Market Launchers Interview with Mark Reyland of the United Inventors Association

I am a big fan of Market Launchers and receive their newsletter, and I'm a huge fan of the United Inventor Association (UIA) since it's the forum our network follows and complies with as the go to resource for inventors.  I loved Paul Niemann's interview with Mark Reyland, who is the Executive Director of the non-profit United Inventors Association. Paul so generously gave me permission to share the interview with all of you.  I encourage you to visit their websites on a regular basis to retrieve important information pertaining to the inventor industry.  

PAUL: Hi Mark. Can I have an update on the UIA’s efforts to help inventors?  

MARK: Sure, the UIA was started in 26 years ago, and the USPTO funded it for the first 10 years. Carol Oldenburg was the constant force behind the UIA for 10 years until around 2008.

Warren Tuttle, who runs Monashee Marketing -- http://www.monasheemarketing.com -- and is President of the UIA, deserves so much credit for keeping it going through the tough times of a few years ago.  

    

PAUL: How many inventors belong to the UIA, and what is the cost these days to join?

MARK: There in 12,000 members, and the UIA provides everything for free except for the cost to exhibit at trade shows. This includes the Daily Inventor blog, the Inventor Education forum at www.theuiaforum.org (which is an interactive forum that has hundreds of Q and A’s), plus two very active LinkedIn groups, plus Facebook and Twitter, and the UIAUSA.org’s Resource Room, GotInventionRadio, and more.   

Now, these shows want to get involved with the UIA: CHITAG, Toy Fair, CES, a specialty foods association, and others.  

  

PAUL: How many inventor groups does the UIA have?  

  

MARK: There are 86 registered inventor clubs across America. We produce speakers for their Speakers Programs, we’ve had Skype Across America since 2011, and we provide a Skype kit for the groups.

PAUL: What are some inventor success stories?

MARK: The Minnesota Inventors Congress is in its 55th year and is the oldest of its kind in the US. They advised last year’s winner about his commercialization options. They provided the opportunity through one of their corporate members, Kenny Durham of Innovators Warehouse, to license it to John Deere.

The UIA also helped an inventor mom with tons of advice to get her kitchen colander into mass retails. There are easily dozens of these types of inventor success stories like this, that we don’t even hear about.

Inventing is often driven by emotion, and education is the antidote to emotion. The UIA has a three-fold mission:   

1.         To create no-cost educational programs to inventors, teaching about inventing and commercialization.

2.         To provide opportunity to their inventors, through trade show programs and mentors. One third of my day is devoted to brokering these relationships.

3.         Work with the PTO and congress to enact legislation that is favorable to the independent inventors.

In 2012 the UIA came up with several goals, including making sure that everything was free (such as seminars). And just to give you an idea of the UIA’s reach and clout in the business community, the UIA was approached by QVC, and this led to the creation of the SCOUTS program. This program introduces inventors to the buyers at QVC. One of the UIA Board members, Scott Hynd, is an on-air talent at QVC who specializes in getting inventors' products into QVC. Now they work very closely with the VP of QVC. They chose 24 out of the 37 products they reviewed at the Housewares Show.

Now the UIA is working on a follow-up program with QVC. Now Alibaba.com is interested in creating a program with the UIA to teach inventors the process of sourcing factories for inventors.

PAUL: Can you tell me about the “Fund-A-Geek” program that the UIA is partnering with?

MARK: In crowd funding, for example, you go in and you say “I need $10,000.” When seeking venture capital funding, you say, “I need $50,000” and they may give you $10,000 and ask you to prove yourself. In the “Fund-A-Geek” program, you approach a crowd of donors (as opposed to funders) for a certain amount of money, then you prove yourself throughout the various stages of inventing and commercialization. This is not a loan but rather a donation, from people who want to see you succeed.

For example, you can go to www.FundAGeek.com and say that you want to raise $1,000 in the next 30 days. Then you promote it to your people. One way is to use Facebook and other social media for this, and you must build momentum to increase your amount of support. More than 100 inventors signed up on the very first day. You can more info at  www.FundAGeek.com       

  

In addition, the UIA is working on creating a professional certification for inventors with Auburn University. This will help ease the way into companies who inventors pitch their products to.

How does an inventor become a member of the UIA?

Go to  www.uiausa.org and click on the big FREE banner to sign up. You will get your own user name and password. 

Visit Market Launchers at www.marketlaunchers.com/

Congratulatory Gifting For Jessica Simpson Welcoming Baby into the World

It seems like Jessica Simpson has been pregnant forever!  Most of us knows how that feels, so we thought it would be nice to set up a congratulatory gifting for her and her fiancé Eric Johnson to celebrate the arrival of their bundle of joy.  We have had a lot of requests to send products to Jessica, so there's no better time than now. 

We've had a lot of luck with our giftings arriving right when the celebrity gives birth, which is huge for the online marketing of the products involved in the gifting. The word on the street is that she's having a little girl!

This is a group gifting, so it's important that businesses who want to be involved understand  the importance and benefits of being involved in this type of event.

This gifting is now closed.  Check back to see all of the amazing products that Jessica and Eric received.

The cost to be a part of this gifting is only $125.
                    (Instructions will be sent once your spot is booked)

What you get with the group gifting

·        - Celeb Hoopla gains approval from the celeb’s rep for gift shipment

·         -Celeb Hoopla gathers the gifts and creates a presentation basket  that’s celebrity worthy

·         -Celeb Hoopla keeps all gifters informed and updated about the progress of the gifting

·         -Pictures are taken of the gifting and can arrange a professional photographer for individual gifters who want more personalized service

·        - Items are enclosed to encourage celebrity feedback

·         -Celeb Hoopla ships the gift basket and secures a delivery code

·         -Celeb Hoopla updates gifters with the code and expected arrival date of the basket
-The participants support and promote each other using their own networks

·         -Womentorz and Mommy Perks blog about the gifting, linking to each business for SEO

·         -Womentorz and Mommy Perks will Facebook and Tweet the group post numerous times (combined audience of 100,00 + readers/followers with the shares and retweets)

·        - Hashtags will be used for SEO when tweeting

·         -Blog posts will remain inside our blogs long term for SEO and continued traffic to gifters’ websites

·         -Feedback is welcome from the gifters and can be added here for additional SEO and exposure: http://www.womentorz.com/celeb-hoopla-gifting-to-celebrities/celebrity-gifting-clients

·         -We welcome future networking opportunities with our gifters. We’ll gladly follow you on Twitter and Facebook if you let us know that you have followed us or liked our pages.

Additional Celeb Hoopla Marketing Services

We are now providing a menu of services for our private giftings that we can also offer to our group gifting participants.  These are optional and provided on an individual and private basis to businesses interested in additional marketing of their products and utilizing the celebrity gifting to the fullest!  Simply sign up for our custom services and we'll add it to your group gifting package of services.

Customized Menu of Services:

·       Month long tweet campaign once the gifting has gone out - Reaching well over 100,000 fans and followers online. - $175

 Professional photography by Rachel Olsson Photography www.rachelolsson.com  of gifting and product.  This does not include a photograph of your product with the celebrity.  A copy of the photographs will be given to gifter for unlimited use. - $900

·       Press release written specifically about individual product using key words for SEO and then posted on the MommyPerks and Womentorz platforms. - $175

News Release Distribution via professional Newswire service - $375 
Includes: Distribution list selection, upload, personal monitoring of news wire processing, wire crossing confirmation, news release pickup tracking reports

Click here to see our many client testimonials!

Click here to read an article on how to make the most of celebrity gifting. 

Celeb Hoopla is celebrity gifting service provided by Womentorz and Mommy Perks to our network of women entrepreneurs.

Pinterest Tips Courtesy of Kidzies

Last week's Pinning Party was a huge success!!!  The great news is that the party will run every Wednesday providing a unique and powerful tool for businesses to help promote each other online using Pinterest.  The Pinning Party idea was the brainchild of the very talented Kara Anderson, the creator of The Bag Holder.  She has always understood the power of group marketing, which is what Womentorz was built on, so she came to me to host the party for our extensive network.  I have to admit that I didn't know very much about Pinterest, so I'm still learning like many others.  We're all counting on the "Pinterest Experts" to bring tips to the group on how to be even more effective on the platform.

Amanda Seidel, founder of Kidzies, is one of the Pinterest Experts who sent me her tips that all of us can use.  She was so generous in letting me post what she sent me.  Here are her tips:

1.  I follow the people who are influential - WHEN they pin and the CONTENT they pin influences how I try to pin.  E.g. - lots of people are on Pinterest late at night.
 

2.  If you put a price in your description, e.g. Huggerz $6, it will appear in the link at the top of Pinterest under Gifts - I've done this a few times to gain exposure from people who search for Gifts.

3.  I share my username with my fans of FB periodically and tonight I asked them to share theirs, too (no one has yet).  But the last time I did this, I gained several new followers.

4.  You can use the "@" sign (like on Facebook) to tag someone on Pinterest.  So... when I wrote a blog around V-day with free downloadable coloring pages, I tagged some influential people and commented that "I thought your followers might like the free coloring pages."  Even though no one re-pinned it (to ultimately drive traffic to my website), several of them started following me.  :

5.  Like in point 4 - you could tag people with your product, etc, but that's not my style - I don't want to push my product on people through Pinterest.  And that's my number 1 reason for still using MY name instead of Kidzies.  I don't know if that's a good idea or not - but when I started using pinterest I had no intention on using it for Kidzies.  It was just fun.  I would love other people's opinions about this.

6.  I'll repin from places I really like - e.g. I'll pin a different photo from the same site several times at different times to see when it gets the most repins.

7.  I've seen some traffic to my site from Pinterest before and thought, "Wow!"  So that's when I started to try to use it a little more as a biz tool.  There's something like 4 million people on Pinterest daily, so, hey, what do you have to lose? 

8.  I've also noticed that you have to be careful with what you pin, not only for copyright reasons, but for your reputation.  Whenever people I didn't know started following me, I deleted several pins that could have been seen as "inappropriate".

Thank you Amanda for always supporting the network and sharing your Pinterest wisdom!!!!    

Where to Join the Party!
We now have a Pinning Party Group set up on Facebook.  The Pinning Party will actually run on the Womentorz Facebook Page, but the group page is for posting questions and tips before, during and after the party.  Here's the link to the group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/208980202540371/#!/groups/208980202540371/

We look forward to seeing you at this Wednesday's Pinning Party!


Be sure to watch Kara Anderson's video on how the Pinning Party works: