MLM is tough, but with the right strategies you can make money with it and even increase your MLM sales.
Whether you are struggling with an MLM opportunity, just want to make more money with MLM or are maybe just interested to know how to increase MLM sales, then this guide is the one for you.
We have gone through what we think will help you get the most out of network marketing – techniques, tips and tricks to improve your success.
But don’t think we are going to be giving you the usual stuff that others will tell you. We are not about harassing your friends and family or constantly spamming social media groups.
We will only share with you things that have been proven to work.
Table of Contents
Before We Get Into It...
Personally, we are not a fan of MLM or Network Marketing or the whole thing about Multilevel Marketing. Not because I don’t think they are legit or anything like that.
But the key attributes needed for success with MLM is:
- Being Able to Direct Sell to People
- Being Able to Recruit an Effective Team Under You
My own personality and character is not suited for recruitment, team building or face-to-face sales, so I have a strong preference for a different style of marketing which is called Affiliate Marketing.
If done correctly, we know network marketing is a viable business model and it can bring people a good wage from it.
But we know that Affiliate Marketing has a much easier learning curve, and the start-up costs are nowhere near as high.
But what that also means, there are some techniques from affiliate marketing and niche site marketing that can be brought over and applied to network marketing to improve your effectiveness in network marketing. Especially when you factor in drawing in free organic traffic.
How to Increase MLM Sales - Don't Bother Your Friends & Family
The majority of MLM companies and their distributors will encourage you to start with targeting your friends and family. First off, it will be to get your first few sales and then it will lead to them pushing you to get them to sign up into your downline.
But that is where the problems start. 65% of people walk away from MLM because they feel uncomfortable pitching to their friends and family.
You can seriously hurt your relationships with those that are closest to you, do you want to do that?
You effectively become their boss, the person who is harassing them to get more sales and to recruit more people.
There is the other side too, if they do not see success or you don’t, it can become a blame game as it was you who introduced them to this opportunity?
There is a difference between recruiting someone you know when you have proof it is working and you are seeing results to recruiting friends to hit a quota.
If you are able to make it work and are seeing the results, then that is slightly different. But most MLM’s we review, tend to end up with people walking away without seeing a dime and having hurt their friends relationships.
It is all about timing and it being the right opportunity for both you and them, not about hitting quotas.
It doesn’t matter what type of business you are starting, an online marketing business or an offline business. You need to treat it professionally and targeting the right people. Relevancy is key, especially online. If a business opportunity is relevant to someone, then it is worthwhile pitching. But these MLM’s just tell you to get people into your downline. Your success will be based on their sales. If they are not salespeople, and you are not sales people you will not see success.
You are much better leaving your friends and family until you know more, are seeing results and then can share that with them as they are more likely to be interested and more engaged in replicating your success.
It is the same with Affiliate Marketing, People are seeing what we are doing and are now asking questions. We can show results, we can share what we do and they are more engaged and interested in having a go.
You need to treat your network marketing business the same way and that will start with you identifying your target audience…
How to Increase Network Marketing Sales - Who's Your Target Audience?
This is not unique to MLM, but the biggest mistake many beginners make when getting started with MLM opportunities is seeing everyone as a potential customer. The same can be said with affiliate marketing too.
The sales pitches these companies have will tell you differently, but that is because they are experts at sales pitches, and they want you to hand over your money.
You will have much better results if you do the work and identify who your target audience is. Who are you going to target for selling your products to and who are you going to target to promote the business opportunity to?
This is not unique to MLM, but the biggest mistake many beginners make when getting started with MLM opportunities is seeing everyone as a potential customer. The same can be said with affiliate marketing too.
The sales pitches these companies have will tell you differently, but that is because they are experts at sales pitches, and they want you to hand over your money.
You will have much better results if you do the work and identify who your target audience is. Who are you going to target for selling your products to and who are you going to target to promote the business opportunity to?
Not everyone will be in that category.
It goes back to the family and friends point. The business opportunity is aimed at someone who can sell or recruit, or both.
You really do need to think about it. I would not want to sell or recruit, and I would only know a few people who I could target within my friends that might be good at it.
But the other side of it is, are they interested in the product or company you have chosen?
Add Value by Fulfilling Your Target Audience’s Needs
So, you need to really think about who does your product or service benefit? How does your product make life better or what problem does it solve?
Then you can start to think about who that benefits.
For example, if it is a skincare MLM that has cream for acne or eczema. You target audience for the products are those with acne or eczema.
But on the flip side, if you cannot really see any of the products at an MLM solving a problem, then it might be best not to get involved.
Your results will be much better if you are targeting the right people with the right product that helps them. Once you become a provider of solutions, your business will be in a much better position.
Make a Daily Effort to Promote Your Products or Services...
A lot of people in and around MLM will tell you that the money is in the downline. They will tell you to focus on recruiting more people into your downline and bring in new business builders.
But that is the problem, when you focus solely on this, all you are doing is building a pyramid scheme. Not an illegal one, but all MLM’s look like a pyramid on the recruitment side.
The problem is, without sales of the products none of you will be earning any money.
Whether that is sales from yourself or your downline, you still need to be selling the products to make it profitable.
Many people fail at MLM, as they lose sight of this and then only focus on recruiting (thinking your downline will make you sales). But if you are not picking the right people, or they are focusing on recruiting too without making any sales. There are on sales for you to be making money on.
You need to think about how you are going to keep on promoting your products or services daily. The recruitment side will come in time, but don’t lose sight of the sales side.
Sponsor Instead of Recruit...
Once you have your sales strategies right and regular sales are coming in, then that is the time to start thinking about building up a team to help you with the sales front.
Remember this is a business, you cannot rush it all and hope it brings success. By learning and building effective sales funnels, you can use this to help your downline recruits to increase their sales (which naturally helps you).
But this is where you need to think about who you recruit, and how you are going to help them succeed.
If they are not making sales, you are not making sales.
They will also become disillusioned with the business model and often walk away losing their investment and their trust in online marketing.
Your job as a sponsor is to help them. Too many recruits someone in, and then move onto recruiting someone else. If they are going to be a part of your team, then you need to treat them that way and help them achieve success. The more successful they are, the more you will benefit anyway.
This is not about recruiting as many people in, this is about the quality of the person you are bringing in.
I bet if you are already in an MLM, you might be thinking that you haven’t really seen much support from your upline? How are you going to change that for your downlines?
If they need help with sales techniques, then you need to help them with that.
Set Yourself Goals for Parties & Presentations
The reason people will buy products from you is because of you. What I mean by that, it has been proven over the years that people will buy a product because of the person selling it, not necessarily the brand associated with it.
It is the personal touch that will sell products and build up the repeat sales from that customer too.
If you think about the products out there, there are tons of products within MLM and outside MLM, so why am I going to buy this product from you and not someone else?
Well, hopefully the answer is that you were that helpful and insightful that I felt I could trust you and your business and therefore made a purchase.
Whether it is via a website or from a person, this holds true to all purchases.
Helping is key, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to set yourself goals or targets.
Setting goals is important, so set yourself a goal for your next party. Then reviewing whether you hit your target, analysing why you might not have reached it. Or, maybe you smashed it and need to set a higher target next time.
The key is to not come across too salesy, many people find this puts them off making a purchase. Don’t sell to them, talk about how the product would benefit them and make sure you are pitching to the right audience.
Learn Marketing Techniques
You cannot stay within your local area and succeed with network marketing. It is like any business model, where you are going to need to learn a variety of marketing techniques and strategies to become successful. You will need to step out from the training that these MLM’s offer, as they are not usually as in-depth as they need to be to explore other ways of bringing traffic to your business.
They will tell you to use social media, but again is this targeted. Not really, as it will be to your friends and family and that might not be the right target audience for your products or services.
They will often give you a replicated website for you to use, but that website will never rank in Google as it will class as duplicate content.
The only route left to you is to use paid advertising to target the right audience for your products or services, but this can be really expensive.
But you are open to learning, then you could learn how to build your own unique website that could be ranked in the search engines. One where you could write content that targets the right audience that attracts free organic search traffic. Collect emails and build a list where you could send targeted promotions to them and it will become a base for you to run your own business.
By sharing relevant posts that teach your audience how to use the products, where they can get them (your website shop) and other relevant information you can really stand out from the crowd.
If you are worried at this point about building your own website, then please don’t be. It is so easy these days. You don’t need to know coding or have much technical skills. You just need to follow the training and you will have your own website up and running within a couple of minutes (and more importantly, know how to market it to get free organic traffic)
Recommended: Learn How to Build & Market Your Own Website Here
Build a Follow-Up System
No doesn’t always mean a no. You will need to build up a follow up system that helps convert those ‘no’s’ into sales. You will do this as you develop your sales process by understanding where people are in the purchase lifecycle.
Some people are ready to buy straightaway, others want to learn more information before they buy and want to compare it to other products to find the best option. Others will not have thought about it at all and want to learn more about the subject, before thinking about products.
Then, of course there will be those that just don’t want to buy the products.
But building a follow up system is crucial, and easy to do if your have your own business from your own website, not the duplicated one.
That way, you can encourage those that aren’t quite ready to buy to your website, where you can encourage them to enter their email address. Once they have done that, you can then start sending them timely emails that help them along the purchase lifecycle where they are ready to buy.
Get Free Targeted Traffic Organically
First off, you cannot achieve this from a duplicated website the MLM provide you. But you need to know how powerful this option can be.
Google, Bing, Yahoo and YouTube are search engines. They are hit with questions every day from people wanting help on some subject. If you have your own website and provide quality content that helps in and around the niche that your product is targeting, then you will get free targeted traffic to your website – therefore your sales pitch.
By understanding your target audiences wants and needs, providing content that helps them and incorporates natural sales pitches, you can rank at the top of the search engines and receive people who are ready to buy your products.
The search engines are after the best answers to the questions they are given, and you can provide that and benefit from free traffic.
Over time, as you keep creating high quality content, you will gain an authority. That comes with credibility with the search engines. Before you know it you will be flooded with traffic to your website, and these will convert into sales.
Our Top Recommended Training Program teaches you in a step-by-step guide how to build your website, market it and create highly targeted content that search engines will love!
There's No Limit!
If you can embrace the power of marketing done right, then you will see there is no limit to what you can achieve. By combining highly targeted content and the power of the internet, the resulting traffic will blow your mind.
Remember, if you can get to the top and ranking first place in Google, you will be getting an incredible amount of traffic to your website and it will be for FREE!
With traffic comes other opportunities to revenue too. Examples include Display Advertising and even adding some Affiliate Products to your offer too.
By building an original website of your own with high quality content, you are building a strong foundation to your business that will stand the test of time.
High Quality Content that helps people is the best option and solution to improving sales in any marketing field, including network marketing.
How to Increase MLM Sales - Final Conclusion
If you can leverage the techniques that we have listed for you in this article, then you are definitely on the road to increasing your MLM sales. These techniques will apply to any online business and even offline businesses as well. It is all about generating highly targeted traffic to your business.
Think about it, if you could build an effective website that can sell even when you are not around, that is a powerful thing.
You will not get that from the free duplicated website they will provide, but that doesn’t mean you cannot build your own and become one of the few that has found success with MLM.
Once you have built the foundation and added some high-quality content that targets your target audience effectively, the traffic will start to flow and then will become a waterfall to your business.
Are you ready to do that? Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Then the natural next step is to learn how to do it. Stop running around like a headless chicken and build a website that can do the hard work for you…
If you have any questions, or comments to add then please do write them in the comments section below. 😉
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You have given some incredible reasons as to why you should only sell to people after you know that it works or people that you do not know and are willing to take the risk instead of your family where it is a dominating and sometimes ugly situation. Do you think that MLMs are a viable opportunity for long term success online and why do you think so?
Hi Jon,
Personally I don’t think MLM’s do have a long life really. There are a few exceptions that have been around for a long time, but they are selling direct to customers to, hence why they are successful.
MLM is ideal for the right person, you just need to decide if you are able to sell. We prefer to help and that is why our preference is affiliate marketing, which is only growing and is going nowhere.
It can be successful, but you need to be willing to learn all aspects of marketing to be effective at it.
Thanks
John
great article.
Haven’t done a ton in the MLM, but a little bit. I agree, don’t harass your friends and family is a good rule of thumb to start. As you point out, there are just a ton of other ways to get traffic and eventually money out of those who joined/sold.
It is always good to do some extra research about the MLM company you’re promoting. Overall though, I think you will be better off in the long haul doing some free promotion rather than trying to convince friends and family anyways.
Sure you might get a sale out of them, but it will probably end there. If they are in love with it, maybe you will get lucky and get another 1-2 sales. But when it comes to online, the opportunities are endless!
Hey Travis,
totally agree, you just end up alienating your friends and family. Better off building proper sales funnels to earn money effectively from people who are interested in your products.
thanks
John
Hello John,
As you mentioned, and rightly so, MLM is difficult and just like you, I don’t fancy myself as being the ideal recruiter. Though I did dabble with the network marketing business a few years back without success. That was a very discouraging experience for me so I had take a different route. But I must, looking back now, I can clearly see that these strategies you outline here was definitely missing in my approach. This is truly helpful.
Thanks for sharing
Hey Rhain,
thanks for sharing your insights. I think we can all look back at times and think we could have done things differently. Part of the problem is MLM’s are expecting such a lot straightaway from people and their sales pitches make you think everyone is ready for network marketing but it is simply not the case.
But if these strategies help people at least move a step forward, then we would be grateful we wrote it.
thanks again
John