What is marketing and what does it mean to you as a direct sales consultant?
Simply stated, marketing is everything you and your business does to get customers to purchase or use your product or service.
Marketing is made up of many components, including public relations, advertising, pricing and packaging.
Business is all about products, people and money.
Marketing Is About People
Effective direct sales marketing is all about your customers.
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Your marketing strategy must be built around both your current and potential customers. If you only consider the product when developing strategy, you will be ignoring the most important component of any direct sales marketing strategy. It is crucial to have a solid understanding of the behaviors and motivations of potential customers. Without this understanding, you will be missing out on business.
Once you have chosen a product line, you need to determine your target market. You don’t develop the marketing strategy from the product, you develop it from the people.
Marketing Is Understanding
Take some time to identify and understand your ideal customers and you will be ready to begin working on a promotional strategy and a marketing campaign.
In direct sales, people don’t just buy a product. They buy a product based on their perceptions of what it will do for them, what it has to offer or the image it portrays. They buy with their emotions! How will YOUR product change their lives and how can you convey that to emotionally connect with them?
When an overweight person purchases a meal plan, they don’t specifically purchase the plan because the meals look so delicious and exciting. They buy the image of a thinner healthier self. The marketing strategy is based around the image of healthy people, not around tasty pre-packaged meals.
Marketing is not just the planning and execution of your marketing strategy. It also involves analysis. Once you have implemented a marketing strategy, you also need to continually analyze and reshape Eliminating the waste and then focusing on what has been successful is the only way to have a marketing strategy that works over time.
To ensure success, your direct sales marketing strategy must be current, fresh and targeted to the right group of potential customers. Most people cringe when they even think about marketing, but you cannot have a successful business without it.
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