Online Marketing Strategy:

Build A Membership Site

To bring your business into the modern age, use the internet to support collaboration, education and information-sharing that is already taking place.

Join and create your own online communities. These are at the heart of social network marketing. An online community is simply an interactive group of people who share a common interest.

Forrester, an internet research group, concluded in its report Online Community Best Practices, published in 2007, that, “Online communities are one of the most powerful tools a marketer can deploy for customer retention, word of mouth, and customer insight.”

If you create your own, behave like a host not a cop. If your visitors feel censored, they won't come back.

You could have open membership for customers, say, to post comments or ask questions about your products. Customers who live in a vacuum are not loyal. They are likely to stop buying that monthly bottle of juju juice when the next great health elixir comes along if they are not involved somehow with you.

Just as you would not offer to sell Easter Bunnies to neighborhood children that you invited to your backyard Easter Egg Hunt, do not use the community push more product.

Upselling is a popular marketing tactic on the internet. Do not abuse your paying customers with it. The purpose of the site should be limited to product or service information, and building a relationship based on trust.

In May, 2008, Forum One Networks, a strategy and research group specializing in online communities, published the results of a study entitled Online Community ROI – Reports and Models. (ROI stands for the annual financial benefit after an investment minus the cost of that investment).

The research group found that 67% of US companies and corporations respondents are actively developing a comprehensive online community strategy or had no strategy. Only 31% had a comprehensive strategy in place.

For major companies to invest in creating their own online communities, tells you there are profits to be made there.

If you are familiar with the branded gurus who have made their fortunes online, you’ll notice they, too, have moved in that direction.

Joel Comm started the Top One Network in May. Members pay $30 a month to network with other webhosts.

To join the highly successful Barefoot Executive costs about $10 a month. This website is geared to women building their own business on the MLM model.

The owner, a career MLM exec, generated a 6-figure income in months after her launch and expects to hit the million dollar mark by her first anniversary this winter.

Of course, you wouldn’t create a subscription site for company customers!

Mike Dillard runs a free membership site for folks involved in MLMs. It is one of the best organized sites on the web. It literally is brimming over with valuable free content. Mike created this site for customers who have purchased his MLM training courses. Because of that, he does not hit is members with ads: his products are carefully kept in one area of the site.

Members automatically receive a newsletter that may feature advice, spotlight a successful MLMer, or notifies you of updates to products. His newsletter is nonintrusive: as an MLMer myself, I always learn something valuable from Mike’s newsletters.

To encourage membership participation, Mike runs occasional contests. If your mind is thinking I can't afford to run a contest, think again.

In a recent contest, members were invited to submit their profiles that they have created on the site. Winners were spotlighted. How much did that cost? The rest of us got to see the critique of their profiles--and their websites. We all won because we all learned something valuable.

Take a look.

If you are interested in visiting Better Networker for ideas, just click the button below.

So what do you think? Is the MLM business model right for you? Can you put a team together with the skills to make the internet work for you?

That is what I am doing and I suggest that if you are a self-starter with just a couple of skills you can attract your dream team with a little imagination and elbow grease!

The one aspect of MLM I haven't brought up is fun. Working within a tight-knit group, sharing common goals and being able to focus your energies in the area of business you do well is fun and exciting.

Recently our daughter pointed out that I had lied to a couple of people who had been asking about my modified MLM model.

They had asked how much time I put into my business and I had responded "a little over 20 hours a week."

My daughter insisted I was spending a lot more time on the business. That was true when I was developing this website, I thought, but that was months ago.

I decided to start keeping track of my time to prove her wrong. Sure enough; she was right. I'm actually spending over 30 hours a week at my business but I'm having so much fun, I didn't notice!