You are a network marketing professional. You may or may not be successful building a down line sufficient to fulfill your expectations – yet. One marketing strategy that is often overlooked is whether you are going after the right target market. do you even have a defined target market?
90% of businesses never precisely determine who their target market is, what their markets desire, their needs, wants and passions. You may say that you approach everyone with whom you come into contact. Your success rate is probably very low doing that because you don’t know what their wants and needs are. You are not providing a solution to their problem/need if you don’t even know them.
Are you selling the latest vitamin drink supplement or scented candles? Are you assuming everybody has a need for such things? Perhaps your business opportunity is what you are really selling because the related products do not provide enough income to support you. If you are selling the business opportunity, are you selling in hand in hand with the product?
If you are selling candles, then sell candles to people who are looking for candles. If you are selling the business opportunity, then sell them on the how to get involved in your down line and how they can benefit being in your group.
But what most network marketers do is go after virtually everybody regardless if these people have expressed an interest in developing their own businesses. Trying to persuade people to endorse the concept of having your own business through a network marketing business and becoming wealthy through residual income is challenging.
Not only can they get hung up on the product, but they usually have preconceived ideas about network marketing.
Thus we come to the statistic that underlies the network marketing industry, and that is the high attrition rate. Most do not succeed and do not stick with it. The two most common reasons are lack of leads and lack of money.
They usually go through their warm market with disappointing results at which time they purchase leads or spend money going to seminars only to have virtually nobody in their down line. They become disillusioned and go back to whatever is was before they started.
Now I know I am generalizing and there are super stars that do the right things from the get go. But I am looking at the high attrition and wondering what are they doing wrong?
Network marketers should be selling the benefits of having a home based “solopreneuer” business. The freedom it affords, the money that can be achieved, etc. The business model of MLM allows for a residual income stream that is based on the efforts of other people, not mass direct selling of products.
So now you would think that our target market therefore should be “home based business opportunity seekers” or everyone that would like to have their own business and do it out of their home. Well, that’s quite a few people.
Virtually 85% of all people would favor that but objections about not enough money, time to get it started and specialized knowledge about how to run a business always surface.
What if, instead of looking at your target market as everyone dreaming of having their own home based business, you looked at people who are already convinced that they want to do that and are having various degrees of success.
This group could fall into two general groups. First, are the ones who have made the decision, but don’t know where to start, and second, are those who are already involved with a MLM but who are not having success.
The first group of people is more in the “desire to achieve” mind state, whereas the later group has a definite need: they are pained by their lack of success. What they’re doing isn’t working and they need a solution.
Think about it, instead of pitching someone a product and an opportunity, you are solving their problem. You don’t have to defend the concept of MLM, you are “one of them” so you can talk on an equal level, and you can offer them a solution.
You can point out what they were doing wrong and offer a different way. A system that you have developed that works for you and your group and that can work for them as well. You can get them back on track to success by offering them a solution to rekindle their “desire for success”. You can strike the match that gets back their burning desire that was snuffed out by their disillusionment.
So now you can craft all your marketing materials to both people who are just starting out in network marketing and people who are struggling. This target market will probably be a lot more receptive to your message because you are more in tune with their wants and needs.