How to use Mass Media to Tell Your Story

“What’s your story?” This is the overarching question for corporate management to answer when working with news media. Why? Because direct-selling is a business of story-telling, and a compelling story will always attract new distributors who, in turn, will tell your story to attract customers.

For news media, they’re in the business of revealing good stories for readers, TV viewers or radio listeners. The more interesting a story—the better a news editor feels about satisfying the never-ending curiosity of their targeted audience.

A good story will always interest a news editor or reporter when presented factually as a solution ‘unique and different’ enough to attract the interest of their captured audience.

When it’s published or aired on television or the internet—it will generally pull 10 times the response of readers or viewers versus the company paying for a full-page ad in a national publication. That’s because a news story carries the credibility of that news organization behind it. An ad—using the same words—is immediately forgotten.

So when a company releases a new product, service or innovation, management should first focus on defining the strongest elements for creating a news story around it. News means: What’s really interesting, unique or compelling?

By way of example, a lot of companies are doing well in the marketplace today with a nutritional product. In order to create news about supplements or the like, you must provide the science behind it. You need to show some credible research—particularly a well-documented clinical trial—from someone such as an independent medical expert not associated with the company’s revenue stream.

In many ways, today’s media landscape is more receptive to legitimate news stories than ever before. Where once there were only newspapers, magazines, network television and syndicated radio shows, the universe is overflowing with hundreds of TV channels and thousands of online news and blog sites. Competition between them is fierce.

With all these news outlets and TV channels competing for audience, real news is paramount for ratings and corporate profits. Meaning the news-universe is on the prowl 24/7 for legitimate reader-and-viewer interest stories.

It doesn’t matter if the new product comes from an MLM company. If it’s a really effective product that will interest many people—it likely rates as a ‘news story.’

Every newspaper, magazine, TV news show and online news site is competing for news copy that grabs their audience’s attention.

Consider the morning TV-news shows such as ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today, CBS This Morning and of course the news channels like Fox, CNN, MSNBC. They all have audiences listening for new ideas to get excited about. Any company—even an MLM company—with a good product has a chance to get on one or more of those shows.

News programs require an ‘expert’ to appear and when you can create that kind of third-party credibility for your company you can claim an enormous advantage in the marketplace. Hundreds of thousands of people might see the story. The news outlet will generally publish a website or 800-number to direct the audience to buy—or get more information. This represents pure corporate revenue.

And when the product delivers the expected result, an awful lot of people from the news universe are going to become repeat buyers. Thirty days later when they return to re-order, management has the perfect new candidate to be a new distributor for your company. Why?

They were excited to buy off your news-story, they’ve now had a great product experience and they see personal dollars (through direct selling) in sharing their ‘results’ with others. It’s not selling—it’s sharing what they read or saw on TV and going forward representing this 3rd party credibility ‘endorsement’ with everyone they know.

Media can have a powerful influence on a network marketing company when it reveals a newsworthy product. Unfortunately, not everything is newsworthy. That’s where skill and experience comes in. Is there a story about your product or not?

One downside of positive media attention is the loss of market exclusivity when your story is told. The lifecycle of Monavie’s first product is one such example.

Monavie was the first company to introduce acai berry to the marketplace. They had an incredible run. Revenues reportedly topped $600 million globally in one year. Today, you can buy acai for half price in major retail outlets like Costco, Sam’s Club ,Target and Wal‑Mart. When a network marketing product becomes a commodity the company needs to go develop a new product. Hopefully with another good news story!