Preneur Marketing Blog – Pete Williams | Author Entrepreneur

Today’s post was inspired by Ed Dale… I first heard Ed talk about ‘the american idol’ approach to marketing during last years Thirty Day Challenge and just love the concept… I am actually working on a series of posts around the topic of ‘What Britney, 50 Cent and Neil Diamond Can Teach Us About Marketing’, so keep your eyes peeled for that… Todays post is simply a teaser – Consider it a single released prior to the album.

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.

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On a few different occasions this year, I found myself in lively discussions about the validity of branding… Actually they have been more pistols-at-dawn debates on whether a small business owner should be pro-actively focused on growing their brand, or let their brand develop as a byproduct of their direct-marketing and organic business growth…

It first came up during a Club Nesso session in June(ish), and then again recently in the Infiniti Telecommunications office during a marketing meeting (read: beers @ 6pm), when one of the new team members dropped the need to focus on Michael Porters 4 P’s and work hard to develop a widely recognised brand, when developing a new division.

They way I took the point this university educated (there’s the source of the problem) team member was trying to make was that we should be investing resources and time to develop a brand like Nike, Apple or Adidas… You know, adopting the whole ‘Madison Avenue Marketing’ approach to business.

That is.. spend the equivalent of Lindsay Lohan’s coke habit, on Billboards and TV commercials in hope to capture a small slice of the markets mind-space … so when they need a business phone system for their small business they think Infiniti and call us etc etc etc

As John Moore over at Brand Autopsy says regarding the brand phenomenon known as Starbucks “…(They) never sought to create a brand. The company was too busy being a business than trying to be a brand. Starbucks was too busy building a viable and profitable business to think about something as seemingly trivial as branding… You cannot create a brand before you create a business. Your business creates your brand. Your brand should never create your business.

In ode to my good mate Scott Ginsberg and his love of lists – For those of you who have small businesses the key to building a strong brand are:

• Build your business on direct response marketing… and word of mouth will grow your brand
• Focus on SEO and PPC advertising… and your brand will become associated with keywords you rank for. (…more)
• Donate to charities… helping the world, helps increase your brands exposure
• Speak at local events and chambers of commerce… sharing your experiences will increase you and your businesses credibility
• Join a local BNI Chapter… not only will it generate sales but word of mouth for your branding
• Really focus on getting your business in the media through free publicity… as they say any publicity is good publicity
• Create something that can go viral… Viral marketing is the best way to build a brand in a web 2.0 world.
• Do right by your customers… excellent customer service is the basis of a strong brand
• Force word of mouth… ask for referrals
• Use your logo, tagline and call to action on all marketing material… you’ll never grow a brand if you don’t at least mention it

What ever you do, always remember – You cannot create a brand before you create a business. Your business creates your brand. Your brand should never create your business.

More About Club Nesso: As I said, Club Nesso is lead by two of my great friends; Ross Mitchell and Travis Madden – If you are Independent Business Owner, ready to launch your own business or the next Richard Branson (yes I was a member, lol) you will be someone who is deeply committed to your success so you need to join Club Nesso. Over 12 months you will be able to diminish the loneliness and isolation of business ownership, you will have someone to bounce ideas off, you will have a sounding board and most importantly you will be encouraged and enabled to work on the business because we where to begin. You will become a strategy dynamo and maybe even a marketing and sales guru. Either way you will improve your business – http://www.nesso.com.au/

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Here is a syndicated copy of an article I recently wrote for the Enlightened Wealth Institute.

There you go, I said it! Most sales environments make selling easy.

Now, if you are in the sales game you are probably going red in the face right now, ready to go to war with me over this, especially if you have a boss like ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’… but, if you consider the parameters in which most sales people work – selling advertising, insurance or soft-drink accounts – it allows for the building of relationships (which makes the sale easier), the ability to continually follow up (which makes the sale easier) and the reassurance of the next sales period (which again makes the sale easier).

How does the game change when you need to sell a project? A project that has a defined and distinct end?

On the surface there’s not much different: it’s all about getting as many hungry and qualified leads into your funnel as quickly as possible and helping them discover that opening their wallets and throwing money at you is in their best interests.

Selling a ‘project,’ however, needs to solicit action immediately… not action later so the sale will fall in the next month’s budget… there is no reassuring ‘next sales period.’

Most sales trainers will preach the adage that ‘it takes 6-7 contacts to make the sale” and, if you have the luxury of time and opportunity for repeat business, these ‘clichéd statements’ actually do have merit.

But, when selling for immediate response, you need to make an offer that moves the prospect to jump NOW. You don’t have time to educate the prospect over 2 long lunches, a chat on the par 5 and 4 direct mail pieces.

It comes down to a powerful offer with a solid and justified ‘end.’ Did you notice the word justified?

Simply adding ‘this offer expires on February 30th’ won’t cut it– you need to explain and justify to the prospect, in their terms, why they must act now and why the offer honestly can’t last. It’s amazing what a candid explanation will do to your bottom line.

Now, did you also notice the term ‘hungry prospect’ above? This is the real key to selling projects (and accounts).

The late Gary Halbert often asked if you were to start a hamburger stand and could be the ‘best’ at one element what would that be?

Having the best hamburgers, a secret sauce, the best location, the best pricing, etc., etc.?

Well, all of that is irrelevant… all you need is THE hungry crowd, as they will eat anything if they are hungry enough.

Technorati Tags: Enlightened, Wealth, Institute, Selling, Sales, Tecnhiques, Gary, Halbert, Pete, Williams, Pete-Williams

My mum has always been a huge chess fan, there was a stage when I was younger where we played together often… That period didn’t last very long though, because she was the one who often got to signify victory with the almighty cry of “Checkmate”, not me – and I hated that with a passion as I am not a good loser.

In business however, checkmate occurs when a customer says YES, opens their wallet and decides to take you, the salesperson, up on an offer.

Traditionally this ‘checkmate position’ would be known as ‘the almighty close’.

However, since any “checkmate decision” actually takes place in the brain of the customer, that buying decision is really outside the salespersons control – and thus makes closing the sale an impossibility…

This is the theory of Newsell (where the customer, not the salesperson, closes the sale) put forth by Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, one of the greatest thinkers ever and the man whoco-founded the School of Thinking, with Edward de Bono, in New York in 1979.

Michael defines “checkmate” as occuring when a customer says I’ll buy it and offers her credit card, or when a buyer accepts the deal and signs the purchase order… or in show business, it’s when the director says, “You’re in!” and you get the part you auditioned for.

The main strategic feature of the checkmate situation is: the salesperson (you) CANNOT control checkmate.

In this “newsell” approach all the saleman can control is the check position…

And, the check position signifies any type of customer contact:
– check is a unit of measurement for ‘customer contact’
– check = CUSTOMER CONTACT = check
– check is when your meme enters the customers brain
– check is when one customer WOMs (word-of-mouth) another customer
– check is when it is possible for the customer to say NO or YES
– without check there can be no checkmate– check is the penultimate state, the set-up move for checkmate
– check is the position of the energy switch which makes it possible for checkmate to happen.

Whether you are making offers directly in person, via direct mail, an email auto-responder or even leaving messages on customers voicemail, in business, check is the moment of ANY customer contact.

Check occurs when you have put the prospect in a position that allows them to say YES or NO as a result of an offer made by you. In other words, the customer’s brain has been stimulated by some form of communication (check), so that the customer can/will respond by deciding whether to act or not to act – YES or NO.

Check is when;
– …you ask the customer a buying question
– …you mail the proposal
– …you meet in a boardroom for a presentation
– …you offer a free taste-test in the supermarket
– …you send out a press release to the media
– …you make the follow up call, after an earlier ‘check move’
– …you give an elevator speech; or
– …a hooker asks if you need some company for the night

The fundamental rule of Check Move Theory is that you the salesperson, CAN and must control check… It’s not about trying to “close the sale” with some ‘used-car-salesmann-swindle’, it’s about making as many “check moves” as possible… The more check moves you make, the more opportunities prospects have of saying YES.

On his website, ‘New Sell Coaching’, Michael Hewitt-Gleeson offers a free e-mail course which go’s into much more detail on ‘check move theory’ and covers things like – The UnCheck Position – What An OldSell Check Is – How To Implement A Check X10 Sequence – The T.C.B. – Even More Types of CheckMoves Pardon the punn, but “Check Out” the ‘New Sell Coaching Course’ and sign-up today here.

P.S. The really ironic thing about Michael’s course, is that he doesn’t try and sell a single thing throughout the course… Yep, not even one check is offered during the whole email course.



Download The Audio Version Here (Right Click and download it)

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It’s often said, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but in today’s world of business, that’s easier said than done.

With more and more sales being conducted through direct mail and the internet, plus fierce competition for shelf space in retail stores… consumers often simply don’t have the time to make an informed decision, and will make a choice based entirely on which product has the better packaging.

The right packaging can immediately give the customer a sense that your product is the perfect one for him and can often close a deal just like that. However, it’s not enough to simply have good copy and strong visual design in your packaging; there’s one other thing to keep in mind that might be the most important one of all.

“Product Perception” refers to the way customers identify new products. Their unconscious mind makes links between the new product and old products they’ve bought in the past. Like many of the unconscious processes of the human mind, this isn’t always a logical process, but luckily it is a predictable one.

Take for example a book. No matter the content of that book, a customer who first approaches it will take it for what it is on the surface: a book. What’s more, they’ll associate it with other books they’ve bought in the past and at that point, the main idea of product perception comes into play. If the customer has routinely paid $20-30 for a book in the past, it’s unlikely that he’ll be willing to pay more than that for your book.

If the exact same material covered in that book, however, were recorded onto audio discs and then re-packaged, or if the exact same book were to be bundled with a piece of matching computer software, the customer would approach that type of merchandise with a higher price point in mind from the start. Keeping this in mind, we can anticipate and control a customer’s initial, most basic reaction to our products.

So, now that we know about product perception, how can we make it work to our advantage?

The first step is to talk to your marketing department and have them consider product perception in all their research. Through surveys and other polling tools, you can figure out what the average customer is willing to pay for products that use various types of packaging, which is valuable information indeed. With this at your disposal, you can repackage a lower price-point item such as a can of paint and market it as part of a “home renovator’s kit”, making it seem much more valuable.

What was once an ordinary pair of shoes can have their packaging turned around to focus on the health benefits they provide over the competition, thus making them more of a high-cost medical item instead of just your basic pair of shoes. These are just a few of the many possible ways to repackage and redefine a product to make it seem more “high-end” at a glance.

At first, you might feel disappointed or frustrated that the content of your product is being overlooked in favor of its appearance, but it all comes down to the first impression. Once you master the concept of product perception, there’s no need to worry!

With the right approach, you can truly set yourself apart from the competition and control exactly how the customer views your product, as well as how much they’ll be willing to pay for it.

Technorati Tags: usp, unique, selling, proposition, marketing, perception, packaging, product, pricing, pete, williams