Get positioned in the right places in peoples’ minds.
Like all great companies, branding and establishing the company’s position is the same for MLM marketing strategies and for Party Plan marketing strategies. The best MLM brands have followed important disciplines. And such positioning is equally important, if not more important, for multilevel marketing and party plan marketing because of the complexities of genealogies, distributor recruiting, distributor retention, differentiating among direct selling competitors, and educating distributors and consultants with effective MLM education systems.
Identifying your company’s unique selling proposition and then developing the marketing plan to present the right message to your target customers, hostesses, consultants and distributors is critical. The time-honored marketing fundamentals used by the best companies in direct selling will save immense time and energy as they dramatically shorten your learning curve.
When your “brand” is based on a simple, clearly defined idea aligned with a clearly defined business strategy it is much easier for your company to signal distributors, consultants and customers what makes it different and why this difference is worth caring about.
Foremost should be the answers to the following questions:
- What is your business strategy? (Our company will make money by selling . . . or providing . . .)
- What is your brand strategy? (Our company “signal” to those who consume our products or services is . . .)
- What is your simple brand idea? (Our company’s simple brand idea is that . . .)
Although the following example is extremely over-simplified, it illustrates the point:
- Pampered Chef’s business strategy is to make money by selling kitchen supplies.
- Pampered Chef’s brand strategy is to signal that the experience of buying its products is more enjoyable than any other way to try and buy.
- Pampered Chef’s simple brand idea is that being in the kitchen can be fun.
The following checklist will provide a useful outline for more closely considering the elements of your company’s brand strategy and how it can create an identity that will capture the imaginations and loyalty of MLM distributors and party plan consultants.
MLM Marketing Checklist and Key Considerations for Party Plan Sales
- Design
- Key design elements (logo, color palette, major design elements)
- Web
- Online documents
- Marketing Strategy
- The Three Stories (Company, product, business)
- Retailing tools (catalog, brochure, DVD, CD, samples, flyers)
- Company brochure
- Business brochure
- Marketing communications
- Product Launch
- Product / service lines, strategies and markets
- Groupings, pricing, development, manufacturing, warehousing
- Product copy, literature & brochure, descriptions
- Legal reviews (including labeling)
- Distributor Manual
- Letters and introduction materials
- Policies and procedures, FAQs
- Product information
- Compensation plan descriptions
- Training essentials
- Business system
- Party Plan Essentials
- Consultant compensation
- Training and development
- Hostess incentives
- Promotions, contests
- Bookings, business development