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Network Marketing on Twitter, Facebook and Google Part 1

Rick Berg — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:52:52 +0000

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By Rick Berg (http://berg-marketing.com)

Network Marketing on Twitter, Facebook and Google

Advertising in Network Marketing on any social media platform, like Twitter or Facebook is like advertising on anything: it requires a clear strategy and a way to measure results.

Back in 1998, while testing network marketing advertising online, I earned over $10,000 per month by advertising and selling network marketing products online. Since then, I have become a multimillionaire and developed winning strategies in advertising and marketing for all types of businesses. I’m about to share some cool secrets and some of these strategies that have made made me a successful marketer.. if you are smart, you will read this and take many notes and then go an put these into action in your own business!

One Network Marketing Business: Two different Revenue Streams

Network Marketing Distributors typically have at least two sources of revenue from their business:

1. Earning an income from retailing directly to customers.

2. Recruiting and establishing a downline to leverage their marketing plan.

This blog series will work with ANY type of network marketing business and show you specifically how to market and advertise your products and business opportunity online using Twitter, Facebook and Google with success!

A Brief lesson in advertising:

I’m going to be covering some common advertising terms in this article and it would be helpful for you to actually understand what I’m saying here if you are planning on actually learning anything here! When spending money on advertising, whether it is online or using traditional media (i.e. Radio, TV, Print), you want to know how effective your advertising is and what your return on investment is right? Well, if you are not a dummy, the answer is “of course”. So here are some terms you need to know:

CPM = Cost per Impression: This is how many times your ad was “displayed” on an ad partner/affiliate website.. this really means cost per “one thousand” impressions. You know those neat little banner ads we all know and love, that you see on any given site, like MSN.com, etc? The advertisers who pay for those ads pay a fixed amount for every 1000 times that little banner ad is displayed. The immediate (but not the only) way to measure the performance on this ad type would be how many clicks this ad generates. It may sound like a relative bargin when you see offers on CPM networks for five bucks to display your ad a thousand times, but if you only get a handful of clicks, chances are, you are going to lose money here.

CPC = Cost per Click: This is the actual cost to generate one “visit” to your site.. this is NOT a lead! Just any joe blow who clicked or responded to your add and landed on your website, is considered a click. The immediate (but not the only) way to measure the performance on this ad type would be how many leads this ad generates compared to clicks. The most important thing you need to do here is make sure you have a proper way to track the “clicks to conversions”. Most ad companies have little snippets of code that you can add to both your landing page as well as the immediate page after a lead has submitted their info. Without this level of tracking, you might as well throw your money away.. or just go watch the Price is Right and send me your money..

CPL = Cost per lead: As the name implies, this your actual cost to generate a “lead”.. remember, this is NOT a sale! This means this is the actual cost to get someone to fill out their info on one of your lead capture pages. Your CPL is measured by the conversion of a click to a lead.. if you are properly tracking your clicks as well as lead form submissions, you will have a percentage of clicks to leads. example: 20 clicks to 1 lead = 5%. Cost per lead = CPC/Conversion, so lets say in this example, one click costs .50… divide that by your 5% conversion and you see that those leads are costing you about $10 bucks each. This is critical to know, especially as you look at your tracking further down your sales and recruiting pipeline.

CPA = Cost per Acquisition: This is the total cost for you to generate a sale or acquisition. If you are recruiting, this would be a measure of how many leads did it take to sign up a distributor. If you have kept track on your lead costs, CPA = number of leads * the CPL / number of distributors. So, using the example above for CPL, let’s say we generate 100 leads at 10 bucks a pop and if you are on top of working your leads, you sign up 10 new distributors. CPA = 100*10/10, so you have a cost per acquisition at $100 per new distributor.

ROI = Return on investment: At the end of the day, for every dollar spent on any advertisement, how much money did you make. Now, with network marketing, there are a lot of things to consider when calculating this. If it’s a single product sale and that’s all you ever get, then that’s it.. however, if you are a good distributor and you are following up with your new customers on a weekly and monthly basis to make sure they are getting the results that they should be getting, you will have repeat orders as well as referral customers. Obviously, if you have this ongoing stream of orders from one customer, your ROI just keeps getting better and better! The same applies to recruiting.. if you sign up a new distributor and you are on top of your followup and mentoring this new distributor properly, the number of new customers and distributors that one distributor can bring into your organization is almost limitless, making your ROI go through the roof!

Conversion = You should know the conversions for every aspect of your advertising campaign.. Cost per Impression to Cost per click, Cost per click to Cost Per Lead, Cost per Lead to Cost per Acquistion, etc. If it is possible to measure, you need to track it. You will find out, not all advertising sources are equal and you should have some established baselines for every ad type/source. This means your banner ads will look completely different that what google adwords when it comes to overall ad performance and ultimately cost per acquisition.

So let’s put this altogether and see how this works in real life..

Network Marketing with Google Adwords

Distributors often use replicated lead generation pages, which due to the nature of replication have little chance to gain “organic” visibility on Google. This is not a problem however, as you can guarantee certain levels of visibility with Google Adwords.

The clear advantage for distributors who can use these landing pages is that the Distributor does not need to be internet savvy, they just need to “drive traffic to the page”.

Google Adwords provide a system allowing anyone to target prospects on a keyword based model, whereas the advertisers bid for the keywords. Google is selling keywords on an auction type basis, allowing any advertiser to bid for the best possible position for a given keyword or ad.

The obvious goal here is spending less on ads than you ultimately earn on the backend sale or “conversion”. Let’s say your network marketing company marketing plan is a “breakaway” plan. If a Distributor takes in $250 for each new recruit that buys into a higher level of a breakaway plan, recruited solely using Google adwords, and your CPA (Cost per Aquisition) was less or equal to the $250, this would be ideal.

The disadvantages of Google Adwords marketing for Network Marketing Distributors

Relying only on Google Adwords can be an expensive venture; Google advertising cost can be tremendous and has actually increased every year since “Google Adwords” was released. If you are gunning for large traffic and in a competitive keyword like “work from home” or “home business”, total CPA is usually “upside-down” in terms of ad cost vs profit. As I mentioned above, you need to keep track of every ad and how they perform, so you what kind of return on investment you are getting. With that said, being upside-down initially may not be all that bad; if you are really on top of your new customers and distributors and making sure they are getting good product and business results, you will have ongoing orders and referral customers. As they say, there is fortune in the followup.. and that is no lie!

How to be Successful in Network Marketing recruiting using Google Adwords

Let’s suppose you have some knowledge about keywords, targeting and AdWords, then you can figure out how many clicks you need to get one lead, and how many leads you need to sell one business pack and how many business packs you need to sell to get one new distributor, etc., ultimately, you will know the average CPA and the time frame within which you have to get these leads to be successful.

This knowledge lets you easily budget your business.

So using the same example I used above:

Let’s say you need 20 clicks to get 1 lead (at 50 cents a click), then every lead costs you $10

Let’s say you need 10 leads to sell a Business Pack, then each business pack creates a marketing costs of $100

Let’s say out of 3 Business Packs sold you recruit one distributor, that means your distributor costs $300 in marketing costs.

Let’s say your marketing plan has a breakaway commission of $250 when your new distributor gets to the manager or supervisor level and it takes 2 distributors to get one manager or supervisor: You are in the red with $300.

So once again, being upside-down initially may not be all that bad; if you are really on top of your new customers and distributors and making sure they are getting good product and business results, you will have ongoing orders and referral customers.. this will move you from being in the red to being in the black!

Advertising and marketing any MLM online needs multifaceted approach: Google Adwords is just one part of the equation.. In my next post, I’m going to show you how to generate “FREE” traffic to your sites using social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook!!!!

Stay tuned for Network Marketing on Twitter, Facebook and Google Part 2!

Fail your way to success?

Rick Berg — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:45:51 +0000

How to use Twitter Karma to do bulk "unfollows"

Rick Berg — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:26:31 +0000

Awesome tool to help you bulk “Unfollow” people in your twitter following!

How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Home Business

Rick Berg — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:22:53 +0000

Facebook has truly exploded into the mainstream. What was once a way to connect with friends at Harvard has since gained 200 million users and grown into much bigger shoes. Now it provides a host of business opportunities, offering enormous exposure of small businesses to a wide variety of networks.

Interested yet? If you have ever thought about using social media to boost your sales potential for a home business, here are some ways to make the most of Facebook.

Building Your Profile

Based on site policies, a profile on Facebook must be tied to a human name, so no business can have one. You can use instead the “About Me” section to describe your business to others, as well as add links to your website, blog, Twitter, and any number of other resources.

Building Your Contacts

List To start connecting with people you know, you could search Facebook for individuals or groups, or import your contact database if you have one. Once you find a few friends you can find more by searching through their friends list. Obviously when it comes to business, the one with the most friends wins, so connect with as many potential clients as you can!

Updating Your Status

At the very top of the Facebook homepage is the status box. Every time you update your status, everyone in your contacts can see the update, so use this as an advantage for communicating to your clients. For business purposes, for instance, this is a great place to promote upcoming events or ideas.

Participating in Groups

Try searching the Facebook groups to find ones related to your industry or near you geographically. There are an incredible number and variety of groups available, since every user is entitled to make them. You could even start a group of your own – there’s no cost and the exposure is great. Just be sure that it’s not all promotion, but instead provide content for members to take part in.

Creating Fan Pages

Facebook has provided the ability to create fan pages for businesses, locations and celebrities. To create a fan page, scroll to the bottom of Facebook and click on “Advertising.” Next, click “Pages” at the top and follow the directions. Pages are a lot like profiles, allowing most of the interactive features. Fan pages also receive higher hits for Facebook searches, so you increase the chances of someone finding your page.

You should have a good idea now of how to get started and build your business opportunities through Facebook. It might be difficult to manage while you’re getting started but the experience only enriches with time, so keep at it.

A Very Informal Twitter Etiquette Guide

Rick Berg — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:03:18 +0000

Twitter has taken off like gangbusters in 2008. At the end of 2008 the numbers were telling us that 70% of all twitter users had joined in 2008. Some folks prefer to have a few close friends that follow them. Those folks can pretty much do as they please. But if you are interested in building a brand and using Twitter to promote it, here are some observations and best practices. Just keep in mind that old saying from grade school: “What if everyone did that?”

Rules for tweeting:

* Don’t tweet more than about 4 or 5 times a day.
* Tweet interesting things.
* Share pictures and links with services like twitpic
* Don’t blather on about what you are eating unless you intend to share the recipe
* Don’t put private communications the public twitterstream
* Do NOT publically welcome all your new followers. Imagine reading pages of that.
* It is OK to tweet your blog posts, but it turns people off if that’s all you do.
* Do not join a “monetize your tweets” service such as Magpie, as it will make people dump you.
* Do not brag about how many followers you have. Everyone can already see that.
* Do not ask for more followers. Boring!
* Retweet others frequently when they have tweeted something good.
* Reply to individuals in public if you think others would be interested.
* Do not tweet things like “Gaaaaaaah”. We need context.
* Tweet at least every other day.
* Be happy and positive.
* Be human.

How to treat the people that follow you

* Do not send an auto-direct message thanking each new follower and sending them your pitch. Direct Messages are individual and personal.
* Thank new followers by following back if you haven’t yet.
* Do not direct message followers whom you are not following because they can’t direct message you back
* Recheck profiles of people you are not following from time to time. Some twits just need a little while to get the hang of it.

How to treat the people you follow

* Do not follow people just to get them to follow you back and then unfollow them.
* Do not do mass follows, or you will be considered a spammer even if you never tweet.
* Follow the followers of people you really like.
* Do not exclusively follow “Rock stars.” Follow a few interesting noobs. They’ll love you for it.
* Use a third party twitter client such as tweet deck to manage the twits that you follow into groups.
* Don’t just read your direct messages and replies. Dip into the stream from time to time.
* Give them some time to follow you back.
* Try to follow about as many people as follow you.

The Power of creating a "list"

Rick Berg — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:19:42 +0000

Sage Advise for Direct Sales Reps:
“Whoever controls the list controls the marketing message.”

If you’ve been around the block a few times and left many different direct sales companies for “greener pastures”, naturally, you’re going to let all your past customers know about your new move. In doing so, you could end up on the business end of a lawsuit for “enticement” from your old company. If you have grabbed your customer list information from your former company, they can rightfully claim that you were using confidential company information that was indeed “owned” by your former company, used explicitly to “harvest” their customers and consultants, potentially causing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

If you look at most direct sales consultant agreements or policy manuals, you’ll see wording that says all customer and consultant lists belong to the company, and that you are granted a license to use that information as long as you are a rep. Customer lists are confidential, and considered an important “trade secret” that could cause financial harm should they fall into the “wrong hands”.

Now, if it sounds like I’m trying to put the fear of God in you, you are right. As a business owner, you need to be aware of all the details of any contracts/agreements that you sign. Make sure you’re reading the fine print in your consultant agreement and policy manual.

You hold ZERO ownership claim to any list that is controlled by your direct sales company. Does that sound fair? After all, you did all the hard work to get all these new customers! Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s not fair.. but there is something you can do about it!

Let me explain: whenever a client or lead visits your company sponsored website and signs up for the company sponsored newsletter, they are part of the company sponsored marketing system and their contact info is essentially owned by the company. It doesn’t matter if the client is a lead from another state or someone from your center of influence. The company owns the lead.

As a business owner, YOU need to have a list that YOU control. You need to create this list, as this will become a key asset to this business and any other you may choose to create later on. Now, as the owner of “Your Biz, Inc.”, you have a right to contact, market and serve anyone on your own list, if you have created it correctly.

Here is how you do it correctly:
It is PARAMOUNT that you have potential clients opt-in to your list BEFORE you recommend your company products or services. In doing so, you can prove beyond the shadow of doubt that they were YOUR leads first. It’s as easy as having them sign up for your monthly newsletter (not the company newsletter, YOURS), through your own PERSONAL website or BLOG. When leads opt-in, they have given you written permission to be added to your marketing list.
If you are not technically inclined and need coaching on how to do this, please signup for our newsletter, as we will send out these “How to” tutorials to you. Also, if you don’t currently subscribe to an email service to handle your lists and your email campaigns, here is the company we use
and I highly recommend (They also have a free 2 week trial period so you can check it out for free).

ONE HUGE GIANT WARNING: Do NOT just add people to your list without them fully opting in, or you could be accused of violating CAN-SPAM regulations. Even if you have a list of email addresses that are listed in a funny email you were forwarded from friends and family… DON’T DO IT! Always get their permission. If they’re really your customers, they are usually happy to grant you that permission. If you want to find a way to automate a way to get people’s permission, we can help you with that as well!

Last, but not least: Portability & Flexibility
When you control the list, you determine how and when they are contacted. You can send them ANY message that is in alignment with the purpose of the list. Don’t send knitting tips to a list about financial management. You now assume responsibility for any and all messages going out to your list. It is also your responsibility to keep the list clean. Plus, if you move to a new company, you can take that list with you and avoid any potential pitfalls in the process!

The Keys for Staying Productive When Working At Home

Rick Berg — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:55:56 +0000

So you have made the leap! You have started your own home based business. It might be full time or just a few hours a week but, you have gone where every American wants to go! So you thought it was going to be cool to get out of bed at 8:45 and make coffee and get to your computer at 9:00. Watch T.V. in the background while you worked all day or maybe you were just thinking of getting a afternoon nap in everyday!

It is all good until the 3rd day and reality sets in. You are not getting anything done!! It’s not easy to stay productive and effective when you’re working at home, especially if you have family or a roommate around. Well no need to panic, it is possible to be productive from home you just have to hold yourself accountable.

1. Work Space
Many people don’t have any extra rooms in their house to make into a office, so they are forced to work from the sofa or kitchen table. If you are going to be working from home full time you need to designate one spot to work. If you have to clean a corner out in your bedroom then do so. You must have a place where you can close a door and get away from the busy parts of the house!

2.Tell People You’re Working With Set Hours!
Don’t let your spouse or kids keep bothering you. You must have a place to close the door and tell them you are working when the door is closed. Don’t have your friends over to watch Sports Center or The View in the morning, tell them you can hang out with them after 5:00. Remember your not being mean, this is your business and you have to be able to work!

3.Get A Routine
If you are working full time from home or just a few hours a week get into the routine of doing the same thing day in and day out. That means get up every morning at the same time and start working at the same time every morning. If you start to sleep in on just one or two days you start to develop a new routine. Remember, you have to “employee yourself”! Keep the daily disciplines in place just like you would if you had to drive to a “job”!

4. Make A Schedule
This goes with getting in a routine. Make a schedule and hold yourself to that schedule. It will help you stay on track and you won’t forget to do things..

5. Make A To-Do-List
This is still my favorite productive tip. Keep a piece of paper next to you and when things come up that aren’t on your schedule put them on your to-do-list. You can also put your schedule and your to-do-list on your computer to help you stay organized. A good resource for getting your life and your new business organized is a book by David Allen called “Getting things done” Get it here

6. Stay on Task
Don’t get off your schedule and forget to finish your to-do-list! Its hard to hold yourself accountable when you don’t have a boss looking after you. So when you feel yourself getting off task just stop and ask yourself how bad do I want my business to succeeded Its all up to you, your accountable.

7. No TV.
This one is a no brainier NO TV while you are working! Now I know a few of you reading this are like I work better with the TV on. If you are one of those people have at it. I’m not going to argue with you. Now if you are the other person who knows it is bad for you, just leave it off.

8. Take Breaks
Take Breaks just like you do at work! Take a lunch hour and get out of the house, get your blood flowing. If you try and work non- stop you are going to get burnout! Take your dog for a quick walk, get fresh air, and your Productivity will go up!

9. Getting Dressed
Many people when they work at home think rolling out of bed and walking to work in your PJ’s is the greatest thing in the world. The downside is being in PJ’s most of the day probably won’t help. There’s a formality about getting dressed that prepares us mentally for the job ahead.

10. Business Phone Line
Have a separate line for business only! Now at 1st you might be keeping your cost down, but when you can work it into the budget, it’s a must. I have used Skype for a year now and have a phone number with them. Its only $10/month and my phone is on my computer!

11. When You Are Off, You Are Off
Enjoy your time off! If you stop working at 5:30 and your business phone line rings at 8:30, let your voicemail get it! Don’t let your work take over your home life, it’s a must if you don’t want to get burned-out .

12. E-mails
Don’t spend hours a day looking at your e-mails! Build it in your Schedule and do it one to two times a day. So many people spend half the day reading e-mails for nothing. If it doesn’t build your business, don’t do it!

Remember, it’s all on you! Employee yourself, look in the mirror at the end of the day and ask yourself, would you have been hired or fired for the effort you put in today if you were working for someone else?

Tony Robbins sharing some cool “Secrets to Success”

Rick Berg — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:08:13 +0000

Tony Robbins recently had an interview with two of very successful Internet Marketing guys, Frank Kern and John Reese, who both started their home businesses from very humble beginnings..

Both of them are self-made multi millionaires who made their fortunes by selling products on the Internet. What’s particularly interesting about both of them is that neither had any “real” education.. Neither one finished college and they both went from being broke to becoming wealthy, and they still continue to thrive in today’s economy.

The purpose and intent of this interview is to uncover the traits that “successful” people have in common. These are exactly the same principals and traits that Carla and I share with these guys and it is the exact reason why we have become so successful!

Watch the video and take good notes, as you will see, the solution to create incredible success is really quite simple and available to you as well!