Invent It, Sell It, Bank It!: Make Your Million-Dollar Idea Into a Reality (36 page)

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Film a video of your product to post on your website and any other online selling or marketing locations.

11

MARKETING THAT REALLY WORKS

“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.”

—A
UTHOR UNKNOWN

Because I’m on television all the time and have been from the very beginning, I have not found it necessary to pay for marketing. Television shopping channels are the ideal medium because they give you a selling, advertising, and marketing platform all rolled into one. Selling on television keeps your product in front of your customers’ eyes far longer than when they’re browsing through a store or even watching an ordinary 30-second commercial. In addition, television demos reinforce your consumers’ in-store experience because, after so much exposure, there’s little chance consumers can pass your product on a retail shelf and not
recognize
it.

In the past, when the only marketing choices available to entrepreneurs were TV, radio, and print, and people’s main daily source of news and entertainment was the television, there was
little need for me to invest in marketing because I already had a presence where it mattered most. The advent of social media, however, flung open a door that had previously been unavailable. Now with the onset of this alternative and immediate source of exposure, I could talk to my existing and potential customers even when I wasn’t on the air. That created a definite marketing opportunity worth pursuing. More important, I was thrilled to have an open line straight to my QVC customers, and I genuinely welcomed the chance to talk freely with them. I am where I am because of them. I love hearing their testimonials on air, and in more recent years, engaging with them on my website, Facebook, and Twitter. And now I get to do it with
Shark Tank
viewers, too!

HOW TO BE SOCIAL

There has simply never been a better way than social media to inexpensively get your message out to large masses of people. Perhaps even more important, social media provide you with a great way to directly connect with your audience and make them feel personally involved with you and your brand.

You don’t want to use social media exclusively to push and sell. That’s boring, and most people will start to ignore you. You need to mix things up—a little selling here, a little fun storytelling there, a picture one day, a video the next. Make sure to infuse all of your sites with variety, humor, and authenticity. I try to post about twice a day. In my experience, this technique seems to strike the ideal balance between staying on people’s radar and not saturating their feeds or causing overexposure. On Twitter, you may consider tweeting a little more frequently, since it’s easy to miss posts in the torrent of content that flows every minute.

I use social media to get the word out about my appearances
in the media, my new products, and my upcoming QVC shows or newest
Shark Tank
season. On Fridays I typically post videos about my thoughts on that night’s new
Shark Tank
episode. I also find it effective to run contests and giveaways to pump up excitement about some of my favorite products. It’s a way of giving back to my loyal followers and customers. People love when I post photos of what goes on behind the scenes at QVC and
Shark Tank
.

I also like to post photos of me doing totally ordinary things, like playing golf, traveling to new places, or cooking in my kitchen. A great post was during the summer of 2013, when Dan and I were visiting a friend’s house for the 4th of July. My niece looked down and said, “What’s that?” We saw three little pink things on the ground. They were moving. I posted a photo of them because I didn’t know what they were, and we got thousands of answers within minutes. They were baby squirrels, hours old, which had fallen out of a tree. My Facebook followers knew just what to do, and I’m happy to say the squirrels are doing fine.

These kind of posts let my fans get to know me better and build a sense of community. I also post many quotes and words of wisdom, not just because I find them meaningful but also because people tell me that these quotes inspire them and help fuel their desire to keep following their dreams, or pick them up after a hard day. The world can be a rough place, and as we’ve discussed throughout this book, the entrepreneurial road can be challenging and hard to maneuver. I love knowing that I can be a source of positive energy and encouragement in the midst of all the noise and busyness and stress. Social media give me a way to connect with my audience, give them a reason to trust me and get to know me, and reveal that when I step away from the cameras, I’m no different from anyone else.

Social media are all about what’s happening right now. Think
of your website as your highlights reel, where fans can come to see your greatest hits and spend some time investigating what you’ve done in the past, what you’re doing currently, and what’s coming up. Think of your social media sites as places to share things in the moment. Your website is one-size-fits-all and your home base, your social media can be broad, or you can use ads to target certain demographics, ages, and interests. In this way, you can make sure that your brand is always relevant to your customers, and can find ways to remind them of the role you can play in their lives.

In addition, there’s no better gauge than social media to tell you which marketing messages are working and which ones are not. If you get applause in the form of shares, retweets, and pins, and engagement in the form of comments and replies, you know you’ve struck a chord. If you post a piece of content and hear crickets, you know you’ve missed your mark.

WHICH SOCIAL SITE IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

There are many social media sites to choose from, but the ones I prefer most are also the most popular.

Facebook

Surely you set up a Facebook business page as soon as you decided you were going to follow through with your dream and bring your new invention to market. If you didn’t, though, go do it right now. Your customers are there, waiting for you.
As of the end of 2012, nearly two-thirds of the adults online used Facebook. It gives businesses an unparalleled way to establish a relationship with their customers and keep them apprised of where the brand is growing and how they can be a part of it. As with all social media, the most effective way to use Facebook is to
put out posts that not only engage your fans and let them know you’re thinking of them but also makes them want to share your posts with others.

To get the most out of Facebook, you want to focus less on quantity and more on quality, because the key to a great Facebook presence is high engagement. You need to post things that inspire people to like, comment, and share what you post, not just read it. That’s why I say things like, “LIKE this post if you’re ready for Season Five of
Shark Tank
!” As another example, Marc Newburger and Jeffrey Simon, creators of the Drop Stop, created a shareable icon that people could post on each other’s walls. It allowed the user to fill in the appropriate names to personalize it, so that, for example, Sarah could post on John’s wall: “Sarah just filled John’s crack with Drop Stop.” People who received the icons thought they were funny, and they were then generally intrigued enough to click on the icon, which took them to the Drop Stop website.

Twitter

Unlike Facebook, you don’t have to know or even be “friends” with someone on Twitter to interact with them, which automatically changes the dynamic between you and your audience. It has a younger audience than Facebook, and its hashtag culture demands that businesses stay extremely up to date on trends so they can appropriately label their tweets to get the biggest reach. I use Twitter to disseminate some of the same content that I post on Facebook, but I also like to use it to give people insight into my thoughts. I love live tweeting during episodes of
Shark Tank
. I do it every Friday night (
@LoriGreiner
). It’s a great way for me to turn the recorded episode into a live event and communicate directly with our
Shark Tank
followers while the show is playing. Often the viewers’ comments are so funny we laugh out loud.

What’s nice about Twitter is that you don’t have to wait for people to come to you to talk about your product; you can go straight to them. Searching Twitter via Twitter trends, or clicking on hashtags to see who else is talking about a certain topic relevant to your brand or product, is a great way to find new customers and engage them in conversation. The idea is not to engage them so you can sell to them; it’s to engage them so that they decide you have something interesting to say and you’re worth following. The sale will, it is hoped, happen later, when you tweet something so catchy, profound, or so intriguing that your follower finally heads over to your site to see if, maybe, today is the day to try out your product.

Twitter, Facebook, and all social media are addictive and satisfying for their immediate gratification and instant feedback, but as a successful business tool, they are platforms that require time and patience. Maybe you’ll immediately see sales when you tweet that your product is now available in six new colors, or maybe you won’t. Most important is that people like you and your voice along with your product, so that they’re interested in staying engaged with you.

Pinterest

Pinterest is synonymous with eye candy. It’s a site primarily, though not exclusively, populated by women. Pinterest is where these women go to collect the images of things they love, things they admire, and things they want to buy, particularly food, fashion, and home décor, although other kinds of products can do well there, too.

Pinterest isn’t as good a venue for social engagement as is Facebook or Twitter; it has comment capabilities, but that’s not as popular here. Repins and likes serve as great barometers of how well your product resonates with the Pinterest viewers. If
you don’t see much action, it might be because your photograph isn’t good enough (Pinterest photos often look like they were taken by professionals), your description isn’t appealing enough, or maybe there are too many other things in that category.

By getting people to repin your pin, you will get people to be aware of it and that can lead to great sales. It’s like a lush, streamlined catalog. But unlike any catalog, you don’t have to pick up the phone or head to your computer in order to place an order. You’re already there. And most of those beautiful Pinterest photographs link straight to a vendor’s website where you can immediately make a purchase. It’s a supremely easy and efficient way for businesses to show off their wares and gain the attention of new potential customers.

Another interesting way to use Pinterest is to create boards that can reflect the various sides of your personality or your brand. Of course, I have a board dedicated exclusively to my products, but as I do on Facebook, I love to share inspirational quotes and things I think are beautiful or interesting, so I also have a board where I post nothing but those. It gives me another way in which to engage with people. Consumers who are interested in what I do on
Shark Tank
or are interested in my products will also check out my Pinterest page to see what I have going on there.

Rick Hopper of ReadeRest has a board where he posts images of products that he finds clever, useful, or funny. The board doesn’t do anything to specifically market his own product, but it is a lot of fun to scroll through, and anything that can keep people connected to your Pinterest page for more than a millisecond has value. Remember, as immediately gratifying as social media can be, when it comes to marketing on these platforms and converting brand awareness to sales, slow and steady wins the race.