Top 4 challenges in marketing a Monavie MLM business
Most MLM advertising is usually geared to new MLM startups. Companies that are either in pre-launch or have just recently launched need to get the word out there and establish brand recognition fast. This usually means they actively engage in a wide range of marketing tactics in the hope they go viral.
On the other side of that coin you have the established MLM companies. These are heavyweights that have been around for years, are well known and have thus far stood the test of time.
Monavie is one of those companies. Monavie retail a wide range of juice products containing a ‘wide array of antioxidants, vitamins, and phytonutrients, as well as other beneficial ingredients like Wellmune, plant-derived glucosamine, and plant sterols‘.
You probably don’t know what half that stuff is and neither do I. Despite that however Monavie have been around the MLM scene for five and a half years which for an MLM company is impressive.
Joining an established company however isn’t always a promise or guarantee of replicating success. Today I want to look at the top 5 marketing challenges of joining Monavie.
1. Market Saturation
As I stated previously, Monavie have been around now for five and a half years and in 2008 had a reported 80,000 active distributors worldwide.
This means that if you’re thinking of starting up a Monavie business there’s a good chance there’s already an established distributor servicing your area.
Obviously with the jazz of internet marketing any Monavie distributor from around the world could be supplying customers in your area but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t research. Even if it’s just a quick Google search of where you live and ‘Monavie’ you’d do well to try and establish if there’s an established distributor servicing your area.
Demand for a product is always finite and if there’s a successful distributor who’s been advertising in your area for a while now, chances are they’ve already tapped into the existing market. Given that you’re going to be retailing the exact same product line at the exact same prices, the chances of you obtaining any new customers is probably slim to none.
All of which is information you want to know before you commit to the business.
2. Competition
I’m not sure what the active distributor numbers for Monavie are in 2010, but as mentioned earlier you were looking at 80,000 competing distributors back in 2008.
That’s 80,000 other people all trying to market the exact same products to the exact same niche market worldwide. You’re just one of them.
Sure you’ll have your replicated website and you can do leaflet drops and even advertise locally if you’re trying to capture the local market, but at the end of the day that’s 80,000 people who got the jump start on you.
Oh, and then there’s all the distributors from all the other wonder juice companies out there too…
That’s not to say it’s impossible to establish a market for yourself but just know what you’re setting yourself up against. Any customers you gain are going to have to be new to the product and that means having gone five years without hearing about it. Let alone overcoming any prejudices or existing conceptions your new customer(s) might have about the MLM industry.
3. The Price
If you’re like me, ten seconds into the marketing spiel of any product and I’m sitting there wondering what the price is. For me this is the bottom line. I don’t expect a premium juice offering to compete with what I can find in the supermarket, but if I can’t rationalise the price difference then I’m not going to buy it.
Monavie juice comes in 750ml bottles and sells between the range of about $30 a bottle (when bought in a 4 pack case), to nearly $40 when bought individually.
Meanwhile at my local supermarket I’m looking at a few dollars a litre, maybe less on special.
The biggest challenge here is justifying to your potential customer that this massive price difference is totally worth it. We’re not talking a slim premium price here either, we’re talking quite a massive difference of around $25 at least. Your challenge as a Monavie distributor is convincing a customer that Monavie really is worth the extra premium price they’re going to be paying, but additionally that there’s no better priced option in between.
The first things I’m thinking when I hear I’m going to be paying at least $30 for a bottle of juice is that
a. I can finish 750ml of juice (and do so daily) in less then 30 minutes and
b. Surely there’s an alternative product priced somewhere between $2-$3 and $30-$40 that is of comparable health benefit and quality?
This is a wide open price gap and has not surprisingly given new wonder juice MLM companies a lot of leverage in pricing their products to competitively compete against Monavie. Something you’d be naive not to take into consideration if you’re thinking about joining Monavie.
4. Selling juice to sustain a fulltime income
Sure a lot of people consume juice regularly but is there really a market to sustain a full time income? Personally I drink over a litre of juice a day, varying in taste from apple, pomegranate, peach, mango, pineapple, watermelon, strawberry, kiwi and whatever else is on offer. Having said that though there’s no way I’d be making the switch over to Monavie at their price point.
I’d bankrupt myself in just a few short weeks.
Many people consume juice regularly but the market for wonder juices, whether they contain acai berry or some other active ingredient, is always going to be a niche market.
Presumably juice consumption for this market is in small quantities once, maybe twice a day. At $110-$130 retail or so a box per month of juice, that’s a hell of a lot of juice that needs to be sold to sustain a fulltime income.
These figures are reflected in the Monavie business itself. Taken straight from Monavie’s current compensation plan income disclosure, in 2009 97% of distributors took home an annual (yearly) paycheck of $3985. Additionally 50% of Monavie distributors took home an average paycheck of just $1214.
Monavie claim that the 50% bracket of distributors worked on average 4 hours a week. This works out to 208 hours a year and pay rate of $5.83 an hour.
Top marks for transparency from Monavie but the numbers are hardly inspiring.
Acai juice at Monavie’s price point is never going to be a mainstream commodity and I imagine the bulk of revenue earned by Monavie’s top distributors is earned via their vast downlines they’ve recruited over the years.
I suspect that unless you have access to an untapped market full of people wanting to sign up as distributors under you, then you’re going to have a hard time making any real money by retailing Monavie’s juices alone.
Monavie is an interesting company to look at given that it’s been around for a few years now. By this stage usually an MLM company has reinvented itself a few times or disappeared completely.
Due to the length Monavie has been in business it’s easy to get caught up in the claims of it’s top earners. What’s important to consider though are the above four points.
With the age of Monavie’s business opportunity, long gone are the days of a level playing field. Distributors entering the market these days can expect a saturated playing field full of other distributors trying to sell the same products at the same price point you are and ever increasing pressure from your upline as they too try to replicate the top earners success.
Top earners who have most likely been with Monavie since the beginning or close to. As a new distributor know what you’re up against and seriously consider all angles of the opportunity before you commit to anything.
Oh yes…the challenges of being involved as a distributor for Monavie.
First of all and as pointed out above, the first obstacle is selling an overpriced fruit juice and nutritionally void fruit juice (you only have to review the nutritional label to confirm there’s not much goodness in the premier blend of mush). Now to justify the price, you’ll be confronted with distributors making all sorts of absurd health claims. This juice apparently has the ability to mitigate the symptoms of arthritis, eczema, psoriasis and various auto-immune disorders. If you scout the internet, you’ll see distributors claiming the product can cure cancer, ADHD or pretty much anything that ails you.
These claims are systematically made despite the fact that Monavie literature clearly states that distributors are not allowed to use terms and phrases which suggest the product can treat, cure or mitigate the symptoms of any disease or condition – no studies have ever been undertaken which prove there are any health benefits associated with being “on the juice”. Not only are such claims in breach of company policy but they are against the law.
Secondly, the most obvious thing you’ll find about Monavie distributors is the fact that they’re aren’t really selling fruit juice – it’s the opportunity that they’re selling and the claims concerning the opportunity are about as rich as the outlandish health claims because let’s face it, selling fruit juice to bona fide customers in the vicinity of $30 – $40 dollars a bottle (even with the illegal health claims) is a pretty tall order for anyone.
There are no weekly or monthly sales targets, no training is provided to distributors which focuses on gathering customers and once they find out you’re not interested in the opportunity, they lose interest in selling you the juice also – retail sales is NOT where the big money has been promised and promoted. The “business plan” you will note involves distributors, who are not engaged in any selling of the product but instead are consuming all that they purchase, recruiting other distributors to do the same. All in the hope of achieving wealth to the tune of millions, “passive, residual income” and financial freedom which is touted by the promoters as being possible for anyone to achieve – simply by “sharing” the product.
You’ll be provided with the 2009 Global Income Disclosure Statement and encouraged to ignore everything contained within same, except the last two columns which indicate the average earnings and the hours distributors have put in to attain such earnings. However, on closer inspection you will see that a group of 377 (who equate to 0.053% of the total sales force) received nearly 40% of the commissions thus averaging greater than $7000.00 per week, fewer than 13% averaged less than $50.00 per week (which for the most part represents a loss after all costs have been factored into) and greater than 620,000 distributors (87% of the total sales force) earned zero in the first instance.
So here we have distributors who are unable to sell the juice without it being attached to the opportunity and without using illegal health claims to justify the exorbitant price of same (it does have to support the inflated compensation plan after all), a lack any retail sales to genuine, bona fide customers not associated with the scheme, the focus of the sales force being recruitment and thus any commissions and bonuses being paid to distributors is as a result of purchases made by themselves and that of their downline, a top weighted compensation plan where there’s merely an internal transfer of monies being paid to earlier recruits as a result of the investments and purchases of the later ones and finally, a company where the revenue being earned is primarily as a result of the investments and purchases of it’s own sales force.
If it looks like a pyramid, if it operates like a pyramid, if the compensation plan enriches only a very few thus leaving the remaining absolute majority of participants at the bottom where no profits are being made, it’s safe to assume it is a pyramid.
This farcical venture has resulted in people being defrauded to the tune of millions of dollars after having invested in a product based on blatant misrepresentations and illegal health claims and an opportunity whereby the FACT that greater than 99% of the sales force is losing money is withheld from them as at the time they unwittingly sign up AND where the underlying business of pyramiding is concealed from them also.
I look forward to the day this organisation gets some much needed and warranted attention from the authorities.
Readers may be interested in a blind study of a number of reputed antioxidant juices using serum ORAC (oxygen radical absorption capacity in the blood) and the highest score was grape juice and a number did not change that value in people and they included the one in question.
David just a quick note: I’m more than hapy for you to contribute here but could you edit your email address the next time you publish so it fixes itself.
Currently you’re publishing from a .nxt email address (typo I assume) and it’s messing up author trust in WordPress as I’m having to correct it manually back to .net everytime.
Cheers and thanks again.
Thank you Oz, it was right b4, so I can only blame the unspeakables who are stalking/hacking me
Out of curiosity, why would anyone be stalking or hacking you?
Re stalking/hacking I reckon they film me for the web.
My mail (a locked bag at the post office), get interfered with and items stolen, things got stolen from the house I was in (and an illegal entry logged by the landlady ).
In the house it started in I had the fuses off and walked into the lounge with a radio freq. detection unit and the thing went off the scale but settled down when I stopped and went mad again when I .moved.
This was consistent with cameras that use radio and a card processor has recorded tampering etc
Wow, sounds a bit batshit insane!
Any idea why they’re particularly interested in you? Who’d did you piss off in a past life hey!
Because I was going to start an oyster hatchery in south aus. and the accountant gave my business plan to the principle of local abalone hatchery when I was looking for funding and I heard a mobile phone ring and then a female voice said no, we’re up at the house we want to get into!
Another night I followed someone back to the ab. hatchery, were a frantic female voice was saying (on the phone) No, he works on the internet! Like she was dead worried this monster they’d created was coming to get them , instead I was happy to identify where the idiots were coming from.
Mind you a psych just looks it up in some yank book and decides I am paranoid schizophrenic.
Great eh
Almost sounds like the plot of a movie…
Hahahahahahahaha