Today we have the honor to have a guest that you might be familiar with, David Meerman Scott, who's an entrepreneur, advisor, keynote speaker and the marketing original thinker. He is the writer of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Now he has released Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans, a bold guide to converting customer passion into marketing power.
Jakob
For those who haven't come across you yet, could you just give us a brief background?
David
I have spent about 15 years in the B2B technology business, particularly information businesses. I worked for companies like Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones and so on. In 2002, I started my own work and have written 12 books since then. I'm best known for a book called The New Rules of Marketing and PR. That book is now in 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese, and I update it every couple of years. The new eighth edition will release in May of 2022.
The new book, Fanocracy, I wrote that book with my daughter. It was a great process to bring her into it, because not only is she of a different generation, but she’s also my daughter and she's a different gender. She's also currently an emergency room doctor at Boston Medical Center, so she brings a very different perspective than I have.
Jakob
Yeah, it's so interesting that you did it with your daughter who came from a totally different perspective.
David
It really was super cool because we were talking a lot about fandom. She's a huge fan of Harry Potter and K-pop music. I'm a huge fan of the Grateful Dead. I love to surf. So, we're really very different people, but we both have the same ideas of fandom and how important it is.
Jakob
Do you think everybody have those kinds of interests that you have for Grateful Dead, or is it an exception?
David
I've asked many thousands of people that question, and it turns out that almost everybody is a passionate fan of something. They might be passionate about a sports team that they love to watch play, or they might be passionate about a sport they love to do themselves. Maybe they're interested in something that is considered more like a hobby; like bird watching or gardening. We also learned that people become fans of B2B companies, which is a part of the discussion that your podcast is centered on.
One of the outward manifestations of [fandom] that I see a lot is that people have on the back of their computer stickers of the things that they love. As an example, I've been on the HubSpot advisory board since the very beginning, since 2007. I see people all the time who have a HubSpot sticker on the back of their computer — or it might be Apple, or it might be other companies. It's super interesting that the idea of fandom is not just for entertainers anymore. The idea of fandom works for any kind of business, including B2B companies.
Jakob
If you would like to describe the core ideas around why it's so important, even for B2B companies, to work with fanocracy as a concept. Why they should turn the customers into fans, and fans to customers - can you give us the Cliff Notes there?
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David
Sure! The ideas originally came to me and my daughter, about five years ago. We had been talking a lot about how social media has changed. Back when social media first burst onto the scene, it was great because it was a way to connect, and a way to share the things that you're interested in. But over time, the social media algorithms have taken over, and that's especially true of Facebook.
With Facebook, the algorithm, I believe to be the most destructive technology ever invented. The Facebook algorithm is designed to get you to stay on the site longer because that's how they can sell more advertising. The way they get you to stay on this site longer is to make you angry, because when you're angry, you tend to spend more time on Facebook.
How do they make you angry? They push you into conspiracy theories. They push you into groups of people who hate other groups of people. It was responsible, I believe, for what happened in my country around our election in 2020; and then the events of January 6, 2021. It's also responsible for things like conspiracy theories around the effectiveness of vaccines: that's super dangerous.
So as my daughter and I were talking about what, how, and why people become fans of something, we spoke with several different neuroscientists about this. It turns out that all of us are hard-wired to want to be part of a tribe of like-minded people. The reason for that is that we feel safe, comfortable, and secure. That goes back many thousands of years in human history as a survival technique. When you're with a group of people who you know, you're with a group of people who make you comfortable, that's where you're safe. If you run across another group or run across danger, you're being supported.
However, if you're alone and you run across a group of people you don't know, or even in modern world if you get into, for example, a lift or a train car where you don't know people, you can feel nervous. What that means is if you're any kind of organization, the more you can develop this idea of creating a tribe of like-minded people, the more fans that you will develop.
"...if you're any kind of organization, the more you can develop this idea of creating a tribe of like-minded people, the more fans that you will develop"
Jakob
That's so interesting. It sounds very logical for many ways: it's a great insight you came across there.
David
What's interesting is that there are many ways that you can develop this tribe of likeminded people. It doesn't matter whether it's a B2B company, or a consumer brand, or an entertainer.
One example is the idea of giving gifts without any expectation of anything in return. The first time I encountered this as a marketing technique was more than 40 years ago. I'm a huge fan of the American rock band The Grateful Dead. And, interestingly, what The Grateful Dead did, unlike any other band, is that they allowed their fans to record their concerts. They did have one rule: you couldn't sell the recordings. But if you wanted to give them away or trade them with other people, that was fine.
Many people recorded the shows and then there were many, many tapes that were out in circulation as people were sharing them. That's how I became a fan of The Grateful Dead: I listened to music that people were playing that had been originally recorded at a concert.
Now what's interesting about that is The Grateful Dead gave the gift of allowing people to record concerts when every other band said no, without any expectation of anything in return. But it turned out that it was a fabulous form of marketing because people like me would hear those tapes and we would want to go to a show, and we bought tickets.
Now let's contrast that idea of giving gifts without any expectation of anything in return to what most B2B companies do. They do create some free content, maybe in the form of a whitepaper, but frequently what they do is they require you to fill out a form before you can get the whitepaper and you must give up your email address. That’s not giving a gift, even though the B2B company's website says, “this is our free whitepaper”. It's not free at all: it’s a coercion technique that the company is using.
“They’re saying it's free, but that's a lie, It's not free. What you have to do is you have to give your personal information in order to get that white paper”
I believe a much better approach for B2B companies is to say it's totally free. Here it is. You don't have to register; you don't have to give us your email address. And then, if your content is good, it will spread just like The Grateful Dead's content spread. People will share it and then some of those people will reach out and want to do business with you. Just like some of the people who listened to Grateful Dead recordings will want to go to a concert and spend money on a ticket.
Jakob
Wow! That's so interesting, and very, very true. Very few companies do offer that for free, that can we say for sure. If it just serves a few minutes on LinkedIn, for example, everything needs some kind of signup, right?
David
Right, and that's why if you can do it, make it free. It's so much better if you're able to reach people in a completely different way and provide all this incredible information. The key is that is that you're not expecting something in return. You will get something in return. If your content is good, people will seek you out. You're not requiring it - you're not coercing people.
“The key is that is that you're not expecting something in return. You will get something in return. If your content is good, people will seek you out. You're not requiring it - you're not coercing people”.
Jakob
That's interesting. What do you see are the key steps for a company to succeed in doing this?
David
Well, that's one. There are other strategies you can use to build fans. But ultimately, if I were to look at the overarching theme, it's bringing humanity to business. The more you can think about what a very human approach would be, the more changes you might make to your marketing.
If you think about another approach, many B2B companies use these big words like flexible, scalable, cutting-edge, innovative, best of breed. I guess they think that it makes them look smart by using those words. But those kinds of words are not the way that people talk. Nobody says, “I want a flexible, scalable solution for improving business process using cutting-edge mission-critical technology”. So, think about how you can be human in the way that you write, just simply eliminating those words.
“Nobody says I want a flexible, scalable solution for improving business process using cutting edge mission critical technology”
I'll give you another example. Many B2B companies use stock photographs. You grab a photo out of a catalogue and then put that onto your website or your blog or your marketing materials to represent your customers or to represent your employees. This is not human either, because everybody knows that those models are fake. Those are not your customers, they're not your employees. All these ideas that I'm sharing really point to this one concept, and that concept is to humanise your company.
Jakob
Wow, that's very compelling to bring humanity. You have followed HubSpot from the beginning, you came across them when they were 10 employees. What areas of these things do you think they have been able to exploit in building their fandom to the rockstar status as a marketing software they have today?
David
All of them. HubSpot is a fabulous example of a B2B company that has done a great job at building fans. In fact, that's how I met Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot. Brian and his team had read my book The New Rules of Marketing and PR when the first edition came out, back in 2007. When they were reading my book, they recognized that I live in the same city. Brian's team reached out to me and said, “Hey, David, we've just read your book. We love it. We'd love to have a meeting with you. Your ideas and our ideas are very similar”.
I went to their offices, and when I pulled out my computer, on the back of my MacBook Pro, I had a Grateful Dead sticker. Brian said, “Whoa, you got a Grateful Dead sticker, I'm a fan of the Grateful Dead too, and I've seen them at that point like 75 times”. We instantly had something that we had in common. Now that simple fact that I had a sticker on the back of my computer was what prompted us to recognize that we're both fans of the same thing. That's what made us instant friends even though we had never met each other before. Within a week, Brian and his team invited me to become a member of the HubSpot Advisory Board, which I'm still a member of.
Brian and I worked together to build HubSpot. We also wrote a book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead together. Brian specifically told me that we are going to build HubSpot the way the Grateful Dead build their band. HubSpot has built tons of fans. They have millions of followers on social media, and they're doing all the things we talked about today.
Jakob
That's so cool to illustrate your ideas around fanocracy, and I totally agree that they give way a ton of free software which is highly appreciated by web developers, they have a free CRM tool for example.
David
Yeah, they absolutely are. It’s not just the software they're giving away. They have blogs and YouTube channels, and they have HubSpot Academy where you can take their free online courses. Tons and tons of this great content that serves to build fans. Then once you're a fan of HubSpot, and you're a fan of their content. As soon as you need to purchase a CRM system, you will think “I might go to HubSpot – I’m already a fan”.
Jakob
Do you have any last recommendation for a marketing manager who would like to build a fan base? Where should we start? You know, what's the first step?
David
Well, we talked about several ideas and there's many more in the book. You can go to www.fanocracy.com: I've got a ton of information on there that to learn about some of the ideas in the book and some of the ideas that we didn't have enough time to share today.
But I would say one of the first places to start is to look at the language you're using on your website and in your marketing materials. Look at the photographs that you're using on your website and in your marketing materials. It's super easy as a very first step. You could even do it today: eliminate the stock photographs if you're using them and to eliminate those meaningless words, if you're using those.
Jakob
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, David. It was such a pleasure to talk to and I recommend everybody who's listening into this to go to fanocracy site or buy the book.
David
My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Listen to the full podcast session here.
