REALnetworkmarketing

A number of people have asked me what I mean by the terms “Push” and “Pull” used in the explanations of the different types of arrows on page 7 of the PearlMaker Overview document (see previous post).

Waaaay back in the mid 1990s there was a concept called “push” versus “pull” communications. Nowadays they’re known by other, more fancy names (see “Barker’s Eggs”) like “Attraction Marketing”, “The Secret”, “Interruption Advertising”, “Permission Marketing” and similar. (Branding is everything in the 21st century.)

I still like “push” and “pull”. Their simplicity and clarity have always appealed to me.

It’s pretty easy to understand: if a message is pushed at you by a publisher or advertiser, that’s “Push”.

If you have the choice to request messages be sent to you with your consent, that’s “Pull”.

Not exactly abstruse, is it?

It’s like the three forms of selling (there are only three, by the way. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to sell you something.)

1. Advertising — which pulls the consumer toward your offer.
2. Visual Merchandising — which pushes your offer toward the (hopefully) rapidly approaching consumer.
3. Personal Selling Skills — which close any gap left by the first two.

Unfortunately, impatient sellers couldn’t wait for consumers to be pulled toward their offers, so they created ways to push their ads by invading the personal space of consumers at every opportunity. That glowing example of integrity and intelligence resulted, eventually in such even-handed legal niceties as the “Do Not Call” registry and “No Advertising Mail” laws.

So, in an effort not to have the PearlMaker Sponsoring System succumb to the “branding* correctness” that afflicts simple, clear communication these days — or to have it hijacked by those who practise it — I’ve decided to only refer to communications between the different parties and components of the System as either “push” or “pull”.

As my long-time friend Kim Klaver so succinctly puts it, “Look… why don’t I just tell you what we do, and you can call it whatever you like?” (I really like the way she cuts through the cr*p that constantly threatens to bury us in network marketing.)

The really nice thing about Web 2.0 interactivity and social behaviour is what I call the “Permission Gap”… that protective shield (like the moat around a castle) that says “yes, you can communicate with me, but only with my ongoing consent — which I can withdraw at any time!”

It’s really about the Law of Common Consent (the fundamental tenet of public relations) which says

“Any organization continues to exist only with the common consent of the society within which — and upon which — it operates.”

That’s a very formal statement meaning that if your organization — company, charity, school, trade union, industry group, religion, even government — screws up badly enough, for long enough, it will eventually earn the wrath of the society that has allowed it to exist. When that happens, it’s all over for you.

(Remember the old saying that “political parties/candidates don’t WIN office. They LOSE office”? That’s the Law of Common Consent in action. Seen the news reports on anti-whaling activists operating in Antarctica in the hope that Japan will be humiliated into ceasing whaling? That’s the same Law in action. “People Power” in the Philippines? The end of communism in Russia and its satellites? Same Law.)

It’s why companies and governments spent gazillions every year on public relations, especially crisis management when disasters happen (especially environmental or humanitarian disasters). The job of the PR professionals is to protect the right of that organization to continue to exist.

The true beauty of Web 2.0 is that it brings that Law of Common Consent within reach of the individual.

Each person has the right to say “Yes, I’ll consent to you communicating with me until you abuse that consent. Then you’re history for me.” Or “No, I don’t trust you… the drawbridge isn’t being lowered for you until you prove your trustworthiness.”

This does NOT suit the traditional “POWER Prospectors” of MLM, who lie, cheat and badger, and for whom every prospect is just a means to an end for them.

And it’s why the PearlMaker Sponsoring System, with its unique Fourth Generation Thinking principles, values, standards and practices, is perfectly positioned to deliver extraordinary results for its members.

The Age of the MLM Cavemen is dying. Those Neanderthals from the 1970s and 80s who stalk and emotionally bludgeon their prey into signing or buying, are going the way of the dinosaurs. They can’t join them quickly enough for me.

What are your thoughts on all this? Agree? Disagree? Or doesn’t it matter?

(*Like “political correctness”, “branding correctness” is just one more insidious form of emotional blackmail to keep you on the back foot by those who want to control you. Another “barker’s egg.”)

The long-awaited PearlMaker Professional Sponsoring System is finally nearing release… the only Fourth Generation™ system of its kind (five years in development and testing by The Profit Clinic).

Its final structure and sub- systems can be seen in the newly released PearlMaker Overview PDF document (15 pages) available from http://myPearlMaker.com/bulletins/overview-2010.pdf (no registration required).

For all those network marketing professionals who’ve been waiting patiently for this “mother-of-pearl” of all business building systems, it’s time to think about planning for the imminent launch. Stay tuned for announcement of free webinars, pre-launch templates and more in the coming week.
Here are some sample pages showing snapshots of the PearlMaker Process, Module One (Relationship Building) and Module Two (Delivery and Training). The content component of Module One isn’t shown here.

The updated PearlMaker web site will be online in the next 24 hours at http://myPearlMaker.com.

There are a couple of ways you can use specialist software to create articles online:

1. Software that “scrapes” content from other people’s web sites, articles, etc online and creates a composite article. The risk here is that you’ll end up with the article equivalent of Frankenstein’s Monster.

2. Software that “spins” existing articles into revamped versions (changing words, phrases, etc).

There are several clever programs that will “spin” new articles from a core article you write (forget “scraping” software that compiles articles off the web — that even more unethical) and submit them to article directories, but here’s something else to consider:

These scripts create endless variations on a single theme. It’s the same content presented in hundreds of different word combinations.

It’s like having 4,000 cable TV channels, ALL of them broadcasting the same program, with the same cast and plot, just with minor differences in the dialogue.

How does that contribute to the QUALITY and VALUE of content online?

It doesn’t. It just floods the web with garbage… QUANTITY, not quality.

And why?

So Google and the other Search Engines won’t pick up on the fact that this is just a deceptive ploy to build link juice for higher rankings for the site they’re all promoting.

It’s no different to the used car dealer who puts sawdust in the gearbox to prevent you hearing any tell-tale noises before you buy.

Google has a history of ferreting out this kind of nonsense, quietly modifying its algorithms, then SMASHING the perpetrators without warning.

Increasingly, it now boots and bans abusers overnight… and permanently!

I couldn’t applaud louder if I tried.

Any place that gets flooded has two serious problems:

1. Getting rid of the unwanted volume of worthless water. People drown in it.

2. The garbage, sewage, predators, parasites and disease that inevitably accompany floods. (They kill more people than the flood itself.)

Flooding the web with garbage and sewage does NOT make for a healthy online environment. Especially when those doing the flooding are predators and parasites — whether they realize it or not.

If you’re someone who adds to the noise and static without any contribution to the value of information online, please don’t complain about being banned by Google and the other SEs when the boom suddenly descends and you find your sites banned for content spamming.

John

In Australia we call a baby pacifier a “dummy”. (Apart from anything else, most babies have less trouble relating to that word than to “pacifier”.)

We also have a colloquial expression: “spitting the dummy”.

It refers to a toddler’s violent display of righteous indignation, when they spit out their dummy with a “so there!” attitude and facial expression. Parents are supposed to be suitably chastened and reluctant to repeat the offending behaviour that led to such displeasure on the part of their infant. (In your dreams, kiddo!)

The expression is also used to describe adult ego tantrums, when people get upset about something trivial and over-react in an infantile fit of pique. It’s almost always about bruised ego.

It’s an expression that instantly reduces the tantrum to its true relevance. In other words, it raises a very real question about which is the real dummy… the object being spat, or the childish egotist spitting it?

Rob Toth, a Canadian internet marketer who has done very well, spat the dummy BIG time today when he replied to several people who dared to point out an important error he’d made in the subject line of his previous pitch email to his list. It was an important message promoting Dan Kennedy’s upcoming event. (Dan is one of the most respected direct marketers and copywriters in the world.)

Rob used the word “elude” (to avoid, escape) instead of the word “allude” (hint at, suggest). I was one of those who wrote to him, saying:

Rob: a quick clarification:
Allude = to refer to
Elude = to avoid
Cheers,
John

No criticism implied. Just a friendly pointer for the future. I have no idea what the other respondents wrote.

The effect on Rob’s ego was glaringly obvious in today’s message-in-reply: scorn, ridicule and odium heaped upon the writers for missing the point and focusing on the trivial issue of incorrect vocabulary.

It was a truly spectacular “dummy spit” by someone who aspires to be like his hero, Dan Kennedy… a copywriter who really understands the critical importance of using the correct words in headlines, especially when 85% of readers never read more than the headline. (The subject line of an email pitch is the headline — and it determines whether the recipient reads further as much as the name of the sender.)

I’ve been online since mid-1996. I’ve been a professional copywriter since 1966. I appreciate glaring errors in headlines being pointed out, so I can avoid repetition. (Mind you, I prefer to check spelling and vocabulary before publishing… much less painful, especially for a fragile ego.)

I’ve had my share of mightily-offended visitors writing to express outrage at a miniscule misspelling or punctuation gaffe (with over 100 web sites, several with thousands of pages). I know how much it can offend such pedantic souls, whether or not they were ever likely to be a customer. They “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel” in grand style, marking me as being slightly behind and to the left of Satan himself for offending their delicate sensibilities in such ways.

But I try not to react in the same infantile manner.

If my dummy disappears, I never have to look too far to find another, even bigger, dummy.

George Fourie, the owner of http://thatMLMbeat.com, is a very savvy Web 2.0 strategic thinker. One of the best I’ve come across, actually. His concept — and his promotion of it, using the Top 50 MLM Blogs awards — is nothing short of brilliant, and I’m just glad that I spotted it and its amazing potential right from the start.

If you’re interested in using Web 2.0 tools and strategies to build your network marketing team, this is where you should be. Seriously.

Sure, there are other useful social networking sites for MLMers, including Mike Dillard’s Better Networker and Diane Hochman’s My Private Classroom. But none of them has the sheer depth of strategic thinking or implementation that George has built into http://thatMLMbeat.com.

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the existing members haven’t yet realized the scope and potential of this business building power toolkit.

Social networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are the lead generation focus of the new wave of network marketers using the Internet for sponsoring.

I’ve been using the Internet for prospecting since 1996. I like to think that I stay on top of most of what’s taking place, but last week I was genuinely surprised to discover that a little-known browser (amongst Internet and network marketers, at least) had just passed 3 MILLION users on Facebook alone… just 3 months after hitting 2 million users on Facebook.

It’s just released version 2.5.6, it’s specifically optimized for social networking, it’s fast, it’s available in Windows and Mac versions, it’s from Mozilla — the folks who brought you Firefox browser — and it automatically imports all your Firefox settings, including bookmarks.

It also uses the same add-ons, plug-ins and extensions as Firefox.

It’s Flock — the best-kept online secret I can recall in 14 years. I’ve tested it now for a week and I am seriously impressed.

Here are a couple of screen captures of the kind of useful features it offers:

• fast links to the main social networking sites, photo and video sites and webmail sites
• My World — a snapshot of all your current social networking accounts, friends, Tweets and more. (It helps to have a really wide monitor — I use a 24-inch iMac [shown below] and still couldn’t fit the entire page on screen with all of the widgets displayed.)

Fast access to your social networks, photo/video and webmail accounts

My World: with all widgets displayed on a 24” monitor

It also has a very smart “share with friends” feature that clearly explains the viral spread of this browser… just the kind of feature you’d expect of a social networking power tool like this.

If you’re using — or planning to use — social networking and other Web 2.0 resources for prospecting, recruiting and training for your network marketing business, without Flock you’ll struggle to compete with those who DO use it.

The really good news is that it’s FREE, and it’s quick and easy to download, install and use.

Check it out TODAY at http://flock.com.

As more and more network marketers flock to the web, most are discovering what the veterans of online MLM have known all along: unless you REALLY know what to do and why, plus how to do it properly, as a way of finding hot, new prospects eager to listen to your sponsoring or product pitch, the Internet SUCKS!

The typical pattern goes something like this:

• You arrive online and start looking for the best ways to find hot new prospects.
• You read everything you can find on all the latest ways to do it, including blogging, article marketing, forums, social networking (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, DirectMatch, BetterNetworker, etc).
• You spend a small fortune on ebooks, special reports, webinars, autoresponders, membership systems, software, mentoring, web hosting… or, if your budget is tight, you squander weeks and months trying to learn how to do it all yourself.
• You realize that it’s all too hard and slow and frustrating and you sign up for coaching with one of the many “attraction marketing” programs.
• You reach the conclusion (mostly accurate) that you need web traffic in huge numbers to find even a trickle of qualified prospects willing to explore YOUR opportunity (the other 99.95% all want to show you theirs, naturally).
• You sign up for every passing Internet marketing “guru’s” mailing list, buy their ebooks, reports, videos, courses, webinars to learn how to build a list, improve your page rank, optimize your sites for Google and other Search Engines, how to rite irresistable articles, how to generate traffic, how to avoid losing your shirt on PPC networks (Pay Per Click) like Google Adwords, until, months later, you begin to wonder why it’s all so hard and why you have less money now than when you first started, but few, if any, new people in your downline — despite all those breathless, adrenalin-pumping promises of riches beyond your wildest dreams, just by sending a few emails to your list or a few Tweets on Twitter about your newest article on your blog.
• You continue to cling to the security blanket of “Blowfly Logic” until your money runs out (or you drown in debt).

It’s an increasingly familiar story if you bother to step back for a moment and inspect the digital landscape (or window sill) littered with the dead or dying dreams of hundreds of thousands of hopeful network marketers, lured to the online world of so-called “New School MLM”. (Even that reference to online network marketing is deceptive, as you can see here.)

So is online network marketing really just a waste of time, money, effort and hope?

Only if you don’t know what you need to know — and DO — in order to succeed.

Remember The Law of Success and The Law of Failure? One requires knowledge. The other doesn’t. And since ignorance is the default setting for all human beings (we’re not born with ANY knowledge), then we’re pre-programmed to FAIL. That, in a nutshell, is why 90% or more fail at anything in life, including network marketing, small business, foreign currency trading, investing in shares and options, residential property… you name it, and 90% of people fail at it.

Yet the solution to this deadly dilemma is so simple: learn WHAT you need to do to succeed, WHY it needs to be done, and HOW to do it successfully.

Seems a simple enough formula for success, doesn’t it? Yet 90% of people still ignore it, to their personal loss.

New medium. Old truths.

I’ve been online since May of 1996. Long before the current online boom in network marketing. I was using these techniques in 1997 to build, train and support successful downline teams. After 13 years at the cutting edge of this “hot new trend”, I’ve learned a few things, like…

• Boring copy, in ads, articles or forum posts, doesn’t work.
• Boring layouts don’t work, either.
• Me-too, “buzz” offers and headlines don’t work for long.
• Lousy targeting of your audience doesn’t work.

If you don’t get these Four Performance Factors right, all the high-quality traffic in the world is a total waste. You’ll drive them away faster than they arrived — and they won’t return!

(Okay, to be fair, I’d learned these realities long before coming online, as a 30-year marketing and advertising professional and academic. But the Internet was a new medium, and it was important to check out any possible changes in results from using it creatively. In the end, all it did was confirm that these long-discovered off-line truths were just as true on-line.)

That means learning from mentors who KNOW these things, and have DONE them… successfully!

There’s plenty of free and low-cost information and resources available on-line to help you create attractive layouts and visuals for your web sites, blogs, ads, etc.

There’s plenty of good information about creating the right kinds of strategies — although it’s surprising how few of them understand the importance of creating the right market communication strategies. Most online strategy seems to be more about improving search engine rankings and extracting more money from buyers through up-sells, cross-sells, false scarcity and forced continuity.

There’s a considerable amount of information about traffic generation and search engine optimization (which is really linked directly to improving traffic and targeting of traffic). But most of it is tactical rather than strategic. The difference? Strategy tends to be more about visualization and planning, while tactics are what you use to implement the strategy. Like having a game plan to win a football game (strategy — the bigger picture), and specific plays to win a goal (tactics — focal points). On another level, marketing is basically strategic, while selling is tactical.

Just this past week, as we gear up at The Profit Clinic for looming launches of several products and services, we came across a brand new product  for generating lots of highly-targeted traffic and using intelligent, practical search engine optimization to support that objective… the Holy Grail of online network marketers!

I was asked to review and test the product by its creator, Frank Salinas. I’ve always liked Frank’s approach to online business and I use some of his products. He has a commitment to improving and supporting his products that I really admire — and to keeping them affordable. So I happily agreed to his invitation.

I have to say I was stunned by his system: it’s not only strategic, it’s also tactical. He outlines strategies for generating more and better quality traffic, then he spells out tactics for actually implementing those strategies.

This is seriously useful stuff!

It’s a 10-part video training series, with slides included as quick-reference summaries, titled “Cutting Edge Traffic Generation”. The communication is simple, clean and easy to understand and use. Audio and video quality are excellent. There’s no “fluff” or hype, just solid information that embodies sound marketing principles and effective sales tactics — with NO “black hat” nonsense!

The thing I like most about this course is its practicality. You can listen and watch, then put each segment to work immediately. It’s not necessary to study and absorb the entire course before you can make a move. In fact, the very first module spells out a simple, detailed plan that can help you to start attracting fast, hot, targeted traffic within just 24 hours.

Frank’s offering it as a Launch Special for just US$27. It will shortly increase to around US$97 or more (which it certainly justifies). It’s affordable for anyone looking for a really excellent, up-to-the-minute, practical way to learn how to attract more and better qualified leads for their network marketing opportunity or products. It comes with my emphatic personal recommendation — as you’ll see on the order page of Frank’s site.

Go here to learn more and to order YOUR copy, before the price rises:

http://onlinebizwiz.com/fast-hot-traffic

Special BONUS!

To back up my personal recommendation (because I think this course is so darned timely and useful for online network marketers, and SO much better than buying stale, insipid, low quality leads) that I’m offering this really useful $12.95 Insight Report as a free BONUS to anyone purchasing Frank’s product via the link above. (Details are on the first page for claiming your bonus offer.)

Disclosure: Yes, if you purchase “Cutting Edge Traffic Generation” using the link above, I’ll earn a commission. But please don’t confuse cause and effect here… I only recommend products that I use myself because of the results they deliver, and because they meet our Three Criteria of Fulfilment, not just because I earn commissions. Big difference.

In recent years we’ve seen more and more “hybrid” compensation plans appearing on the MLM scene… usually with the pitch that “we’ve taken the best of every plan and combined them all to create the highest-paying plan in the history of network marketing”, etc etc etc.

Then the imitators all jump on the bandwagon to try to capitalize on the “buzz”.

(In case you haven’t put 2 + 2 together to make 4 yet — not the 22 that the promoters typically claim — “buzz” is usually synonymous with “hype” and “spin”. It should trigger very loud warning bells any time you see or hear it used.)

Let me show you a different insight:

This was the same basic argument used by Dr Frankenstein when he created his so-called super-being. He took the best bits of different cadavers, then zapped the hybrid corpse with electricity to re-animate it, with disastrous results for everyone concerned. (It turned against its creator and killed him.)

Note that all the bits and pieces were taken from bodies that were already dead. That’s very relevant in MLM pay plans, too.

So why do these imitators choose the “hybrid” route?

As usual, they’re sellers, not marketers. They’re opportunists, not true entrepreneurs and innovators.

There’s often fierce competition between local auto dealers to donate new vehicles to local secondary schools for driving classes. The reason is simple: long research, over more than 50 years, has shown that a significant number of people buy the same model car that they learned to drive in.

If you visit MLM forums and just listen generally to people discussing MLM compensation plans, it’s interesting to note how people favor different types of MLM compensation plans. More often than not, if you ask them the right questions, you’ll quickly discover that they tend to prefer the same type of plan used by their first MLM program!

That is, until they find that it doesn’t work as well as they were led to believe. But whatever plan they prefer tends to be the one they feel most familiar and confortable with.

So… if you were an opportunist wanting to start a new MLM company, what kind of plan do you think might appeal to the widest number of people? One that they can ALL promote as “the best ever”?

Of course! One that grafts together the “best” bits of all those other plans!

NOT because it works any better. (Frankenstein’s monster didn’t work all that well, either, remember?)

It’s because it appeals to more people than specific types of compensation plans!

And since most people in MLM have little or no ability to analyze or evaluate compensation plans, it’s “safer” to give them what they’re used to, no matter what that may be!

The Bottom Line: Compensation plans are the single most reliable manifestation of any MLM company’s REAL motives and attitude toward its outsourced sales force — its distributors. If you want to know a company’s real intentions, look at its preferred compensation plan. The higher the breakage to the company it delivers, and the more spin that gullible people will swallow about it, the more the company’s owners love it.

Christmas and New Year are upon us once more, so before I forget here’s wishing you the very best of Christmas cheer and a prosperous and happy New Year for 2010 from my family to yours.

The photo is missing our son, Josh (who lives in the USA with his family), spouses, partners and grandchildren, but since I don’t have a photo of everyone, this one will have to do.

Thanks for visiting my blog during 2009. I look forward to reconnecting with you in the New Year.

Many of you know of Lou Abbott, founder and author of MLM — The Whole Truth. Lou and I have chatted over the past 3-4 years, with more intensive discussions over the past week. We’re very much on the same page of the same book when it comes to spreading the message of ethical self-regulation in network marketing — educating network marketers (especially the less experienced), exposing abusive, self-defeating behaviour that damages MLM and our individual prospects for success, and offering better, smarter alternatives.

From today, Lou and I are joining forces to share this vision much more widely. Watch for an announcement shortly at http://MLM-theWholeTruth.com (Lou’s excellent site, which every serious network marketer should bookmark and visit regularly — and sign up for regular email and RSS updates on useful industry news. I certainly do.)

While we’ve been acquaintances and colleagues for some time, we’re now friends and collaborators in what is sure to become the strongest combined voice for positive change from within network marketing in 2010.

It’s an exciting development.