In today's internet age, advertising and marketing techniques that were the buzz of the business world a short decade ago have all changed. The people and companies that changed with the media are very successful and those who thought they could make their old ideas work in a new generation of media have failed. Although many companies don't want to think about it, there is no way to avoid the changes that are coming into our technology world and to the business world as well. Regardless of if business change with the times, the times are still going to change.

In the old days, marketing was more personal than it is today with many concentrating on the internet and global marketing efforts. Unfortunately, many of their marketing dollars are wasted in areas where customers are not located. By default of the global accessibility of internet campaigns it has become increasingly difficult to target specific areas where marketing campaigns can do the most good.

There is also a lot of confusion about what marketing is. Often it is confused with advertising. Advertising is designed to draw attention to a particular product for a particular period of time. Grocery stores have been very successful in using weekly advertisements for specially priced products to lure people into the store and hoping they will spend extra dollars on merchandise with higher margins.

Marketing, on the other hand, is selling a brand or idea and is not limited to a single shot. Inviting people into the store to shop once will provide one sale. A good program, which defines the store presence and its core values, will keep people coming back more often. Marketing can make a customer feel more a part of your business than an advertisement can make them feel and can help build loyalty with your customers.

Multilevel marketing is an area where most people confuse the two. Designed to build legs of profit producing distributors, many people forget about selling products and focus instead on convincing more people to sign up as distributors. When everyone concentrates on building a distributor network, no one is selling anything or making any money.

In order to succeed in building a strong network of quality distributors is not to recruit new distributors, but to have them ask to join your program and this is where real marketing techniques make the difference. A successful network marketer will first concentrate on the product. If it is something they believe it, it will be easy to do. They will tout the product or service to those who can use it and seldom mention any distributorship.

If the product is as good as you claim it to be, the best salesman to get that person to sign up to be a distributor will be your customer. They will want to know more about the company and you can then tell them they can save money buying the product wholesale by being a distributor. When they ask how, they are hooked and you have added a partner to your distributorship leg.