21st Century Network Marketing

You probably remember the way network marketing was done in the last century. You started out with a list of 200 people you knew (somewhat) as your "warm market". You included all your relatives, neighbors, doctors, dentists, mailmen, grocery store clerks, and so on.

You then met with those people, at first with your sponsor, to tell them about your business opportunity. You draw circles and present "the plan". Then, you invited them to a local "opportunity meeting" where they could hear testimonials and additional information about "the plan".

After exhausting your warm market you began talking with strangers. Perhaps you used the "5 foot" rule and started up a conversation with anyone within speaking range. You then tried to get their name and phone number so your could contact them later. You then built a list of people to call to set up appointments for home presentations.

The net result of this for many people was a host of relatives who tu! rned the other way when they saw you coming. And, most people just couldn't get very far into their warm or cold markets without being discouraged by all the rejections.

While many network marketing companies still teach this methodology, more savvy companies are using 21st century technology to help people build their downlines and become successful.

The first hurdle new technology helps overcome is contacting your warm and cold markets. Now, instead of you having to prospect for potential recruits, the Internet allows interested people to contact you first.

Websites with lead capture or "splash" pages now capture names, email addresses and sometimes phone numbers of interested visitors. By entering their contact information on the capture page, the prospect begins receiving a series of predefined emails from an autoresponder that describes the business opportunity.

The emails encourage the prospect to contact the sponsor for additional informat! ion. Or, if the prospect entered a valid phone number, the spo! nsor can contact them. And, contact between the sponsor and potential recruit is much easier since the recruit was the one to initiate contact.

Now, since potential recruits can come from anywhere in the world (for an international opportunity) the local "opportunity meeting" of the 21st century has become a webcast. Anyone with an Internet connection can hear and view the testimonial presentations as well as a description of the business opportunity.

These webcasts can even include a question and answer session. At the end of the webcast, viewers are told to get back with the sponsor that directed them to the webcast for any additional questions and to sign up.

Training is also handled on the Web. New recruits can attend training sessions via their administrative site or "back office". The company may put on live training sessions throughout the week for their members. In any case, a number of training programs are recorded for playback at any convenient time b! y members. All the resources needed to help build a successful business are located in the "back office".

Members can then set up their autoresponders and capture pages. Their autoresponder messages and capture pages can be based on a corporate "standard" or the members can express their own personality and ingenuity.

Members then work to drive traffic to their capture pages. This can be by traditional methods such as search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. Newer methods also include blogging, placing ads at classified sites like craigslist.com, writing and submitting articles to article distribution sites like ezinearticles.com, creating videos for posting at youtube.com, participating in social sites like myspace.com, or a number of other techniques.

The new Internet technology can do a lot to help network marketers succeed. You should begin to investigate and use this technology in your network marketing efforts.
! Source: http://www.a1articles.com/article_270131_80.html
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