“Pelotero” is a documentary about Dominican teenagers preparing to try out for major league baseball teams when they turn 16.  The documentary explores the dark side of the system, exposing corruption, steroid use, and age falsification.  IndieGoGo allows the film’s makers to generate interest among independent film fans during production with social networking tools.  They can create a widget to place on blogs, websites, or e-mail signature that enables fans to donate to the film.

They can create a Facebook page for the film and add updates via Facebook connect in their news feed.  Fans of the film can click on buttons on the film’s profile page to share with friends on Facebook and MySpace, send to contacts in Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo, and Digg it, or send a Tweet (“Help make indie film happen for Pelotero on #indiegogo http://www.indiegogo.com/Pelotero?account_id=7871&iggref=twtr”).  All of these tools enable the film makers to tap into the collective power of coordinating their fans.

While most of the users of IndieGoGo are in the U.S., including award winning film makers Tiffany Shlain, Arin Crumley, and Lance Weiler, many of the 2,000 films on the site come from around the world.  This base of US users gives film makers in Latin America a direct path to the US market.  “Changes Lives” from Mexico is a documentary about a school that teaches children from different backgrounds to live together.  The purpose of the film is to raise money for the school.  “Changes Lives” hasn’t raised any money yet, it started on the site July 17, but “Pelotero” raised $2,000 earlier this year.

In Bolivia, the Aymara people have migrated from rural areas of the country to the cities due to problems in the mining and farming sectors of the economy.  Since moving to the outskirts of La Paz, the Aymara have not been able to join mainstream society and feel ignored by the city’s powers leading to a sense of invisibility. “Digital Aymara” is a documentary about Aymara children who are learning to produce a series of telenovelas on Youtube to communicate what life is like on the margin of La Paz society.  By taping into the social network IndieGoGo, the film’s producer, Kurt Shaw, is looking for more than simply donations, “my original hope had been to find some donors, though that was never the main priority, and other people doing similar work, so we could exchange ideas, techniques of participatory filmmaking, distribution channels.”  Gaining a distribution channel outside Latin America would certainly help create awareness of the plight of the Aymara people.   Coordinating fans on IndieGoGo to help market the film is one of IngieGoGo’s key strategies.  They suggest fans invite their friends using their email invite tool, place the GoGoWidget tool on sites around the web, introduce friends to the film’s Facebook fan page, post to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Digg, and Yahoo Buzz!, and contact bloggers, the web’s influencers, about the film.  In addition to producing “Digital Aymara” Kurt runs the Shine a Light organization that obtained its major source of funding from an earlier music project, City of Rhyme, a CD by rappers in Recife, Brazil.  He attributes funding to “attention in the blogosphere.”   Shine a Light’s films have received almost 100,000 hits on YouTube.

IndieGoGo gives independent film makers social networking tools like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Digg and digital tools like widgets.   These tools can be used by the film makers to coordinate their fans to help raise funds during production and market the film both during and after production.  And the connection to the fans is not limited to Latin America, but is global.  What other web sites connect Latin American businesses to global markets?  What other websites coordinate the uncoordinated?  Please comment below.

When thinking about a new strategy of coordinating the uncoordinated, ask yourself these questions*:

• What components in your environment are available to coordinate?
• What potential allies are there?
• What interests in the different components in your environment would induce them to cooperate?

*See The Kai Method for more information, www.kaimethod.com.

Many of the strategies Heather uses at Wiggly Wigglers are actually common strategy patterns that can be applied to any business.(1)  The patterns she used are introduce a new player to the game (also referred to as ally with a partner outside your market), apply indirect influence over your customers, sacrifice one battle to win a bigger battle, and link multiple strategies.

Wiggly Wigglers’ customer base is located in England, but their Facebook fan page has people from all over the world.  How does this benefit Wiggly Wigglers?  Heather explained an Englishgarden is more glamorous in the United States than in England, as a result people from California, for example, are more enthusiastic about English gardening than people in England.  The enthusiasm of the global community in Wiggly Wigglers Facebook discussion section generates interest among local gardeners and leads to sales locally.  This is an example of introducing a new player to the game, English gardening enthusiasts located outside of England were not part of the UK market for gardening supplies.

Another example of this strategy outside of social media is Miami’s bid to get a Major League Soccer team.  Marcelo Claure, a local cell phone magnate, teamed with FC Barcelona to present the case for a Major League Soccer team in Miami.  By bringing in an established soccer organization Marcelo gained instant credibility for his bid.  When looking into a new strategy for your business, ask yourself what piece you could introduce to the game to tilt the situation in your favor.   Who could you ally with outside your market?

Some of Wiggly Wigglers’ goods are perishable, so Heather tweets discounts to encourage customers to buy these items before they expire.  While Wiggly Wigglers gives up the full price on these goods, they make sales that would be lost otherwise when the goods perished.   The strategy can be described as sacrificing one battle, full price, to win a bigger battle, total sales revenue.  When thinking about the big picture, increasing annual revenue and maximizing profit for example, it can be helpful to determine battles your business is losing and redeploy resources to other areas that lead to winning battles elsewhere.  Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, cut about ¾ of the projects in progress, and refocused the company on a few initiatives.  The company went from unprofitable to profitable within a year and since the introduction of the iPod the stock price soared.

Heather described to me an instance when a customer complained about Wiggly Wigglers on Twitter while she was off line.  By the time she returned online a number of Wiggly Wiggler customers had come to the company’s defense with stories of their positive experiences and effectively neutralized the complaint.  This is a positive externality of running a Twitter account, customers become customer service representatives.  It is also an example of the benefit of building a community online, Wiggle Wigglers indirectly influenced one customer through the community they built.  Which touches on another issue, how can companies measure the return from investing in a social media marketing campaign?  What is the dollar value of neutralizing a customer complaint online?  What is the cost savings of another customer performing the role of customer service?  For digital marketing professionals, how can this be incorporated into a pitch for their services?

Another way to bring new players to the game is with crowd sourcing.  Wiggly Wigglers uses a wiki to develop their catalogue which gets their customers involved in the product selection process.  It is a way to do market research by helping to determine which products their customers are interested in purchasing.

Wiggly Wigglers won the Dell Small Business Excellence Award in 2008 for their web 2.0 marketing initiatives. They linked a number of social media strategies for their online strategy using Facebook, Twitter, and wiki’s.  The result was an 80% reduction in their marketing budget.

(1) See “The Way of Innovation, Master the Five Elements of Change to Reinvent Your Products, Services, and Organization,” and “Hide A Dagger Behind a Smile,” by Kaihan Krippendorf for more frequently used patterns of strategy.

Creating a discussion section on Facebook keeps customers engaged longer and extends the period of time a company has influence over their purchasing decision. It’s a strategy similar to Barnes & Nobles putting cafes and chairs in their stores, it keeps customers from leaving and increases the probability of making a sale. Dell has a discussion section on Facebook which keeps their customers engaged and increases the chance for a sale. The discussion section also allows Dell to outsource some of their customer service to other customers. I read a discussion thread where one customer complained about internet connectivity issues on their Dell computer, other customers jumped in to defend Dell and point out internet connectivity is not affected by the Dell computer but by the customer’s internet service provider. Without a single Dell employee, a customer complaint was resolved. Coca Cola has a popular page on Facebook with over 3 million fans, which wasn’t even started by the company. Two Coke enthusiasts started the page and Coca Cola became involved after 750,000 people signed on as fans. Facebook discussions also enable companies to influence customers with peer-to-peer marketing, generally more influential than business-to-customer marketing. Facebook is a good tool to engage and influence customers.

When trying to engage customers, where you put information is as important as what information you provide. Dell puts short guides on a variety of topics related to internet tools including social media, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, crowdsourcing, and website analytics on their Facebook page. Toyota has a Facebook page with discussion section but puts all of their vehicle brochures on their website. One Dell guide is “Learn to Listen” which concisely describes how to get started using social media for a small business. Dell puts content on other areas of a small business on their website, The Small and Medium Business Solutions Center. Topics on the site include technology, marketing, industry specific information, experts, small business stories, and business ownership. The assumption Dell makes is that customers on Facebook want to learn about social networking and customers on their website want to learn about a wider range of topics. With the broad acceptance of Facebook as a platform in Latin America this assumption may or may not be true. In any case, it pays to put information where your customers are located, and now people are hanging out on Facebook.

Crowdsourcing is another method to engage customers. Dell’s Idea Storm is a sort of a Digg for new product development. Customers recommend a new product and other people vote to promote or demote the idea. There is a Facebook app that allows a customer’s friends to vote on their suggestion. We are at the precipice of more combinations of new technology like this to engage customers. To date Dell has used 332 ideas generated from Idea Storm. Target used crowdsourcing to generate buzz around their charity donation program. On their Facebook page Target asked fans which charities they should support and gave away $3 million a week to those charities.

Obviously Twitter is a fantastic tool to disperse information to customers. Particularly as Twitter use increases globally. Companies that have started using Twitter include Amazon, eBay, Pepsi, and McDonalds. A company with a variety of products and customer segments can target specific customer groups with multiple Twitter accounts. This is exactly what Dell does with accounts such as “@DellSmBizOffers” for small businesses, “@DellHomeOffers” for home customers, and “@alienware” for gamers. Twitter can also be used to offer discounts to specific groups. Dell offers discounts available only to Twitter users through these accounts and others like “@DellOutlet,” which keeps customers reading their tweets and allows Dell to intersperse tweets with marketing messages. According to internetnews.com Dell made over $1 million in sales from Twitter through December 2008.

YouTube is a location on the web potential customers lurk. And videos on Youtube can be longer than 30 second or minute spots generally used on television. Nike with it’s list of super star athletes is positioned to put up great videos on Youtube. Some examples are “Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold”, “Soccer vs. Ninjas,” and the LeBron James series of commercials. Dell has posted television commercials and videos on products like the Mini 9 on YouTube. The videos are longer than commercials and give product descriptions, allowing Dell to engage their customers longer. Flickr is another place people frequently visit, Dell has pictures of products and action photos of people using their products on Flickr. Dell could post videos and pictures on their website but chooses to place content on YouTube and Flickr in order to give them a presence everywhere their customers are located online.

IM is a great tool to influence customer purchasing decisions at point of sale, although expensive to employ customer service representatives. I used Dell’s IM service, LiveChat, to get advice for buying a computer. I listed a few parameters for the computer I wanted to buy. The response was quick, although the first computer the representative suggested was out of my price range. After further discussion I found a PC that was priced right. The key was speed of response. I was on Dell’s website looking to make a purchase and the quick response from LiveChat made it easy to make a purchase right away. While IM is great but expensive, there are probably other methods to make buying decisions easier for your customers, what can you do to make buying decisions easier?

To recap, there are a number of social networking and web 1.0 technologies businesses can use to keep their customers engaged and increase the probability of a sale. Dell uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and IM.

How can you engage your customers longer?

Endeavor operates like an enormous VC without capital, they offer advice and a great network to support entrepreneurs. Their services include:

• Strategic advice from a global network of business mentors through their “VentureCorps” program and summer interns from top business schools through their “eMBA” program.
• VentureCorps includes successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, corporate executives, attorneys, accountants, investment bankers, and consultants.
• eMBA summer interns help by writing business plans, analyzing growth strategies, and conducting market feasibility studies.
• Introduction to sources of funding and road shows.
• Monthly management workshops
• Monthly peer networking groups of other local entrepreneurs to discuss challenges specific to their country/market.

To be selected by Endeavor an entrepreneur needs to meet the following criteria:

• Entrepreneurial initiative – does the entrepreneur have a proven track record? The number I heard at the conference was $500,000 USD in annual revenue. At this point you may be asking yourself, I’m an early stage company, how can Endeavor help me? Contact the local Endeavor organization for information on assistance for earlier stage companies. See the Endeavor country websites listed at the end of the article for contact information.
• Business innovation – will the business improve the local industry?
• Value and Ethics – does the entrepreneur have integrity and follow the law?
• Role model potential – does the entrepreneur have leadership quality and a good “story” to inspire others?
• Development impact – will the business create economic value through job creation, wages, and revenue?
• Fit with Endeavor – can Endeavor help this Entrepreneur succeed? Does the entrepreneur accept input from Endeavor and give back to Endeavor? This was a problem with previous entrepreneurs in Brazil, the ones who did not pay attention to advice they received were not successful.

(This information can be found on Endeavor’s U.S. website, www.endeavor.org.)

The organization is intentionally decentralized in order to be helpful to entrepreneurs locally. Each country has it’s own Endeavor board and structure. The strategy has been successfully implemented, as Linda Rottenberg, the founder of Endeavor mentioned at the conference, a Brazilian acquaintance said to her, ‘Endeavor, why does a Brazilian organization have an office in New York?’

The weekend prior to the conference Endeavor selected a new set of companies to support. The conference itself started with a presentation from Carlos “Beto” Sicupira, CEO of InBev and chairman of the Endeavor Board for Brazil. Beto’s dream is to transform Brazil through entrepreneurship. His strategy is to create a strong, self-sustaining organization to promote entrepreneurs. He has done this by forming a board of directors of successful businessmen and a mentoring network of 300 business professionals. One point Beto made is that “the dream only has value if it aligns everyone to row in the same direction.” This can be applied to any entrepreneur. In order to build a successful organization it’s important to get every member of the team working towards the same goal. A mission beyond generating income for the founders helps do this.

One example is ThreeMelons, an online gaming company in Argentina whose mission is to launch Latin American pop culture to the rest of the world through online gaming. While they are a for profit company, the bigger goal helps to marshal resources and motivate the team.

Another point Beto made was “dream big and obstacles are small.” An ingredient necessary to becoming a successful entrepreneur is the ability to overcome obstacles. It requires more than intelligence, perseverance (see Harvard Business School working paper “Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship,” by Paul Gompers, Josh Lerner, David Scharfstein, and Anna Kovner), and the right mental approach are needed. When the dream is big obstacles appear to be relatively smaller and easier to overcome. It helps to mentally frame problems appropriately.

Look for more articles on specific Endeavor entrepreneurs and the strategies they used to become successful to come.

Here is a list of Endeavor websites for Latin America.

www.endeavor.org.ar

www.endeavor.org.br

www.endeavor.cl

www.endeavor.org.co

www.endeavor.org.mx

www.endeavor.org.uy