The decline of traditional network marketing
Recently I have been reading about the fall of the Roman Empire.
It was not really an abrupt collapse as many believe but a slow decline that occurred over several hundred years. which many historians believe finally culminated on September 4, 476 when Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed by Odoacer, the Visigoth king.
Over the last few years we have been witnessing the slow decline of traditional network marketing as we use to understand it. With the wide spread acceptance of social media and social networking we are seeing a complete cultural transformation in the way we view prospecting and selling network marketing products.
Personal and business relationships now exist with equal importance online as they do offline. In the case of X and Y generation statistics tell us almost 90% of their warm market participates in a social network. Facebook just blew past 800 million members so you are now definitely in the minority if you are not participating on a social network for work, play or both.
To be successful in network marketing today you MUST first understand that our industry is changing very quickly as a result of the growth of the internet. To make a substantial yearly income you have no choice but to leverage yourself through the use of social media and internet marketing strategies otherwise you just will not be competitive.
Many network marketing companies are transforming themselves and scrambling to look for ways that they can provide social media tools and training for their distributors. Nu Skin is right at the forefront of these trends. Recently they introduced first ever mobile phone applications, they have created You Tube accounts, Facebook fan pages and many of their corporate officers have just created Twitter accounts.
Even though Nu Skin has been taking those initial steps competitors are doing the same and it’s not enough.
The important question is what can we do that no one else in our industry can do?
We are already preparing for another big AgeLOC product launch but that will only take us so far. Product innovation is only half of the equation. The other half is marketing innovation and I don’t mean just tools. We need to be able to market those new products in ways our competitors are currently unable to and that means through the internet. Doing so would set the stage for the transformation of an entire industry.
