MLM at its' best!

Multilevel marketing doesn't get much, if any respect in the world of business. I'm not quite sure why. It's totally legitimate as long as there is an exchange of product and/or services. Sure, there have been some bad apples who sully the profession but, what profession exists that has never had people in that profession perform in such a way as to put a blight on the whole profession. Even when that happens, the profession continues and respect is doled out based on what most of those within that profession do. Not Multilevel marketing though.

Both Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki are huge supporters of multi-level marketing, but they choose to call it Network Marketing. As far as they are concerned, network marketing is the only way to truly create an empire. Anyone who has intentions on becoming a multimillionaire must engage in network marketing. Such as it is, the definition of network marketing is to share an opportunity with another (or more accurately, many others) and receive compensation for introducing someone to this opportunity that they decide to take advantage of and leverage for their success.

It seems as though we prefer traditional methods of being paid for a hard days work, punching a clock and not messing with that whole traditional idea. It seems as though it is inconceivable to share an opportunity with someone else, whether it is the opportunity to start your own business, the opportunity to avail oneself of life changing products such as vitamins, herbal remedies, makeup, spa products, etc, and be compensated for helping someone improve their life. When mentioning the opportunity to start your own business and change your life, fire your boss, set your hours as you see fit, work as hard as you want (or not), I'm often met with frowns and suspicion as to "what my real motives are" as though I'm not above board and totally legitimate in my quest to build my own business by helping you improve your life, whether it is by starting your own business or purchasing one of my products.

It may be difficult but follow me here. Isn't this exactly what Obama just did with his brilliant multichannel media campaign? The only difference is, he wasn't offering us (his supporters) the opportunity to start our own business. He offered us-through his brilliant use of the internet and mobile texting-the opportunity to help him financially in order for us to have the opportunity to have him as our next President of the United States of America. Brilliant! So many of us bought into the idea of helping this person we felt was worthy of this help that he was able to raise $659 million dollars ($150 million in one month alone) that would enable him to get the word out to enough voters so as to bring about change of historical proportions. This, my friends, is network marketing at it's finest hour. I wonder if it can ever be done with this degree of success again. He didn't let up! The campaign was like a machine. From personal experience, once you gave to the campaign, they kept urging you to give again and again, even providing incentive (the rally tickets, improving the state of America, change, etc) to compel us (me) to keep digging in my pockets even when I knew I couldn't afford to because he compelled us (me and many like me) to believe in his mission.

I'm sure I've gone on far too long about this subject but my point is that there is more than one way to 'skin a cat' if you will. The traditional and current multichannel marketing methods seem to still be encased in one little area when there is so much more to be had.

We had a speaker a couple of weeks ago telling his story about the agony that most CMOs and Heads of Marketing go through when trying to determine who will get credit for a sale when there are various channels that the customer may have used before making the final purchase as well as the possibility of returns.

In Network Marketing, that is not an issue. Regardless of where the customer purchases or possibly returns the merchandise, the credit goes to the person with whom that customer began their relationship pertaining to the product. How? Simple. When the relationship is initiated with a consultant, that consultant has an ID number. If the customer makes a purchase, more than likely they will want to purchase from the person they initiated with (at least 90% of the time) due to comfort levels and most especially when a large purchase is involved. Upon purchase, credit is given to the ID number which belongs to a consultant who is usually on a team that leads to a director or head of marketing. The consultant gets credit for making the sale due to the ID and credit is also doled out to that consultant's 'upline' which could be a director, team leader, executive, etc. The same is true for a return. That credit would be taken away from the ID and upline. I'm not sure why this isn't the norm in traditional marketing but...doesn't it make sense?

I found this article referring to Obama and how his marketing campaign influenced the election. Check it out. http://www.google.com/bookmarks/url?url=http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/quelch/2008/11/how_better_marketing_elected_b.html&ei=pSEUSY6qK5qWMsL2oDA&sig2=642USb_VrVC-pFFMT5Te3g&ct=b

Ok, I'm done feeling sorry for myself. I've been following my personal website and the school website projects I'm conducting with google analytics.

Unless I'm not clicking on the correct report, I must admit to being a bit disappointed. I thought analytics would allow me to see exactly who was visiting my site and when. The only thing I've been able to see so far is how many hits I have. I've been researching all the other ways I can analyze and hopefully improve my site in order to please/convert visitors into customers. I must say, the "free shipping" proposal is not an unreasonable one. If a customer is ordering $100 or more in product from my website, I think paying $6.50 for them to receive their product is not a bad exchange, huh? So, thank you James, for bringing this to my attention. It doesn't always have to be about profit, I'm finding.

Right now, it's more about getting product in the hands of the public. This is the only way to truly spread the word. It's most important to have people touching, smelling and experiencing the products so they can talk about them, fall in love with them and want to have them in their life always.... ahhh, what a concept, eh?

In my interactive marketing course, this week, it was all about analyzing the data. The big question is, 'at what point in their web shopping experience did your website lose the customer or cause them to abandon the activity in which they were engaged?'

The other big question was, 'what is the efficacy behind using multiple channels to get the sale and how do you measure which channel was most effective?' This was a very intriguing presentation/discussion. In any sort of sales these days, any sort of physical experience with the product before the actual purchase would be a desired situation for the marketer/business owner, right? So why take away the most common/easiest way to experience (to a small degree) the product, which is normally in the catalog that is mailed out to the consumer on a regular basis?

It seemed as though some of my classmates felt that the catalog is a dying method of marketing. The instructors for the night shot that theory down, poste haste. I completely agree. I also felt that this phrase "the pass along" doesn't truly indicate the importance of that catalog landing in the hands of someone that it wasn't necessarily mailed to but... the person became a customer after seeing the catalog.

Case in point: One of my colleagues in the MLM business lives in Coral Springs, Fla. She had mailed out catalogs and even left some catalogs at her dentist's office. She received a call from a man who had found her catalog at a fast food restaurant and wanted to order the products for his wife. How cool is that? My colleague had no clue how her catalogue had made it to this area of town for he was much further away than it seemed reasonable for her catalog to travel based on the original location but, she didn't question it. She took the order, counted her blessings and continues (to this day) to spread her catalogs far and wide.

That just reinforces...you just never know who you will touch with those direct mail campaigns...you just never know. I'm still looking for an article so I'll be back. In the meantime, enjoy having a look at another of my websites. There's lots of healthy stuff on there ( I personally recommend Projoba Pollenburst- item # pj330 if for any reason you need to boost your energy levels naturally-it's made with green tea and flower pollen, ahhh)... www.youngevityonline.com/rhondae