DubLi Network Opportunity: Marketing Basics II by Ycademy – Dublicator
Vouliagmeni, October 28, 2008 – The series of Articles entitled Marketing DubLi will step-by-step develop different Marketing Strategies for Independent DubLi Business Associates and Partners of the the Dublicator Team of Independent DubLi Network Business Opportunity Associates. Marketing Basics II will deal in simple terms with basic marketing choices, such as pull and push marketing and target assessment to conclude on considerations about key-word marketing.
In our first Article, DubLi Network Opportunity: Marketing Basics I we went through some prerequisites for successful Home Business Building and we roughly mentioned Targeting. We will now have a closer look at targeting and target assessment in order to figure out where and how to market and to promote the products and business Opportunity of DubLi and DubLi Network.
1. Push Marketing and Pull Marketing
“The business terms push and pull originated in the marketing and advertising world, but are also applicable in the world of electronic content and supply chain management. The push/pull relationship is that between a product or piece of information and who is moving it. A customer “pulls” things towards themselves, while a producer “pushes” things toward customers.” Wikipedia
In simple terms and on the example of DubLi: when you go out and promote DubLi to your Friends and Lists you are on pull marketing terms. When potentially interested people find your links, site or ads because they search for it, then you are on pull marketing.
Or, push-pull strategies are distinguished by the fact that in push marketing you move the products or ads to the target, while in pull marketing the consumers move your products or content towards themselves.
2. What is better, Push- or Pull Marketing?
Let me tell you right away: there is no absolute answer to this question as it depends on the market, product, target and more factors. The industrial era developed high skills in push marketing: the industry produces a product and pushes it down the throat of consumers through an active sales force. Since the mid 90ties the internet has brought some interesting developments, namely through the appearance of eBay and Google. Consumers started to go out and to look for what they desired to buy, they developed what I call a Google-eBay Reflex.
Isn’t it true, when you need to know something, you just search Google? And if you search for a product you check out eBay (not necessarily because you want to buy from eBay, but also to check the price of the product in the active market place.
Customers are aware of a solution for their problem or a product which satisfies their (urgent) needs. The awareness is often created by mass media, such as TV, Radio News Paper . TV is push marketing. Once you are aware that a solution exists, you go and shop for it applying your Google-eBay reflex: do a quick search on Google or on eBay, your credit card between your teeth and buy the product you wanted so badly and at this moment.
This brings in the timing factor: when do we need to market what and where? Timing is everything. As we know from YAM, the best customer is the one who searches for what we have to sell because he wants to buy it NOW! Does he find you? Here we are in a pull marketing situation.
We can almost say, traditional marketing was push marketing while we are shifting the longer the more towards pull marketing situations namely on the consumer side and online. A recent study of online consumer behavior shows that today close to 60% of all sales are closed based on pull marketing situations. Push marketing, like TV may create product awareness while pull marketing aims to be at the right place at the right time with the right solution or result the customer is (desperately or urgently) looking for.
Customers abandon preventive purchasing in function of an eventual future need, they tend to buy what they need and when they need it. I imagine, the present economic crises will enhance this trend.
In other terms: the market and the target is less foreseeable than say 20 years ago. Companies don’t build huge stock and inventories of goods anymore in view of selling by pushing the product to the end user, they rather produce to respond to a demand and the demand is largely defined by customers asking for the product. While Dell or Microsoft produced in the 90es based on static market evaluations and assessments, today they produce based on an actual demand which is based on the feed back from their network of distributors (wholesale and retail orders). The market is less predictable and companies must react faster and in a more flexible way to customer demand.
Other typical Push Strategies have made it to the market in big style during the past 10 years: referral and word to mouth marketing. The whole direct selling industry is push marketing based. When a company tells happy customers to spread the word to friends and families, that’s push marketing. When a company entices its distributors to go out and recruit, it’s push marketing.
Push strategies have been tried online by most any Networking Company, without groundbreaking success, except may be in email marketing and namely before the implementation of the CAN-Spam Act late in 2003. (Spam still seems to work – otherwise we would not have our mail boxed flooded with it).
Why do I tell you all of this?
Pull and Push strategies have to do with what you have to sell and to whom. To find out which strategy you should use, you must have a clear view about your Target, your Product as well as on what’s provided by the Merchant you are referring customers to. Let’s try to apply the above to DubLi and DubLi Network bringing it to simple terms.
1. What is DubLi?
DubLi is a Global online Auction House which offers also a referral and networking Opportunity.
Conclusion: The DubLi products are traded online by and for people who are online. Products include bids, business associate packs, partner program packs.
2. What are DubLi Business Associates paid for?
The sources of income of a DubLi Networker consist in commissions over multiple levels, using referral marketing in order to trigger successful recruiting and successful selling of bids by DubLi.
Conclusion: There are two types of products: digital bids which need to be purchased and exercised online and DubLi Business or Partner Licenses, which can be promoted online and offline.
3. What is the main financial benefit for DubLi Business Associates?
On the short run, the first and fastest benefit results from referring new DubLi Network Business Associates, as the Company pays out over 50% of the Licese Price through 5 levels of achievement.
On the long run: the benefits will result from customers’ trading activity in the Auction House, whereas the Business Associate receives commissions on every bid purchased by directly and indirectly referred customers. Considering that the best paid eBay partners earn from hundreds of thousands of Dollars per month up and in excess of 2 million, one can easily see the power and benefits of building large customer networks.
Conclusion: Considering that the best paid eBay partners earn from hundreds of thousands of Dollars per month up and in excess of 2 million, one can easily see the power and benefits of building large customer networks.
4. How to Combine short and long term benefits resulting from the DubLi pay Plan?
If it is true, that the fastest benefits result from networking and referring new associates, then it’s obvious, business associates should go out and network and refer new prospects to DubLi.
To leverage best in the process you need to refer preferably new networkers, who will also network and bring new customers.
On the long run, you will need to refer customers to DubLi, the more the better. The DubLi referral program works similar to eBay’s partner program in this respect: if you refer a customer, who brings along another customer, then the latter is considered as well as your direct customer and you get the full reward from his trading activity.
5. Duplication
Duplication is when a patern is repeated through out a network. Networking recruits tend to take example on their sponsors and are motivated to do as the upline sponsor does. Here is one of the big problems in networking: if the upline sponsor gets it wrong, the domino effect will kick in throughout the whole downline, until someone breaks out from the patern. Inversely, if upline gets it right, then the downline will benefit and build success, for as long as they follow the leader.
The huge rate of defection in MLM and networking show, that duplication is difficult, namely if you want to duplicate success.
Conclusion: We must aim to recruit people who qualify for what we are doing and who then recruit people who qualify for what we are doing.
6. Who Qualifies best for DubLi Business?
Some of the qualities you are looking for are: the prospect should be online and have basic computer skills and have trust into the internet and ecommerce. It’s probably someone who has already purchased online and who knows people who purchase online. Ideally he has some marketing/advertising and sales skills and a list of like minded contacts.
If you go out and refer only low-techies, you may well get your short term recruiting bonus, however that person is not likely to help you to build your business online. The effect of such targeting will kick in when your team member needs to renew his/her license.
The DubLi Business stands and falls on the medium and long term with the trading volume achieved on the platform. It remains therefore crucial to focus on the appropriate target.
7. How and where do we find the Target
This is probably each marketers best kept secret as it has to do with market and target assessment and we deal with details in internal Dublicator Ycademy calls and trainings. But to give a hint: We use a mix of pull and push strategies, whereas we have noticed that for the time being the YORGOO – Dublicator team is the only one out there to use online pull strategies for DubLi related marketing in a visible way. This gives us a USP (Unique Sellers Position) when it comes to competition within the DubLi Network and the inventive and visionary features of the DubLi Auction Platform gives us a USP in the competition with external vendors and marketers.
8. The Difference between marketing DubLi Network and DubLi Auctions
We will specifically deal with the promotion of auctions in a later article. This much at this stage: Networking and MLM traditionally are brought to people using push strategies while products are sold more successfully using pull strategies.
DubLi Network is MLM and it is relation based marketing. No opportunity sells by itself, nor by the merchant’s website. Relation based marketing has to do with your Authority and Credibility your circle of influence and the trust people place in you. Even if you use pull strategies for MLM lead generation, the sale will depend on relational and credibility aspects which each marketer needs to work on, daily. Don’t just send traffic to your DubLi Network site, it will not work. The key is pre-selling, so that the prospect is ready to sign up by the time he gets to the DubLi Network web site.
It is a fact that in affiliate and referral marketing online, the trust factor is increasingly necessary to trigger sales; cold market traffic has proven to be about inefficient these days when it comes to sell a business license for hundreds or thousands of Dollars.
Conclusion: Networking has to do with Networking! Networking means building relations and working permanently on the quality of such relations. The quality of relations will determine your conversion rate.
The DubLi product marketing is a more delicate issue we cannot detail here: on one hand the best way to satisfy potential customers is to drive them directly to the appropriate auction, on the other hand once the prospect is with DubLi you lose any kind of dirct communication possibilities, since you cannot anymore access your customers and prospect from the DubLi back-office. The Carrot Strategy could do the trick.
9. What is the Cost of Marketing?
There is no business without marketing and there is no marketing without cost in time and money. Push strategies in general are less costly and less efficient if you look at it from the ‘closing a deal’ point of view. However it will depend on your choice.
Example: a typical pull strategy can consist in being highly reachable and visible on Google. You have two options: either you get your webpages listed in the top 10 on the relevant key-words or you buy Google Adwords.
Companies are spending thousands per month to optimize their sites and to increase visibility on Google. It’s usually a difficult task to get on top and it may take time and effort as well as the use of some advanced publishing software. On the other hand you can get a quick result by placing Google Ads: anyone can become visible on Google search page 1 on any keyword, by using the PPC engine.
What’s cheaper? Google Adwords need permanent, daily input of money and if you don’t make it to get to conversion bench mark with your advertising, then you are wasting your money. However, in Networking you will often see uplines convincing downlines to spend and be it just 5 Dollars per day on Google Adwords. In this case, the cumulative effect of all downlines spending $5 per day will trigger a notable result for the upline, however it will not result in statistical success for the individual downline. In other words, you become a water carrier and you waste your money, unless you spend enough to reach the conversion bench-mark and that may be rather costly.
Let’s put the cost in perspective on a practical example:
If I spend $500 on a good website script and start publishing, I can reach high visibility over 2-3 months in targeted key-word environments. My additional cost is hosting ($35 per year at ChiHosters - unlimited pack- and the renewal fee for my domain). that’s it.
If I go for Google Adwords and send traffic straight to my replicated DubLi sites, my cost will be $450 in 3 month on a budget of $5 per day.
We know that the $5 Budget is too low to bring tangible results to the individual advertiser; also the day you stop the Ads you disappear from the screen, completely and immediately.
While my investment into reaching high Google listings and rankings will increasingly bring results over time and on the long term. There will be thousands of top 10 positions in relevant search terms and there is no daily cost involved, except the time it takes to publish posts and pages.
After one year with AdWords on a $5 budget per day (that’s the minimum Google lets you do) you end up paying 365 x $5 = $1825, while in the other case I am still at $500.
Both strategies have in common that as well as for the Ads as for your web site you need to assess your market and target key expressions and that needs some marketing skills to be successful.
As an alternative to use Google Ads, you could try to place your ads on some of the websites which rank high on Google in your target environment. Chances however are high that these sites belong to your competitors or to high power publishers who would either not accept your ads or ask for astronomic rates.
Last solution: Do as your upline does and get your downline team to spend $5 per day on GoogleAds so you can profit from water carriers as does your upline. The problem is: you first need to have a downline team and for that you have just spent another $5 on GoogleAds. The perfect Catch 22 but it corresponds to a wide spread reality namely throughout low-tech networks where the dummies are contributing to the marketing of the smarties and where the smarties get a permanent renewal of dummies into their downline who replace those who have abandoned the $5 roulette. No wonder so many quit. Check out the many ‘work from home’, business opportunity’ and ‘home business’ ads you see all over the place.
Another way to look at it is the following: DubLi pays Euro 250 (about $375) if you bring in a new bronze business associate and Euro 1000 (about $1500) if you refer a Gold Pack purchaser; if DubLi was able to produce a new Gold Pack Associate on every Euro 1000 (about $1500) in Marketing Money spent, they would do it by themselves and they would not need you as a network marketer. DubLi pays to get access to your contacts, your circle of influence and your labor in as much as continuous prospecting and conversion is concerned. The combination of the benefits DubLi Products and the Opportunity can procure and your skills, influence and daily work will result in a balanced deal between you as a Business Associate of DubLi Network and the Company. You get paid for the result you produce for DubLi.
What is true for DubLi is true for any MLM and Networking company out there and it should be part of your assessment when you choose an opportunity to promote, to evaluate your chances, risks and potential in function of your capabilities, relations, authority and credibility.
Last but not least: in MLM and Networking you are never paid for your effort or your work: you are paid for the result you produce in the books of the merchant! Therefore your focus must be on the result, the closing of the deal and that’s a matter of pre-selling and converting your prospect.
10. Assess and Analyze your Bench-Mark Targets
Many people work long hours and promote heavily their opportunity without ever reaching any tangible results; the two main reasons are wrong targeting and remaining below conversion bench-marks on an individual bases. Your metrics will tell you how many visitors of what quality you need to your site to get one sign-up. You will also meter how many sign-ups you need to produce a Gold, Silver and Bronze team member and how many people you have to send to your DubLi Auction Site in order to sell bids. Based on such metrics you determine the bench-marks for your campaigns.
Say: If on average you get a sign-up from every 20 visitors, the next question is to know how many sign-ups will produce a paying customer. Let’s assume that on every 10 sign-ups you get one paying Customer buying a Euro 500 Bronze pack, then your bench-mark is at 200 visitors per day based on the above average assumption. If you are below 200 Visitors, you are basically wasting your time and money.
Please note: I said 200 PER DAY. It’s not 200 spread over a months. With 200 a day you give yourself a daily chance of personally recruiting 1 bronze pack associate. If you are below, your statistical result is equal to zero.
You can now calculate your cost or the value of a lead and the value of a new associate in marketing terms.
Say if you pay $0.50 per click on AdWords (and that’s cheap for efficient key-words and placement in your niche), your daily marketing budget should be $100 if you use just this strategy. That’s a whooping $3000 per month.
Is it worth the while? Yes and No.
Yes: you have the choice between something and nothing … if you spend time and money, you better go for something. Also in terms of earnings: DubLi pays you a minimum of $50 for each new Bronze Associate. Once you have three, from the fourth Frontline Associate on, DubLi pays a minimum of $100 for each Associate.
No: you are spending all your earnings on Google and on top you invest your time and effort on the pre-selling and conversion front.
Conclusion: the above example does not correspond to reality concerning DubLi Marketing, it’s a hypothesis. But the example shows you how you can find your bench-marks. This you can do for any strategy you use and then choose the most cost effective solution. It’s all about testing for yourself as there is no Duplication here. You cannot and will never be able to Duplicate on PPC or such like key-word related marketing, except if you are applying the water carrier principle above. What I am getting at here is: no successful marketer will share with you the efficient set of keywords he is using to earn his money.
If I was successful using the above advertising model with a specific keyword and a well formulated ad, by sharing it just with one person, who duplicates the recipe, I will cut my earnings in half, respectively I may fall below bench-mark and the show is over.
Be aware that if and when an upline suggests keywords to use in your $5 or $10 per day campaigns, he is most likely looking for some downlines who help him finance his own marketing budget using the water carrier principle. If you discuss key-word marketing with your upline, always ask what his bench-marks are according to the above principle. If he is professional he will be able to tell you based on what budget you can reasonably expect the desired results or even better, he can tell you how many visitors he needs to his site from his AdWords Campaign to produce one Bronze Pack. Don’t be shocked when you hear high numbers, but ask for proof: the easiest proof is to see whether he matches expectations by using the strategy at least at bench-mark level … in this case you should be able to see daily expansion of his downline (front-line). If he cannot give you such indications, why should you go and throw your money at Google and do the dirty job for the benefit of your sponsor who obviously is not as involved as he claims.
If you are Google savvy, then of course it’s another situation because then you know how to test to find your marks and how to evaluate the return on investment on your marketing bucks.
11. Key-word Marketing using your website and organic Google Traffic
The above cost and risk can be widely eliminated, if you are ready to make an effort yourself using your blog or website to reach high and targeted visibility on Google. It’s not easy as mentioned above, but it’s extremely rewarding, cost-efficient and … fun! Get a high profile software (I use only scripts from Semiomantics; contact Zo Nicholas at admin(at)cashbizz.com), learn how to use your website and learn how to blog commercially and Google-efficiently (Ycademy – Trainings and Seminars are ideal, namely when Semantic Publishing is on the program) and then just start having fun publishing. It’s fun, it’s efficient and it’s something you can learn for the benefit of your long term purpose.
The focus must be directed on getting to the top 10 of Google on your set of keywords. Top 10, not top 20. Top 10! That’s where 80% of the traffic is. Semiomantics Ycademy courses have a proven track record and examples you can see on Google at any time. The advantage of this marketing method: you can easily track the results, and you can motivate your team members to build their own authority and publishing power for the benefit of the expansion of their and your business. This is about the only marketing method with 100% transparency where you cannot be fooled: either you reach your target on Google or you don’t. Anyone can check and anyone can see how successfully you publish, namely when targeting highly competitive key-words.
12. Combining your publishing web site development with AdWords
A smart move is to do some team-work with your team members when it comes to publishing.
It’s again a matter of bench-marks and numbers. On a default Google Search return you get 10 entries listed on the left side (publishers) and then say 5 Google ads on the right-hand (advertisers). That’s potentially 15 different links a visitor can click on.
Not every spot gets the same amount of traffic but for the sake of our example let’s suppose that they all would get an equal amount of clicks. Suppose the search terms gets 1500 searches per day, meaning that 1500 different people will see that page per day and lets assume they all click on one link on display.
The average traffic per link is 100 per day. If your bench-mark is at 200 per day, you either need more spots on the left side where your website ranks or you buy a Google Adword and have your ad displayed all day long to get 100 more visitors (budget $50 if every click costs 50 cents).
In this case your site saved you $50 per day in advertising cost or $1825 per year. Your site is already a great investment.
Suppose now, that your site may score 2 top 10 entries on that page: your site saves you $3650 per year. But how about if you and your downline team together get say 5 spots on the top 10 … your result is brilliant and the individual result as well as he/or she can top up what’s missing with Google AdWords in a much cheaper and much more efficient way to reach bench-mark levels.
Finally, marketing has become a science and cost effective marketing requires skills. Marketing online can be very technical, namely if and when you use pull strategies. To advertise and to market efficiently, a combination of both types should be envisaged. The internet offers the advantage that your ads continue while you sleep or while you are absent. Also the internet allows you to reach out for much more people in a day than low-tech marketing strategies. Interactive websites to drive your prospects to are ideal, in the worst case an opt-in feature and an autoresponder system will do till you get back online to contact your screened prospects personally to build the relation which is crucial in networking.
Also the timing of your marketing is important. You must know when to market what and where and what bench-mark needs to be reached. It’s better to build shorter campaigns with more mussel where you reach bench-marks than to build campaigns which drag on without creating any buzz or momentum as you remain consistently below bench-marks.
To Market DubLi, use pull and push strategies, however make sure you get the target right, namely in DubLi Network Marketing. If you build a whole downline of low-techies who never use the internet or who are not prospecting online, you will end up with people who will not reach their goals, they will drop out and make bad publicity for you and for the opportunity you promote. It may give you some fast cash on the short end but over time you will see that the better you target and the more time you spend with those who qualify for what you have to sell, the faster you will reach your goal of a high residual income stream in your Home Business.
Yorgo
Ycademy
Ycademy – YORGOOpublishing is a publisher of e-learning and information resources for Home Business Developers, Networking, Marketing, Publishing and related subjects. Our materials are used by thousands of online networkers in over 130 countries. Ycademy is part of YORGOO Enterprises and the place where online business is created and built and where skills are developed on daily Trainings, personal Coaching and Online Seminars.
On November 29 and 30, 2008 Ycademy in Collaboration with Dublicator, will hold a 2 days online Seminar with focus on Online Marketing DubLi Auction related Products. The schedule and registration conditions will be published shortly. The seminar will be limited to 20 participants only as Trainers work also individually with participants in work-shops and pre- and post-seminar sessions. We focus on individual results and we give every participant the utmost attention.
Yorgo Nestoridis aka Yorgo: Get the profile from HERE