Multi-level marketing, the main term
Network marketing? Multi-level marketing?
Home-based Franchising? Direct Sales?
Concentric Marketing? Affiliate Marketing?
Referral Marketing? Inline Marketing?
WTFIsIt Marketing?
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)- Network marketing (most often used alternative)
- Home-based Business Franchising -- WARNING: franchising is NOT multi-level marketing
- Direct sales -- selling direct to consumers, related to but NOT equivalent to MLM
- Affiliate Marketing -- now used by Vemma, often plagued by fraud
- Seller-Assisted Marketing -- mostly a "business opportunity" scam
- Referral Marketing / sales -- marketing via word of mouth; some forms may be illegal
- Dual Marketing / Dual-Level Marketing -- mainly used by Mary Kay, still MLM
- Concentric Marketing -- used by convicted pyramid scheme Burnlounge, replaced "levels" with "circles", but otherwise, the same as MLM
- Consumer Direct Marketing -- the consumer is doing the marketing, potentially illegal if recruitment heavy, as it becomes recruiters recruiting more recruiters.
- Inline Marketing -- trademarked by "Nutraceuticals Inc", it's still MLM
Any way, why are there so many fancy names for the same thing? Fraud experts, such as Tracy Coenen say this is an attempt to obfuscate and distract from the bad reputation multi-level marketing had picked up over the decades it had been in existence. However, I think this is also a symptom of how the decentralized nature of MLM became a sin, not a virtue. People are just appropriating terms that sounds SOMEWHAT similar to multi-level marketing, and in some cases, inventing them out of thin air.
First, let us define multi-level marketing... a marketing strategy where the sales force is compensated on multiple levels... direct sales profit, and portion of sales profit achieved by other salespeople they recruited (downlines). Remember, MLM = direct sales + commission based on downline sales.
But first, we have to clear up a few myths...
