? That doesn’t happen online. They arrive when they can. If you are diligent and keep everything updated it’s ok even if they arrive a year or more late.
Stage Fright?
There’s nothing like having the perfect presentation all ready to go, but when you get on stage and see those 3 people staring back at you your mind goes blank. There’s nothing there.
Even if you deliver the perfect presentation on that stage, it only exists in that moment and then it’s gone forever. You have another presentation next week? You have to do it all over again. A lot of duplicated work.
Use the Internet. Record yourself in an empty room if you want to create a video and put it on YouTube. Better yet, embed it in an article on your website and put all of the highlights in the text so that your prospect gets it in two formats. You can also save it as a PDF that your prospect can download and take with them.
Personally, I don’t like video. I don’t watch them. I prefer text. That gives me the option to read it all the way through if I have the time, or skim it for the main points if I’m in a hurry. You can’t do that with video.
Text on the internet gives me the opportunity to refine my message before anyone else sees it and I can continue to edit my message even after it’s been published if I find a mistake or some detail changes. Things are always changing, right? Speaking from a stage doesn’t give you those luxuries.
Do You See The Benefits of Internet Network Marketing?
Do you understand why Internet network marketing now? Bigger potential audience and the ability to keep refining and reusing your message over time. Who doesn’t want that?
I do have one disclaimer. People ask me to teach them how to build their network marketing business online because they think that it will be somehow easier than the old face-to-face approach. It isn’t easier. It isn’t less work. Actually, there is a lot more upfront work to get everything set up. There are no more guarantees that you will make money online that you could offline either.
The basic goals in network marketing are the same online as they are offline. Build relationships with people, learn what they need, then fulfill that need if you can. That doesn’t change. The only way around that is to get out of network marketing altogether and get a “real job” instead.
Thanks for Reading
I appreciate that you took the time to read this post. Do you have any questions or thoughts about Internet network marketing? Leave me a comment below. Would you like to know more about how I use the Internet for network marketing? If I may ask one more favor while you’re here, I would really appreciate if you would take a moment to share this post with your followers on social media.
Thanks again.
