What is a customer evangelist and why is that important to you as a builder?
Jon King, MIRM

Jon King is the Creative Director of Power Marketing & Advertising. Reach him at jking@power-marketing.com

If you can create a customer that is so absolutely overjoyed with their buying experience to the point that they must spread the word, then you have created a customer evangelist. In recent years many marketing pros have seen the potential of using these “satisfied believers” as a marketing tool to grow their customer base.

The following are four reasons why the evangelistic customer approach is important to you.

• It’s cheap. Creating a customer evangelist generally costs you nothing.
• It’s effective. If you sit back and think about your last big-item purchase what was the biggest influence? It was probably a friend or word-of-mouth that led you to buy that item verses some flashy advertisement.
• It’s fun. This is a group of people that love your product. Of course they’re not going to be hard to work with.
• It’ll drive your competitors crazy. Once the buzz has started it will be harder for them to compete with what you’ve already started.

So how can you create a customer evangelist? From the book “Creating Customer Evangelists” by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, the following tenets, or rules of thumb have been taken from the practices of some of the most forward-thinking companies. Try to employ some these following thoughts:

• Customer plus-delta: Continuously gather customer feedback. Listen to your customers. This is one of the most important elements to create a loyal fan base. If you don’t know what your customers are saying about you, then how can you capitalize on the good things they may be saying. My suggestion is to constantly get feedback from your customers and make sure you use your findings to either promote your company, or if you have to, change how your operate.

• Napsterize knowledge: Make it a point to share knowledge freely. Based on the Napster business model, companies have found that when they share their business processes with customers and partners there is an increase in the perceived and actual value of their product.

• Build the buzz: Expertly build word-of-mouth networks. Buzz helps people discover your business faster than traditional marketing techniques, and also makes selling your product easier because customers know more about your company when they visit.

• Create Community: Encourage communities of customers to meet and share. By creating social gatherings for your customers, both you and your customers will benefit. They benefit from congregating with like-minded people, and will get advice for buying other products and support for things they’ve already bought. The company benefits by gaining valuable customer feedback and by increasing the loyalty of a satisfied customer.

• Make bite-size chunks: Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite. If possible offer samples of your work or product to give customers an idea of your quality workmanship.

One of the best examples of a company that has used the above model to create customer evangelists is Macintosh Computers. It was first launched in 1984, and soon thereafter hundreds of user groups sprang up around the world. From these initial small user groups a culture of sharing ideas and products arose amongst the customer base, and soon a small army of loyal “Mac lovers” arose. (I must admit, as a graphic designer, I’m of one of these loyal customers even though I didn’t use my first Mac until 1991). Macintosh admits that they didn’t do this on purpose. They didn’t follow the process so much as create it along the way.

Taking all this into account, how can you capitalize on some of these processes and create customer evangelists? To start, why not try getting rid of stock photography on your web and paying for really good shots of actual satisfied customers? Better yet, feature them on your webs main page or in your advertisements. There is no better advertising than happy satisfied customers. Also, encourage customer feedback, and provide clear and easy ways to gain this feedback by possibly adding an easy-to-find contact form on your web devoted to their thoughts. Finally, remember that the key to creating customer evangelists is creating community. Make sure you can bring your buyers together in some way so that they can share their experience with others that have enjoyed your product.

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