Notes from Nothing

I know you… You are an evangelist!?

How many of us are/have been evangelists in our life?
Ans: ALL OF US/ ALL THE TIME.

I think being an evangelist is what we marketers are all about. It is the very basis of our existence. Anybody who believes in any particular product/service IS called to be an evangelist. As a consumer, we evangelize the movies we watch, the books we read, the products & services we use — how much more important is it for us to be an evangelist of the company we work for. Taking a cue from the Wikipedia definition of evangelism, I believe

Customer Evangelism is the art of proclaiming of the goodness of your product/service to your prospect/customer or by extension any other form of preaching or proselytizing with the customer’s good at heart.

I believe evangelism is the perfect marriage of sales & marketing esp. since you don’t want to sell your product/service to your customer; you want to evangelize it and through them others. In my opinion the difference between sales and evangelism is HUGE because it moves the focus away from ME to YOU – the Customer, and therefore is a paradigm shift in sales & marketing itself.

The reason for my thought process on evangelism is a great post I read today on customer evangelism (via Church of the Customer Blog, via Word of Mouth Marketing Association “WOMMA” blog). Both the above-mentioned websites are great resources for all you wannabe customer evangelists or those of you who believe you are called to be an evangelist in your own current marketing job. Back to the post that started it all. Betsy Weber, the chief evangelist for software toolmaker TechSmith, writes on the 5 qualities for a company evanglist:

Here’s my translation …

1. Listen
2. Customer is the focus – Be Honest to them!
3. Convert your team first
4. Did I mention…LISTEN
 5. Got Passion?

(Read full article here: WOMMA Post by Betsy Weber)

For further coolness on customer evangelism, check out the Customer Evangelist Manifesto (via Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s site – Church of the Customer). Great stuff! Thanks, Ben.

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  1. Can you manage a community of users? « Marketing Nirvana

    […] As you may have read in my earlier posts, customer evangelism is practiced by every passionate user within an organization. And, I see the […]

  2. Joost Review | Third time’s a charm (List of channels available) « Marketing Nirvana by Mario Sundar

    […] I’ve proclaimed on numerous occasions, customer evangelism is the art of proclaiming of the goodness of a product to anyone you know with the customer’s […]

  3. Smarter conversations through the Gaping Void « Marketing Nirvana

    […] you may have read in my earlier posts, customer evangelism is practiced by every passionate user within an organization. And, the role of […]

  4. Best Wishes from “The Church” « Marketing Nirvana

    […] still remember, the first evangelism post on my blog that garnered widespread attention was my follow-up (June 06) to Betsy Weber’s “How-to: Becoming a Company Evangelist” (that I found […]

  5. Marketing Nirvāna — by Mario Sundar » I’m with Stupid 2.0!

    […] 2- Paying $10,000 to advertise on TechCrunch for a month. Noah’s probably right. $10,000 for a month, seems steep by any magazine’s standards. TechCrunch is inching towards a feed readership of 100,000. Comparatively a visitor and tourism guide with average circulation of 100,000 and combined circulation of 800,000 charge $6600 for a full page back cover. However, let’s not forget that TechCrunch may afford the opportunity to target your most coveted tech-savvy core audience and therefore commands a higher price. 4- Digg will save us. Noah’s right. Digg cannot save you, nor can TechCrunch, not even MySpace, if you have a terrible product. Viral Marketing, Community Marketing, and Customer Evangelism necessitates a killer product and if you don’t have that, I’d recommend focusing your resources on upgrading before further spending your ad dollars. […]

  6. mariosundar

    I agree, Jeremiah. It’s a tough job, made easy by our total belief in the product/service.

    Thanks for the links. I think Guy Kawasaki’s “The Art of Evangelism” is right-on: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_art_of_evan.html.
    -Mario

  7. Jeremiah Owyang

    Being an evangelist is a tough job, you have to convince others to believe in something they may not believe in already.

    I’ve found that through evangelism, you may or many not have followers –as a result, turn around frequently and look.

    http://jeremiahthewebprophet.blogspot.com/2006/01/difference-between-evangelist-and.html

  8. mariosundar

    Hi Jackie,

    I think “the Church” is evangelism-worthy! Keep up the great work!

    -Mario

  9. Jackie Huba

    Thanks for the evangelism of our work, Mario : )

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