This is probably the number one question that many newbie marketers are asking themselves! There are a few reasons but looking at the main ones that have reared their ugly heads may be of some help and hopefully guidance!

Marketing OnLine – Overwhelm – Here you are – ready to give it your all – ready to commit your time and energy to your new business, whether full-time or part-time – and… suddenly you are in a zoo – a maze – a deep pool of ads and guidelines and websites promising you this is the next best thing out there. The next shiny ball that you absolutely, simply ‘must have’. Widgets, copy-writing skills, traffic sites to give you 1 zillion hits per hour, free leads – at least 1,000 per day (free!!??) and the list goes on. Where do you go and what do you do. You are now in the clutches of one of the ugly sisters – Overwhelm!

Marketing Online means you need to have the experience of those who have gone before and made a success of it. If they did it, then they should know how they did it – makes sense right? So who do you trust? Who should you follow? Is it the highest price for their offers? Is it the biggest website with the brightest colours? Is it the one who sends you 1,000 e-mails every day – they must be great or they wouldn’t do it – right? Wrong!!

Failing At marketing online is down to the fact that you cannot get past this barrage of offers of people and companies who know they know better than you. There is a huge difference between them and you – you are unique – you are your own Unique Selling Point- there is only one of you and thousands of them!

Here is where you start some serious due diligence – you need a mentor – that much is clear – so where do you start? Initially you are looking for integrity – a must in today’s marketplace of so many get rich quick scams. Check out the leaders of the companies you look at – how do you feel about them and their stories? Is their raison d’etre just more money? Do you feel that they might actually care about people? What do they offer? What support is there for the newbie who doesn’t have a huge budget? What is on offer for the business owner who wants to do it differently rather than spending 70 hours a week away from his family? What is on offer for the mom who wants to stay at home with her children? Look at all the levels of what is offered.

Marketing Online – Training – Next step is to look at the training that is offered – are you given a smudged blueprint, charged a monthly fee and told to get on with it? It will be alright – just keep on making the calls, e-mails, blogs, articles etc? If you are – forget it! What you need is what you want – detailed training in the form of webinars covering all the subjects you need such as SEO (including what that means!), how to generate traffic, how to run social media sites and why, how to market yourself, how to brand yourself, how to make videos (gulp!), where to put your content – why is content important, how often, how many etc etc. This is training – somewhere you can ask all the questions you need answered – real people there to hold your hand and give you guidance as to your mistakes and then pat you on the back when you get it right.

Marketing Online – Support Systems – One other area that is so important is what is available for you to use that is already set up. Personally having spent days, hours and weeks trying to set up my own ‘professional’ website I realise that this is an area that I am not professional in at all and no search engine worth their salt is going to find much of what is hidden in its deep and dark pages of my life! Help?? That is why it is important when you are starting out – whether successful business person or newbie – to have systems already in place for you to use.

A sales funnel already set up – you just guide towards it. Sounds simple that statement doesn’t it? Possibly not so simple but with the right training as I have shown it becomes less of a mountain and more of a small hillock! Without a professional sales funnel this is definitely Everest! So, having this done for you – professionally – understanding the wide mouth, the layers, the levels, the pricings, the offers etc is paramount to you.

An amazing offer or product second to none – this is fairly important (!) – seriously if it appeals to you then chances are it will appeal to others – back to your due diligence. It isn’t always the highest price – sometimes it is what is behind the price – the ethos of the founders, their stories, their training levels, their care, their willingness to support everyone. Their genius if you will. Remember – it was this that created their companies in the first place!!

Marketing Online – A Final Summary – The foregoing is an idea of what you should be looking for in your search – it doesn’t matter if you have a lot of money to invest and are looking for a top-tier programme or product or if you are a newbie with a smaller budget – top-tier does not necessarily mean the price – it can mean the training, the commission, the back-end products and the bonus – residual income!

When you begin your journey as a woman entrepreneur, your most important action step is to get clients and create a “buzz” about your product or service so you can keep the business alive and get on a path to profitability. With effective marketing, your business will grow and over time, word will spread about the results people are getting when they work with you. If becoming a leader in your industry is a goal for you, now will be the time to consider an updated look in your business – a new brand image – both personally and professionally.

Over the last few months, I’ve completely revamped my online presence and I’m in the process of updating my personal brand as well. When you have a big vision for your business, it’s essential that you stay “current” in every area. If you’re in a product business, you’ll need to keep a fresh, new look for your product packaging. If you’re in a service based business, you’ll want a “new and improved” version of who you are becoming as a leader in your industry.

You may be reading this and thinking, “This sounds like a lot of work; my personal and professional brand seems to be working for me.” I, too, was slow about creating my own “new and improved” upgrade for far too long because I didn’t want to spend the time making the necessary changes. In the last few months, amazing opportunities have presented themselves to me and I know this is no accident. It’s because I stepped up my professional and personal brand image to reflect who I am becoming as a leader in my industry.

Not sure where to start? Here are a few tips and solutions on how to give your business a “new and improved” look and feel:

Online/Offline Brand

1. Website/Blog – Take some time to review your website and ask yourself if it truly reflects your business and more importantly, where you are going in the future. This is one of the first places people look to “check you out” and make buying decisions.
2. Social Media – Make sure your profile or Like page reflects the message you desire to send to your potential clients and referral sources. Tip: Add a current photo to all your social media pages. There’s nothing worse than going to connect with someone and finding a photo of their dog or worse, no photo at all.
3. Printed Materials – Carry your desired “new and improved” look all the way through to your business cards, brochures and any other printed material.

Personal Brand

1. Manage The “Mane” – Is it time for a new hairstyle? For years, the length of my hair was much longer until one day I realized this style no longer served me or my business. I’ve opted for a shorter more current look.
2. Say “Cheese!” – Is it time for a new photo? It’s essential that you update your professional photo at least every two years. It’s not as expensive as you might think to hire a professional for a few hours and it’s a worthwhile investment if you’re ready to uplevel yourself and your business.
3. Hit The Mall – Is your closet full of clothes that no longer reflect who you are? You don’t have to break the bank buying a whole new closet full of clothes. Invite a “nutritious” friend who has great sense of style to join you for a day of shopping. If your budget permits, you might want to hire an image consultant for a few hours to give you some tips on what colors and styles highlight your beauty and genius.

If you’re ready to step out in your business in a bigger way, these tips and solutions will cause people around you to sit up and take notice that you are serious about success in business. Taking these steps will unleash more referrals, more clients and more income – 3 necessary ingredients for complete success.

Anything is possible. Everything is waiting for you.

© 2012 Joy Chudacoff

Joy Chudacoff, ICF, PCC, is the founder of Smart Women Smart Solutions®, a Professional Certified Coach to 1000’s of women, Motivational Speaker, and Entrepreneur. She publishes a weekly buzz generating ezine, Reflections On Life and Business for Women Entrepreneurs. If you’re ready take your life and your business to the next level, get your FREE Tips, FREE Report and FREE MP3 now at Profits With Passion.

Growing your business is a must when your only source of income is from your business. In order for this to happen, you must continually work your business. There are a number of ways to do this, but they need to be done on a regular basis.

1. Article Marketing – One of the most important things you need to do is article marketing. Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is what you need to do to make it happen. You can either do the writing yourself or you can hire a ghostwriter to make it happen. Your ghostwriter may be willing to submit the written articles to directories or you may need to hire a Virtual Assistant if you don’t have time to do it yourself.

Article marketing promotes your business through the bio you include at the end of your article. You’ll also be able to promote your business through the profile page you set up on the article directories. Most directories offer the profile so you’ll need to make sure it’s always current and that your links work.

2. Social Networking – Another important task you need to do to promote your business is to use social networking. Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are valuable when used correctly to promote your business. It’s important to not only promote your business, but to communicate with others and offer tips to your followers. It’s important to build trust with your followers and that won’t happen if you only promote your business.

3. Blog – One last task you need to do regularly for your business is write for your blog. Your blog is a great way to share things about your business with your readers. These can be highlights about specific products or services, tips that will help your readers, and information about your field that will encourage your readers to use your business over someone else.

When you use these three tasks with your business , you’re sure to see growth. While it’s not going to be immediate, if you do it weekly at the least, you’ll see it happen over time. It’s important to find out how to do it correctly and these tips will help you to have a better understanding of how to do that so you can make it happen.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping her clients reach their goals through the services she offers. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, click here to see how she can help you make that happen.

With so many ways to reach a wider audience online, stealing people’s emails and spamming them with your business pitches, is a big no-no.

Unfortunately, the recruiting aspect of the direct selling business encourages this type of behavior in some people. Even though there’s an incentive to grow your direct sales home business by signing up new consultants, spamming people is the least attractive, not to mention ineffective. You also risk not a making connection with this tactic.

You’re also wasting time by going after people who aren’t interested. The key to growing your direct sales business is to get the attention of prospects. A true prospect is someone who is interested in your business. When you have a prospect you can over time develop a relationship that potentially could lead to a business transaction.

A better strategy would be to comment on the person’s blog, friend or follow her or him on one of their social networks, and so forth. Most people are online these days and there’s a good chance they’re on Twitter, Facebook and many other online places that you can friend them.

If you find yourself making this spamming mistake, rest assured you’re not the first. Every new direct sales consultant are taught using similar strategies: go after anyone you see and tell them about your business. Keep talking to everyone you meet.

In this case, using social media and online tools to spam people with your business opportunity. Go for no and you’ll get more yes’s, right?

There’s no doubt the internet offers many tools to market your direct sales business online and maybe that’s the problem for inexperienced consultants. Finding the tools is the easy part. It only takes a few minutes to get a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account. The hard part is not knowing what strategies to use to grow your business.

Just because you’ve joined multiple social networks doesn’t mean you know which strategies to use to connect with people. Without knowing what to do can hurt your online reputation i.e. spamming people with your business opportunity is one of them.

You see this on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. A new consultant tweets repetitively about how awesome the products are and why everyone should join their business opportunity.

It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote your business but remember to do more engaging rather than hitting your followers with one-way broadcasts. There’s a right way to toot your own horn on social networks.

From my experience, one of the most effective ways to build my business is creating a content marketing plan that entails which strategies to use to attract the targeted-leads that are looking for my type of business.

Without a strategy on how to attract your target audience’s attention, the tools will be ineffective.

If you don’t know the proper strategies to find your target prospects and connect with them, you’re more likely to go after anyone and everyone, online and offline.

Before you start using the tools, take a step back and think of the strategies you’ll need, to market your direct sales business online the right way.

**Not sure where to start? Grab my FREE 27-Page Report to help you grow your direct sales business online the right way.  Learn how to generate more targeted-leads to your business from using article writing, blogging, and internet marketing.

The success of your direct sales online business depends heavily on traffic and the right kind of traffic. You want targeted traffic to your blog.

If you’re not getting the right kind of leads then you don’t have any prospects to work with.

Here are some easy ways to get more traffic to your blog:

#1 Increase your blog posts. Write at least one new article a week. If you’re going to blog and get serious online, this isn’t an option, just commit to writing.

#2 Write more targeted articles on the topics in your business by using the appropriate keywords/phrases that your potential market is searching for.

Example: if you’re in the personal development business the title of your article should have the long-tail keyphrases of the keywords personal development.

Why is this important? – Unless you have a well established blog – Steve Pavlina, as an example, it’s very hard to rank on the first page of Google with the keywords personal development alone.

In fact, there are about 171,000,000 results with the keywords personal development on Google.

By using the long-tail keywords in the title of your article you’ll see more targeted traffic to your blog.

With that said, focus on writing for your audience instead of over analyzing on keyword density. Write naturally but be mindful to optimize your article for organic searches.

The important thing is to provide an informative article to your target audience.

#3 Article writing is my best method for getting consistent, targeted leads. Use your articles and submit them to multiple directories and social networks. Then use Google Analytics to see where the traffic is coming from.

"Article marketing is very effective depending on how it is been used. I have seen articles with less than 100 views and those with tens of thousands of views after a year of writing them on EzineArticles". -Sitesketch101

If you’ve done keyword research before you write and optimize them appropriately, you will get traffic to your site. Whether or not someone subscribes to your blog depends on several factors…

• Do you have an opt-in box?
• Is it positioned where visitors can see it?
• Is there a compelling reason for them to subscribe?

These are just some of the reasons why someone would choose to opt-in or not. You don’t have to be a SEO ninja or pay top dollars to get traffic to your blog because the basics work: create quality content and marketing your content.

There are many ways to get traffic to your blog. Commenting on other blogs, guest posting, participating in social networks, and so forth. The question isn’t whether these strategies work but a better question to ask yourself is: are you doing the work every day?

This is a short list of many, many ways to get more traffic to your blog.

**Do you want to learn how to generate free, targeted-leads from articles and internet marketing? Visit my site for free tips and an ebook report to show you how.

Janette Stoll helps direct sales home business owners how to generate tons of targeted leads from article writing, blogging, and internet marketing. Her blog is visited by thousands of work-at-home professionals monthly. Download your FREE Report for tips to grow your direct sales home business. Or click here –> http://www.marketingdirectsales.com

While you are a direct sales professional one of the hurdles you will likely have to climb over is how to sell to people who aren’t in your general area. One of the most basic concepts of direct sales business organizations is the home party strategy, nevertheless you can extend to a much wider amount of people and expand your earnings if you take your online business online and present your social in a chatroom. How’s that work, you ask. Let us show you how to host a direct sales party online!

Step-By-Step Plan To Throwing A Direct Sales Party Through the Internet

1) Attendance – Create a listing of individuals who attend your party. Similar to a home party, you may likely desire to go with a coordinator and allow her choose the attendees.

2) Online Webinar – Opt for a chat room to host the party on or an online conference room. A chat room will allow you and your partygoers the option to remain at their desktop computer and type to be a part of the conversation while an online conference offers people the option to listen in and take part with the help of their home phone, Skype, or by computer typing according to the webinar room features and functions. Likewise, there are outfits that specialize in hosting online direct sales parties.

3) Pick A Date – Mark well the time zones your party guests live in to plan when hosting the party will be the most convenient for all guests.

4) Send Out Invitations – You can post your party invitations via e-mail and make sure to add instructions on how to get access to the chat room or online meeting room.

5) Before the Party Preparation – Ahead of the party ensure you’re prepared with links to your products and product descriptions. If you’re employing an internet conference room relatively often you will be able to include photographs, PowerPoint slides and provide clickable website links right on the screen throughout the demonstration. You may also mail materials to all your attendees prior to the party so they have easy access to the material you are presenting.

You may likewise wish to generate a script for what you are going to point out and what you would like to do throughout the party. This will help you stay on the subject and keep the party to the elected amount of time.

6) Party Time. – Make certain you log into your party ahead of your program. You won’t want other people to get there before you show up. Once almost all of the people have turned up, you will have to introduce yourself, thank your guests for coming and you can even play a game to get each person prepared. A basic game to play on the web is a search the product directory game. Give prizes to the winners.

7) Give Your Presentation. – In addition to offering your products, make sure to speak about special deals you have taking place like cost-free shipping for purchases over a specified amount or a free product with every purchase. Consumers relish special prices and giveaways, use this and make your party attendees feel important and valued simultaneously.

Finish the Party On Schedule. – It’s important to keep the party to a stipulated period of time. For many, an hour or so with the computer and/or phone is plenty of time. Say thanks to everyone for coming, let folks know how they can get involved and develop into direct sales consultants themselves and be sure to give your contact details and web site address once more. also beneficial if you let people know they have a day or two to place their order and still receive your special promotion.

9) Continual Follow Up. – It’s definitely helpful to send a thank you to people who go to your online party. In your thank you make sure to include your web site address, your contact details and a reminder about particular product offers they can benefit from.

Hosting an internet party is much the same as hosting a house party except they are generally a bit more cost effective for you, you do not have to purchase products to demonstrate with, and you do not need to get cleaned up to attend. Indeed, you can host an online party in your underwear. Ultimately, they are an excellent way to broaden your customer base and connect with friends and family everywhere throughout the world.

And now I would like to invite you to visit my online marketing success blog, The Project Marketer! Visit our Direct Sales section and learn even more about throwing successful online direct sales parties: http://www.ProjectMarketer.com