Social Marketing Axiom - Offer What People Want
It is true that learning the skills of social marketing is an important tool in your network marketing business. When you work for someone else, much of that is done for you. Yet, when you have your own network marketing business or any home based business for that matter, the challenge of meeting those social marketing needs will be all yours. Building your business with social marketing is more than just learning how to deal with people: it is a process of learning to offer value before expecting something in return.
Until recently, a traditional network marketing business was built by following leads, finding prospects, cold calling, doing follow up visits and pretty much anything else your upline suggested. Traditionally, most home businesses are built much the same. For your business to succeed you ought to have a source of contacts. Finding that source is extremely sluggish .
Sadly, even if you do everything right - even if you invest hours upon hours promoting your business, your prospects are probably half-hearted at best. The regular person can - with a click - access information that includes the negative as well as the positive. Much of this information is opinion based and not necessarily reliable - making it even more difficult to reach your target audience. Like everything else, technology is pushing for a change in how you build your business. And It is not that I am saying that the old business model doesn’t work anymore - because I know people who are still doing just fine with it. By this I mean that time is at a premium in today’s world. For example, have you noticed that families are noticeably busier than they were, say - even 20 years ago? There is so much competition in every area of family life that the average family simply doesn’t have any time left. They do, nonetheless, still need that surplus income.
Nowadays the most common option is still - to set up a home based business. With no travel time, they have the distinct advantage of being able to stay home where they can invest a few hours here and there; but, those few hours rarely show enough profit to make a difference. And who wants to add yet one more thing to an already packed schedule with little to show for it?
I should say, they need a way to leverage their time by setting up a business using Social Marketing. I first learned about Social Marketing when I enrolled in the University where I began learning about things like blogs, articles, journals, video, bookmarking and social sites. Another thing that was impressed upon us over and over again was this statement: Offer value in the first place - before expecting anything in return.
Let me offer you an example! I drove by a flower market on the way home today. On the large billboard outside, they announced the random name of one person from our community. Every week there is a new name drawn. That person only needed to stop by the store to receive a free dozen roses: no purchase, no entry, no strings attached. What a marketing plan! Give value before expecting anything in return. What do you think: any of those people ever return to purchase flowers?
Or another example: my friend has a guitar business. Many times he has offered valuable information to someone looking to purchase a guitar or offered his expert opinion on whether or not to fix or restore a guitar. Do they always return to buy from him? Not always. But, he knows that he has offered them honest value up front. Well, they are then free to consider the information and draw their own conclusions. And again you see: value before return.
That is the fundamental taught at any course on business: always offer value before expecting anything in return. Undoubtedly building your business on the internet with Social Marketing offers so much more than just business tools. It will teach you to offer what people want - and how they want it.
Tags: Social Business Model, Social Business Network Marketing, Social Business Networking, social marketing, Social Marketing Business