MLM Lead Generation Via Newspaper Ads: The End Of An Era?

by David Ledoux, Founder ILOVEMLM.com

Recently I was discussing MLM lead generation with a coaching client of mine. He was lamenting the high cost of classified ads in regional and national newspapers. His cost per lead from USA Today was approaching the $40 per lead mark, and he was struggling with prospects scattered from coast to coast and every Podunk town in between. He had tried narrowing his ads to the main city papers in his state, and it was even worse.

He was seeing $300 ads not get a single phone call in the Business Opportunity Section of his big city paper. Anyone who has tried to build an MLM business for any length of time can relate. Lead flow is the lifeblood of the business. Ironically, I came into the industry via a small classified ad in my local city paper. In December 1990 I called of an ad in the Toronto Sun that said, "I'm 21, drive a new Corvette Convertible, own 5 homes, and make $15,000 a month. Call if you want I have. Serious enquiries only, don't waste my time."

I joined that cheeky monkey, and we ran that ad every single day for 6 months. In early 1991, we would never get less than 5 calls a day from that ad. I think our record was 23 calls in 1 day. 1 day! I enrolled over $30,000 in brand new volume in April 1991 from that ad alone. Eventually, others in the company started to rip off our ads, and flood the paper. The glory was over by August that year.

Today, the Toronto Sun doesn't have 1 single MLM ad in it. I checked the Biz Op section and there were 2 ads for starting your own carpet cleaning business and one for starting your own coffee truck. The medium has shifted.

If you are going to advertise, you need to be in front of your target market in the most cost-effective medium possible. In my opinion that is Google. You can now put your ads on Google Adwords as tightly targeted as a zip code. Let's say you want to create some leads in Las Vegas. You open an account in Google Adwords, pick your region, pick your keywords, write 2 ads, put in your visa number, and presto! You can have leads coming in within an hour. No waiting days for a newspaper. This is ultra-fast targeted MLM lead generation for the 21st century!

The true power is you can split-test your ads on the fly. You can constantly be tweaking headlines and ad copy. You can improve the pulling power of your ads every hour if you wanted to. The larger your keyword count, the more eyeballs will see your ad. If you want someone in Las Vegas who searches for "yeast infection herbal cure" you can put your ad right in front of his or her eyes. Nothing else is as powerful.

If you know what you are doing, you can eventually get 100 visitors to your landing web page for as little as $5.00. Even if your landing page is a super-tight screener, and only 5% fill out the form, that's still a cost per lead of a buck! If you ran an ad in any Las Vegas paper you couldn't get your cost per lead under 20 bucks, and forget about tweaking your ads on the fly.

Network marketers are notorious early adopters. Back in 1991 real estate agents, drug dealers and network marketers were the only ones with those giant brick cell phones. We were quick into fax on demand, video and audiotape prospecting, and of course we practically took over the web in 97. It's worth your time to teach yourself how to advertise on Google. There are a ton of great courses out there, discussion forums aplenty, and Google itself has a bunch of great tutorials. There is never any excuse to ever again have to buy an overpriced burned out lead from some broker.

Good luck in your MLM Lead Generation!

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David Ledoux has been involved in the network marketing industry for 15 years. He is an author, speaker and million dollar earner. To discover more jealously-guarded secrets of making $100,000.00 or more every year through MLM check out his new book, The Ultimate MLM Blueprint for Massive Success. The book and a FREE MLM Training ezine are available online at

http://www.ilovemlm.com
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