Fanocracy with David Meerman Scott | S01 E11

Hello everyone and welcome to New Breed's Adding Value podcast. My name is Guido and I'm the manager of Acquisition and Strategy at New Breed. For those of you who don't know, New Breed is a customer acquisition agency focused on helping B2B companies grow and expand their business. And we do this by following the inbound methodology, which at its core is about adding value before extracting value. So the goal of this podcast is to bring you stories of how people add value to their customers, their company and the individuals around them. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, give us a five star rating and check out the rest of our content on newbreedmarketing.com today. I'm excited to have David Meerman Scott join the podcast. You are a keynote speaker inspiring transformation in people and their businesses around the world. You're also a best selling author of books including the New Rules of Marketing and Primary Marketing, the Moon and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, which you co authored with Brian Halligan. But I want to talk to you about your latest book, Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans. So David, I really appreciate you taking the time to join today and welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Guido. Awesome to be here. We have so much in common, especially the whole inbound HubSpot ecosystem thing.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to dig into some of that. We both have some pretty strong connections from the HubSpot side of things and that is where I want to get started. So, been writing books alongside a list of some pretty notable people in the industry for a while, including Richard Jurek. But you did write that book with Brian Halligan on how the Grateful Dead were some of the founders, so to speak, of the whole inbound marketing methodology. What was that experience like, writing with Brian and creating that book?

Actually, I'm going to go back even further. I'm going to go back to 2007. I was the very first HubSpot advisor and I joined them in 2007. And at that time I said to Brian and halligan, of course, CEO of HubSpot, and Dharmesh Shah, the co founder and CTO of HubSpot, hey, you guys should write a book. And they were like pushing back on me, no, no, no, we don't want to do that. You should really, really write a book and you should call it Inbound Marketing. And we, because at that point they were launching the whole inbound methodology. And then finally I wore them down and they agreed to write a book. I wrote the forward to that book, Inbound Marketing, which Came out, I think around 2008 or 2009. I forget. Exactly. And then Brian and I started. We're both massive fans of the Grateful Dead. Had gone to a number of Grateful Dead concerts together. Brian and I kept commenting on how we saw these incredible parallels between what the Grateful Dead was doing to market themselves being the same as inbound marketing. Because the Grateful Dead were the only band really around that would allow fans to record their concerts. That was remarkable because every other band said, no. Grateful Dead said, sure, why not? So Brian and I thought, wow, this is exactly like inbound marketing. You create great content, and then that creates fans, and then some of those fans will become your customers, which is what happened with the Grateful Dead. What happened with the inbound methodology. And it's what you're teaching now, Guido. So we decided initially to do a web called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. Turned out to be the most popular webinar HubSpot had ever done up to that point. So Brian and I knew, wow, we got something going on here. So then we decided to write the book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, and it actually became an international bestseller because it became one of the most popular nonfiction books in Japan the year that it was translated into Japanese, which is really, really interesting. So, yeah, Grateful Dead. Who would have thought, right? Yeah.

Does the Grateful Dead have a big following over in Japan? How does that happen?

Not at all. Not at all. They never toured in Japan. We don't really know why it became so popular in Japan. Exactly. My wife is Japanese. She did the translation. So maybe she's a better writer in Japanese of our words than we were in English of our words. But the other thing that had going for it is it was a fabulous design in Japanese. It was the best book designer. Most famous book designer in Japan did the design. It's just stellar design. So I think that had a lot to do with it as well. And maybe because there weren't Grateful Dead fans in Japan that they were intrigued. Whereas here in the US Most people have already a preconceived notion about the Grateful Dead. They love them or they don't like them at all. And therefore, maybe it was a harder sell in the English langu know. Who knows?

It's possible. Yeah. That's fascinating, though, that it has. That it kind of took off over in Japan.

Yeah. It's crazy.

So over time, you've kind of been working with Brian and you've been in the industry for. From what I was able to gather, I don't want to date you here, but close to 17 years or so you've been speaking on these types of topics, writing books on them. So what are some of the most impactful lessons you've learned along the way in your time? Talking about this kind of idea of turning fans into customers.

So yeah, so I was a marketing vice president at several real time financial information companies like Dow Jones and Reuters, for example. Most recent corporate job was I was vice president of marketing of a division of Thomson Reuters. So I was lucky because I had an unfair advantage on this whole inbound marketing thing because I already knew how online content worked before the web. So that gave me an unfair advantage. So I've seen sort of three patterns in the universe in my life that I thought were so unbelievably significant that they were going to change the way marketing was done. The first time I saw that pattern was in the early 2000s when everybody was talking about marketing on the web as advertising. At that time it was banner advertising. Everyone was saying, oh, it's all about banner ads. It's all about banner ads. It's all about banner ads. And I said, no, it's not. It's about content. And that really came from the idea of me having this experience working with financial information companies, which is all about content. So I wrote a book called the New Rules of marketing and PR that came out in 2007. Was the very first book about this idea of call it what you want, content marketing, inbound marketing, new rules of marketing, whatever concept you use. I was the first one to articulate that because I saw this pattern in the universe nobody else was seeing. The second time I saw a pattern in the universe of marketing that nobody else was seeing, happened in the late 2000s when I was noticing that marketing was going real time. And there are a few reasons for that. The first reason for that, and I don't know if you remember this, a lot of people don't remember this, but about 10 years ago, Google did not index in real time. If you wrote a blog post or you changed your website, it would take Google a month or two months to index that new content. But Google about a decade ago changed their algorithm the way it worked to be able to index in real time. And I thought that was fabulously significant. And at the same time, Twitter was growing in popularity. So I wrote a book called Real Time Marketing in pr. That book hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. And I also invented a concept called newsjacking, which is when you create real time content based on breaking news. And the Idea of newsjacking has become so popular that that word is now in the Oxford English Dictionary. The third time I saw a pattern in the universe of marketing that no one else was seeing was about five years ago, when I was seeing that too many people are actually now understanding that content and inbound marketing works. But many of those people who don't work with people like your company or don't work with HubSpot and don't understand the methodology well, they actually are using techniques that are more sleazy and more focused on the wrong things. And so the pattern in the universe I saw is that the pendulum is swinging too far into the direction of superficial online communications. People doubling down, sending yet another email connection, people who are misusing the social networks. Polariz. That pendulum is going to swing back. It's starting to swing back. And what it's swinging back to is a true human connection. And that's where this idea of fanocracy came from, is how can you create true human connections with customers?

It's interesting that you mentioned that. Where people are basically overdoing it with a lot of the content that they're creating today to the point where they're over saturating the market, so to speak, and creating content for the sake of content, rather than creating content to actually improve the experience and educating the people that they're trying to start those conversations with.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And, you know, everything that you're. That new breed's doing, everything that I'm doing, everything that HubSpot's doing, we're teaching people the right ways to do content marketing and inbound marketing. But the idea that there's so many millions of people out there who think they know what inbound marketing is, but without actually knowing what it is or, you know, they just do a lot of the same old stuff that is, you know, frankly, annoying and doesn't work well because you're not adding value first. The whole point is to do what the Grateful Dead did, which is allow fans to record your concert, give the music away. And the right way to do inbound is to give away tremendous value, because then you have an opportunity to have someone become your fan. But that's not what most people do.

Yeah, it's interesting because the Grateful Dead is one great example of that. But in one of the other videos I watched of you, you mentioned Comic Con, you mentioned Coachella and readers of Harry Potter and that whole series, and all of them basically created great experiences that turned people into fans so what are some of the lessons that a B2B company who's very different than a Coachella or a Grateful Dead can take from and apply to their audience?

So if I were to break down the ideas in this book into one sentence, so five years of research and writing and editing and promotion of a book to one sentence, is that where marketing is going is a true human connection. Fandom is a true human connection. So yeah, I'm a massive fan of the Grateful Dead, but I'm a fan of the Grateful Dead. Yes, I like the music, but more than that, it's because I'm part of a tribe. I'm with a group of like minded people who speak a lingo, a language that we understand. And I could be standing next to somebody who I've never met at a Grateful Dead concert, but know that we're a part of the same tribe. I could strike up a conversation as if we were old friends. My daughter Reiko is my co author on this book and she's a great co author because she has the exact same ideas of fandom as I do. However, she's a completely different person. She's obviously a different gender, obviously a different generation since she's my daughter. My wife's Japanese, so she's mixed race and she has a neuroscience degree. But her fandoms are different. She's such a massive Harry Potter fan. Not only has she seen all the movies multiple times, read the books multiple times times, gone to Orlando to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park multiple times, gone to the UK to go the studio tour where they filmed the movies, but she wrote a 90,000 word alternative ending to the Harry Potter series posted on a fan fiction site. It's been downloaded thousands of times and has hundreds of comments. And in her novel that she posted on that site, Draco Malfoy is a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. And that's the approach she's taken. And people love that with her. Her fandom for Harry Potter is again because of the connection she has with like minded people. Right. If she were to ask, if she were to ask you, Guido, what house are you in? Right. You would know that you would. What would your answer be?

I'd probably go with Ravenclaw. That was usually my favorite. Everyone wants to say Gryffindor, but I don't think I truly would fit into Gryffindor. So I'd go with Ravenclaw.

There you go. See? So you speak the same language. You're a Harry Potter fan. It's about that true human connection. It's about being part of a tribe. So anybody can do this. Any organization can create a tribe. And one of the most important things we learned is there's a neuroscience aspect to this tribe. The neuroscience aspect is that our brains are hardwired to want to know, are the people who are in close physical proximity with us part of our tribe? In which case those are incredibly powerful positive human connections, or are they a potential enemy? In which case it's a very negative potential human connection. And so our brains are hardwired for this. We can't help ourselves. We need to know, is the person nearby us friend or foe? If they're a friend, really positive. If not, we have to kick in our fight or flight instinct. That's hardwired. It's non negotiable. This is part of what makes us a human. So we spoke with some neuroscientists about this concept. One of them told us about the idea of proximity in the different zones. Further than 20ft away, roughly, is called public space. We don't track people in public space. We know they're there, but we don't worry about them. In our ancient brains, between 20ft and about 4ft is called social space. That's when we begin to track people. So if you walk into a crowded room, you can't help the fact that your brain is scanning that room looking for people who are part of your tribe, people you know, or people who might be a potential enemy. So if you walk into a room with your friends, you feel great, and your. Your brain is firing in a really positive way. If you walk into a crowded elevator, you can't help the fact that you feel nervous because your brain is telling you that there might be danger there. So the further than four feet. Closer than four feet. I'm sorry, is called personal space. That's even more powerful. That's cocktail party distance. So that's why if you're in a tribe of people you like, you feel so good, is because there's those positive human connections. So what this means for all of us in business is that if we can figure out ways to bring people in close physical proximity with us, that's really powerful. That's one reason why HubSpot, a B2B company, does so well with their inbound contact. 25,000 people coming to Boston who are in close physical proximity to one another, who are all part of the same tribe. That's powerful stuff for growing fans. But there's another aspect of this which is really Interesting. And that's the idea of mirror neurons, another form of neuroscience, because people say to me, david, that sounds good, but I can't bring my fans together because they're all over the world, or we run a virtual business. The idea of mirror neurons is that when you see somebody doing something, your brain fires as if you're doing it yourself, which I will now demonstrate. So if you're listening into this, you're not seeing what I'm showing Guido now. I'm showing him a lemon and a slice of lemon. He's laughing at me. So if I take a bite of this slice of lemon, it's really powerful. My eyes scrunch up, my mouth puckers up, my saliva glands are doing their thing. It's a really powerful, powerful thing to bite into a lemon. My brain is firing right now. But, Guido, I bet you your brain is firing in the same way right now just by hearing me talk about it and seeing it.

Yeah, that's so interesting, because.

Interesting, right?

Is that the same concept where when you see someone yawn, you kind of instinctively want to yawn as well?

That's a part of it. There's another aspect of it which is fascinating to me, which is why I want to bring it up. It's the use of video and audio. So you and I, the. Your listeners, aren't seeing this, but you and I now are on a video where we're seeing one another. Our brain tells us, you and I, that we're in the same room. Even though we're not intellectually, we know we're not in the same room. You know, we. We could be thousands of miles apart, but our ancient brain, through mirror neurons, say, I am in the same room as you, but. So we can all use this knowledge to do a much better job using video in our business and a much better job using photographs in our business. Video that's cropped close, within four feet, within personal space of somebody, used all over your website, used in your social networks, as well as photographs, is a very powerful way to build fans, and it comes from neuroscience.

I feel like I'm learning so much right now because I listen to companies like Vidyard talk about the power of video, listen to companies like Drift talk about the power of building those connections and being authentic. And it all sounds great, and I believe in it, but there's actually some science behind.

Yeah, we did not want to scrape the surface of fandom. So, I mean, two people, two of us worked for five years. We interviewed hundreds of people to come up with These ideas, and we did not want to be superficial about it. We want. Didn't want to just say, oh, yeah, you need to grow fans. We wanted to dig in deep. And one of the most fascinating aspects to me was this idea that the reason we become fans, the reason that we enjoy being a part of a tribe of like minded people is rooted in neuroscience.

Yeah. The fact that you're bringing up a tribe is also something that. I'm drawing some parallels too, with some of the other conversations I've had on the podcast. I had Mark Killens on a little while ago, and for anyone who either didn't listen to that episode or doesn't know who Mark is, he was one of the people who helped grow the HubSpot Academy, which he describes as being a community, which is kind of very reminiscent to the tribe that you're describing. So you have all of these people learning about inbound marketing and learning about these concepts together. And if you meet someone else who's inbound certified or who has been through the Academy courses, it creates that connection right away. And then at the conference itself, at inbound, then you start meeting these people in person and it's just that much stronger.

Exactly. And by the way, as we're recording this podcast, just a couple of days ago, my course on HubSpot Academy on the ideas of fanocracy has just been released.

Oh, great.

Yeah. My daughter and I did the course together. And you're absolutely right about HubSpot Academy. They have a massive number of fans and it's total inbound because you don't have to be a HubSpot customer to go through their courses. They're all free and they provide tremendous value. And interestingly, since I talked with Crystal King and the others at HubSpot Academy about this concept of how our mirror neurons work around the difference of how to focus on video. They've actually changed the way they do some of the videos at HubSpot Academy and made them a little bit closer, cropped and looking directly at the camera versus away from the camera. So how fascinating is it that you brought up Mark and HubSpot Academy? And I've done a course for HubSpot Academy, and the HubSpot Academy has even changed a little bit of the way they do their videos based on. On these ideas. So, gosh, you're like the whole universe is coming together right now.

Small world.

We're witnessing it.

Yeah. So one of the things that I also wanted to ask about related to this whole concept of fanocracy. Is I feel totally bought into the idea behind this. But it seems like if you don't know where to start, there could be some challenges that or some stumbling blocks that could come up along the way. So what are some of those things that a company might want to anticipate if they try to go down this path of building fans?

So the main thing is that it's much like the concepts around inbound. This is not a quick fix to get revenue this quarter, right? And that's the same thing that's true of inbound inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is not to generate $10 million this quarter or whatever the right number is that you need to make your number this quarter. This is a longer term play. Building fans is something is an asset that you will have forever. Just like creating inbound marketing assets, blogs and YouTube videos and a great website are assets that will be valuable for a long time for a company. So I think that going into this, that recognizing that fans are just an incredible way fandom is an incredible way to grow business over the long term and to develop a tribe of people who love what you do is an amazing thing. However, that being said, many of the ideas that we talk about can be implemented instantly. And one in particular that I want to mention is related to what we just talked about around the use of video and photographs. I noticed that so many companies, especially B2B companies, but all kinds of companies, tend to use stock photos of people. And I don't have a problem with stock photos of buildings or dogs or cats or something like that. That's fine. But stock photos of people I have a big problem with because almost always those are used in a way to imply that they're your customers or potential customers or people using your products or services. But the whole world can see through the fact that that's not a real customer or employee or partner. That's just an photograph that you pulled out of a catalog. So something that every business can do right away. You can do this today to improve your chance of growing fans. Use real photographs of real people, real customers, real partners, real employees on your website. And also the language that you use is important because people don't become fans with robots. So if you on your especially B2B. But all kinds of organizations are guilty of using jargon. So if you look at your website and it says something like we're the flexible scalable solution for improving business process using cutting edge technology because we're a mission critical best of breed application, you need to get rid of that What I call gobbledygook because that's not how people talk and people don't become fans of gobbledygook. So those are two things that can be done right away. And there's other ideas within fanocracy in the book that can be implemented right away. But to truly build a viable tribe of fans, that will take some time. Yes.

So you're talking through that and I'm pulling up our website right now to make sure that we have all the gobbledygook removed. Yeah, a little nervous, but yeah.

Well, you know, I probably have some on my website too because we naturally speak using the jargon in the industries that we work in, but trying to attract new customers with jargon. Typically you just need to be careful if the jargon is understood. And that's how people will choose to do business with a company. Of course, leave it in, but that's not always the way it works. And also if you're trying to recruit employees or get the media interested in you, jargon will work against you.

So one of the other questions that I had related to building up a fan base, and I think you touched on this a little bit already just in terms of the fact that it's going to be a long term play. But is there anything else in terms of the risks in building a fan base that someone should keep in mind when it comes to trying to build that out, or is there anything else that someone should be wary of?

I don't think there's a risk at all. Because what this is really about is building genuine human connections with existing and potential customers. What it's really about is treating people with respect, about telling the truth, about. You know, I'll give you another very specific idea from it. One of the chapters is Give More Than youn have to, and that's. That idea came from the Grateful Dead. We talked about it earlier. They're the only band that allowed fans to record their concerts. They gave away their music. Yet what I see so many people doing with their, with their content, with their inbound marketing is there. They slap a gate, an email requirement, and all of their best content. And that's not the best way to build fans. It may be the best way to build a couple of email addresses, but that's not the best way to build fans. Because if you say, here's my white paper, but you can't have it until you give me something first, that sets up an adversarial relationship with a potential customer. But if you were to say here's my white paper. It's totally free. I don't need to know who you are. That is something that can create fans. But some people say to me, but David, I need to get email addresses because we need to get people into our sales funnel. Okay, fine, but make the initial content like the white paper free and then have a secondary offer inside the white paper. I call that a hybrid approach. And the secondary, so the white paper completely and totally free. The first touch, completely and totally free. No registration required at all. Then inside the free content, you say, hey, did you like this white paper? Why not sign up for a newsletter? Or why not reach out for a free demonstration? Or why not attend our webinar? And here are the links. You can do that. Each one of those things potentially will allow the registration, but not on the first instance. And so there's a number of different things that can be done and all of them lead to this idea of fandom. But ultimately it's about being human and thinking through every transaction, every interaction in a human way. So you attract people to you rather than trying to use coercive methods to get them to buy something from you.

So one of the things that I always try to focus on, we're a very data driven company, so I always try to think about the numbers. How do we measure this? How do we try to quantify what we're looking at here? Does that really change drastically at all? What do you take this more human, more authentic, more fan building type of approach to your business? Or is it the same type of metrics just being a little bit more patient with some of the way that they develop?

I think you can still, of course, measure anything you want and you still should measure anything you want. Absolutely, no question about it. You should be measuring, however, the approaches of what you measure and what's the most important thing. You might want to rethink some. I mean, I'm just thinking out loud in terms of what we just talked about. If a company is focused on measuring as the most important metric, how many people are filling out a lead generation form? Again, that's an adversarial relationship with a potential customer. If the first thing you do the first time they find you is say, thank you very much for visiting our website, I'm not going to give you any more content unless you register first. That is something that you're measuring, but you might be measuring something that's not actually conducive to building fans.

Totally. That makes a ton of sense. And I've been thinking A lot about over the past year or so, if not longer, about making more and more of our content free and accessible to everyone. We do try to create a ton of valuable content on our blog that people can see for free on their own, but we do have plenty of gated resources as well. It's something that I think a lot of companies struggle with to get over that hurdle of. This has been our main driver of bringing new leads into the door for such a long time. How do you expect me to move away from this right now? And everything that you're talking about is driving the point home that maybe some things will change off the bat, but in the long run, you're going to see way longer and way better returns.

Well, and I think that it's not, and it doesn't have to be, at least initially, an either or. You don't have to say that everything is either completely free or everything is gated. You know, maybe you say that we've got 15 different white papers. Let's do some experiments. You know, what happens if we ungate some. What happens if we can track somebody from the ungated white paper? How many of those people who read that white paper then are going to register later in the sales process? And can we measure to find out whether that's going to be a more powerful way to get sales leads than to require them to send us their email address initially? Because basically, the way I look at it is if somebody is filling out a form to get your initial white paper, they don't really know who you are yet. But if they're filling out a form after having read your white paper, they're already that much further along on the sales process. Furthermore, it means that the people the salespeople are responding to are not simply someone who wanted the white paper, but they're reaching out to somebody who's actually read your white paper. So the sales conversations are going to be more productive. So I'm not saying there's only one way to do this, but the Grateful Dead style approach is one that isn't used as often and is a very powerful way to reach people. It's a more human centric approach. It's a more friendly approach. It's the idea of the more you give to the universe, the more the universe will give back to you. Does that mean you're going to make your numbers and you can quantify every single touch point today? No. But you have to have the faith that what you're doing is incredibly valuable.

Totally agree. And I'm bought in on this. I can't wait to read your book. But is there anything else that you want listeners to know before they decide to read Fanocracy?

So the main thing that I found fascinating when we started to do this was write this book is Reiko. And I looked at the things we're fans of and said, well, of course people are fans of Harry Potter. Of course there are fans of the Grateful Dead. But we wanted to just dig in and see, are people fans of anything? And it turns out, yes, people are fans of all different kinds of businesses. Right. We talked about HubSpot. They're an enterprise software company with millions of fans. That's remarkable. An enterprise software company with millions of Fans. We found B2B technology companies. We found nonprofit organizations, doctors, dentists, nonprofits. We found all kinds of different organizations that have fans. One of the manifestations of fandom that we love to talk about is the people who will eagerly show that they're a fan by wearing a logo. So people who wear a ball cap with a logo on it. People wear a T shirt with a logo on it. People who put a sticker onto their computer with a logo on it, or even tattoo a logo onto their body. Which we found companies that have that. There are fans that do that. And so this outward manifestation of fandom is true of all kinds of organizations. You and I have seen people at technology conferences and on the back of their computer, their technology company logos. There's a US Government agency that has tens of millions of fans that you can be on any in any city in the world. And you can see people walk down the street wearing a T shirt with a US Government agency logo on it. That US Government agency happens to be. You know who it is?

I'm gonna guess NASA.

Yeah, it's NASA.

I've got a sticker of them on my computer.

You have this sticker of a US Government agency on your computer. How weird is that? Right? It's weird. But here's the thing. What we found is that people become incredibly passionate about the things that they love. And it can be a government agency, a B2B company, a doctor, a dentist. It can be Be anything. This idea of fandom is for everybody.

Yeah, I love it. This has been such an awesome episode again. I learned a ton today. So, David, thank you so much for joining. And I've got a lot more great episodes that are coming along the way. So please, everyone make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can get notified when our next episode comes out in the meantime, check out new breaches marketing.com for our other great resources. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.