Avvo: How To Build A Community For Busy People

You know the problem right? you launch an online community…and nobody shows up. No users means your community is a failure. What do you do?

That’s what we’re about to learn.

Mark Britton is the founder of Avvo, an expert only Q&A forum that received 50k questions and answers every month. And Avvo’s community includes people so busy that they’re difficult for sites to recruit: lawyers and doctors.

Mark Britton

Mark Britton

Avvo

Mark Britton is the founder of Avvo, which helps people choose lawyers and doctors by providing ratings and a forum for reviews.

 

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Full Interview Transcript

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Hi everyone. I’m Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart and you know the problem, right? You launch an online community and nobody shows up. No users means no community means basically no business. So what do you do? Well, that’s what we’re about to learn.

Mark Britton is the founder of Avvo, an expert only Q and A forum that receives 50,000 questions and answers every month and Avvo’s community includes the kinds of people who you’d think would be too busy to be on-line, who’d be tougher to recruit than probably the people your site’s trying to recruit. He’s got lawyers and doctors answering questions in authoritative manner. I invited him here to Mixergy to show us how he did it and to teach you and me how we can build online communities based on his experiences. Mark, welcome.

Mark: Thanks Andrew.

Andrew: So Mark, you did a pre-interview, which means I’ve got tons of notes here with a lot of meat to give my audience and I know that this is going to be useful for them.

Mark I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but yeah.

Andrew: It’s going to be very good. I want a lot of useful information for my audience. Let’s just give them just a quick understanding of what the product is and then I want to understand how any one in my audience can build it up the way that you have. And we’ll learn about your business throughout, but just let’s take someone in my audience. Let’s call him Bob Hyler.

Mark A: OK.

Andrew: Bob’s an online entrepreneur, he’s running a business. How would he come in contact with Avvo and what would his experience be like?

Mark: Well, we talk about Avvo being expert only Q and A.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And the reason for that is so anyone can come in, for free, and ask a legal question or a medical question and have real professionals, real doctors and lawyers, answer those questions, again for free. But where we’re really unique is we back up that Q and A forum with ratings. Now we rate 90% of the doctors and 90% of the lawyers in the United States from 1, which is extreme caution, all the way up to 10, which is superb.

So, it’s not like, say, Yahoo Answers and a lot of the other Q and A forums, general Q and A forums, that are out there where anyone can come in and answer. You actually know you’re getting an expert. You see the Avvo rating, you see their client or patient ratings and you even see peer reviews, so it’s backed up to really show you the expertise of that professional. So the Bob Hyler example. Bob has a question about intellectual property.

And he has done a bit of research but realizes, so keep in mind that a lot of the, I think for a lot of your viewers, they’re going to understand the web funnel and I think most people that run retail or consumer based business realize that there’s a funnel in that people do a lot of research and then they narrow down that research before they actually hit the buy button and in legal and medical, people generally know that they have a legal. Let’s focus in the Bob Hyler example, just on legal. He knows that he has possibly some issues around intellectual property but he doesn’t know what to do with them.

So he’ll do some general research but then he’ll very quickly say, you know what, my facts and circumstances are, there’s some particulars here. I have a co-founder that is since left the company that may have some ownership rights to the intellectual property, et cetera. And so he needs tailored advice, but he’s not sure that he needs a lawyer. So that’s where the Q&A forum comes in and is so incredibly valuable. Because you, anonymously, can go in and ask a lawyer. We have a 97% response rate! It actually fluctuates from about 94% to 99%, we’re at 97% over the last two or three months.

Andrew: 97% is huge!

Mark: Yeah, it’s massive.

Andrew: Let me get into a question that someone like Bob or anyone might ask. I’m actually on your website right now under intellectual property infringement. An entrepreneur said, “I submitted an idea to a company. Now, after 10 years, they’re coming out with this idea with a product that I submitted. I’ve been told not to burn bridges. I’m new, what gives?” Basically, someone submits an idea, it seems like the company that he submitted the idea to might have taken the idea and run with it. What do I do now? Those are the kinds that Bob or Steve or Beth in the audience might go to the site, and they have an over 95% chance to get an answer. And an authoritative answer, and we know it’s authoritative based on the level of the contributor.

Mark: That’s right.

Andrew: This is a tough thing to put together. This is not like just getting a bunch of people to chat online. This is really useful information from incredible lawyers and doctors. I want to know how you did it. Take me back, though, I know you weren’t always an expert at building communities. Take me back to what life was like before you learned what you’re about to teach my audience.

Mark: The thing to keep in mind is we still haven’t completely succeeded. I hate to get too far ahead of ourselves. Part of having any online community is constantly growing that, grooming that, et cetera. But going back, I had this idea….one of the earliest data points that I had was that lawyers were still spending over a billion dollars a year in the yellow pages. And as you looked at a lot of the yellow pages association data, they spoke to the fact that the yellow pages was a massive marketplace for getting information to consumers, or at least putting the consumer and the lawyer together. And anytime the yellow pages is leading the charge, we’re dealing with massive inefficiency.

I wanted to bring forth a forum that put people together in a more meaningful way. Let me give you just a bit of background on Avvo…

Andrew: Actually, if you’ll forgive me for a moment, I’m sorry, but I’m really curious about how you built up the business, but I feel an intense obligation to my audience to tell them this is how you guys can build a community. The problem, though, is if I launch into the tactics, they’re never really going to feel the need to understand the tactics and pay attention. But if you show them that you were where they are now, and didn’t know how to build a community, they’re going to understand the problem that they have now, they’re going to see it through your eyes and they are going to say, ‘OK, if Mark can do this based on where he was, we can too’. One of the things that you told Jeremy in the pre-interview is that you had a reporter from C-net who basically did what? What was it that that reporter did?

Mark: I’m actually getting to that, because that’s not dealing with the Q&A. That’s dealing with the directory.

Andrew: That’s what I’m getting at. Talk to me about the time before.

Mark: So we launched with a directory. We were rating and profiling lawyers in nine states. We didn’t have a Q&A forum until about five months later, when we realized that we needed to have more engagement for our customers.

We’re a little bit unique, because I had a very senior role at Expedia and spent a long time on the web. And we can touch on that and how that helped me.

Andrew: No need. I apologize, I feel like maybe we’re a little bit off here.

Mark: Why don’t we do this? Let’s cut the interview, let’s come back from the beginning. And if you’d like me to be much more precise on where we go from the beginning, and get right down into the tactics, I’m happy to do that. I thought you were asking for more background, so that background sets a very platform from how we built from there. Does that work for you?

Andrew: I don’t want to get into the tactics. I want to stick with the outline, I think you got a copy of the outline.

Mark: I do.

Andrew: OK. I just want to go to this story about how a reporter from C-net suddenly went for your throat and criticized your baby and said, ‘Hey, this is not what you envisioned it is’. And it was a real blow. Talk to me about that environment.

Mark: OK.

Andrew: I just want to go through….I just want to set up….

Mark: This is where it’s hard, where you didn’t do the pre-interview, so not understanding the flow. We launched Q&A. Excuse me, we launched in a directory then we layered the Q and A on top of that. So, if we go back from the beginning, I thought you were kind of asking pre-Avvo and starting Avvo at all and so, what we can do is lead into it as far as saying, ‘OK. You weren’t always about Q and A, so why did you start in a directory and how did the Q and A come behind that?’ I think that will be a fairly fluid lead in. How does that sound to you?

Andrew: Well, we’re still in the interview, you can take it up from there. I think it’s OK if the audience sees that I’m using notes here and that the notes don’t always lead through a smooth interview. Go for it. I’m learning along the way here and the audience is willing to and eager to, I think, see as I get this right and wrong. If there’s a better way, if there’s a way for you to lead into that, go for it. My vision, though, for this interview is. . .

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: I just want the audience to see what it’s like before you figure out what we’re about to teach them.

Mark: Right.

Andrew: I want to see what life is like after that.

Mark: Right.

Andrew: And then I want to go step-by-step through the tactics that will enable us to go from that before picture to the after picture. And so that’s fine if you want to take it from there, I’ll step back and I’ll let you go for it.

Mark: Well, here’s all that I would say. I would say that, so one of the things when you’re building any sort of online community, is that you don’t really know how it’s going to be received. You get very close to and you mentioned your baby, I got very close, we all got very close to our baby, and so one of the first things that you need to do is go out and test the waters on that product, right? So, you know, you need to go out and talk to the press, I think, if you’re going to impress, if the press isn’t impressed by your product, you probably have a problem and that’s what we did.

So we built this thing, we went out, we started, we did a closed beta and we went out and started talking to the press as far as saying, would you write about this. And in general, we got the wow, almost across the board, we got the wow factor from the press, which made it feel really good, right? But we had one reporter in particular, and it was extremely, extremely painful where we had this reporter who really, I’m not sure how much even understood the web. I’m not sure he understands web 2.0 for sure. But he definitely didn’t understand our product and I was led into that interview believing that this was an interview that was connected through one of our board members. It would be a friendly interview, what have you. But he just went on to just completely attack us and he wasn’t using it through the eyes of the consumer. He was trying to write a negative article. I mean, he definitely went in upset with us in some way.

And I’ll tell you, for starters, if you look at my background, you come out of this background where you’re a big company and you’re used to your credibility that comes with that, but that’s not always where you start from. So attacked in the beginning from some elements of the press, but we were also sued nine days after we launched. So, with a combination of getting a little bit of bad press but a lot of good press to go on top of that, sued nine days after we launched. Here we were, no matter what our backgrounds were, we were a bunch of ex-Expedia guys, we knew the web. We were starting absolutely from ground one or step one. Ground floor, step one, what have you.

Q: All right. So you were where, essentially, many of us are when we’re launching a community but, actually a few steps behind because not only are you starting at the ground floor, but you’re starting at the ground floor with some guns pointed at you. . .

A: Big guns.

Andrew: Through this lawsuit. Tell me now, give me a sense of where you are right now. You’re considered one of the most influential, actually, I’ll let you take it.

Mark: Well, I mean, I think that Avvo as a whole, so you go from these fairly humble beginnings of, again, getting sued nine days after we launched with some very media savvy attorneys. Fortunately, that was sold out and actually turned into a big benefit for us. And you come, what are we? So we’re four years since our launch and, at least on the legal side, now we launched doctors a year ago, but since the legal launch, we now have the American Bar Association coming out and calling me one of 20 legal rebels.

That was a year or two years ago. It was the first time they had the program, but one of the most influential lawyers. Those lawyers that are changing the face of the legal profession. So we’ve gone from kind of the profession being confused because we were pushing them into a new web 2.0 era and to them kind of getting it now and heralding us as someone who’s really pushing the profession forward, so yeah. It’s, when I look back, it’s very gratifying.

Andrew: And you had an experience that I think a lot of entrepreneurs look for where you actually get to see somebody enjoy your product. I know that sometimes I’ll hear a conversation where someone will say, ‘Hey, I heard this thing on Mixergy,’ and I’ll go, ‘Yeah, I created that.’

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: You had something like that.

Mark: I did. I think where it’s really cool is I’ll have my Avvo jacket on in different places, especially if I’m in cities far away, and somebody will say, ‘Hey, I know that product.’ That’s really great. I was actually at a soccer game. It was so I coached one of my games and afterwards, some people were walking by as I was putting the balls away. They were talking, actually a medical rather than a legal issue, and they were saying, ‘Yeah, there’s this site, Avvo, where I was able to find all of the information and I actually asked a question and they were talking about the question and answer forum.’ I really wanted to get up and just them right? But they also didn’t overhear what I was saying and anytime you’re talking about medical issues, it seemed a bit unseemly, but it really made my month. It possibly made the quarter as far as just when you create something from nothing and then have people talking. Like that’s the brand movement, right?

Andrew: Yeah.

Mark: The brand is taking flight and it’s just a fantastic thing.

Andrew: All right. So I’d like to be able to build a community that is impactful. What do we do? How do I do it? How does someone in my audience do it? What’s the first tactic we should be aware of?

Mark: Well I think the biggest thing in this is, arguably, lost. So I feel like a lot of what we’re going to talk about today is kind of marketing 101, but I think marketing 101 is lost quite often and it’s actually marketing and product 101. So if you don’t have a great product, if you aren’t building something that you truly believe in and everyone you show it goes, ‘Wow,’ except the clueless CNET reporter, you know, if you don’t have that ‘wow’ factor, then it’s going to fail and I think that even though you can get very close to your product, the best CEOs, the best entrepreneurs, they’re either just completely in love with thing or they’re concerned that something is sideways. And if you have that concern at all, get it right before you launch if for prime time.

Now there’s a balance, right? I think that there’s a big change in product development from my earliest days in the web as far as getting stuff out there and iterating on it quickly, great. But if that first version that you put on the street doesn’t have a ‘wow’ factor, it’s not going to go anywhere and so it kind of goes back to the press issue. So first of all, build great product. OK? And that will sell it. I mean if somebody doesn’t look at it and use it and go, ‘wow,’ then they’re never going to go and tell one of their friends to use the product.

Andrew: Mark, is that even more important in community based or social networking based sites where the user has to say quickly, “I’m willing to share this with my friends and have it be a representative of my interests online,’ versus maybe the Huffington Post that had a little time to get it wrong, or do you think that today, across the board, we have to get it right with the big ‘wow’ right from the start?

Mark: No, I think you can start smaller, but at the same time, I’m just a big believer that if, you know, there’s so many press outlets that are related to new products and we’ll take TechCrunch as kind of the 800 pound gorilla these days. We have GeekWire up here, but if you can’t take it to one of those reporters and say, ‘Yeah, you know, this is interesting. I think this is differentiating and I’d like to have my readers know about it.” If you can’t get there, then I don’t think you have a product that, whether it’s in social media or any other channel or any other place where your target audience is, it’s not valuable.

Andrew: I think that for a lot of founders, it’s hard to figure out whether they have that ‘wow’ product or not. Either because they fall in love with every little thing they put out there or maybe they’re the other kind of entrepreneurs who beat themselves up over everything. . .

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: . . .and fill themselves up with insecurity over every little thing that they create. How do you know that you’ve got a product that’s a ‘wow’ product and people will be willing to spread the word about it?

Andrew: Yeah. So first of all, by the way, I think most entrepreneurs are kind of a mix. There are parts of it that they just love and are obsessed by and I think that there’s another part where they’re always wondering whether that’s the right feature. So I think that doing closed data with your target audience is really important, OK? That’s number one. But also if you believe, if you truly believe in this product, get it out there and start interacting with that target audience and you’ve got to find out where the target audience is. You have to take it to that target audience and so this is where the marketing 101 comes in a bit. So, you know, I think you’ll have a lot of entrepreneurs that launch something and then just sit back and say, “Well, at some point, whether it’s the press or potential users, you know, I’ll go around and I’ll send out a couple of emails. I’ll send it out to my friends, but it’s not moving and therefore it must not be successful. I think part of the problem a lot of the times, if you just haven’t done your homework in taking, or the hand crank, and taking your product to the masses, because even the most viral of products, if people don’t know about it, it can’t go viral.

And so, if you take Avvo for example, we have two sides of our informational marketplace. You have the consumer side that’s consuming the information, but then you have the professionals that are answering the questions, etc. And so it just, on both sides of these, early on, our best way to get to consumers was press and we talked about that but on the other side, the supply side, getting lawyers to know about it and see it as a valuable platform. I mean, we did something we called the Avvo tours and we identified very strong, I’ll call them mavens, people who had a following in each of the big, major metro areas and we essentially built a conference around those people that was based on on-line marketing. We knew our audience would be tech savvy lawyers.

So let’s find a maven that a lot of tech savvy lawyers follow and let’s have a conference on on-line marketing sponsored by Avvo in that city. And then you have all of these tech savvy lawyers come in, the maven, or the multiple mavens, that you have speaking, they’re impressed that you’ve asked them to speak, they bring in their group and you have this brand impression and this brand demo, excuse me, this product demo as part of that, where you’re getting directly to your target audience. Now does that scale? No. But nothing you’re doing early on scales. You got to turn that hand crank and you got to get out there and mix it up and that, Andrew, is where you’ll get massive feedback about your product. You come off the stage, you always leave time, or what I always do is say please ask me questions while I speak. And people will ask you very pointed questions about your product, which you’ll get a very quick feel for whether it’s working or not.

Andrew: How did you know who the mavens were and how did you get them to come out to your event?

Mark: So, the first thing, this is where we’re a bit unique that I talked about from the top. I had a pretty strong name in legal to start out with and then that lawsuit brought us so much press and it brought so much traffic to the directory that we, a lot of people knew who we were in the beginning, so there was a lot of social media buzz, a lot of press buzz around this new Avvo thing and the fact that it was getting sued by a bunch of press savvy lawyers.

So, it made it a bit easier but there were absolutely thought leaders, especially in social media, they might have heard of us a little bit, but they really didn’t have a sense for what we were about. So really, all that we did as a team, was we would look at those people that were active in social media, active at conferences, and seemed. . . in any vertical, in any industry, I think you have anywhere from 5 to 50 people that are showing up at all the same conferences, have the best blogs, are showing up as quoted in all the different, whether it’s the blogosphere or online articles, or just out in the press in general, and so, with a little bit of research, you can figure out who has a fairly large voice and then reaching out to them.

Again, it helps because I had a lot of credibility on the legal side, having been a former general counsel and worked in a big firm here in Seattle and I’m an ex-FCC lawyer, etc. But still, if I wasn’t delivering something that I really believed in, that was a quality product that, for them to tell their constituents, their followers, their readers. I really felt, I believed to my bones, that I was offering something valuable.

Andrew: So what you did was, in order to figure out who the mavens were to invite to the event, you said who’s on twitter and is active in our community? Who’s speaking at events in our community and you sent them all invitations to come out to your conference?

Mark: That’s right.

Andrew: I see. And then from there. . .

Mark: Well, hold on. The true mavens, I picked up the phone and contacted them and built a relationship with them. So, if we take someone like Carolyn Elefant in Washington, DC. Caroline writes a blog called My Shingle. She’s very focused on helping people be solo practitioners and she has a blog, My Shingle. She’s written a book called Solo by Choice that is fairly well read. I just picked up the phone and said Carolyn, this is a quality product that I have and she knew a little bit about it.

Andrew: But, you invited her to the event that you put together?

Mark: I invited her to speak and help us put on the event. That way she has a starring role and she’s able to tell her story as well, so that’s vital to her. She has a bunch of people that she can say, “Hey, come to this event.”

Andrew: OK. So one of the first tactics is to put together a conference that lures in the mavens in your community. What you did was you looked on Twitter, you looked in your communities to see who the big voices were, and you invited them to the event, often picking up the phone and talking one on one and doing that scary thing that technology has kept us from doing, modern technology and . . .

Mark: Yeah, yeah.

Andrew: . . . [??]. How did you get other people to come out to the event, other potential users of Avvo?

Mark: We would have teams . . . For one, the mavens will have followers. They will put in on their Blog. We would put it on our Blog. Then because we had a directory we had contact information for a lot of lawyers, so we would put an engagement team against calling them down, or we would send them emails and just say, hey, this [advocating], we call a lot of our conferences now, is coming to your town.

We’ll love to tell you . . . with the focus being on online marketing, I think that’s one of the keys to the extent that you’re engaging in thought leadership is that if you’re just a show for your product then people get tired of that very quickly. This is a very classic form of inbound marketing, giving someone something of value so that you’re building your relationship with them. That’s what we did.

We gave them value on online marketing, but that left a brand impression that Avvo understands online marketing. We also were able to get in front of them and essentially demo the product as a very small part of the overall value we were delivering.

Andrew: You said you emailed them. How did you get the email address? Is it the people who you invited?

Mark: Well, we have a lot of email addresses just from people who would come in and claim their profiles. And also sometimes from the bar association. We partner with a lot of different organizations, whether it’s practice areas for doctors and lawyers or the licensing associations. That will give us some contact information, but if we didn’t have the emails we would pick up the phone.

Andrew: OK. So here’s what I have down in my notes so far, create a directory of the people who you want to, who you’re recruiting to be active members of your site and enable them to claim their profiles. Another thing that you did was you put together a conference where you brought in the people who you imagined would be the most active members and the most prestigious members of your community.

You taught them about something that wasn’t a sale. You weren’t selling them on your product. You said you taught them a related topic, online marketing. Before that you told me, Andrew, develop a wild product. One more question on the wild product and then I’ll go to another tactic. How did you know that you had a wild product? In fact, you told Jeremy that being sued had something to do with telling you this is something big. What in the lawsuit that told you you had a wild product?

Mark: Well, I think first of all to the extent that no one pays attention, positive or negatively, you don’t have a wild product. We had this very [visible] reaction early on that was this lawsuit.

So, again, we rate lawyers when we launched and we still do, but it was the core of our product when we launched was rating them as low as one which is extreme caution. You do this with doctors as well. We mind the public records so that you know if the doctor or lawyer has misconduct in their background.

Having lawyers with misconduct in their background go crazy to the point where they’re willing to file a class action lawsuit to put us out of business, claiming that our system was fraudulent. Well, I knew our system wasn’t fraudulent, and I knew we were on to something.

I’ll never forget one of our Board members, Rich Barton, who started Expedia and Zillow. Rich and I have known each other for a very long time. Getting sued was a very difficult time for us, but I remember him saying in a board meeting, you know what? If it’s not frightening then it’s probably not important.

Really it put things in perspective for me that if you’re move the conversation, if you’re going to bring the legal profession into the 21st century, yeah, it’s going to be a little frightening. Some are going to push back on that.

Andrew: All right. What’s the next thing that we need to know if we’re going to build a community on our sites?

Mark: Well, one thing that, this goes back to the product piece. We touched on it a bit, but your product has to do what you say it’s going to do. If you’re going to call people into the site, you’re telling them that there’s an objective for the site. Right? There’s something that they can accomplish. If they can accomplish that very quickly, then you’re going to lose the whole viral element. They’re just going to bounce out and be gone. And so, another piece of this, I think this is why we layered on the Q & A.

From the beginning of this conversation, it’s an interesting story because we’re kind of looking at it from this flat directory standpoint, but we realized over time that people were really valuing the information we were giving them. But they needed to have more interactivity. They wanted more interactivity.

So, nail the objective. Make sure when they come in that you nail the objective, but as part of that give them the interactivity, give them the ability, the tools to engage with the site as much as they’d like to.

Andrew: OK. Why did you decide to go for a Q & A site instead of a forum or another way to enable people to interact?

Mark: OK. If you go back to where we were from the beginning of this interview when we were trying to get a feel for what the right information is for your audience, it felt when we launched that really just getting them off this Yellow Pages platform, and by the way, most of what you have and most of our competitors are still this kind of recommended lawyer being the one that pays the most amount of money.

That looked like the place that we could go and really differentiate ourselves by being more objective, right? And having a broad base with much more information and guidance. What caught us off guard was we were seeing . . . we had so many consumers come into the site, great that they’re getting information and great they’re contacting lawyers. But they were asking questions that were very preliminary. They weren’t necessarily looking to hire that lawyer, they were looking for additional orientation.

Going back to this funnel idea, they’d come in and read some of our . . . we had a very mild layer of orientation, just very basically, this is the practice area and here’s what it does. But they wanted more information from us in a very tailored way. And so, we said, OK. By the way, we got feedback from a lot of lawyers who were saying, “Listen, we’re getting a bunch of questions rather than people saying I’m ready to hire you.”

We were seeing it and the questions being asked, but we were also seeing it from our user community, our lawyers who were already engaging it saying, “I can’t handle all of these questions.” Our bet was: if we can give them a layer of engagement, it will better orient the consumer, and it will better qualify them for the lawyers so that when they actually go to contact the lawyers, it’s to say; “Hey, I’d like to hire you” as opposed to “I don’t even know where to start.”

Andrew: I see. All right. Another thing that you suggest, anyone who wants to build a community online, as you say, go to the press and build your credibility and get an audience that way. How did you do that?

Mark: This goes for press and social media. I would actually say two things, Andrew, that are kind of married, and we can go down both tributaries, but I think social media is a form of press today. You have to think of traditional press, which is picking up and speaking to traditional press outlets, but then the intermediates, the kind of crossovers, the bloggers. And then, you have people that we talked about that are like the mavens, people who have a lot of followers and say, “Hey, this is a cool product.”

You need to reach out to all of them, and you need to do it from a CEO or, at least, senior executive standpoint. This is actually a big mistake that I see from a lot of young entrepreneurs. They’re afraid of the press. They’re afraid, especially ones that have a technical background, that are great at writing code but the idea of starting an interview, like the way we just started this interview, that’s panicking. They just don’t want it, or, at least, it creates panic. They don’t want to go anywhere near this stuff.

And so, listen, there’s no way around it. If you have a great product, you need people to tell your story, and there’s no better free outlet than press and social media. To the extent that a PR person’s calling them, they hear from PR people day in and day out, and they actually don’t have that high of a view of them because the PR person’s always calling up and saying, “This is the best thing since sliced bread.”

However, if you as the entrepreneur built this thing, picks up the phone and calls them and says, “Hey, I’ve built the best thing since sliced bread” and they can hear your passion, that’s real and you must do that outreach.

Andrew: How do you stand out? I mean, in your case there aren’t that many legal and medical question and answer sites.

Mark: That’s true.

Andrew: But there’s some. But there’s some. In the space that I’m sure a lot of our listeners are going into, there are even more. How do you, in that world, say to a reporter ‘those others are great, but you should pay attention to me and write about me’.

Mark: So first of all, if your product’s not differentiated in some way, and this goes back to this wow factor, if all you’re doing is releasing a ‘me-too’, then what are you doing? Right? If you’re not pushing the conversation forward in some way, then it’s not the outreach problem, it’s not the press problem, it’s the product problem. So figure out what the strength is in your product, what the differentiate is, and go to people and pick up the phone and tell them about that differentiation. And if it’s real, they’ll write about it.

Andrew: One of the other messages that you want to get out to the audience is, if they want to build a community, they need to give the consumer a reason to find a way to engage with the site. How do you do that?

Mark: I think that this goes back to the subjective side of things. Whether the person hears about your product or whether you’ve reached out to them through outbound, inbound, whatever form of marketing to say this site will do something amazing for you. First and foremost, you must succeed in that objective and you must succeed in it quickly. But at the same time, I think you also need to listen to your user community. We did a lot of researching into what you would want out of a user community. They want accurate information, they want it quickly, and they usually want it for free.

So I think a mistake, for example, that a lot of a sites make is that they put what they consider to be their valuable community behind a firewall, or they try to charge for it, or what have you. Now, there are some sites out there that succeed by having a pay-wall there, but I think we’re moving away from that fairly aggressively. I’m a very big believer in the freemium model. So delivering free products that people can buy additional elements to, to up-sell. But getting this really big, robust, interesting marketplace that people can come in and interact for free before you try to monetize them. I think that’s really important.

Andrew: When you get someone to the site, I understand that one of the first things they see is a big input box that just invites a question. In this case, I actually see that there’s a sample question put into the input box that says, ‘How can I tell if this mole on my leg is cancerous’? So I would type in my question, I’d click the find advice button, and I might want to come back to check the site to get answers. But beyond that, how do you get me, as the person who asked the question, to keep returning to the site and to know that Avvo both medical and legal questions.

Mark: One thing, I think it’s important, if you can, to collect e-mail. So that you’re building a user base, and that you can back and re-target to that base. But also, people don’t always think through, in say Q&A specifically, but interactivity on your site, they’re not thinking through always the elements of that or how often they need to come back and check. To the extent that you set it up so that they have to do all the work, you’ll have massive breakage. So you need to have a vehicle to get back to them, so they’re essentially subscribed to the question.

So that, one, if there’s an answer, and quite often in Avvo there are multiple answers, each time we ask them to come in to see the answers, and then we also ask them to rate the answers. So the conversation continues. And even if, lets say a question doesn’t get answered, which is possible, then we use a bit of artificial intelligence to understand why their question didn’t get answered, and we suggest that they re-ask their question under this subject area, or in a different way. But you have to be proactive as the site owner, in this person who’s come in probably doesn’t have a lot of brand affinity or even brand knowledge the first time they come through. You need to be aggressive in keeping the conversation going.

Andrew: And how do you keep that conversation going after a question’s been answered multiple times? How do you say to someone who had his answer, and life is good, that this is the place to return to with your future questions. How do you stay top-of-mind?

Mark: It’s actually really hard, and that’s why you have to have some level of contact information for them. So I would suggest for anyone that is out there who is trying to build up a loyal user base, well you need a customer base and typically that comes through email or maybe you’re able to do it through Facebook and Facebook friends, etc, but building up a base that you can then send an email to, you can send reminders to and possibly alert them of new products, what have you.

Again, you have to be careful on this because you have to be offering something that’s truly valuable because if you’re just spamming saying, “Come back. Come back. Come back,” that gets old and they shut it up. You need to know where they are and, for example, at Avvo you can’t. We do this for a lot of different reasons including the integrity, the questions, and if the question is challenged, etc. Excuse me, rating is challenged, what have you. But we collect user data, so that we can continue this dialog.

Andrew: I see. All right. What’s another tactic that we can take if we want to build an active community the way that you have?

Mark: So, you know, one story that I tell a lot of people that I think is surprising to them is and I think it’s consistent with everything we’ve talked about on reaching out to the press and social media, etc, but, you know, one thing that’s really hard if you have. . . Again, a marketplace, you know, kind of denotes this idea that you have a supply and consumption of that supply, and often if you look at a great Q&A site, Stack Overflow for example, they’re all developers, right? So you’re kind of marketing to the same constituency group as far as what the supply and demand is. We’re a bit different in that our supply was these lawyers who are not, you know, I mean advertising was illegal in the legal profession until, you know, 30 years ago. In the. . .[cuts off]

Andrew: Oh. Did we just lose the connection? There we go. Sorry, I thought we lost the connection there. You were saying advertising was illegal until 30 years ago and then I missed you.

Mark: Well, and it’s still quite conservative in a lot of states and even for, you know, you have HIPAA for doctors. So you have some people for who this whole idea is Q&A and interacting directly with people online, it’s fairly new and they’re not sure what the regulatory construct is under it and so one of things that I did when we launched our Q&A site is I just got on the phone. I called 100s, I mean 400+ lawyers and, again, we had the benefit of having their contact information because you had a lawyers that were already engaging with the site through the directory, but I just got on the phone and I educated them about this new Q&A product and how it would help them meet whatever objective that they had.

Typically, it was getting more business, but often it’s helping their communities, maybe it’ll building out their web presence. I walked them thorough each one of those things and it created really early adopters who knew that they could contact me if they needed additional information, etc. They felt that they were really a part of our early community and many of those have continued to be our greatest Evangelists over time.

Andrew: Mark, that’s something that I’ve been wanting to do, but to be honest with you, I’m a little intimidated by it because I feel if I have a phone call with someone that’s unscheduled, I could be interrupting their day. To just pop in on their cell phone or on their land line even and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a few questions for you. I want to show you a few ways that you can use my site better.’ It feels a little intrusive. How do I do it in a way that gets, if I’m going to make 100s of phone calls, it gets 100s of conversations too, and not a bunch of people who are frustrated?

Mark: I think there are two types of conversations. I think there’s the general networking conversation where you want to meet someone who is not necessarily going to be a core customer of your site, but you think they’re a great product person, a great marketing person and you want to meet with them and you want to soak up things from them. I think that’s more intrusive and we can talk about that in a second, but I think if you’re calling someone who can use your services and you’re actually delivering something of value, then it’s not that intrusive because you’re giving them something that’s valuable.

So, you know, leave them a message. You don’t necessarily, you know, you’re not going to get people all the time. Or you can also start the conversation that says, “Hey listen. Just right up front, I’d like to, this is a piece of value.” So I have this question and answer forum that we’re launching and it’s been out there for about 30 days and I know, seeing the traffic that you already get through the directory, I know that you can get so much more by the Q&A. So do you have time for that right now? Do you want to schedule something later?’

And most often people are so flattered that you’ve called them and that you’re really interested in reaching out to them. I mean a lot of them are just like, ‘Holy cats. Like, you’re the CEO and you’re calling me? Like, thank you. I don’t ever get that treatment. You know, Jeff Bezos isn’t calling me from Amazon or whatever it is.’ And so we have a very fruitful conversation. Now, the downside of that is because they do enjoy talking to the CEO, you know, I’ve got a lot of people pitching me on their business ideas for what have you [laughs] to a much longer. . .

Andrew: Right.

Mark: You know, some of these calls I’d be on for 20, 30 minutes and I had to get smarter about not having it get so mired and that we were moving away from the objective for both of us. . .

Andrew: How do you do that? How do you keep it on track?

Mark: . . .which was understanding the Q&A. Well I think, you know, one of the things that you can do for someone is, one of things that I actually really like about everything you do in Mixergy is that you’re really transparent and I think there’s a lot of value in that. And I think anybody who knows me, knows that I’m, respectful, but I’m very honest. So I would have said to someone on the phone, ‘Hey, you know, this product that you’re talking about, it’s not just something that I see us getting involved in the near future.

If it is something I’m interested in a later date, I’ll be more than happy. Let’s get together for coffee and I’ll end up probably seeing you at a conference anyway. But, you know, in the short term, to be respectful of your time and mine, let me tell you exactly how this Q&A. can drive your business and how by being an earlier adopter, you can build out some beach heads, etc, etc.’

Andrew: I see.

Mark: So, you know, it’s in all things. It’s just human interaction. Let’s go to this networking piece for a second, though, because I think it’s really important, Andrew.

Andrew: Sure. Yeah, please.

Mark: Another thing I see especially a lot of young entrepreneurs make a mistake on, is that they don’t build a network in their community, and possibly in their tech community. So two tech communities that are very tied are Seattle and Palo Alto. Actually, Palo Alto is tied to every tech community. But you see a lot of cross pollenization [SP] coming between Seattle and Palo Alto and, you know, I’m always flattered and really impressed more than anything when a young entrepreneur reaches out to me and says, “Hey, I actually think you could add value to my product and I just need 30 minutes of coffee so that I can bounce some things off of you.’ So you talked about is that invasive?

Yeah, it’s invasive and people are going to say no, but, you know, I remember when I was trying to get Avvo off the ground, I had a lot of coffee and I met with a lot of people and I feel an obligation to pay that forward. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs out there feel the same way and, yeah, they’re busy, but I have coffee regularly with young entrepreneurs and try to set them on the right track because I love what they’re doing and I was there once. And so find those people, reach out to them and you’d be surprised how often those people will meet you and how quickly you can build your network.

Andrew: What do you do when you get on the phone with someone, and I’ve been looking at a few articles here, I’ve been bringing them up as we were talking, about the significance of the ratings? A see someone here, “Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro in Seattle received a handsome 9.2 rating.” So people who receive high ratings are proud. I see people who have low ratings are frustrated. What do you do when you get on the phone who says, “Mark, I’ve got this low rating. I don’t think I can ever dig out from under it on your website, so I’m going to move on to another website,” or otherwise complain to you while you’re on the phone with them?

Mark: So I’ll just tell you a bit of irony. That Hagens Berman that you pulled up, that was the law firm that represented the class action against us. So the lawyer that was representing the lawyers with misconduct, is out there now touting his Avvo rating.

Andrew: Oh, is that right?

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: OK.

Mark: So Steve Berman was the plaintiff lawyer. So, first and foremost, as a CEO early on in the product, and I’d say any senior executive, if you’re not taking customer care calls, you’re failing. You need to get in there and understand how your product is working and that first piece of feedback, whether it’s through the press, whether it’s through social media, whether it’s through people calling in on you 800 number, if you aren’t taking calls and understanding that feedback directly, you’re just crazy. You’re going to sell optimize.

So one thing that I do today when I go out and speak, I will put my email up as the last, I’ll put my email and my Twitter handle and I will say, ‘If you have any questions about our product, if you ever want to just talk about how [??] email me and I’ll get on the phone with you. And I do that all the time. It’s one of the biggest parts of my job. And as part of that, I was speaking in Boston. I had a lawyer come up to me afterwards and say “I was [??] and I like the idea of Avvo, but I’m not going to interact with you if you’re putting this scarlet letter on me that is misconduct,” and we had a very terse, very tense is a better way to put it, conversation, but Andrew the only way that I know how to do it is I believe in our product and I’m very transparent about what our objectives are in putting this information out there. And yes, in some instances, people aren’t going to like what we say, but that’s okay because we’re meeting a broader objective to get the consumer more information and better guidance.

Andrew: How does speaking in public help you when you’re building a community?

Mark: It is invaluable. First of all, as a CEO, but just as a product person, if you’re not a strong communicator, you’re not going to be able to build that funnel of objectives that communicates very simply “Here’s your objective and here’s how you get to it quickly on your site.” Also, people talk about the elevator pitch and what have you. If you can’t stand in front of a group of people whether it’s on a panel or in a keynote or even just impromptu, stand up at a table at some sort of entrepreneur luncheon. If you can’t stand up and talk about the differentiation in your product in fifteen seconds, you’re going to have a very tough time succeeding.

So, just from the skill set of communication which flows through your entire product marketing and business operations equation, you need to be able to do that. However, it’s almost a byproduct or a secondary value in that the evangelizing. No one understands your product better than you. No one feels your passion more than you do, and so to stand up there and talk about “Hey, here’s where I started and this is the need that I saw, and here’s how we’re solving it, in fact we’re nailing it.” To stand up and tell that story, people get misty-eyed in the audience, right? I mean, I still see entrepreneurs when I see them speak at big tech conferences and I’m like “Man, I love that, and I love that I’m hearing it from them,” and that’s going to leave a brand impression, that’s going to make me want to go visit the site because I have this incredibly passionate, committed CEO who’s up there with a vision, and they’re driving towards that vision.

Andrew: Now, I remember sitting in a conference in Vegas earlier this year, seeing a speaker talk to an audience of a couple hundred people and thinking to myself. This guy had to fly all the way to Vegas, leave work for at least a day (it sounds like it’s actually going to be three days), leave his family for that long, just to talk to 200 people.

Mark: Yeah.

Andrew: If you were to buy Google AdWords, 200 people wouldn’t cost him much more than 500 bucks to reach them. Doing an interview on Mixergy or even a smaller site or especially, even better, a bigger site than Mixergy would get him thousands of people who are watching him, and still this smart entrepreneur packed up his bags and flew to Vegas. Why does that make sense? Help me understand how reaching such a small audience could have more impact than I’m noticing from the sidelines?

A: Well, I do think you want to be sensitive to your return on your investment, and you’re right, there are some things I would much rather sit here on my computer in my office and do an interview that goes out to a large number of people. However, that passion element, and also human interaction is critical. The networking theme shows up here as well. I’ll give you a great example. I talked about these Avvo tours how we identified the mavens and built our tours around the mavens in key metro cities. One of them was Philadelphia for us. So we go out to Philadelphia and for whatever reason, I think we had 13 people in the audience. And it wasn’t only me, we had our head of marketing, we had our head of sales.

First of all, it’s just hard to have energy in front of that many people and it just feels like the whole thing’s a failure, right? You can hear the crickets coming from the back of the room. But, I love what I do and I believe that with those 13 people, I can actually change their professional lives. I had a lawyer who came up to me afterwards and he said, “You know, that’s one of the more inspiring conversations that I’ve had around online marketing and I love what you guys are doing. I’m going to sign up for AVO, but on top of that, you know, I’m very involved with a top lawyer list in the Hudson River Valley, which is just west of Philadelphia. To this day we power, and we just took on powering their doctor’s issue. We power the top lawyer’s issue for everything west of Philadelphia. Simply because I was willing, like you said, to pack my bags and get in front of 13 people. And I can’t stress enough, Andrew, this human element. Technology is great, but the human element cannot be substituted.

Andrew: I love that story. That’s not the kind of thing that could happen just by buying an ad-word, I don’t think.

Mark: No. And I find every conference I speak at, it turns into more speaking conferences. So it’s all the network, and it just builds and builds and builds.

Andrew: Finally, testimonials. What do you think of that, and how does that help?

Mark: I think that when you’re trying to build credibility for your marketplace, there are a lot of people who are going to be suspect. There are so many new products that are coming out, and you can pick up the phone and reach out to people and have a wow product, but for whatever reason it’s not taking hold. Maybe it’s because you’re a poor marketer.

To the extent that you can sell people that the fly wheel is actually spinning, we go back to the old Jim Collins metaphor, but it’s so real. Have you built a robust marketplace, or are you just faking it? To the extent that you’re able to have participants in that marketplace say, “Wow, this has changed my professional life”. The more jaded crowd is the supply-side, right? Because they have so many people trying to sell them things.

A perfect example is, in my outreach in talking to lawyers, I had a lawyer named Elizabeth Powell that had stopped answering questions. She was one of our top Q&A participants in Washington. I picked up the phone and I called her, I said, “Why aren’t you answering questions anymore?” She said, “Because I’ve gotten so much business from you. I’ve got 150 new divorce clients from you, I just don’t have time to keep up with all the work. I said, “Oh my gosh, Elizabeth, can I please use this as a testimonial?”

For years, I used this example when I was speaking in front of people to tell them the fly wheel’s not only spinning, it’s about to spin off it’s axle because it’s working so well. And then behind that, we have a testimonials page. Early on in our site, we actually had the testimonials in the C-column [??] of people saying, ‘This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The fly wheel is truly spinning.

Andrew: I’m looking for the testimonials page up on the website now. I’ve got it here in front of me. I don’t see the testimonials page in my quick search here, but one of the things that I love about the design, we could have spent a whole hour on just the design and user interaction aspect of your site, what I love is that everything that I’m looking for, everything I need in order to get my question answered is right there. Starting with that big, fat “Put your question here” box, and we’ll get you an answer. And what I’m wondering as I see that is, how do you get me an answer? How can you get a 97% response rate? I’ve seen these forums where you go in and you see a question and no answer. Just crickets. A desperate cry for attention from someone else in the forum, and again no answer. How do you get such great answers? How do you encourage lawyers to respond?

Mark: A couple of things. First of all, you need to understand your market and what they’re looking for in using the tool. For lawyers, and it’s slightly different for doctors, but for lawyers, converting these questions into leads, into contacts, that’s one thing they are hyper-focused on. So go back to the testimonial. Do we have the evidence that this turns into leads? If you can convince them on that, that’s half the equation. You’re focusing in on something that’s very critical, and that’s how do you make sure that they are deeply engaged? And part of that is the tools.

So you ask, “How do you continue the conversation with the consumer?” And we talked about the installed base, what have you. With the lawyers, making sure that they have a subscription tool and understanding that they’re really busy people, and they don’t have time to be coming back and checking the site regularly.

So when you come into Avvo as a lawyer or a doctor, you have a dashboard and all the questions that are in your practice area, it’s sitting there, but we’ll also send you an email and you can also batch it. So as the questions come in the practice areas and [??] that you select, we’ll get you an email, but we’ll also batch it if you don’t want to receive because we get so many questions. If you don’t want them coming in all day, but it’s interesting that lawyers actually want them right when they come in so that they can be the first answer in there.

Andrew: I see. Because you give them real incentives for answering. We’re not just talking about a pat on the back. We’re talking about real business from real clients if they answer and the more they do it, the more a reputation and the more clients they get.

Mark: Yeah. And look at those answers, by the way, Andrew. It’s not just their answer. It’s a big picture of them that links right into their Avvo profile with their contact information sitting right there. The quid pro quo is you answer the question and you get a free advertisement right there on Avvo.

Andrew: I see. All right. Quick recap. I want to do a quick plug and then I want to ask you a question that I don’t think the audience thought I was going to ask, but it’s important to. So here’s what I’ve got. Based on this interview, my notes, the pre-interview notes, what we got is if you want to build a community that’s as active as Avvo, here’s some of the things that you can do.

Develop a free ‘wow’ product that fills customer needs. Figure out your target audience and where they hang out. Go to the press and build credibility and an audience. Give the customer a reason and a way to engage with your product insight, we talked about that. Be aggressive in forming relationships with social media influencers. Get on the phone and just call, we talked about several examples of that. Get out and speak, and you, Mark, actually even got a partnership through speaking to a small group. And get testimonials, leverage the users who are already excited about your product, you told us the story about Elizabeth Powell.

I also wrote a couple of notes here about creating in-person events, gets [??] into the site, talked about creating a directory of the kinds of people who you want to engage in the site. That could help before even going after the interaction from them and finally, the incentive to participate. On Avvo, it’s really strong. So quick plug and then I’ll ask you that question that I hinted at. The plug is this. If you want to take this relationship to the next level, if you need more help as an entrepreneur, got to mixergy.com/premium. I know Mark is big on testimonials, so I’ll read you just one of the emails that I recently got. This one comes from Dylan Jones[SP] who’s a premium member. He says, “Andrew, I signed up for the courses which are all part of the premium membership. They’re all free if you’re a premium member. Man, I wish I had done this at the start. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb,” he says. “So I’ve just downloaded the course on customer acquisition blueprint and it’s given me so much focus that now I know what to do. Going to start “Getting Data and How We Apply These” and will share with you the results at certain points along the way.’

And then he talks about the other course that he took and that’s essentially the idea here. If there’s a problem you’re wrestling with, how to get customers, how to figure out who the right customers are, how to convert leads into customers, or any question, we have it there at mixergy.com/premium. If you’re already a premium member, it’s all there, part of your membership. Go get it. If you’re not a premium membership, I hope you sign up at mixergy.com/premium so you could get these courses. All right, Mark, there’s my plug for myself. Finally.

Mark: Good.

Andrew: Here’s the question. We had a bit of a rough point there in the early part of this interview. You said in this interview and I took a note on this, that you’re crazy not to get feedback. I’m going to ask you for feedback. You’re someone who I admire. Your success is one that I admire. Tell me what you were feeling at that point where there was a little bit of friction and how you felt that it could have been better for you. What could I have done?

Mark: Well, I think that the gentleman, I’m forgetting, is it Terry? No, Jason, that I spoken with originally.

Andrew: Jeremy. Yes.

Mark: Jeremy. There we go. He had a different flow that I think he envisioned. Then, so you come in cold and you have a flow that you envisioned and so what I was trying to build on from this base of what was the problem we were solving, and I think that was attractive to Jeremy, whereas I think you felt that it wasn’t cutting to the chase quick enough. So it left me a bit confused as to should we be following what Jeremy asked me to follow or what you would like me to follow right now, and so what I was suggesting at the top of this, ‘OK. Now I get a little bit better for you’re looking for, Andrew. Let’s just go back in. Let’s start from the top again, and we can give a little bit of background and drop very quickly into the more tactical stuff,’ and so you didn’t want to do that, which is fine but that’s where the dissonance was.

Andrew: All right, I think we do need to do a better job of letting guests know about what the expectation is. That’s a very helpful point for us. All right. If people want to connect with you, obviously I think the first place they should go is to avvo.com for the transcribers. That’s where they can ask questions, legal questions, medical questions. What else? What’s another way for them to connect with you?

Mark: Well, again, if anyone wants to connect with me personally or the way they can interact with the site?

Andrew: Let’s do both.

Mark: OK. So, just keep in mind, there are lots of things that you can do as far as doctors and lawyers go. You can come in and ask the questions, get great answers. You can also rate your doctors and lawyers. You can vote up and vote down certain content that you like or dislike within the site. And so, if you just spend the time going through and using it, as someone who really has a legal or health issue, you’ll see that we’re constantly there to have a conversation with you to better serve your legal and health needs.

For me personally, it’s Mark@Avvo. M-A-R-K at A-V-V-O.com. You can follow me on twitter, Mark_Britton is my handle. I’m also on Facebook. For everyone that’s listening, I’m always, just like I said, I’m happy to help if there’s something that I have a level of expertise that you think that we could help you guys out on, and it’s not competitive, I’m happy to talk about some of the things that we’ve done and continue this conversation.

Andrew: All right. And I hope the first thing they do is not ask for help but first send an email, or a tweet, or a Facebook message or whatever to just say thank you and I’ll be the first to do that and say Mark, thank you for doing this interview.

Mark: Yeah. Thanks for having me Andrew. It was great. Really well done.

Andrew: Thank you and thank you all for watching. Good-bye.

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