InternetVIZ: Hello and thanks for sitting down with us today.

Seth Godin: My pleasure.

InternetVIZ: Your books, Permission Marketing and Unleashing the IdeaVirus, are both critical of marketing practices that bombard, rather than reward, customers.

SG: That’s correct.

InternetVIZ: Given this, what should marketers be focused on? How should they try to structure relationships with prospects and customers?

SG: Marketers should be focused on giving people a reason to listen to their messages. Once people are listening, they should be presented with an infrastructure that allows people to amplify the message through digital word of mouth, what I call ‘word of mouse.’

InternetVIZ: That’s cute. What's the difference between word of mouth and word of mouse?

SG: Word of mouth tends to spread slower, more analog. If you like a book, you might tell a friend or two. And then your friends are unlikely to tell someone else until they read it for themselves. Because the numbers are smaller, it doesn't take many people who don't participate in the word of mouth for each generation to be smaller than the one before it. With word of mouse (word of mouth augmented by the power of online communication), you can tell 100 friends, or a thousand friends. Because the numbers are larger and faster, the spread of the message grows instead of slows. Products market themselves by creating and reinforcing ideaviruses.

InternetVIZ: That takes us right into the heart of your latest book. What do you mean by ideavirus?

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SG: The idea is really simple. For 100 years, marketers marketed to people. And the way you got rich is you bought a bunch of ads, you interrupted a lot of people, and if you interrupted enough people with enough offers, sooner or later you made money. That doesn't work anymore. Now, what works is helping people market to each other and getting out of the way. And so, an ideavirus is a concept, a service, a product, something neat and noteworthy that people tell other people about.

InternetVIZ: Okay, so an ideavirus is this noteworthy thing the idea of which the company wants people to unleash for them. Sounds cool but how can a company develop a Web site to help unleash the ideavirus?

SG: The company can do three things: 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. 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. Make it easy for consumers to spread the ideavirus by providing a multitude of tell-a-friend tools, as well as overt rewards for spreading the word.

InternetVIZ: Would you include e-mail newsletters in this bag of tricks?

SG: Certainly.

InternetVIZ: Why can e-mail newsletters, in particular, be so powerfully effective in unleashing an ideavirus?

SG: What marketers are searching for is a way to circumvent the tyranny of cost-per-thousand interruptions. They need something that ignites, a way to tap into the invisible currents that run between and among consumers, and they need to help those currents move in better, faster, more profitable ways. Instead of always talking to consumers, they have to help consumers talk to each other. Remember, the goal is to market to people and then get out of the way. So an e-mail newsletter (which almost anyone with a job in this country could access at home, at work or at the library) will still find an audience and spread.

InternetVIZ: How does your earlier idea of permission marketing fit into e-mail newsletters and unleashing an ideavirus?

SG: Permission marketing becomes a critical tool in working people through this transition. 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 to 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 being discussed. And sometimes, they become converted and turn into sneezers, volunteering to go out and invite other people over for dinner the next night. Note that they didn't start by walking up to a stranger and proselytizing about their religion. Instead, they used a gradual technique to sell their idea effectively and turn it into a virus. Are there religions that are not viruses? Sure, the Shakers were. They didn't try to convert at all. That's why there are no Shakers left. On the Web, this multi-step process is too often overlooked by companies facing short-term financial pressure (combine this with the legendary short attention span of entrepreneurs and you can see why this happens). Instead of building a virusworthy cool product or service, identifying a hive, promoting an idea, and making it smooth and persistent, they just spend a few million dollars to buy advertising. The hope, of course, is that somehow by spending enough money on clever ads, they'll magically create a critical mass of positive energy that will turn their idea into a virus. They're looking for a shortcut, and as a result, leading their companies to doom. Building a virus takes insight, talent and most of all, patience.

InternetVIZ: In this time of dot-bomb madness, companies are scratching their heads looking for ways to increase sales. How can your ideas help them increase Internet sales?

SG: The number one asset a company can have is permission to continue talking to me over time. If someone comes to your Web site and leaves, they're an anonymous stranger. You have no idea who they were, and no idea how to go back and get them. But if someone gives you permission to correspond with them, permission to follow up, now you have a valid lead, now you have an asset. I think that corporate Web sites are one of the biggest wastes of money of the decade. Virtually every company that went at this problem went at it the wrong way. They somehow believed that, A, consumers would want to read their online brochure, that B, consumers would somehow stumble onto their online brochure in a haphazard way, and C, once people got to their online brochure, they'd return. I think all three of those assumptions were flawed. Internet newsletters are a much more focused way to build corporate messaging, one that doesn't involve putting a needle into a very large haystack and hoping that someone falls on it.

InternetVIZ: When they send out newsletters, or any other type of correspondence, are there certain rules they should follow?

SG: There are three things that great marketing always is. It's anticipated, it's personal, and it's relevant. Anticipated because you don't want to be surprised. Personal because it's about you. And relevant because it's about something you care about right now. Most advertising—I would daresay 95 percent of all advertising—is unanticipated, impersonal and irrelevant. So permission marketing gives the marketer the opportunity to change all three of those things and have a dramatic increase in results. The question is, Why should I give you permission? What benefit am I going to get out of giving you the right to interrupt my day? If Willie Nelson or Bob Dylan wanted to start a newsletter, and said, I'll let you know when I'm in your town and when my next album comes out, a whole bunch of people want that. But if you make nuclear power plants or telephone headsets, you have to come up with some really compelling, selfish reason why the consumer should say, Yes, it's OK to alert me about X, Y or Z.

InternetVIZ: So the goal is to deliver information that is useful and relevant to their lives?

SG: It seems like an obvious thing, doesn’t it? But too many companies ignore this and send out irrelevant and useless information instead. They destroy permission and stop the spread of their ideavirus.

InternetVIZ: Well, this provides a lot to think about and put into effect. Thank you for taking the time to share these insights. It was very informative.

SG: You’re welcome.

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Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. He is the author of Permission Marketing, a treatise on the benefits of opting in, and Unleashing the IdeaVirus, which was released for free on the Internet and had more than 180,000 direct downloads immediately after becoming available and is the most read full-length eBook of all time. Previously, Seth acted as VP of direct marketing for Yahoo, from 1998 to 2000. He joined Yahoo following its acquisition of gaming and direct marketing firm Yoyodyne, for which Seth had served as president since 1995. He has been active in offline and online marketing since he became brand manager at Spinnaker in 1983, and he was president of SGP for nearly 10 years.