Painting the Picture
Creating buzz for your business means having a great product. Creating that great product, however, is an art.
Lots of people ask me the question, How can I get people to evangelize my product? Bookmark this: The key to evangelism is having a great product. It is easy, almost unavoidable, to catalyze evangelism for a great product. It is hard, almost impossible, to catalyze evangelism for crap. (The word evangelism, after all, comes from the Greek word for "bringing the good news," not "bringing the crappy news.") So what are the characteristics of a great product? DICEE.
DEEP A great product is deep. It doesn't run out of features and functions after only a few weeks of use. Its creators have anticipated what you'll need once you come up to speed. As your demands get more sophisticated, you discover that you don't need a different product.
INDULGENT A great product is a luxury. It makes you feel special when you buy it. It's not the least common denominator, nor is it the cheapest solution in sight. It's not necessarily flashy in a Ferrari kind of way, but deep down, you know you've rewarded yourself when you buy a great product.
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COMPLETE A great product is more than a physical thing. Documentation counts. Customer service counts. Tech support counts. Blogs about the product count. A great product has a great total user experience.
ELEGANT A great product has an elegant user interface. Things work the way you expect them to. A great product doesn't fight you--it enhances you.
EMOTIVE A great product incites you to take action. It is so deep, indulgent, complete and elegant that it compels you to tell other people about it. And you're not necessarily an employee or shareholder of the company that produces it; you're bringing the good news to help others, not yourself.
If you want a smashing example of a DICEE product, you need look no further than the iPod . . . Deep: It can house thousands of songs, videos and podcasts, plus third-party add-ons that have expanded its functionality in ways Apple never anticipated. Indulgent: Yes, you could buy a cheaper MP3 player, but that's not the point, is it? Complete: It includes total integration with online buying, Apple's support (other than a battery or two) and online support from independent websites. Elegant: What could be more user-friendly than one wheel that does it all? Emotive: How did you first find out about it? Someone probably told you about it or showed you theirs.
So if you want raging, inexorable, thunderlizard evangelists for your product, make sure that product is DICEE.
Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop, a managing director at VC firm Garage Technology Ventures, former chief evangelist for Apple Inc. and author of eight books--most recently The Art of the Start. Visit his company's site, alltop.com.