New network marketer asked me recently how long it would talk them to learn all there is to know about network marketing. 20, 40 or 60 hours? For those that have been doing this for a while you will probably be taken back like I was when I first heard this question. The answer is you never learn all the techniques. First, the number of ways to market is countless. Just coming up with a list would take a while. Second and more important is however you do it today most likely is not the same way you will do it six months from now.
This question led me to want to write this article. There are so many ways to market I will start by listing the most popular was that are used today and then pick one to focus on details. Some of the most popular ways to market online is to use the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, BetterNetworker, Myspace or Youtube. Other ways to market are Pay Per Click (PPC), writing articles, Banner Ads, solo ads, email marketing and many many more. As you may imagine each of these is very unique just as each web site or each book you read is different..
As a example and to demonstrate how much there is to learn I will pick just one method and drill down to more detail.. Facebook is the 2nd most visited website in the world right after Google. There are hundreds of millions of people on Facebook and it is growing every day. Once you have created your account on Facebook and got your profile all setup, you will want to start adding friends. A good place to start is to search for groups of companies that are competitors to the one you are affiliated. Join those groups and start to invite friends. You have to be careful to not invite too many friends to quickly or Facebook may flag you. A good rule of thumb is to invite 50 people at a time. More than that can get you in trouble. Continue this process every day to grow your list of friends. It is not uncommon to have over a thousand friends in just a few weeks if you keep at it.
The next step is to get those friends to optin to your list web page so you can get them into your sales funnel. The key to making this happen is to help your friends and in time they will be come customers. One way is to invite them to a free webinar where a subject is being taught that the prospect has an interest. For example, how to get your web site on the 1st page of Google for free. Do you think people would want to register for that? Of course they would. In no time you will have friends opting in to your web site to attend the free webinar.
The next step is to contact the new prospect and asked them how they enjoyed with free webinar that you gave them. At this point you are building a relationship with the prospect and in time some number of them will purchase something from you or join you in your primary business. Relationships take time to build and will not always happen right a way but some will and some will take some time. You can speed up the process by engaging people online by making comments, chatting with them or sending them messages. A common phase I hear is people like doing business with other people not with computers or companies and this will talk time but will be rewarding. How fast it happens depends how how well you build your relationship with that prospect.
I realize that this is a high level look at this technique but I have given enough details that you can see how this can work for you. It will not happen over night but it will happen over time as you build relationships with your Facebook friends. You also should realize that I have only gone over one way to use Facebook where there are over twenty different ways to market on Facebook.
As you can see from this one example, there is so much to learn about marketing online you can appreciate that this is a very large endeavor and one that will take a long time to master. I realize that the new network marketer that asked me how long it would take did not know what he was asking but it also made be reflect on how much I have learned in the time I have been doing this. Sometimes there are questions that take you back and this is one that did it for me.
Please let me know what you think about this content. I welcome all comments. I hope that it helps you to be able to attain what you want out of your business.