How to leverage the Internet in MLM

by Steve Lowell

Published on this site: August 9th, 2005 - See more articles from this month

Most people who try to leverage the Internet to build their MLM business wake up to the rude awakening that Network Marketing in the Internet age requires a whole lot more than just having a web site.

Your marketing system should fulfill four critical functions in order to peek the interest of your prospect to the point where they either come back to you for more information, or they remove themselves from the prospect pool.

First of all, your system should promote you as a professional. This adds to your credibility and makes it much easier for your prospects to understand that you are serious about your business and that you are capable of helping them.

To accomplish this, whatever resource you use to begin to promote your business should somehow be professionally labeled or marked as coming from you. This is not to say that you must be the author or presenter of the material, but that material should be accompanied buy some promotional entity which depicts you as the deliverer of professional information.

If your resources are on-line, you should have a professional looking photo and/or a short professional bio on the web site.

By promoting yourself first as a reliable source of information, you will build trust and rapport with your prospects, increasing their chances of allowing you the privilege of helping them solve their unwanted condition.

The second critical function of your marketing system should be to emotionally engage your prospect so that they can relate to the information on a personal level. By presenting an emotionally compelling presentation, your prospect's mind will be more accepting to the information that follows.

Remember that the reason your prospect is examining your information in the first place is because they have indicated a specific discontent that they need to have serviced. Your marketing system should remind them of the feelings of discontent that they experience, so that they become excited about the possibility of solving that discontent.

Since most decisions are made based on how we feel, it is critical that your prospect become emotionally involved. This emotional involvement will help your prospect to make the decision to continue exploring your information.

Appeal to your prospects emotional senses using specific questioning, a generic audio, video or on-line presentation which brings your prospect's sense of discontent back to the surface in order to prepare them for the next step.

The third function of your marketing system should be to educate your prospect so that your prospect is clear that this is a network marketing business.

In a previous article entitled "100% Rejection Free MLM Prospecting", I provided the following advice, and it's worth repeating here because it is highly critical to the effectiveness of your on-line prospecting initiatives:

Don't trick your prospects into attending a meeting or live presentation if they are unaware that your business is MLM. This turns people off, and makes them feel manipulated and it puts you in a position where you may have to deal with those objections yourself.

Use a system that informs the prospect of the MLM nature of your business without your input. That way, you will not attract difficult questions from your prospect. If your prospect is completely un-accepting of the MLM business model, they will bow out of the process at this point.

By using a video or other tool to inform your prospect that your business in Network Marketing, you allow the prospect to absorb and consider that information on their own time on their own terms. They will be much more appreciative of this consideration than if they had invested time to attend a lengthy "opportunity meeting"

You want to know if your prospect is resistant to the MLM business model at this point so that you can stop investing time in trying to recruit someone who does not want to be recruited. This is a major problem area for most inexperienced network marketers.

The fourth function of your marketing system is to pre-qualify your prospect by requiring some sort of action on the part of the prospect.

Maybe they have to fill in a form on-line, or complete a short questionnaire. If your prospect completes the required action, after they have been educated, that will tell you that your prospect understands that your business is MLM and they are accepting of the concept and they are likely open to exploring your offerings further.otherwise they would not have completed the process.

The reason this is so important is because by giving your prospect a task to complete, you are pre-qualifying their level of commitment to solving their discontent, and you are giving them an easy way out in that if they decide that they are not interested in following through any further, they simply wont complete the task.

This removes the rejection factor completely from the equation, and allows you to invest your time only with those prospects who have demonstrated a sincere interest by completing the tasks requested of them.

The marketing system that I use is a compilation of generic systems, connected together to form an effective and easy to follow marketing and pre-qualification system which can be used by any network marketing professional in any network marketing business.

I recommend that you visit the MLM Executive Roundtable website at the URL below and subscribe to the MLM Daily Meeting Minute, a free 30 day audio program that will provide you with proven Network Marketing tips, hints and suggestions each day for 30 days.

Steve Lowell is president of SJ Lowell Inc. in Ottawa, Ontario Canada; a business consulting firm and founder of The MLM Executive Roundtable at http://www.MLMRoundTable.com Register for the free 30 day "MLM Daily Meeting Minute" and receive powerful network marketing tips each day for 30 days. www.MLMRoundTable.com