To be successful in online MLM marketing, you have to start with strategy and work your way down to tactics. I see a lot of people using online tactics all over the map, without having a clue about how to create an effective online strategy.
A Horse Analogy About Strategy and Tactics
For me, everything goes back to horses so let me give you a horse analogy that made sense to me and, hopefully, will make sense to you. When I first wanted to learn how to ride cutting horses, I only knew how to ride a horse. I didn’t know anything about how to cut a cow out of a herd, anything about cows in general, or anything about how to ride a cutting horse. The first time my trainer “put me on a cow” it was a disaster. Cows went everywhere, my horse went into overdrive, and it was all over before it started.
My trainer could see that the tactics she was trying to teach me for cutting a cow were useless as I had no general idea of the strategy of cutting a cow from the herd. So to simplify things and teach me strategy, she took my horse away from me. Then she sent me into the herd of cows on foot (can you say stinky?). I then had to move the cows around on my own two feet. She talked me through the strategy, which goes something like this:
- Eyeball the cow you want
- Go to its hip and, from that position, drive it out of the herd
- If it gets out of your control, go to its head and stop it.
- Once you get the cow out of the herd, step in between it and any other cows.
- Once the cow is separated, go to the head and stop it. When it turns and goes the other way, get to the head and stop it.
If this sounds complicated, imagine doing it on a horse with 4 other people helping you turn the cows back, and about 10 head of cattle. Now do you understand why I couldn’t grasp the strategy while mounted on horseback? I had to get down on the ground, get a really simple view of things before I understood the strategy.
Online MLM and Learning to Think
So online MLM works kind of the same way. When you first get into it, all you notice is the confused whirlwind of tactics. You don’t know whether to go for a Google ranking, blitz the social media sites, focus on blogging, or aim at forum marketing. You are literally clueless.
So take a hint from my horse analogy above. Stop everything and simplify. Get down on the ground level and figure out what your strategy is, and then apply the relevant tactics. So if I were to break down an online MLM strategy into simple steps, here’s what I would do:
- Know that you have to have an online presence somewhere: a website, blog, or social media page. Chris Brogan calls this home base.
- Your home base needs to be individual and personalized, reflecting how you do your MLM business, use your company’s products, live your life, etc. Your home base can be oriented around a specific niche (like “curing guinea pig diseases”) or around your personal way of doing business (like entertaining but foul-mouthed marketing). Your home base should have multiple points of entry that allow people to order product, inquire about the business, join the business, and so on.
- Your home base needs to have useful relevant content that will cause people to visit and the come back.
- Once you have established your home base, you will need to drive traffic there by participating in other online activities, like article marketing, forum posting, social media interaction (Twitter, Digg, delicious), or blog commenting. Chris Brogan calls these other online locations outposts.
- You will need to keep adding interesting and relevant information to your home base, and keep interacting with others in a useful way through your outposts. Consistent effort is the key to creating a high profile online presence.
So that’s the basic strategy, and the basics about how to “think” about your online MLM business. Once you have that fixed firmly in mind, you can begin looking for various tactics to apply to each of these points of strategy. Make sense?
If this blog post is as clear as mud to you or you need clarification on specific points, feel free to hoot and holler (or just send me an email).
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Photo credit: Free Digital Photos
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