By Laura Milne

No doubt if you are trying to progress on your journey to MLM success and you have been doing some training and some research then you will have discovered the importance of having a good MLM marketing plan in place.

A good MLM marketing plan is vital for many reasons. Four of the most important ones are detailed below:

• It provides you with structure and guidance.
• It helps to support effective time management.
• It actively supports you in achieving your goals.
• It gives you the ability to be able to evaluate your progress.

So you understand the importance of having a good MLM marketing plan in place but how do you go about creating one? Well you could search for basic templates that you could use to start you off, however in my experience these are never as helpful as I hope they will be. That’s because everyone has a different way of working and generally ‘one size fits all’ plans are difficult to find. Instead I recommend that you pull your own plan together, sticking some simple principles and guidelines:

Step 1

Think carefully about the marketing methods that you are going to select to focus on. If you are new to MLM marketing, I suggest that you select one method at a time with the aim of perfecting it before introducing a second method.

Step 2

Split each marketing method out in to its own MLM marketing plan. Each plan should focus purely upon the actions required for that method, where possible detailing the time involved for each action.

Step 3

Provide as much structure as possible within each marketing plan. Break all actions down in to bite size chunks. If you have a monthly action, consider what you need to do on a daily or weekly basis in order for that monthly action to be effective. For big tasks, break them down so you can see step by step, all of the actions required for you to complete the task.

Step 4

Don’t be afraid to go back to your plan and update or re-schedule as often as necessary. Especially in the early days it’s easy to underestimate the time required for certain actions or miss some important actions all together. Make all of your MLM marketing plans work in progress so that you can constantly tweak them until they are as effective as they can be.

Step 5

Pull together one overall plan that incorporates all of your MLM marketing plans. This plan is going to be the key to your time management as well as a guide to keep you on track with all of your individual plans and actions. Without this it is easy to become so consumed with one plan and one set of actions that other plans and required actions start to suffer. Allocate specific amounts of time to each plan and try your best to stick to it.

Step 6

Have scope within your plans to be able to update your progress against your actions. This is vital to being able to plan future actions and required time allocations as well as giving you the opportunity to be able to regularly track your progress against your plan.

Step 7

Before you put any plans in place you should have spent some time setting your goals. These goals should be very clear and burned in to your mind. Make sure these goals are clearly visible on your MLM marketing plans. Even if only at a subconscious level, this will help you to focus on each action with a clear understanding of how it is taking you one step closer to your goals.

As well as these steps there are some general considerations you should have when developing your marketing plans:

• Be realistic. Don’t schedule 10 hour days if you know that there is no chance of you ever working more than 5 hours. This will be completely counter-productive as you will not be able to stick to the timescales allocated and will constantly be chasing your tail and playing catch up. That’s not the most productive way to work!

• Don’t waste too much time on the cosmetics. It’s not how this plan looks that is important. After all, it’s only for your own use. As long as you are comfortable that it provides you with everything that you need then that’s enough – even if it’s not particularly pleasing on the eye.

• Organisation is key. Although it may seem like a waste of time to be planning rather than completing actions, you will complete your actions far more effectively and in a much more timely manner if you have spent some time planning your approach.

Once you have your MLM marketing plans and overall time management plan in place then do your best to stick to it. Try not to procrastinate. I know how easy it is to put the jobs that you don’t really enjoy off until tomorrow and focus on the more enjoyable ones now. To make sure you don’t do this try always to complete your least favourite tasks first. You will be pleased to have them out of the way and you can then enjoy your remaining actions without the constant nag of that task that you’re not looking forward to.