Does Internet Marketing Replace Traditional MLM Strategies?

For many distributors struggling to turn a profit in their MLM business, learning internet marketing strategies, tools and tactics can be the difference between realizing all of their goals & dreams that this industry promises and becoming just another casualty that tried MLM before but failed to become successful.

Unfortunately there are several trainers out there on the internet that advocate abandoning the time proven strategies taught by MLM companies in favor of internet marketing strategies.

Typically, the trainer shares a story about how they struggled in MLM before learning these internet marketing techniques and then after applying these techniques, their income exploded. They also talk about how traditional MLM strategies didn't work for them and this is why the student needs to use internet marketing.

Trainers that advocate this approach fail to understand the ultimate goal in MLM.

MLM is not about you being the best recruiter or the best person at signing up customers. MLM is about you doing a few basic simple concepts and you teaching your team how to do a few basic simple concepts until it duplicates down through your organization and the business begins to grow without your involvement.

The challenge is sticking around long enough until those people that are willing to do these few basic things are discovered and the organization is able to take off without your involvement.

The other challenge is that there is no way of knowing whether someone you recruit is going to be one of those people that are willing to do those few basic things. There is especially no way of knowing whether the person you recruit will eventually lead you to the person that is willing to do those few basic things.

As a result, when these trainers advocate only using internet marketing strategies, they in effect handicap a MLM distributor's ability to find those key individuals faster by limiting that distributor to one source of prospecting, that being internet marketing. The fact of the matter is that some of the best distributors in your organization may very well be people that you already know, people that they know or people that you meet when going through your daily routine.

The other downside to advocating only internet marketing strategies is that
you handicap the growth of your organization by making a very dangerous assumption. Just because a prospect comes from an online source does not mean that when the prospect becomes a distributor he or she will thrive using an internet marketing approach.

The prospect that you recruited may have a very strong warm market that he or she has great influence over and is highly respected in that warm market. However, that prospect may only be barely competent in the internet, having the ability to navigate web sites and check email, but not much else. As a result, now instead of having a distributor that could be a six figure income organization for you, by requiring only internet marketing, that distributor now becomes another distributor that quits in 90 days.

Because of this, I NEVER advocate only using internet marketing strategies to build a MLM business.

The key to success is to be familiar with ALL strategies, YOU use the strategy that works best for YOU and you work with your team to help them discover the strategy that works best for them!

Some distributors in your organization will do very well with internet marketing strategies. Other distributors will be able to master the warm market and referral process. Other distributors will do well by calling business opportunity leads. Still other distributors will be a master of the conversation and can spark conversations with people throughout the course of their daily activity to build their business successfully.

Internet marketing does NOT replace traditional MLM strategies. It simply complements traditional MLM strategies. Know that and apply that, and you will be well on the road to building a long term successful business!