Preneur Marketing Blog – Pete Williams | Author Entrepreneur

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

To first understand how to make the most of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your business, you need to understand exactly how it is that search engines go about their business.

In the English-speaking world, the major search engines include Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (which includes AskJeeves).

Typically speaking, search engines perform two functions.

• They “crawl” the web and create an index (database) of the billions of documents (web-pages) that are available online – this includes your business’ website.
• They use this index to provide useful answers to questions that users ask of them, most often in the form of a list of relevant web sites after someone searches on a particular phrase or term; such as “plumbers in melbourne”

Let’s look at each of these.

Crawling and Indexing

Search engines don’t just head out across the expanse of the web at random. Instead, they proceed along methodical lines. Most every webpage you’ve ever been to on the internet contains at least one or more hyperlinks to other website pages or files. This sharing of links, in theory, serves as a network connecting all of the pages that exist on the internet. By using these links, the software that search engines use to scour the web (known as “crawlers” or “spiders”) can reach the billions of documents available on the web through any given starting point.

Randfish explains it brilliantly using the analogy of a city bus or subway route. While the main points of interest are the various stops and cities along the route (think of these as the web sites and files), the streets connecting them (the hyperlinks) are critical and of no less importance.

So if you don’t have any hyperlinks (on other webpages) that point to your business’ website then the search engine spiders will never be able to find your website and place its pages in the index. It is this web structure (hence: world wide web) that the search engines crawl through, making these stops, where their next task is to take a look at the code that makes the pages and store the relevant sections of code in their database for retrieval…

Retrieval and Rankings

When most people go to search for something on the internet, say looking for someone to fix the leak in the bathroom… they submit a query at a search engine, by typing in the phrase/term they are looking for (plumber melbourne), and in return they get a list of relevant web pages.

To do this, the search engine looks through its massive collection of documents, and performs a two-step process. First, they return results which are likely to have some relation to what the user was looking for. Secondly, and this is important, they determine the order, or “rank” in which these pages are displayed to the user.

To make this determination, the search engine judges two aspects of your businesses page: relevance and importance.

Relevance is a very complex matter that we’ll be discussing throughout this guide. Suffice to say, relevance is no longer simply a matter of having the right words (plumber & Melbourne) in the text of your webpage. SEO goes far beyond that and incorporates a great number of factors.. but as a starting point; the only way the search engines can determine what your business (website) is about, is by reading the words of test on your sites pages. So if you are a plumber, make sure you incorporate words such as plumbing, plumber, leak, toilet etc etc in your copy.

Importance, from the search engine’s perspective, has to do with how popular your site is… and just like in high school where the most popular people had the most friends… the more links you have pointing to your site, the higher your importance, and the higher your rank in any given search.

If you’ve used a search engine before, you likely know this, but the more relevant and important a page is thought to be, the closer to the top of the search engine results list it can be found. How many times have you even bothered navigating to the second page of a results list to find what you’re looking for? …Exactly….

Of course, these two factors are determined by machines, so there’s a lot of room for error. But rather than see this as a negative thing, we should look at how we can capitalize upon it. In other words, if we figure out just how search engines go about determining how important and relevant your page is, we can make sure that they award us high rankings.

In the next post we will be going further into the actual look and feel of a Search Engines Results Page and how that all works… stay tuned..

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimisation, search, engine, optimisation, google, yahoo, msn, sem, serps, pete williams, pete, williams, preneur marketing, preneur, marketing, small business, small, business

Like many small business owners, you may not have even heard of SEO before. And yet, it is one of the most critical things that you need to understand if you want your website to stand out from the crowd and actually generate positive results for your business.

Just What is SEO?

SEO refers to “Search Engine Optimization”. And basically, it involves making very subtle changes to your website so that it becomes more attractive to the programs running the net’s most popular search engines – Google, MCN, Yahoo etc etc.

If you’re not convinced that this should matter to you, take note that the majority of all web traffic is generated by just a few major search engines: Yahoo!, MSN, Google, and AskJeeves.

When was the last time you went to the yellow pages to find a business instead of Google? Exactly.

If these search engines can’t locate your site, then your site cannot be put into their databases. If you aren’t in their databases, you can’t turn up during a search.

In other words, you will never reach those people who are out there, actively looking for your product and services.

This isn’t just a matter of generating random traffic; it’s about ensuring that those people who are in the market to buy your products already will be able to find your site when they come looking for it. If your website is not getting listed on the first page of the Serach Engines Result Pages (SERPs) your business simply doens’t exist online…

So How Exactly Does SEO Work?

Search engines are constantly looking for ways to improve upon their services; they want to go deeper into the web and return better results to their users… That’s their business – to return (display)the most approprite sites on the internet for the ’search term’ entered by the user.

However, it’s ultimately computer software that is conducting these searches, not a human being. As such, they’re prone to error, as I’m sure you all know by now. The good news is that these programs search for sites in a very predictable and methodical fashion. If you know how they conduct their searches, you can make the changes to your site that you need to (often, just a tweaked word here or there!) to take you from the bottom of the search pile to the top!

Why wouldn’t you want to be part of this?

In this blog series, we’re going to cover SEO at a high-level. But before we get into all that, you need to ask yourself if SEO is what you’re looking for… Why did you build your website in the first place? Was it to satisfy your ego and burn money on a slick-looking interactive brochure that nobody is ever going to read? I doubt it, but if so, then you can probably achieve that goal quite nicely without bothering any further with SEO. However, maybe your aim was to generate new leads for your business? If so, then SEO is one of the most effective means to that end in your entire arsenal.

Are we on the same page here? Have I convinced you that you NEED SEO if you want to take your business anywhere in this day and age?

If make sure you check back here in the next couple of days to read the next installment which will cover: How The Search Engines Operate… How the Search Engines Rank Your Site… and much more.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimisation, search, engine, optimisation, google, yahoo, msn, sem, serps, pete williams, pete, williams, preneur marketing, preneur, marketing, small business, small, business