Your Business Corner

Today, people have choices to join traditional MLM home business or online MLM business. In the beginning, I joined traditional MLM home business and tried to market the business online. It didn’t work because they had restrictions. They didn’t provide support for our online marketing efforts. They’re against us instead. My past experience made me understand better the difference between the two. Now, I list down top ten questions to identify network marketing internet business.

1. Does the MLM company provide you with a personalised website? The website must carry your name, your email and or your picture as a brand partner. This website can serve as administration, training and resources at the back office. The example is yourname.MLMcompany.com.

2. Does the MLM internet-based company provide you with plug-in online marketing system and marketing website to capture prospects? If you market your business through internet, you must have a marketing website. Marketing website can capture name, email, phone number and country of the prospects. Attractive marketing website will generate more leads.

3. Built-in autoresponder is a necessity to build a trust between your prospect and you. An autoresponder will educate and follow up your prospects daily or periodically while you can’t possibly email or call your prospect daily. If there is no follow-up messages, people will often forget after signing up.

4. Traditional MLM company tends to carry a wide range of products while MLM internet-based company has few products for simplification or streamlining purpose.

5. Do they have restrictions on the use of company branding, images, logo, articles, videos for your own promotional purpose? MLM internet-based company shall give you 100% freedom to use their resources for online marketing purposes.

6. Do they provide online training such as live call, audio or video courses for their brand partners? Offline training is important but online training can reach out wider audience at their own home. Lack of training is one reason why people fail in MLM online business.

7. Do they use concept of online shopping, online payment and autodelivery? These 3 concepts give a convenience for people. With autodelivery, we don’t have to follow up our customers or remind them to buy the products again and again.

8. Do they use online administration and online registration (paperless administration) so you can manage your online MLM business easily?

9. Can you build the network marketing internet business not only in your country but in the countries of their networks. Of course, there are always differences in compensation plan and investment cost among different countries but MLM internet-based company must overcome this obstacle. If you can build your online MLM business worldwide, you will have a global genealogy in your organization and your organization can grow really big.

10. Do you join the right marketing group that has knowledge in network marketing and internet marketing? You shall join the right marketing group who can guide you and understand the use of internet marketing skills.

The questions number 1 to 9 apply to MLM company to choose the right online MLM business while the question number 10 is to choose the right marketing group. You certainly don’t want to join network marketing group that still practices the traditional marketing concept and don’t have any internet skills to teach you how to market network marketing internet business.

Marketing local business is not as simple today as it was in the past. A long time ago, it seems marketers promoted neighborhood business by putting ads in the yellow pages and buying ad space in the local newspaper. Business has gotten very hard in The Twin Cities. Eager buyers no longer look at the newspaper ads to shop for products and services. Today most consumers start by doing an Internet search before they buy. What will happen when you anticipate eager buyers shopping for what you offer? Knowing what they type into the search box, what’s keeping you from appearing everywhere they look?

Marketing Local Business Online

Take roofing for example. Drop by Google.com and search for the following:

• Twin Cities roofing
• Minneapolis roofing
• Saint Paul roofing

As I write this, the search engine results pages all show one thing in common: that gorgeous map! Local business results are your key to marketing business successfully.

There are three sections to each Google search results page:

1. Pay-per-click advertisements at the top and down the right side;
2. Local business results and that gorgeous map above the fold; and
3. Organic or natural search results everywhere else.

So, each roofing company has at least three (3) chances to show on each page. And, take note, this is only Google! We’re not looking at Yahoo!, Bing, Facebook or any other search results. Is Your Website Marketing Local Business?

Consider your own company website. You may have paid big bucks to publish your online business card — did you? Did you pay for pretty? Or, did you intend to pay to produce more customers? How many new customers did you get last month because of your pretty website? What is your return on that investment?

What about your website content? Is it relevant to your visitors? Is it compelling them to take action and buy from you once they’re on your pages? What would persuade you to buy from you? Are you calling them to action on each page? If you don’t ask them to call you, what do you expect them to do? Not calling you, not buying from you and going away may be exactly the message they’re getting from you.

As a neighborhood business, what are you doing to make sure that eager local buyers know that you exist? How would you find your company if you didn’t know about it? Remember that cool map? Google will only place you in the local business results after they recognize that your business is local to that search. What is your service area? As a Minneapolis roofer, how interested are you in Duluth business? Or, business in Fort Lauderdale? The best marketing local business strategy pulls customers directly from your local community. Even if business thousands of miles away can be good, won’t neighborhood business be better?

Marketing Local Business Has Changed

Marketing local business online is not that different from marketing offline. Eager buyers want to taste, hear, smell and feel your products and services. Give them a great reason to walk through your front door and they’ll come to check you out. There are rating and review sites providing places for your customers to express their feelings about your business. Claim your business listing on social rating and review sites like Google Places, MerchantCircle, Yelp, Angie’s List, etc. With half a reason to stand up in public and tell the world about your remarkable work, many customers will do just that.

How much of that do you want?

Community involvement will certainly build your brand quickly. The more your neighbors talk about your business, the sooner marketing local business brings them to you. Marketing is different today than in the past. Today most consumers start by doing an Internet search before they buy. Anticipate eager buyers shopping for what you offer and, of a sudden, everywhere they look you are there. In fact, marketing local business online is different: it is effective.

Marketing Local Business 90 Day Challenge

Give yourself ninety days and you will be successfully marketing local business throughout your metropolitan area.