Category: Feature Articles

The direct selling industry thrives on personal connection and entrepreneurial spirit, but today’s landscape demands reinvention. Shifting consumer behaviors, regulatory scrutiny, and the Amazon-driven expectation for fast, seamless shopping have forced the industry to evolve.

In the evolving landscape of direct sales, the necessity of a robust compliance program cannot be overstressed, particularly in light of recent interactions between regulatory bodies and consumer advocacy groups.

Go ahead, Google the name of your company now. I’ll wait. With direct sales continuing to move toward more of an online model, it’s never been more important to protect your company’s online reputation.

With the expansion of culture through social media in just the last 10 years, social selling is no longer a young person’s game. It is now almost a requirement for every direct selling company to harness the power of social media selling and pave the way to creating meaningful digital connections in order to be successful. 

It can be demoralizing to have compliance constantly reaching out to correct claims that a seller assumed were just fine. Yes, monitoring is essential as you do not want your field to be easy target for regulators to put your company at risk.  So how do you monitor, keep the field happy and prevent future infractions at the same time? The answer is education through compliance training.

Unauthorized sellers battle with companies for consumer dollars, and customers look for the quickest, cheapest way to get the product on their doorstep. This severely impacts a direct seller's bottom line and, most importantly, hurts the field, as they often cannot compete with the cut-rate prices found online.

With the proliferation and popularity of video apps like TikTok and the rise of influencer marketing, social selling is everywhere. Even so, despite the convenience and ingenuity of this brand of marketing, it’s still unclear whether your product will stand out in the endless sea of advertisements that is the current social media scape. Even so, there are new platforms on the horizon that look a little different and seem to beckon the next frontier of social selling.

You may have thought to yourself, “it seems like just about anyone can be an influencer these days,” and you’d be correct. Young people are finding it easier than ever to monetize the now-marketable skill of content creation. The transition from long-form to short-form content created a higher demand for more content, and thus more digital content creators. 

Retailers had to take a more direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales approach due to the pandemic and have found success in a space previously dominated by the direct sales industry.

Adding to this increased regulation are measures being taken by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Like other regulators, such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the FDA is making a point of upping its game. While the FDA has always been an ardent protector of public health through its enforcement policies, they are adapting to new sales techniques by increasing their scrutiny of social media promotion.