Many traditional Network Marketer’s have been frustrated by the tactics of people using attraction marketing to generate leads. As quick as they can build interest offline, attraction marketers are scooping the leads up online. Let’s take a look at how they do it.
In The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto report by Ann Sieg, she describes how network marketer’s are using attraction marketing to leverage of the hard work that network marketers are doing offline. These attraction marketers are literally cleaning up 100′s and 1000′s of leads that where warmed up by offline mlmer’s.
Attraction marketing seems to be a popular term amongst network marketers these days and so before diving in and uncovering the tricks used by attraction marketers, I thought it would be useful to define what it is…
So What Is Attraction Marketing?
The process of attracting prospects to your business opportunity rather than approaching them is the basis of attraction marketing. Most attraction marketers use the Internet to do this.
Many network marketing companies teach their distributors to make a list of friends and family and approach them one by one. Attraction marketing teaches the opposite. You still build a list but instead of approaching people, they are joining your list voluntarily. Many people are doing attraction marketing because they don’t like the idea of approaching friends and family to build their business.
Attraction marketer’s usually lead with a free offer such as an ebook, an audio or a video series. They will then offer a cheap training course related to how to build a network marketing business. If the information is good, the prospect then views the marketer as a credible source of information about building a network marketing business.
Selling an expensive product is sometime called a self-liquidating offer. The whole purpose is to acquire a customer for future sales. In network marketing circles it’s often referred to as a funded proposal. Basically you make a little money selling the inexpensive course and get to propose your business opportunity to a qualified lead.
Attracting prospects with free information and then leading them through a sales process that leads to a network marketing opportunity is the basis of attraction marketing. It is an extremely effective concept but unfortunately for old school network marketers, it puts them at a very big disadvantage.
How attraction marketers are mopping up thousands of leads as a result of traditional network marketers hard work…
Here’s the problem for traditional network marketers — A recent Jupiter research report found that more than 25% of people they studied have cut back on watching TV…so they can spend more time on the Internet!
A couple of years ago, when Americans had a buying decision to make, 70% of them used the Internet to research their different options. The number has dramatically increased since then.
Internet savvy MLMer’s understand this trend and are using it to their advantage with smashing results. When you showed someone a business opportunity before the Internet, they only had access to the information that they were given.
When someone gets shown a business opportunity these days, the first thing that they do is Google it. The traditional network marketers are getting people interested enough to do some research but what happens after that point is completely out of their control.
To illustrate, consider if someone was told about the Agel MLM business opportunity. They would go to Google and start running some basic searches. They may type in terms such as; ‘Agel business opportunity’, ‘Agel success stories’, ‘is Agel a scam’ and so on. Smart marketers know exactly what people are searching for and deliver the perfect message to match. They may write an article with the title, How to build an Agel business in less than 1 year.
When the prospect sees those kinds of ads they are going to be interested…
… when they read that message chances are they will want to know more and so they will go on that marketers mailing list to get more information.
The prospect will then get a series of messages over the coming weeks that talk about how to build a mlm business without chasing friends and family. They may decide to invest in an ebook or course from this person. Once a prospect has gone down this road it may be very difficult for the traditional network marketer to win that prospect back, even though they introduced them to the concept in the first place.
The marketer that sold them the information product will usually follow up with a telephone call and before they know it, they are thinking;
“I’ve got to work with this guy or gal, they definitely know what they are doing and besides, I sure didn’t like the idea of approaching all my friends and family to build my business. This is perfect, I can build a business without having to do that!”
A popular method that is used to hook prospects into the marketing funnel is controversy. There are no rules against this and it works very well. You often see threads in MLM forums where people are complaining that these attraction marketing methods are unethical or unfair.
Complaining about this changes nothing, attraction marketers will continue to pick off hot leads day and night. I can almost guarantee that if you are not using information marketing to attract new prospects into your mlm business things will get very tough.
How To Get Around This?
Well, as they say, if you can’t beat them…join them.
There has never been a better time for you to roll up your sleeves and get on the technology band wagon. With the economy in desperate trouble and corporate America looking more shaky every day, people will be flocking to the Internet searching for a home-based business opportunity. If you’re smart, you will put in the hard yards now so that you are in a position to help these people get what they are looking for.