Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
63
 www.ideavirus.com
After a consumer is interested enough to visit ZDNet or Google.com or some other neat new
site, what should these sites do to augment the ideavirus? Three things:
1. Get permission to follow up: make it easy for me to learn about 
why
I should embrace this
idea over time. All those ads you ran are a great way to get someone to your site, but it might
cost your site $100 in marketing expenditures to get that one visit from just one consumer. If
you don’t get permission to follow up, the entire $100 is wasted.
2. Make as many supporting manifestos available as possible, in whatever forms necessary, to
turn consumers from skeptics into converts. This 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 the odds of spreading the virus.
3. Make it easy for consumers to spread the ideavirus by providing a multitude of tell-a-
friend tools, as well as overt rewards for becoming a sneezer.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
64
 www.ideavirus.com
Ten Questions Ideavirus Marketers Want Answered
1.
Have we chosen a hive we’re capable of dominating?
2.
How likely are the powerful sneezers to adopt our virus?
3.
Do we know who the powerful sneezers are and how to contact them?
4.
What can we do to our product to make it more virusworthy?
5.
Are we rewarding promiscuous sneezers sufficiently to get them on our side?
6.
Have we figured out what we want the sneezers to say? How are we teaching them to say
it?
7.
Even if our product isn’t purely viral by nature, is it possible to add more viral marketing
elements to it (or to our marketing approach)?
8.
Do we know how to get permission from people once they’ve been touched by the virus?
Do we know what to say after we get permission?
9.
How smooth is the transfer of the ideavirus?
10.
Is our offering good enough to wow this hive?
11.
Do we have the resources and time to dominate this hive before others rush in to fill the
vacuum?
12.
Have we built in multiple feedback loops so we can alter the virus as it moves and grows?
13.
Have we identified the vector we want the virus to move in, and have we built the tools
and plans to keep it moving in the vector we’d like?

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