Unleash Your Ideavirus - Part Two

Ideavirus Tip #3: Answer These Three Questions!

There are three questions whose answers will determine how well your ideavirus will spread:

1. How many people know about it before the spreading starts?

You can launch big or you can launch small. In plenty of cases where you're trying to launch a hot new Web-based service, all you need are 100 people to seed it. But if you're entering a vacuum and you're finding that there's plenty of competition on the horizon, launching big -- although much more expensive -- can increase your chances of success.

How to launch big? With traditional interruption advertising. With sponsorships. With free samples. One of the dumbest things that marketers do is to put artificial barriers in the way of customer sampling and trial. How many new cars would dealerships sell if they decided to charge people $100 to take a test-drive? But charging for a test-drive is no dumber than charging to read a book, to see a movie, or to hear a speech. When you launch an ideavirus, the more people who can see it fast, the faster it spreads.

2. How smooth is your ideavirus?

In addition to being persistent and cool, an ideavirus needs to be smooth if it's going to spread quickly. If you make it easy for the virus to spread, it's more likely to spread. Take the approach used by Hotmail: Build a smooth transference tool right into the product.

Sometimes it's hard to achieve smoothness -- but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. Columbia Music Club has thrived with member-get-a-member promotions, in which they bribe members to tell their friends about the club (for example, you can get three free CDs if your friend joins the club). Fast Company puts a button next to every story it publishes on its Web site: "Click here to send this page to a friend." Very smooth. Tupperware built an entire company around the smooth transfer of product enthusiasm from one friend to another. When you focus obsessively on how to make an ideavirus as smooth as it can be, you have the chance to increase its velocity dramatically.

3. Have you mastered the Hare Krishna Dinner Party Tactic?

Sooner or later, you've got to turn momentary attention into an embrace of your idea -- and then, hopefully, you convert the user into a sneezer. Permission marketing becomes a critical tool in working people through this transition -- think of it as the Hare Krishna Dinner Party Tactic.

The Hare Krishnas have grown their sect by inviting people to eat a vegetarian dinner with them. Intrigued or just hungry, people give them momentary attention and then permission to talk with them about this new way of life. Sometimes, people leave having done nothing but eaten dinner. Sometimes, people listen to what's being said and decide to embrace the ideals behind the religion. And sometimes, people become converted and turn into sneezers, volunteering to go out and invite other people over for another dinner tomorrow night.

What the Hare Krishnas do not do is to start by walking up to a stranger and proselytizing about their religion. Instead, they use a gradual technique to sell their idea and effectively turn it into a virus.

On the Web, this sort of multistep process is too often overlooked by companies facing short-term financial pressure. (Combine this with the legendarily short attention span of entrepreneurs, and you can see why this happens.) When I visit some cool new Web site, I'm telling its creators that I'm interested in what they have to offer. What can they do to infect me with their virus? Three things:

Get permission to follow up with me, so that over time I can easily learn about why I should embrace this idea. It might have cost a site $100 in marketing expenditures to have gotten me to visit it for the first time, but if it does not get permission to follow up with me, that money is wasted.

Make as many supporting manifestos available as possible, in whatever forms necessary, to get me over the hump from skeptic to supporter. These can include endorsements, press reviews, even criticisms and commonly made objections. Think of the Hare Krishnas at dinner. The more they can expose you to during that hour, the better chance they have of sticking.

Make it easy for me to spread the ideavirus by providing a multitude of tell-a-friend tools, as well as overt rewards for becoming a sneezer.