Introduction to network marketing

Network marketing is when a team of affiliates promote your services or products on your behalf and receive a commission for each successful lead they send your company.

A networking team will be able to handle all of your marketing and sales on your behalf.

Network marketing teams are normally split up into:

• Sales representatives
• Team leaders (managers)

Commissions earned through network marketing teams will be split up between the sales representatives and team leaders.

Creating your network marketing campaign

Step 1: Setup a networking system

First, you would have to set up a CRM that you can use to manage all of your networking teams and generate links they can use to complete orders for your company.

We recommend using Infinite MLM.

Infinite MLM offers a full system to manage your network marketing teams to mark them as sales reps or as team leaders.

You can also use the app to automatically pay out their commissions.

Infinite MLM does charge a once-off fee, but you can request a free trial when signing up on their website.

You can learn more about Infinite MLM by testing out their free demo.

You can also recruit a freelancer to build a basic system to generate links that your networking teams can use to do the following:

• Generate links for your products.
• Recruit new sales representatives.

We recommend using Fiverr to find your ideal app developer.

You can search for “Network Marketing” on Fiverr and you will instantly get results.

Read more: Best free online tools for startup companies

Step 2: Determining commissions

Next, you would have to determine the commissions that will be paid to your network marketers.

Commissions are normally paid out to team leaders and are then split up between their teams through the team leaders.

Here’s an example of how commissions are paid out:

• Total commission for sale: R 1000
• Commission paid out to team leader: R 800
• Commission paid out to sales rep #1: R 100
• Commission paid out to 1st sales rep #2: R100

We recommend using Percentage calculator to quickly confirm percentages.

A key difference between network marketing and affiliate marketing is that network marketing reps can recruit new sales reps and train them.

The more reps that are appointed would lead to more sales and higher commissions that will be paid to the reps that appointed the new candidates.

Where to find candidates for your network marketing strategy

Friends and Family

Friends and family are a great way to start getting members for your network marketing team. Friends and family would also be easier to train which could save you a lot of time down the line.

Private hire

Also post a job ad online, to go through potential candidates.

Our favorite websites to post available positions/jobs are:

• LinkedIn
• Indeed

Publish an app

If you opted to create an app for your networking marketers for them to easier place orders, you should be able to publish the app online for new recruits.

Here’s a great guide on how to publish an app on the Google play store

You can also publish your app on the IOS AppStore.

This is a great option if minimal training is required as users will be able to signup and start selling in no time.

A great networking team can drive your sales up through online interactions and word of mouth as tons of reps can market your products or services at the same time.

Understanding the differences between network marketing and affiliate marketing

Network marketing is often confused with affiliate marketing, see why affiliate marketing might be a better solution for your small business.