Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams

To overcome a fear of failure, you must realise that there really is no such thing as failure. Success and failure are merely perceptions. Something that might look like a failure at the moment is only another step to your eventual success, or even the success itself.

Take the story of the now famous and hugely successful Post-it note. The adhesive used in Post-it notes was invented in 1968 by 3M researcher Spencer Silver. He was attempting to design a strong adhesive, but he actually ‘failed’ and the adhesive he developed was very weak. Dr Silver tried unsuccessfully for five years to find a use for his new adhesive. Arthur Fry, a new-product development researcher, attended one of Silver’s seminars, and he was intrigued by the strange adhesive. During his spare time Arthur Fry sang in a church choir, and it annoyed him that the bookmark in his hymn book would always fall out when he stood up to sing. One day he realised that he had found the perfect use for Dr Silver’s glue — it could be used to make a bookmark!

The original Post-it notes were used as bookmarks, and the remainder were shown to the 3M marketing department, but they rejected them as useless (a failure). Arthur Fry gave them to his secretary to dispose of, but she instead found what is now the classic use for them. Fry told her to distribute the remaining notes to all the executive secretaries in the 3M offices. When they ran out, she was inundated with calls for more. These calls were passed on to the marketing department, who finally got the idea. Initial prototypes were available in 1977, and by 1981, after a large sampling campaign, the product had been introduced around the world.

Everyone now knows and uses Post-it notes. This is a classic tale of a failure turned into a success. Post-it notes have been developed in a range of colours and designs for a variety of uses, and they can be found in offices, schools and homes all around the world.

HEY, did you know i’m running a contest while I am away…
(more…)

For those of you playing along at home, you’d know that I am off to the USA for a 3 week vacation on Wednesday.

So, in an effort to ensure the blog doesn’t go unloved I have scheduled a series of posts with excerpts from my book ‘How To Turn Your Million Dollar Idea Into a Reality’ to magically appear over the next 3 or so weeks.

These posts will cover:

• There’s No Such Thing As Failure
• Want Profitable Ideas? Become A Fisherman.
• Building On Other People’s Ideas
• Finding your USP
• Why Are You Going Into Business?
• Creating Systems To Meet Your Goals
• …and much much more

so keep an eye out, and subscribe to the rss feed…

PLUS, i’m going to run a contest while I am away…

MARCH MADNESS CONTEST Firstly, here is what is up for grabs… A signed copy of my book, which these excerpts come from - ‘How To Turn Your Million Dollar Idea Into A Reality’ [valued at AU$29.95] Unleashing The Power Of Publicity Audio CD - Interview with Pete Williams & Dale Beaumont [valued at AU$27.95] Business Essentials Audio CD - Interview with Pete Williams (May 07) [valued at AU$27.95] Why We Want You To Be Rich Book - Robert Kiyosaki & Donal Trump [valued at AU$29.95] and… A Hand Crafted Pen Crafted From The Authentic Timber of the Melbourne Cricket Ground[valued at AU$189.95] Total Value: AU$ 305.75 There are two prize packs to be won. To Enter: 1. Post a ‘review’ of one of these up-and-comming book excerpt posts on your blog, with a link back to the relevant post on my blog. Does that make sense ? I’ll see the link or the trackback. 2. Include an email address in your post unless your whois information is correct. 3. Promise to give a review of the entire book on your blog once you have received it and read it. 4. I’ll randonly draw the 2 winners when I get back after April 18 2008. It’s that easy!

Also, here is my loose schedule… if anyones interested in catching up for a beer or 3 shoot me an email.

March 26 til March 31 -Los Angeles (celebrity spotting for Fleur)
April 1 til April 3 - San Deigo (the vacation part)
April 4 til April 8 - San Antonio for the NCAA Final Four (this is my part of the trip)
April 9 til April 11 - Las Vegas (spending the $100 Fleur won on the weekend in a charity raffle)
April 11 til April 13 - Sacremento (visitng family)
April 14 til April 16 - San Franciscor

The way Basketball Australia has let the sport die here is nothing short of dismal… Back in the early 90’s, Basketball was one of the top 3 or 4 sports in this country and due to some poor decisions by the sports governing body and the National Basketball League it has seen this great sport fall off the radar.

That, mixed with the current situation facing Eddy Groves, one of the countries great entrepreneurs, founder of ABC Learning Centre… and owner of the Brisbane Bullets, who as Brian Kerle pointed out in Sundays Courier Mail, “it’s no secret he has (also) been propping up the NBL for some time” - the NBL is set for a very quick death.

Due to Groves current financial situation, thanks to an over zealous sell-off by the markets and subsequent margin calls… not only are the Brisbane Bullets on life-support, Groves also owns the basketball stadium in Adelaide and is understood to have a significant interest in the 36ers, therefore the South Australian franchise might also be under pressure.

Another of the countries most recognised clubs, the Sydney Kings, are also on the brink of collapse, and word around the camp-fire is that West Sydney Razorbacks and the Wollongong Hawks are also in deep financial trouble.

Acting NBL Commissioner Chuck Harmison said this week the NBL was not in crisis and “We are going through a review process which is going to deliver some findings on how we can become a stronger league and keep teams in the league for a longer term,”

Well Chuck, today’s post is my take on the situation, what caused the deterioration, and what the league, clubs and the sports governing body MUST DO to revive the basketball brand here is Australia.

As Tim Morrissey, so rightly pointed out in the Daily telegraph this week “The NBL should never have pushed Channel 10 into showing games live on a Saturday night.” The league was getting great weekend coverage on free-to-air TV… but in their eagerness to make the sport main-stream they pushed to hard and Channel 10 chose Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffiths, over the NBL to entertain their viewers on Saturday nights - and rightly so. The only sport in Australia that has the right to grab prime-time eyeballs is the AFL.

Trying to take on a country’s religion was never going to work…. and that’s one of the key rules in business and marketing that they broke - Know Thy Competition. The decision makers at the time completely lost sight of their competition, the other people fighting for their markets attention.

The NBL not only competes for fans (read:customers) against the AFL, NRL, A-League etc, but their target market now have endless options when it comes to entertaining the family… and that’s what the NBL sells = Entertainment. It’s the Nintendo WII’s, the Foxtels and the Facebooks that are stealing the fans away.

It’s not about the sport itself anymore, it’s about making a trip to the basketball an experience the whole family can enjoy. The standard of the competition has unquestionably risen since the NBL’s peak, but given that attendance levels haven’t grown at the same rate, it proves that it’s not just about the sport.

The night out for the family begins when they arrive at the stadium, not when the umpire throws the ball up at the beginning of the first quarter. At a club level, the organisations need to keep this in mind when preparing their game nights.

Get the cheerleaders, mascots and street entertainers out walking the corridors prior to tip-off interacting with the fans - when I was 16 I went on a Basketball trip through the USA, and what I remember more about the Chicago Bulls game was the pre-game atmosphere - not Jordan and Longley on the court.

It’s this interaction with the fans that the NBL has let slip away… As Morrissey mentioned in his article, “the Kings (and all NBL clubs) should not have stopped sending their players out to schools and into the community on a weekly basis.”

Think about all the “hot” new trends that are taking kids away from basketball - Nintendo WII’s, Online Multi-player games like World-Of-Warcraft etc - It’s all about two-way interaction. Kids no longer want to go to get entertained by watching, they want to get involved with the game… and getting back to the grass roots and getting players back into the schools is the perfect way to make this happen.

And why the sports governing body refused to support, endorse and implement the (now) worlds leading basketball development program is beyond me. Billy Bounce is a basketball development program created by one of the NBL’s ex-players Bruce Hultgren, who since receiving little (read: absolutely no) support from Basketball Australia, has taken the program to the India, Dubai and the USA where it has been endorsed by Five Star Basketball - the world leader in basketball education programs.

But for this to happen, the NBL needs to re-think their scheduling, revert back to a winter sport and stop with this mid-week game rubbish. As Sam Mackinnon said in his recent article “It’s hard to get publicity about the new season when it starts right in the middle of the footy finals, and it’s also difficult to pump our finals series when it goes head-to-head with the start of the NRL and AFL seasons.”

The NBL thrived as a winter sport, as it got to compete with the AFL and NRL as the only major team sport played indoors over winter, and with scheduling mid-week games, players are never going to have the much needed opportunity to get out to schools. Get them back out to school to do clinics - invite the kids along for free (or at least at a discount) - and they will bring their parents, just like we did in the early 90s.

The week days must be set aside to grow the sport, get the players into the communities and schools (have I said it enough yet?) and revert back to mid-week evening training sessions… where fans can get along to watch the sessions and clubs can build the relationship between kids and families.

And don’t even get me started on ticket prices… I understand the economics of the situation - that they need to charge this to cover player salaries, but every other business in the world works like this: The employees (read: players) get paid in proportion to what revenues they generate… So the better the player = the more well known they become = the more fans they bring to the games = the more merch they sell = the more revenues they generate = and only then are they paid more…

Yes, lowering the contract value of players may mean we lose some to the big dollars in Europe, but I would rather see a financially strong league locally, than no league at all… Plus, as Mackinnon pointed out “we shouldn’t forget that by having a July-to-December season, more of Australia’s top players who apply their trade in Europe could play in the NBL before heading back.”

But the NBL seem to have it round the other way - they need to increase ticket prices to cover players exorbitant salaries. Ask the average joe in the street who the 4 highest paid NBL “stars” are, and I would strongly bet that they wouldn’t have a clue - most Australians still think Andrew Gaze is in the league.

And that leads me on to my final point - Where have the leagues personalities gone? Back in the NBL’s good-old-days, the league was full of characters.. the people who where not afraid to speak their mind and make the league great… Simon Kerle, Bruce Palmer, Ray Gordon, Andrew Parkinson and Tim Morresey. Give some of the league’s characters a voice, just like the NBA has done by embracing the technology the fans have and getting players to blog.

The NBL needs to invest in the players, create characters that kids want to latch on to - where has the Dwayne the D-train gone, or what about Alabama Slammer James Crawford.. I can’t name a single player in the NBL that has a persona… and that’s what’s missing - when it comes to Basketball in Australia there is nothing for the kids to latch onto.

Technorati Tags: nbl, national basketball league, national, basketball, league, Australia, Bruce Hultgren, Bruce, Hultgren, Billy Bounce, billy B, Chuck, Harmison, Chuck Harmison, Tim Morrissey, Tim, Morrissey, Eddy, Groves, Eddy Groves, Pete, Williams, Peter Williams, Pete Williams, ABC Learning Centres, ABC, Learning, Centres, Brisbane Bullets, Bullets, Brisbane, Adelaide 36ers, Adelaide 36ers, Sydney Kings, Sydney Kings, West, Sydney, Razorbacks, Wollongong, Hawks, West Sydney Razorbacks, Wollongong Hawks, review, revamp, stage, stage 2

Todays post is based on the Robert Cialdini influence principle of ‘Liking’… and the two ways you can look at the factor of ‘liking’ when it comes to marketing and selling.

Firstly, you can say people will buy from people they like. Pretty plain and obvious, it’s just human nature that people are reluctant to throw money at people they don’t like.

There really isn’t anything new here… this principle has been openly discussed for decades. No sane marketer goes around trying to piss their prospects off.. that just ain’t cricket.

Although, what I am NOT saying is “try and get everyone to like you”.. trying to do this is a fast ticket to the insane asylum. Dan Kennedy talks about this principle really well and I will dedicate an entire post to it at some point.. but for now the take away is:

“Try and get your targeted prospects to like you… and just ignore everyone else… even Mother Teresa had her haters”

Secondly, you can look at it from the point of view that if, as a marketer, you can get your prospects to think/believe/feel that they are “just like you” it builds a very strong bond that is such a powerful selling tool.

Over-The Shoulder marketing is not just about letting your prospects look over your shoulder so they develop a liking for you… It’s about creating a subconcious connection in the prospects mind that the are JUST LIKE you..

It’s this take on the ‘liking principle’ that forms the foundation of ‘Over-The-Shoulder’ selling and one reason why Twitter has become such a powerful marketing tool.

Twitter is a great way to really engage your customer in this “Over the Shoulder” way.

Some of the greatest over-the-shoulder marketers around are really embracing Twitter to interact with thier herd (read: prospects) but posting what would otherwise be considered the most random collection of tweets (posts on thier twitter feed)… everything from what they had for breakfast, to what they are doing with their family on the weekend, to what random web-site’s they’re visiting.. plus the odd (strategically placed) sales pitch.

By reading the Twitter feed, you are practically reading over their shoulder and getting a glimpse into the persons life.

So is are these tweets really that random ?

Well, what’s actually happening in these prospects mind whilst reading these random tweets:

“Look at Scott… Look at what Scots’s doing. Aww, Scott’s with his family! I have a family… Oh, Scott had to go to the supermarket just like me. Oh wow, Scott has to do the same mundane taks as me… Cool, Scott likes wearing pink tutoos just like me… Scott really is so similar to me. Amazing, Scott is making like $100,000 a month doing this internet marketing thing… Well if Scott is just like me, there is no reasons I couldn’t do that too… Maybe i will buy his stuff and be even more like Scott….”

It’s not just about having someone look over your shoulder and exposing your life to the world (although thats why the majority of people twitter) - it’s about building a rapport, it about allowing your prospects to get a glimpse into your life and create that “i’m just like you bond”.

As Brent says so elequently…. It’s about making yourself similar to other people in your market - with some of the same struggles, joys and mundane day-to-day life. It’s “mirror marketing” - allowing people to see themselves in you.

It makes anything you do seem achieveable.

If you’re a guru, and you’re like them, your success becomes within their reach. It becomes achieveable.

Pete

P.S. - If you want to find out what Fleur and I are doing this weekend then subscribe to my twitter feed here.

P.P.S. - Make sure you check out Brent Hodgsons blog here - http://www.brenthodgson.com/. He’s just started blogging again after a little break and he really does know what he’s talking about.

Technorati Tags: over the shoulder, over, shoulder, marketing, over the shoulder marketing, over the shoulder selling, brent hodgson, brent, hodgson, pete williams, peter williams, Robert Cialdini, Robert, Cialdini

When people think of the entertainment industry, and in particular the music industry, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the glitz and glamour, pop stars with unheard of fame and more money than they know what to do with. Yet, in spite of that reputation, the entertainment industry for the most part has always used marketing strategies that were just simply the worst to be found in any industry.

It usually worked by having a scout in the employ of the record label go out and frequent clubs where popular local acts would be performing, in the hopes that they would catch sight of up and coming talent that had yet to be discovered by anyone else.

Once an artist was “discovered” in this manner, the record label would offer them a contract and then work with them, trying to tweak their sound and image to fit what they saw as the current market trends. Once a corporate identity of sorts was established for the artist, the label would then spend outrageous amounts of money on marketing and promoting their album, in the hopes that it would appeal to the public and become a hit.

Of course, many great acts and performers have gotten their big break this way over the years. The system certainly works at least some of the time, and the fact that the record industry is still going strong is proof that when it does work, it tends to work rather well.

Still, with such an approach, it’s just as likely that the label’s investments would be sunk into an act that just never goes anywhere and doesn’t generate a profit. In other words, there was vast room for improvement.

Enter the reality television boom of the late 1990s, and its most identifiable breakout success: American Idol.

American Idol is not just a successful television show (although it is that), it’s a total revolution in the way that entertainment marketing is done. You see, like all smart entrepreneurs, the folks behind American Idol have done a complete 180 and made their market research an integral part of their product. Using a wildly popular television show that offers the promise of fame and riches, they bring potential acts to them instead of seeking them out, and then weed through them until a batch of qualified performers are selected for a final showdown.

Each week, one person is eliminated on the television broadcast, based on the number of votes that they receive from the viewers who call in to show their support. This approach is genius in two ways: first, it gives the record labels the opportunity to test the waters with an artist to see if they have the public appeal it takes to succeed without the need to invest much of their own capital upfront, and secondly, they actually make money by doing this, because they charge people to cast their votes and also profit from sponsorship of the television broadcast.

Rarely has there been a more innovative and redefining marketing move than the one put forth by American Idol. There’s no reason to let them reap all the rewards, though. Their success can be yours as well, if you’re willing to use a little creativity to apply the “market-first” concept of product development to your own business.

Technorati Tags: american, idol, american idol, marketing, pete williams, pete, williams, preneur, marketing