Digital marketing vs network marketing: Everything you need to know.

Hi, I’m Praneeth.

In this blog, I will explain all the details and differences between digital marketing vs network marketing.

So without further ado let’s get started.

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Definition.

Here in this section, you will learn about what are the definition and examples of both Marketing strategies.

Digital marketing:

Digital marketing is a practice of promoting a product using electronic devices like phone and computer on platforms such as,

Search engines, blogs, email, Social media channels, online stores, and forums.

There are many types of digital marketing strategies, they include.

1. Search engine optimization.
2. Search engine marketing.
3. Content marketing.
4. Social media marketing.
5. Affiliate marketing.
6. Email marketing.

Click here to learn all the digital marketing strategies’ pros and cons.

Network marketing:

Multi-level marketing or network marketing is a strategy that companies use to make direct sales of products from manufacturers to consumers like the person to person sales and to further increase sales of the company,

Whosoever buys the product from these MLM companies, can become the distributor of the product and recruit other people to buy the product.

This way,

You can earn money in 2 ways,

Sell products of the company to the people and earn a commission and when you recruit as many people as possible into the business as distributors of products who are also called as your downline and,

Whatever the sales your downline distributors make either selling to other people or recruiting more people to sell the company’s products without your interference,

You will make a profit in it as a particular percentage thus creating a passive income source for the marketers involved in the chain.

This is the main reason why many people do network marketing.

• Learn what is upline and downline in MLM here.

This network marketing strategy is also called a chain strategy,

Click here to learn the difference between multi-level marketing and pyramid scheme.

Differences and similarities between the two.

Here you will learn the difference and similarities between both Marketing strategies in detail.

Let’s start with the difference between both digital marketing and network marketing strategies.

Differences between the two.

The biggest difference between both marketing strategies is that,

In digital marketing, in order to make a profit, you must sell products, more products you sell equals more profit for you.

In network marketing, interestingly,

Of course like digital marketing, the more products you sell to other people you will make more money as a commission but,

Unlike digital marketing, you can become a recruiter or distributor of the product and make your own personal network of people (downline) who can sell the product of the company as distributors,

And whatever sales your recruiters make, you will earn money as commission in those sales because you are upline to them and money flows in this chain system which is why this strategy is also called a chain system.

Here are the top 5 differences between the two marketing strategies.

S.no	Digital marketing	Network marketing
1.	You can work from any part of the world, you just need the internet and a computer to work.	You cannot work from anywhere, you need to physically present and interact with people to make sales.
2.	Your earnings depend on how many products or companies you sell to the people.	Your earnings depend not just on how many products you sell but also on how many products your downline sells without your interference.
3.	You can see results quite faster.	You can see results slower.
4.	You can easily monitor, analyze the growth and results of your marketing efforts from your phone anytime.	It is not that easy to monitor and analyze the growth and results of your marketing strategies anytime.
5.	It is easy to scale the marketing efforts.	It is not easy to scale the marketing efforts.

Now, let’s see the similarities between the two marketing strategies in a quick view.

Similarities between the two.

Here are the top 5 similarities between both marketing strategies.

1. Both are marketing strategies that many companies use to sell products.
2. In both strategies, you can use the internet and social media to sell products.
3. Both are highly competitive industries.
4. Both require some initial investment to get started.
5. Both require a lot of knowledge, skills, and expertise to succeed.

Now let’s look at the next section.

Pros and cons of both Marketing strategies:

Here let’s take a look at the pros and cons of both strategies in detail.

Digital marketing pros:

Here is a list of the digital marketing strategy pros.

1. You can easily work from any part of the world.
2. You can target international audiences from home.
3. You can drive effective results and conversions because it is more targeted even in a limited budget.
4. You can easily scale your marketing efforts without any need for human resources.
5. You can easily track and measure your growth on your Marketing efforts.
6. You can easily customize and personalize your marketing strategies for higher conversions.
7. You can see results faster and quicker in digital marketing compared to network marketing

Cons of digital marketing.

Cons of digital marketing in detail below.

1. It is one of the highly competitive markets on the internet.
2. You need a lot of knowledge, expertise, and flexibility in order to do digital marketing because platforms like SEO, SEM, and SMM are highly competitive and constantly changing with new trends.
3. You need to comply with the security and privacy policy of the data of people.

Network marketing Pros:

let’s see the pros of networking marketing below.

1. You can improve your communication, networking and sales skills a lot which is most important in life.
2. You have less control over the product and service that you are selling.
3. You can find lots of mentors in network marketing experience who can teach you a lot of things.

Network marketing cons:

let’s see the cons of networking marketing below.

1. It is not an effective strategy for Marketing & selling a product.
2. You cannot work from any part of the world and do marketing, you need to go, physically interact with people to do the sales.
3. The industry is filled with lots of frauds and scams which makes it hard for people to get converted into customers as you will face lots of rejections with a small conversion rate.
4. It takes a lot of time, patience, physical and mental energy to succeed in the network marketing industry.

Now let’s see which is the best and why.

Which is best and why:

Look,

I am experienced in both network marketing and digital marketing,

As a matter of fact, before starting digital marketing and this blog, I was involved in a network marketing company, I don’t want to disclose the name of the company but my school friend got me into this company and I was selling online educational products.

I have invested a good amount of money into the business but I failed badly because I was not the kind of guy who was good at sales, talking to people, and convincing them.

Eventually, I learnt these skills myself but, I just wanted to mention it to let you know that I am someone who has both knowledge and experience in both fields and industries.

Practically speaking,

Digital marketing is much better and effective than network marketing because,

1. It is fast.
2. It is not that hard to make sales.
3. It is not expensive but the marketing budget is easily customizable.
4. You can work from anywhere.
5. You can do digital marketing a few times but you cannot do network marketing for increasing digital marketing efforts.

The reason why network marketing is bad is that,

It is just hard to make sales, I have seen my friends leave the company within a couple of months of joining the industry losing money and relationships after when I left.

On top of that, the chain system which it has and scams that are associated with it makes it really hard for even good MLM companies to survive and make sales.

The last and final reason to choose digital marketing is that,

The usage of mobile phones has increased a lot.

Everything you can possibly imagine are getting sold and moved on digital platforms like,

• Food delivery with online apps like Uber.
• Education with platforms like YouTube, skillshare.
• Entertainment with platforms like amazon prime and Netflix.
• Work with apps like Skype, zoom.
• Health consultancy.

Mainly due to the Corona pandemic, the use of the internet has increased a lot when physical distancing was minimized MLM companies were shut down but digital marketing companies were still in action and making money.

The future is all digital, so it is highly advised to move online and utilize digital marketing strategies over other traditional marketing strategies for better ROI.

With that being said let’s conclude the blog post.

Ending remarks.

There you go these are the main difference and pros and cons of both marketing strategies.

Do comment down what you think about these Marketing strategies in the comments section below.

Share the blog with your family and friends if you have found it helpful.

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Read my other blogs,

• Is affiliate marketing a pyramid scheme?
• Pros and cons of digital marketing.
• Pros and cons of affiliate marketing.

I will catch you next time till then,

Keep learning and keep growing.