You might be surprised to learn that one of the most effective ways to recruit new direct sales consultants for your team is to publish an online advertisement. Online advertising isn’t cheap and for many it can be a bit of trial and error. The key to success is creating advertisements that speak directly to your audience. Namely, you want to appeal to people who are looking for new opportunities, self-employment or careers.

There are three essential tips that help you appeal to this audience.

1. Keywords – What keywords do your prospects use when they’re searching for information? This is important particularly if you’re utilizing PPC ads. The ads will be displayed depending on the keywords your prospect has used in their search. You want to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords.
    
   If you’re not using PPC but are instead creating a traditional text ad to be published on a website or ezine keywords are still important. They grab the reader’s attention and help them quickly identify the benefit of reading your ad.
2. Call to action – What do you want readers to do when they read your ad? Do you want them to visit your website? Do you want them to give you a call? Do you want them to download a free ebook you’ve created about how to achieve direct sales success? Make sure your ad’s call to action supports your goals. If your goal is to connect with potential recruits make sure you give them the means to connect with you.
3. Benefits, benefits, benefits – What’s in it for them? An advertisement that says, “start your own direct sales business” is fine. You might get a few responses. However, an ad that says, “Control Your Destiny – Achieve Your Personal Annual Income Goals Your Way with Direct Sales.”
    
   In order to stress the benefits of becoming a member of your team consider what needs, desires, wants and problems your prospects are feeling. Then show them how to solve their problems by becoming a consultant. Keep it short, simple and sweet.

The final element of direct sales advertising success is to make sure you’re placing your advertisements in the right location to attract your prospect’s attention. Additionally, test and track your advertisements success. Keep tabs on which ad’s perform the best. Which generate the most interest and response? Which produce the most effective recruits?

Image courtesy of 4nitsirk on Flickr

Direct sales offers an abundance of opportunities to make a great income. In addition to your own sales success, recruiting other consultants can boost your income. There are many common and effective ways to recruit new teammates.

One of the most popular of course is to recruit at home parties. If you’ve exhausted the standard recruiting strategies or you want to launch a recruiting campaign consider some of these unique, and effective, strategies as part of your overall direct sales advertising plan.

1. Social Networking
   Many successful direct sales consultants accidentally stumble upon the power of social networking. They post a promotion or a review for a product and not only do they make sales, they connect with others who are interested in representing the company. Social networking is extremely powerful for connecting with other like-minded people.
   However, instead of stumbling upon success, you can create a plan and implement it to recruit teammates. For example, you might create a Facebook advertisement or a Facebook fan page to support your career. In addition to promoting products occasionally you can also share your experiences and the joys of being a direct sales consultant for your chosen company.
2. Blogging
   Do you presently have a blog? You can recruit motivated teammates by starting a blog about your adventures, misadventures and successes as a direct sales consultant. You’ll help other direct sales consultants achieve success. You’ll also attract great people to work with and join your team.
3. Guest Blog, Article Marketing and Helpful Content
   Finally, and perhaps you’re starting to see a theme here, consider publishing content about how to succeed as a direct sales consultant. When you publish helpful content you position yourself as an expert. Share your personality in your content and you’ll also attract people who want to work with you. You’ll be amazed at how well this strategy works. Publish content on article marketing sites, become a guest blogger for work at home or direct selling blogs and publish content on social networking sites like Linked In.

Add these three online recruiting strategies to your next recruitment drive and reach your goals quickly, and effectively. You’ll recruit top notch teammates and be well on your way to lasting direct sales profits and success.

Promotion is defined as the act of furthering the growth or development of something. Under that definition just about every action you take for your business is a promotion. However, the word promotion implies something greater – a concentrated effort to bring awareness to a product, service, or campaign.

As a direct sales professional you can promote a product, an event like recruitment fair, or a promotion your company is offering. Regardless of what you’re promoting there are key ingredients to a successful promotion.

1. Know Your Destination
   What do you want to accomplish with your promotion? What are your goals and objectives? This is the very first essential step to any successful promotion. There is any number of potential goals. They can be monetary, for example $1000 in sales. Your goal might be to attract X number of ezine subscribers. Or you may want 100 people to attend your recruiting fair with the additional goal of recruiting 5% of them.
2. Action Plan
   Outline exactly what you need to do to achieve your goals. For example, if you want to attract 100 people to a recruiting event you might decide to publish an ad in your local newspaper and to email everyone on your email list and ask them to come and bring a friend.
3. Scarcity, Urgency, and Your Call to Action
   When you implement an element of scarcity or urgency your promotion will gather more attention. For example, if you’re promoting a new product you might offer a coupon for the new product. The coupon will have an expiration date. If you’re hosting a recruiting event you might say that it’s limited to the first 100 people. Studies have shown that these tactics produce results.
4. Integration
   When creating your promotion action plan be sure to integrate it into all of your existing marketing tactics. For example, market it in your email messages, on your blog and/or website, on your social networking profile and anywhere else you market your business.
5. Testing and Analytics
   Each promotion is an opportunity to learn. Use this opportunity to learn about what your customers and prospects respond to. Learn about what they want, need and desire and how you can best service them. Test your marketing tactics for results. Which tactics work best? Measure sales, clicks, and visits to your website and examine the data. Each promotion will offer you with an abundance of information to help you improve your business and your next promotion.

Embrace these keys and you’ll enjoy success time and time again.

Image courtesy of SixRevisions on Flickr

Getting ready to launch an advertising campaign? Want to recruit a few new top producing team members? Are you hoping to draw attention to your direct sales company and all that you have to offer? Before you place an advertisement take some time to create your advertising and listing strategy.

Step One: What Do You Want To Accomplish?

In order to achieve advertising success it’s important to first know what you want to accomplish. What are your goals? For example, do you want to recruit three new top performing recruits?

Step Two: Define The Offer.

It’s also very important to know who you’re looking for or what you’re offering. What are the characteristics of top performing recruits? How will you appeal to your audience? What benefits can you highlight? How can you solve their problems?

Advertising is about capturing your prospect’s attention and motivating them to take action. In the case of recruiting new teammates the desired action may be to click through to your recruiting page. Decide exactly who you’re advertising to and what you have to offer.

Step Three: Researching Advertising and Listing Options

Now it’s time to decide where you’re going to advertise or list your business. Take some time and research your options. For example, you might advertise or list on Craigslist. You might also create a Facebook ad or list your business opportunity on a Direct Sales Company directory.

Step Four: What’s Your Budget?

Once you have an idea about your advertising or listing options, it’s time to begin comparing them. You’ll of course compare them based on how they fit your goals and your target audience. You’ll also want to evaluate them in terms of cost. Which options best fit your budget?

Step Five: Optimize Your Advertising and Listing Strategy.

At this point you likely have your goals, your ad or listing created and you have chosen a site or sites to focus on first. The next step is to integrate y our advertisement of listing into your overall marketing strategy. For example, if you publish a new advertisement on Craigslist you might link to that ad from your Facebook page. Integrating your marketing and business building tactics helps draw more attention to them. It makes them more effective.

Finally, consider sending prospects to a landing page for each specific goal you identify. This will help you test and track your results. You’ll learn what your prospects respond to and which listings or ads generated the most interest and results. Also consider tackling one ad or listing at a time. Tackling too much at once often results in incomplete efforts. Focus on one tactic, perfect it, and then add more.

Image courtesy of deanmeyersnet on Flickr

Facebook offers advertising benefits to business owners from all industries. Yet for direct sales consultants, it may be particularly effective. Why? Because Direct Sales is all about connecting with your audience and prospects – it’s social networking. Facebook of course is a social networking tool. You can use Facebook to build your business and recruit new teammates. Let’s take a look at how to advertise with Facebook.

             Image courtesy of David Berkowitz

Step One: What Do You Want To Accomplish?

It’s very important with any advertising strategy to create a goal for your ad. An example might be that you want to recruit five new teammates. Once you have your goal you can then create an ad and a plan to achieve it. The goal comes first.

Step Two: Register for Your Account

If you don’t have a Facebook account you’ll want to get one. Registration is free and you can get a Facebook page up in a few hours. Once you have your account you can then move forward and create your ad.

Step Three: Create Your Ad

Facebook is incredibly user friendly. It actually walks you through the step process of creating your advertisement. Initially, you’ll be asked to:

• Create a title for your ad
• Prepare the text for the body of the ad
• Upload an image for the ad
• And provide the web address of the page that users will click through to – where will you send your prospects? An example might be a contact us page or an opt-in page.

There are a few specs to pay attention to when creating your ad. For example,

• You have 25 characters (including spaces) for the headline of your advertisement.
• You have 135 characters for the body of the ad.
• Your ad image must be no larger than 110 pixels wide x 80 pixels tall – it should have an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9. (The Facebook interface will attempt to resize it automatically).

One of the wonderful user friendly features a Facebook ad provides is the ability to view your ad as you create it. This helps you make minor tweaks as you go and generate your ideal advertisement.

As you’re creating your advertisement make sure the ad copy, including the headline and call to action in your body copy support your goal. You’ll also want to follow basis advertising guidelines – namely, capture attention and tell your prospect what they have to gain by clicking on your ad.

Step Four: Target Your Audience

The next step is to target your advertisement. You can target:

• Location
• Age range
• Gender
• Education level
• Where your prospect’s work
• Their relationship status
• And the language they speak.

Step Five: What’s Your Budget?

Your final step is to decide on your advertising budget. Start small and consider initially creating one ad rather than several. This will help you fine tune the results and make sure your ad is generating the desired results. Once you’re achieving Facebook advertising success you can then branch out and create several advertisements.

Have you tried Facebook advertising and if so, were you happy with your results? Comment below to tell us about your experience or to ask any questions you have about social media advertising and marketing

There are many ways to grow a direct sales business. You can of course sell more products and earn more commissions. You can also grow your team of recruits and earn commissions from their sales success. In fact, for many direct sales consultants growing a team of successful consultants is the single biggest profit generator. It can mean going from a few hundred dollars a month in commissions to a few thousand.

Of course the challenge to growing your team of consultants is connecting with the right people. While this is usually an ongoing process you can boost your numbers by launching an advertising campaign. There are many effective direct sales advertising options to consider:

1. Classified Ad Sites – The majority of classified ad sites are free. This is of course one of the benefits to using a site like this. Additionally, you can generate some very good leads for your direct sales team. They can also generate links to your website which can of course increase sales and recruits. One of the most popular classified ad sites is Yahoo Classifieds.
2. Craigslist Advertising – Craigslist is a unique type of classified ad site and therefore deserves its own category. Craigslist gives you the power to control what region to advertise to. For example, if you only want to advertise to your city or region you can do that or you can advertise to multiple states and metropolitan cities.
3. Facebook Ads – Facebook advertisements give you the ability to target a specific prospect based on gender, age, location and much more. Facebook reaches millions of users daily. While it does cost money it can generate targeted results.
4. Text Ads on Directory Sites – Direct sales directory sites provide a unique opportunity to appeal to people who are likely already considering a career in direct sales. They’re visiting the directory site for a reason – to research opportunities. Your advertisement can help attract your ideal recruits.
5. Ezine Advertising – An ezine is a newsletter that targets a specific audience. For example, a website owner may have a parenting ezine or a work at home ezine. Placing advertisements in these ezines can help you reach a motivated and potentially profitable crowd.
6. Website/Blog Paid Advertising – You can buy ad space on a niche website or blog. For example, if you’re interested in recruiting single moms you might buy advertising space on a blog or website dedicated to that audience.
7. PPC Advertising – Google is just one of the search engines that provides PPC advertising opportunities to motivated business owners. Creating targeted, keyword specific ads, help you achieve success.

There are multiple options when it comes to advertising your direct sales business. Before you choose any particular option make sure to establish goals for your ad. What do you want the advertisement to achieve? Then create a plan to make it happen. Consider your budget, what link you’ll include in the advertisement (for example you might send prospects to a landing page designed to recruit new direct sales team members) and finally decide how you are going to track your results. Then choose your advertising medium and launch your campaign.

Image courtesty of swanksalot on Flickr

One of the simplest ways to gain more sales, more email subscribers, or more team prospects is to include a strong call to action in all your marketing and sales materials.

A call to action is simply telling your reader what you want them to do. Phrases such as “Call now” and “Click here to buy” are examples. There is nothing complicated about a call to action, but all too often we forget to include it.

Why Is a Call to Action Important?

When writing sales copy it is obvious to you why you are writing it. You want people to purchase your product or service. So it’s easy to forget to tell them to do that. At first glance, it may seem quite unnecessary.

Think about it for a minute. People today are quite busy with their day-to-day activities. They have work and family to think about. In their spare time they have hobbies and entertainment to keep them busy. There is no shortage of things to occupy their minds. When reading a sales letter they often read what they see and that’s it.

Sure, if the reader stopped to think about it, they would realize that the copy is urging them to make a purchase. Most of the time they don’t. They think, “Gee, that sounds nice,” and go on about their business.

In an online sales letter this is even more of a problem. The Internet is full of information and your sales page is one of millions that are out there waiting to be read. You could have the most compelling sales copy in the world, but without a call to action, your sales will not be as good as they could be.

Another reason for a call to action is to let customers know what course of action they should take to purchase. If you don’t tell them to click the link or call the toll-free number to order, they may not know what they need to do. Instead of investigating they may just look elsewhere.

Where Does the Call to Action Go?

The most common place for a call to action is at the end of the sales letter right before the signature and P.S. There should definitely be a call to action in that very place. There are other places that you can add a call to action for added convenience and visibility.

If your sales letter is long you could consider putting a call to action after each main section. Some readers could make up their minds without reading all the way to the bottom. Other readers may read all the way through but go back to look over the details again. Letting them know what they need to do to order when they are ready will seal the deal.

Calls to action are important in sales and marketing copy. A few simple, well placed words may be all it takes improve your response rates. Tell your readers what to do and they’re more likely to do it.

There’s this weird dichotomy in online marketing today. The Internet is more and more accessible and offers more and more tools that make marketing easier. Yet it seems to be getting harder and harder to sell online.

Maybe it’s because there’s so much more competition now. Or perhaps it’s because consumers are more savvy, and more careful about how and when they spend their money. Or maybe, because we’re all bombarded with advertising all day, every day we’ve become resistant to anything that even slightly resembles a sales pitch.

If you are struggling to sell your product or service online, it’s time to stop trying to sell products and services. Instead, start selling yourself as somebody who is trustworthy.

This free report, Relationship Selling – How to Sell Yourself Online shows you how to do just that.

“The one thing you must realize, and if you get nothing else from this report but this, it’s that you can’t sell somebody a product or service until you really do have their trust.”

Start building trust today. Click here to instantly download your free copy of Relationship Selling – How to Sell Yourself Online.

Enjoy! And please come back and leave a comment to let us know what you get out of the report and what changes you’re making.

To view and print this report 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 this 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.

With the Internet becoming more and more of an everyday convenience for most people, and with more and more interest in running an online business, turning to the Internet to market a direct sales business naturally follows. Marketing online can be very effective, but sometimes direct sellers become so engrossed in Internet networking tools that product sales takes a back seat.

Social media marketing can be particularly tricky. It works if worked right. And it’s fun. But if you aren’t careful, it can consume a lot of time – time that could be spent direct selling for immediate profit.

As Lisa Young says in Twitter Tips For Direct Sellers, “…social media and online marketing does not replace your home party business.” Marketing and selling is a balancing act. Use online social media to build relationships that can lead to business, and continue to sell use the proven, basic direct sales methods like home parties and face-to-face sales.

I have another free gift for you as a token of my appreciation for being a loyal reader. Thank you for making the time to read iRepNetwork’s blog, Business Opportunity Connection.

Melissa Ingold, the Internet Marketing Sweetie is one of my favorite mentors. She always produces high quality, effective business guides and this one is no exception. And her newly released, The Top 10 Words that Say Buy and Why They Work is another great guide.

Melissa lists the top keywords that “make us want to purchase” and explains why they work. If you incorporate these words into your promotions it’s likely that your sales will increase.

Grab your completely free copy of The Top 10 Words that Say Buy and Why They Work. You don’t even have to supply your email address to download it. It’s my gift to you, courtesy of Melissa, to thank you for reading the Business Opportunity Connection.

Click this link to get your free copy.
To view and print this guide you will need a PDF reader. If you don’t have one, you can get Adobe Reader for free here.

Are you new to our blog or did you miss our other gifts? Find them all here.

Thanks again for sticking with us and as always, we welcome your feedback. You can offer your opinions and make requests and suggestions by leaving a blog post comment or by contacting us.

Enjoy!

To view and print this report 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 this 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.