Yes, everybody could use more money. But most mom business owners and business seekers I know aren’t looking to make millions. Most of us want to contribute to the family income while staying at home with our children. Especially initially, our goals are usually more family focused, like paying the mortgage, getting a new car, saving for college, or being able to go out to dinner a couple times a month. We want a business that we can enjoy and still have time to enjoy our family.

I recently posed a question on a popular message board and the responses I got confirmed that “rich” isn’t always the goal. Moms want to “pay bills and have some in savings,” “pay my bills and take care of kids, and “pay the bills, have some fun and still have enough to set aside in savings/retirement.” Others mentioned “financial security” and the “peace of mind” that comes from not worrying about money.

Often after meeting some immediate needs with our first business endeavor, we start looking more towards the future and wanting a little more. I think about how I’d like to enjoy retirement without worrying about money. And how I’d like my son to be able to choose his career or business path without being so concerned about whether his chosen path will net enough income. I even think about how much fun it would be to help other moms get started in business by providing some start-up cash or funding a business expansion.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t go for millions if that’s what you want. In fact there were a few responders who said they want to be rich and be able to afford luxuries. What I am suggesting is that if you are marketing your business to moms, don’t assume we’re all looking for big bucks. Promising fancy cars and six figure incomes doesn’t attract as many moms as you think it might.

The key is to listen to what each individual prospect is looking for and help her meet her goals.

Are you using social media to drive traffic to your website and increase sales? Or are you still sitting in the skeptics camp not certain that social media is anything other than a waste of time?

If you are not using social media to promote your services, products and website, you are missing out on one of the hottest marketing trends in years. And in doing so, your competition is very likely capturing sales that could be yours.

Social media is opening doors for entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide. Through social media you can:

• Formulate joint venture partnerships with someone you otherwise would have never connected with.
• Interact with customers and clients in real time offering support and guidance.
• Interact with people who are interested in your product and services and in you.
• Drive traffic to your website, squeeze page and brick and mortar or online store.

And, if all that isn’t enough to convince you to incorporate social media into your strategic marketing efforts, the costs of social media most likely will.  Aside from your time to network and connect with friends, followers and connections, nearly all social media tools and applications are free. Affordable and powerful strategic marketing…NICE, huh?

Ready to get started?

Click the “Add to Cart” button below and find out whether Twitter, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn are the right social media platforms for you and your business. Learn social media best practices and how to avoid the pitfalls of social media marketing. And get a list of tools that will help you make the most of your social media efforts.


16 Page PDF…..$4.50
Wait! Before you click that button you should know that our mailing list subscribers get a 50% discount on all our special reports. Subscribe now.


Our product link (Why tell?)

Click here to see other available business guides.

Downloads are processed through our carefully selected 3rd party shopping cart service, e-Junkie.com.
Payments are processed through PayPal even if you don’t have a PayPal Account.
To view and print these files you will need a PDF reader. If you don’t have one, you can get Adobe Reader for free here.
Note: Every effort has been made to accurately represent our product and its potential. Each individual’s success depends on his or her background, dedication, desire and motivation. As with any business endeavor, there is an inherent risk of loss of capital and there is no guarantee that you will earn any money. Click here for complete terms of use and disclaimer.

In her blog post this morning, “Direct Sellers, Cut the Crap,” Jennifer Fong asks direct sellers, network marketers, and MLMers to “stop being so desperate to recruit that we stretch the truth.” She wants truth in recruiting. And I agree 100%. There are so many benefits to becoming a direct sales consultant that there’s no reason to use untruths to recruit.

But in my opinion, the only way the nonsense will stop is when people stop responding to outrageous claims of instant riches.

I want to be very careful here and not blame the victims. None of us are immune to being duped by some of the very sophisticated frauds, con artist, and scammers out there. But for the most part, I don’t think the direct sellers using these less than honest recruiting methods fall into the category of scammers. Many are simply misguided marketers who continue to use these types of methods because they work.

Many of us want to believe. We ignore common sense and allow ourselves to think that it is possible to get rich quick or that there’s easy money available. Just look at state run lotteries. Despite slim odds of winning, people in the U.S. spend more than $50 billion a year on lottery tickets. They’re hoping to hit it big for overnight riches. It’s the same mentality that makes claims of overnight success in MLM attractive.

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the possibilities. But as Jennifer said, the reality is that while there is the potential for big earnings, “it’s a lot of work, and it takes time.” Jennifer and others have been teaching that reality for years, and I think that’s the message we need to keep in the forefront. A bit of skepticism can be a good thing when evaluating an opportunity.

Still Jennifer’s plea for truth in recruiting is important to reach that group of misinformed and misguided direct sellers. Perhaps they’re using the same methods that they responded to or they’re just doing what their upline teaches. Again, everyday Jennifer teaches direct sellers how to become successful by conducting themselves with honesty and integrity. Lister to her!

The truth is most of us don’t need to be rich and that’s not what we’re looking for. We just want to live comfortably, take care of our families, and have a few extra dollars to indulge ourselves once in a while. Direct sales can help achieve those goals. Recruit with that reality.

For some direct sales consultants January and February can be very slow months. Your customers may be anticipating an upcoming tax bill, or perhaps they’re still recovering from holiday overspending. Or perhaps your marketing efforts took a back seat in December and the results are catching up with you now. Whatever the reason for it, Laurie Ayers has some great tips to help you out of a rut.

7 Steps to Get Out of the Direct Sales Rut

by Laurie Ayers

Business not flowing as well as you would like? Did you have a great holiday rush and now your direct sales business appears to have come to a screeching halt? Here are seven steps you can take to get out of the rut.

1. Direct mailings with your company catalog. Pick a market or two, such as assisted living facilities; nail salons or real estate agencies to name a few. Mail no more than ten catalogs to each market; there’s no sense waiting catalogs and postage without testing the waters first. Be sure to include a sample and/or special offer. Increase chances of having your catalog opened and read by placing a relevant sticker on the front. Highlight what’s in it for them if they open it.
2. Develop a Valentines Day marketing campaign and get it out to the masses NOW. February 14th will be here before you know it. Men will be particularly grateful for gift giving made simple. Think where you can find a group of men – barber shops, auto sales, auto repair, gyms, pro-shops, etc.
3. Create a special offer for Groundhogs Day, February 2. There’s one people don’t see everyday.
4. Call all of your customers, leave voice mail if necessary and merely say, ‘I’m putting in an order and wondered if you were ready for more …”
5. Hire a business coach or join a Mastermind group. Find the right one and your investment will pay off ten-fold.
6. Commit to asking for referrals from three people each day. Not covert dropping of cards and catalogs but actually speaking to strangers. Go into the gas station to pay, instead of using pay at the pump. Hand the cashier a catalog and a sample and say, “If you know of anyone who likes (candles, jewelry, makeup, etc.) could you please pass this along?”
7. Hold an open house. Who cares if you’ve been in the business two years or nine months or anywhere in between? Call it a mid-winter shindig. Pick a theme – Superbowl, Chocolate Martini, After Holidays Rest and Relaxation or Chick Flick Movie Night.

Sometimes there’s no secret to getting out of a rut other than to go back to basics. Remember when you first started your business. You were excited; you were pumped and you definitely were not in a rut. Shake it up a bit; think outside of the bowl. Remember if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep getting what you’ve been getting!

About the Author: Laurie Ayers is a WAHM from Michigan. She started her first home business in 1988. As a single parent, Laurie has supported her family by working at home as an Independent Consultant and Star Director with Scentsy Wickless Candles. She enjoys helping others start a candle business. You can find Laurie at http://www.thrivingcandlebusiness.com/ and http://www.Scentsy.com/LA

Because any direct sales consultants and other home business owners start out with little or no marketing training or experience, marketing your business is hit or miss. Your budget is usually limited and you don’t want to waste money on poor results. And free marketing methods require a time commitment and your time is valuable too.

To get the most from your marketing efforts, it’s important to make sure you deliver your message to your target market – to the people who are your ideal customers and team members. Even the most well written advertisement is completely wasted if it’s not delivered to an interested audience.

For example, if you sell high-end baby clothes, you’re not likely to gain a lot of customers on a website for frugal moms. Even though many of the moms there have babies, they are looking for ways to save money and aren’t likely to indulge in designer or expensive baby clothes. You’ll get much better results with an article or ad placed on a site for professional moms on maternity leave or a nanny referral service.

Take some time to figure out who is most likely to buy your product or service. Are they male or female? How old are they? How will your product or service help them? Take a look at companies who sell products that are similar to yours to determine if their market is your market. How and where to they advertise?

By making sure your message gets in front of your target market you’ll start to see a much better result for the time and money you put into marketing.

Many of us who start a business from home have little or no marketing experience, especially with online marketing. We learn as we go. Here are a few common marketing mistakes that if avoided will save time and money, and spare you some disappointment.

1. Not having a marketing plan.
   A marketing plan is simply a blueprint for how you will go about promoting your products or services. In the same way that a business plan provides focus, goals, and tasks for your overall business, a marketing plan provides a road map for your promotions and advertising. It’s best not to approach marketing without one.
2. Putting all your eggs in one basket.
   This old saying seems to work in a lot of situations and marketing is no exception. Diversification is the key to success and growth. You may find one or two strategies that work particularly well for your business, but don’t base your entire marketing plan on just those methods. Explore other options to avoid being stalled at a certain point.
3. Ignoring the power of networking
   Business networking is invaluable. When entrepreneurs get together to brainstorm and exchange ideas, all sorts of beneficial relationships are formed. In your business networks you will form joint venture partnerships, referral networks, and find mentors and friends.
4. Working alone to “run the whole show.”
   Most small businesses start out with one person working alone. But as your business grows there will come a time when you’ll need help to keep things running smoothly. Your time can best be spent marketing the product in new and creative ways. Someone else can take care of designing your web site, answering emails, and handling the bookkeeping. Use your expertise where it will increase profit the most and hire others to take care of the everyday details.
5. Cutting the budget.
   When business is slow is natural to want to cut expenses. But it’s especially important to keep marketing and advertising during a downturn. A better choice is to beef up marketing to reach a new or wider customer base.

If you’ve already made some of these mistakes, don’t panic. Take a good look at what you’ve been doing, keep doing what works and drop what doesn’t, and begin again with more knowledge and a marketing plan for success.

Direct sales consultants are often advised to use a number of free or inexpensive marketing methods that don’t work as well as you might think. But because they are low cost and occasionally produce results, consultant continue to use and recommend them. Before you put any time and effort into them, consider how effective these methods really are.

1 – Business card marketing. While business cards are an essential business tool, leaving a trail of them wherever you go cheapens them and minimizes their effectiveness. To use them to their best advantage, treat your business cards as if they are valuable. Only hand them out in person, to people with whom you are starting a business relationship, and always try your best to get their contact information as well.

Read more in “Is it Marketing or Littering.”

(Flyers and brochures should be handled similarly.)

2 – Catalogs. Consultants are often advised to generously give out catalogs and to leave them in doctor’s offices and hair salons, on the train, or anywhere else someone might pick one up. While a single catalog may be inexpensive, this practice can become a significant expense for consultants over the course of a year or two. And in most cases, catalogs left anywhere are more likely to end up in the trash than result in a sale.

Save your new catalogs for existing customers, guests at sales parties, and people who you meet face-to-face and who express a real interest in ordering from you.

Your old catalogs can be left around town with a big sticker on the back indicating that it’s an outdated catalog and inviting people to contact you for a new one.

3 – Car bumper stickers or magnets. Unless you have an extremely catchy domain name, it’s not likely that you’ll reach many potential customers with this method. When cars are moving it’s difficult to read what’s on the bumper sticker and when they’re stopped or parked it still requires someone to get out a pencil and paper to write down information. And before you add your business information to your car, check with your insurance agent to see if that changes your classification to business use.

4 – Free online classifieds. The only thing I’d recommend advertising in free online classified is an offer of interest to others who place free classifieds. They are the only people that are likely to read the ads.

5 – Safelists. The only reason someone signs up for a safelist is to promote their own offers. Almost no one actually reads the ads. Treat them the same way as free classifieds.

One of the biggest drawbacks to these free and inexpensive marketing methods is that they put control in the hands of potential customers. You drop off cards or catalogs and wait for customers to contact you. If you collect contact information from potential customers you’re in control and can contact them with additional information and reminders.

Additionally, most of these methods have to long term benefit. Cards and catalogs have to be replenished and free online classifieds generally move very quickly and your ad ends up buried under hundreds of other ads.

I won’t say you should never use these methods, but I am advising against relying heavily on them. If you do use them, be sure to track your results so you know which are worth repeating and which aren’t worth the time and effort. Use them as a small part of your marketing plan and spend more time on free marketing methods that also have benefits and are longer lasting. Methods like article marketing, press releases, social media marketing, link directories, and online networking not only connect you with prospective customers and team members, but they promote your expertise, provide search engine benefit (backlinks), and help you develop a referral network.

When someone asks about online marketing or increasing website traffic, one of the recommendations frequently offered is to utilize search engine optimization (SEO). What exactly is it?

Search engine optimization is a strategy to increase visitors to a website by placing high up in search results when someone uses a search engine to search for keywords related to your topic

Think about how you go about researching a topic online. You enter certain words into a search engine such as Google or Yahoo and are presented with results – usually pages and pages of results. As you review them to see what fits your needs, it’s likely that you’ll visit the first few sites, and if you find what you need there, you won’t return to the search results to view more sites.

The order in which sites are listed in those search results has a lot to do with search engine optimization. The words you enter into a search engine are called keywords. If you ever look at the top of your search results you will see the number of results returned plus the words that the search engine used to bring you those results. Now look at the results. The keywords you typed in are bolded either in the titles or in a line of content on that webpage.

By optimizing your web pages and content to match the most common phrases or keywords used for your subject, your content can be found. Ideally, content found on the first two pages of search results are the ones that people will click on. No one wants to sift through five million results. The top content or websites are the ones ranked first.

What makes them top-ranked? One factor is how often the keywords appear in the content For keyword-optimized content, keywords that show up three to seven percent of the time are ranked higher than content with less frequent keywords.

Search engines crawl your content and webpages for ranking. Keyword-dense content has a good chance of rising to the top of the rankings. But, search engine optimization is not just about single keywords, but also two and three word phrases. Longer phrases have become a great way to rank high, since most content tries to match single keywords.

Search engine optimization extends to your domain name as well. If your website has a specific niche, using keywords relative to that niche in your domain name drives traffic to your website. Don’t neglect your webpages either. Individual pages that use search engine optimized headers are also ranked.

For the website owner, using a keyword optimizer makes short work of calculating your keyword density. There are also programs that rank the popularity of certain keyword phrases when searching for information using search engines. Remember, if you can’t be found, it will be hard to sell your product or service to others.

As important as keywords are for SEO, they are not the only factor in determining where your site will be listed in the search engines. Learn more about SEO:

• Grab your free copy of SEO Fast Start by Dan Thies
• Claim your free WordTracker trial today.
• Free guide How to Get Backlinks (the basics)

If you’re looking for more traffic to your site, consider search engine optimization.

Affiliate link or our product link (Why tell?)

If paid advertising is part of your overall marketing plan you want to do what you can to get the most for your money. Here are some basic tips that will help achieve your advertising goals more expediently and effectively.

Image courtesy of swanksalot.

1. Advertise where your prospects will see your ads. Do some initial research to find your target audience and use ad tracking to determine if you’re reaching them.
2. Know your competitive edge. What can you offer that others can’t? Find a different spin or edge to make your product more appealing or offer just a little bit more. Maybe you have more experience or knowledge. There are a lot of ways to form a competitive edge. Know your market and your competitors and be creative.
3. Be careful that the image you portray for your company and products is positive. Always be professional. Be careful of what you say, whether it be on air or in print. Use a catchy logo and tag line. Maintain a consistent image so that it becomes recognizable.
4. “You have to spend money to make money.” Many people don’t like this age old adage, but it is very true. You will eventually spend money on advertising. Even free advertising has a cost – your time is money.
   The more money you spend, generally the better your reach. You don’t want to lower your effectiveness by cutting corners. Free or inexpensive advertising may be a good short term solution when you’re starting out but eventually you will want to look into different advertising options that may require more money.
   Of course you want to set an advertising budget, but allow for flexibility so you can take advantage of opportunities that arise. Also, learn the best times and season for your product or service increase your budget accordingly. Keep in mind that these seasonal times can change according to economy and market changes.
5. Keep in mind that your product or service will not appeal to everyone. Find your market and appeal to them.

These basic advertising tips are not difficult to implement. Diversify, be persistent and track your results and before long you’ll find the best mix of advertising to suit your budget and produce results.

There’s no doubt Twitter is becoming a very popular social media tool for both business and personal use. It’s easy and fun. If used properly it can help you build your direct sales business by connecting you with prospective team members and potential customers. If used improperly it can be a waste of time and even damage your reputation.

Lisa Young (Follow @lisarobbinyoung on Twitter) offers these tips to get you started on the right foot:

Twitter Tips For Direct Sellers
By Lisa Young

As a target marketing specialist for direct sales reps, I spend a lot of time testing new strategies to help direct sales reps reach and serve their customers. My current favorite is twitter.

Twitter is an obvious choice for connecting real time with friends or followers. It’s quick and relatively easy to navigate. Simply create an i.d., and start looking for people to spread your message.

The trouble comes when a person is brand new and has no idea how/where to begin.

Twitter is not a platform for heavy selling. Rather, it’s a great place to introduce yourself, share more about who you are, and then open the door to potential business ventures. Heck, you only have 140 characters per tweet, and if you want people to share those tweets, you need to keep it under 120!

In the interests of etiquette, here are a few simple tips to help direct sellers make the most of twitter:

1. Be genuine. This is at the heart of everything twitter represents. Select a user name that reflects who you are, rather than your product or company name. In fact, most companies prohibit use of their name in that manner anyway, so why risk it?

People will gravitate to who you are first, THEN to what you offer.

2. Provide value. You’ve heard me say this time and again. People are always asking themselves, “why should I believe/listen you?” We are deluged with thousands of “advertising” messaged every single day. Your tweets need to stand out, provide value to your market and serve the very people you’re trying to reach.

3. Be personal. By that, I mean resist the temptation to automate your folowing/unfollowing or direct messaging.There are appropriate ways to use automation with twitter. I’ve tested dozens of applications that were developed to maximize the efficiency of twitter. My results conclude that autofollows and autoDM’s just cause trouble.

Take the time to make the connection manually – which will avoid the need to unfollow at a later date. Yes, it means your number of followers may grow more slowly, but you can be sure that the followers you do have are actually INTERESTED in what you have to say.

4. Be patient. If you’re being true to who you are, you’re not likely to get a million followers overnight, but you WILL generate a following of people that know like and trust you. Word will spread as your followers share your message with their followers.

This is why I stress that social media and online marketing does not replace your home party business, but is an additional marketing component to running your business like a real business. Yes, there are people who have all but retired from doing home parties, but it didn’t happen overnight.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a twitter account (or any single marketing strategy) is the fastest way to riches. It can help increase your reach dramatically, but it’s certainly not an overnight solution.

==========

© 2009 Lisa Robbin Young.

Want more help understanding twitter and how to apply it to your business? Explore Lisa’s new course: Twitter Secrets for Direct Sellers [http://www.homepartysolution.com/twittesecrets].

The only certified Direct Sales Marketing Coach in the WORLD, Lisa Robbin Young helps demystify the business side of running a direct sales business like a real business instead of an expensive hobby. Register today for her free member community & target marketing program for direct sellers at http://www.homepartysolution.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lisa_Young
http://EzineArticles.com/?Twitter-Tips-For-Direct-Sellers&id=2673303