Multi-level Marketing Operations Give Marketers a Bad Name

When I left college, I knew I wanted to go into marketing. Specifically, sports marketing as I wanted to work for the Boston Red Sox, along with everyone else in New England. I had majored in English though and wasn't quite sure how to market myself or even what I wanted to be doing in Marketing. However, I'd never even had an internship, I had had to work and make money every summer in order to go to school. So my options and connections were shall we say "limited".

How could I get a foot in the door? I went to Craigslist, family friends, my alumni network and basically resume spammed quite a bit. Remember this is when the economy was not=fail and you could almost get away with some of the stuff I was doing. I figured if I kept hitting the job market hard I would eventually get my way and find a nice entry level job where I could learn and expand. Later I would find out that it was what I was doing in between class would turn out to be more valuable: playing WoW, using Digg, exploring new social tools and ways of communication online. Who knew?

I remember the first solid hit that I got on a job opportunity and it was with a sports marketing firm. Wow, that's exactly what I wanted to do right? I arranged to meet said person and begin the interview process which began tomorrow (first sign for me that this was total b.s.).

So I decided to do some digging and research about the company that I was going to be interviewing for. I immediately ran into a Consumerist.com article regarding MLM marketing and the relative scammy nature of their existence. Everything I read was a horror story and essentially boiled down to the fact that MLM marketing is a loosely disguised pyramid scheme or at worse a really awful cult. The burn out rate with their employees is astronomical (thus the need for a constant stream of ads recruiting more of them).

Marketing is about establishing a clear value proposition for the customer and greasing the wheels for a sale to occur. Great direct or inbound marketing isn't voodoo or a get rich quick scheme. It is built around honesty, integrity and a desire to fulfill someone's need via your product. It isn't about preying on people who are green, down on their luck or just unwilling to invest the time and effort into fully exploring their options. If anyone promises a career that sounds to good to be true...that is because it is.

tagged as affiliate marketing, craigslist spam, mlm, mlm scam, multilevel marketers, network marketing, scam, scams