Google Ads has made it clear they are going to come down hard on network marketing opportunities that are more suited to 'traditional' forms of advertising.
Bad news for my Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing cousins.
Good news for genuine network marketers.
PPC marketing has always struck me as a refuge for those who don't really want to network, but who are good at 'closing' the sale.
The PPC advert has done the pull (or push depending on how you view PPC) part for you.
The really big earners who use this method are good sales 'closers'.
What's interesting is that Mike Dillard author of Magnetic Sponsoring the book that invented the term attraction marketing says in most of his videos, if you have the money PPC is the fastest way to grow your business.
Well Google are saying 'no longer'.
They are going to come down particularly hard on affiliate and replicated sites.
I predicted this very move 3 months ago in my Blog.
Am I a fortune teller? No, I am a contrarian thinker, I have always been told this.
One of my previous Managers called me a 'Cassandra'.
My Greek mythology being rusty I resorted to Wikipedia:"The term originates in Greek mythology.
Cassandra was a daughter of Priam, the King of Troy.
Struck by her beauty, Apollo provided her with the gift of prophecy, but when Cassandra refused Apollo's romantic advances, he placed a curse ensuring that none would believe her warnings.
Cassandra was left with the knowledge of future events, but could neither alter these events nor convince others of the validity of her predictions.
" It was obvious to me that Google would 'slap' this type of business hard.
My reasoning was quite simple.
The business opportunities were happy to call their representatives, Business Owners, Partners, Colleagues etc.
but still wanted the dominant role.
A partnership implies equality, and let us be absolutely clear on one thing.
When you join a network marketing opportunity you are not a partner.
You are at the mercy of your Sponsor if you have never done marketing or been self employed before.
So if you get a bad sponsor what will be your natural inclination when wanting leads? You will become a hunter and seek out your prey.
A lot of people did this by using PPC keyword phrases to attract people to adverts and then sales pages with testimonials of self-made millionaires and images of chests full of money etc.
In addition they made the 'fatal' promise, 'you will never have to phone a lead again'.
Well call me contrarian but if real success in network marketing depends on having a solid front line team then not talking to people seems a weird way to network.
The second problem with PPC is it is a skill rather than a marketing approach.
You are unable to ensure all your team will achieve even a basic level of competence in PPC.
Why? Because people like me hate the thing.
It's a logical mind game that fascinates some people and bores others.
I am firmly in the latter camp.
PPC is going to become the province of businesses that have products to sell to customers pure and simple.
This means that if you are going to get leads for people to join your network marketing team you will have to use one of three methods:

1. Cold calls - Using various sources (both on and off-line) to identify a segment of the workforce that will potentially have the skills to be a good network marketer.
   Salesmen are not necessarily good network marketers by the way.
   Good network marketers are 'leaders' first.
   You will find leaders amongst already successful business people, mortgage broking, real estate, managers in most organizations.
   You need someone who has worked in a team, has led a team and knows how to build a team.
   Most sales people are driven by commissions and 'money now', they are 'sharks' continually looking for the next meal.
   They do not have the time or patience to be coached or to build and develop a team before growing their sales organization.
   
2. Offline networking - This would be local Chambers of Commerce, organizations like Business Network International and various other professional bodies.
   Here you are looking to make sure you get 'their' business card as well as give yours.
   The point being the person may not be your lead but they remember you should someone in their circle want the opportunity you offer.
   
3. Social web marketing - Some statistics to digest.
   Last year 1 in 8 marriages in the USA were couples who met on Facebook.
   Facebook added 100 million users in 9 months, Radio took 38 years to reach this level in the USA.
   Only 18% of TV advert campaigns give a positive ROI.
   The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the 55 - 65 age group.
   Twitter is growing at a faster rate than Facebook did at this stage in its development.
   If Facebook were a country it would be the 4^th largest country in the world.
   YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
   

Now you can see why I stopped PPC and for the last 5 months have been developing my skills in social web marketing.
Is it easy? No.
Can anyone be coached how to get leads through social media - yes provided they put in the time and wait.
All you have to do is two things:

1. Provide interesting, humorous and informative content for your audience
2. Syndicate your content by broadcasting it to your networks.
   If you listen to your network first, see the sorts of problems people talk about and then provide answers to those problems your content will go 'viral'.
   

Now all you have to do is 'engage' with your audience, identify potential leads and pick the right time and way of approaching them about your opportunity.
This is nearly always through your social web Hub - your Blog.
The beauty of this approach is Google loves user generated content making the more links you get to your Blog the higher up the natural rankings it goes.
Your Blog does your pre-sorting and people choose whether to go to your sales page.