Some issues just never die…

This is a partial repost of a post from the marketing blog originally made November 17, 2007.

Your marketing material should not have your upline’s name or face anywhere on it.

Your upline should not be using you as a billboard to promote himself.  None of your marketing material should mention your upline’s name in any way.  Your audio should not include your upline introducing himself by name.  The videos should not show your upline’s face or name.  Your team name should not include your upline’s name.

Think about it: If your prospect can see your upline’s name he is very likely to skip over you and join under your upline.  If your prospect sees that “John Smith” is the leader of a strong team of “WizzyBizzy” distributors, he will probably just Google “John Smith WizzyBizzy” and find your upline’s site and join directly under him.  (Now it’s true that some people will want to do this anyway and figure it all out no matter what is on your site, but most people won’t unless you shove it in their face on every page of your website.)

Your upline KNOWS this.  That is exactly why he goes to the trouble of putting his name and face all over the material he provides for you.  An upline who promotes himself on your tools is deliberately trying to take prospects from you.

The other reason that uplines do this has to do with “Branding.”  Every strong marketer has visions of them self as the next MLM guru.  And no matter how great the current opportunity is, we all know that there will be more great opportunities coming in the future.  Strong marketers want to position themselves as heavy hitters in preparation for next year’s opportunity.  They use marketing material to brand themselves and get name recognition.  That’s just part of business and it’s one of the primary reasons that I have this blog.  But in my opinion, if a network marketer wants to promote his name it should be on his own website or blog.  NOT all over his downline’s marketing material.  In my opinion, it is better to pay for your own marketing material than to use tools branded with someone else’s name and face.

Look at your marketing material.  Does it have somebody else’s name and face all over it?  Even if it is free, you are paying dearly for it!

In conclusion, you are one of the lucky few if you are getting any kind of help from your upline.  But you may want to take a second look at what you are getting and how you are paying for it.  There are plenty of good sponsors out there who will not take advantage of you.  Spend a little extra time searching for them the next time you are looking to join an opportunity.

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