Our company NaXum powers dozens of direct selling, mlm, party plan, and referral marketing companies with software, apps, and sales tracking systems to run their businesses. We've seen 6 key trends that every referral marketing company should take notice of for 2022.

1. The 2022 Direct
Selling Trends
Report
By: Ben Dixon

2. With COVID-19 continuing to change the way business is done
across the globe, Referral Marketing businesses everywhere are
faced with how best to support their members when the majority
are no longer leaving home like they used to.
Creating platforms that ‘feel like' a top leader
sitting next to the newest person on the team:
We have seen incredible innovation in 2020 and 2021 that has
pushed companies to look deeply at the experience they are
offering their members. With members no longer attending live
events weekly and getting out to meet people in regular
day-to-day life, companies have been forced to put platforms
together that ‘feel like’ a top leader sitting next to the newest
person on the team, suggesting what to do next.
Whether modeling how to connect with a friend and invite them
to your website via text message, or giving your member a
compliant selling system for engaging new contacts on social
media, predictive apps and marketing systems have become a
critical cornerstone of every company's strategy.
Predictive platforms engage every new team member with the
daily habits and little things they need to do that compound daily
into building a real business. Because massive amounts of
members are actually adopting predictive platforms, the
companies who have deployed predictive technology are receiving
data they have never had before.
The insights from the success and failure of the predictive content
become the guiding light to a companies’ content strategy moving
forward.
#1
Rise Of
Predictive
Platforms

3. In our last report, we highlighted the trend of tastefully tying
causes to your direct sales company as a must to ‘Engage for
Good’. Causes continue to be catalysts for viral participation and
enhancing the story of direct selling companies across the globe.
Companies today are tying causes into the
experience of being a member in UNIQUE ways:
Some are rewarding their members with points for taking the
simple daily actions of watching training videos, prospecting, and
sharing on social media and allowing members to cash in their
‘points’ for gifts that go to causes they care deeply about. Imagine
the reward of telling your field that regardless of the sales they
make, if they do the work to share your company, you will support
the causes they care about!
Others are tying causes to loyalty by giving gifts to foundations
every time a customer purchases or at different benchmarks of the
lifetime of a retail customer's subscription.
#2
A Cause
Bigger
Than
Yourself

4. Compensation plans are no longer only for the members
promoting as a direct seller. Startup direct selling companies and
relaunches are consistently deploying customer rewards programs
as a regular part of the company's culture.
Popular Rewards Programs:
Receive your subscription at no cost when you refer 3 (in
some cases 2) friends who also purchase a subscription of
the same value or higher.
Enter the lottery for a guaranteed reward for sharing your
product experience story with a #hashtag on social media.
Subscribe for 3x months in a row and receive a reward.
Tiered rewards for 3 months subscribed, 6 months
subscribed, 12 months subscribed, and more.
#3
Customer
+ Loyalty
Rewards
Programs

5. The old paradigm of giving your members as promoters the ‘best
price’ on the product instead of the retail customer is dying.
Companies everywhere are setting up pricing structures that
remove ANY incentive for a regular consumer to want to become a
promoter only on the basis of getting a ‘better price’ for the
product.
The New Golden Rule:
The trend we are seeing across the board is allowing the retail
customer to have access to the same ‘best price’ that a promoter
would have. Companies may have retail prices for one-time
purchases, discounted subscription prices for retail customers
subscribing, and even further discounted prices that loyal retail
customers can achieve based on specific rules. Across the board,
companies are moving away from creating any incentive that
would move a person to want to become a promoter just to get a
discounted price on products.
We also see companies continuing to charge administrative fees to
the promoters to recover costs of platforms that support the
promoter experience and clearly differentiate who is a retail
customer versus a promoter. There is a trend favoring annual
admin fees for promoters over monthly fees at this time.
#4
Pricing
Trends

6. Rewarding Behaviors
Compensation trends are moving beyond
rewarding sales to rewards-specific behaviors
that lead to sales. Weekly contests to give
bonuses to the top 10 sales people that had
the most prospects attend the webinar,
rewards for members with the longest daily
streaks of winning their daily goals, and
rewards for members who complete
‘micro-actions' that contribute to your
culture.
Paying The One Who Does The
Work
Regardless of the price the retail customer
pays for a product, you’ll see a trend where
direct compensation is being made to the
actual promoter who did the work in direct
sales, MLM, and party plan compensation
plan.
Older commission plans at times ‘cut out’ the
retail commissions (that were meant to pay
the person doing the work) when a retail
customer chose subscription pricing. This
trend is going away as companies work to
incentivize promoters to focus on retail
customers who subscribe to services.
#5
Compensation
Trends

7. Insight tools are changing the way companies plan, iterate, and
execute throughout the year.
Deploying Platforms To Maximize Leading
Indicators:
For decades, many direct sales companies have been stuck in the
predicament of needing to plan, iterate, and execute on programs
while only having transactional historical data to base their
decisions on. This means that it may take 90 days to know if your
programs or changes are having any effect at all.
Companies today are deploying predictive platforms that track the
text messages, social media posts, and calls the members make to
get daily data faster on the response the marketplace is having to
specific content and initiatives. The insights predictive platforms
bring to the table become the guiding light to monthly, weekly,
and even daily decision-making.
Which posts are your members willing to make on social media?
And out of the posts they are willing to make, which posts actually
get their friends to your shopping cart?
What hook is the best text message to send to your friends in
Spanish to start a conversation about your product?
Which training videos are the promoters actually finishing in
onboarding?
What is the best way to handle objections that come in from
prospects?
All these questions can now be asked, tracked, and reported on.
#6
Data
Trends

8. Ready For A
Solution To Win In
Today's Market?
Book A Discovery Session At:
www.naxum.com

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