The 2 Brand Evangelists You Should Have In Your Company

Evangelism marketing can be a useful strategy for your marketing in 2016. But that depends on 2 things:

• What is your marketing strategy for 2016?
• What do you understand by “evangelism marketing”?

Actually, I already wrote about evangelism marketing and what an evangelist should do in your company, but today I want to talk to you about how I personally see the brand evangelist in a company.

There are 2 kinds of brand evangelists:

1. The brand evangelist who is working for the brand – the guy from inside the company (employee)
2. The brand evangelist for whom the brand is working for – the guy from outside the company (fan/client/customer)

After reading this article you’ll be able to figure out whether you have a brand evangelist in your company, if you need one and if you have a brand evangelist outside the company.

1. The brand evangelist inside your company

I see the brand evangelist as more than a chief evangelist or tech/software evangelist. If we look closer at the word and its significance, the “Evangelist” is the one who brings you the good news.

[Tweet “An evangelist is the one who brings you the good news from inside the company to the outside.”]

The difference between a chief evangelist and a brand evangelist

Let’s look at Guy Kawasaki. He is the godfather of evangelism marketing and he started this movement since the time he was working at Apple. Now he is the chief evangelist of Canva. But what exactly is Guy doing at Canva? He evangelized the world by bringing them news, updates and everything a person should know about Canva. Guy is one of the most well known people on social media, a great author and public speaker – but now he is doing it talking on behalf of Canva. He gets the updates from the Canva team and goes outside the company to share them with the people that follow him on social media, listen to him at events and read his articles.

On the other hand there is the brand evangelist who is doing a little more than the chief evangelist. He also has the responsibility of sharing the news with the world but he is more into the brand. His work is kind of a similar to the one of a brand manager combined with a community manager and also including some content marketing.

When I became the brand evangelist for Bannersnack I wanted to do more than a chief evangelist is doing. So I got more deeper into the banner editor and the brand of the banner maker. This is why I tried to managed the content marketing strategy and also take care of the company’s image that is projected outside the doors.

Maybe most of you guys will tell me that it’s only a matter of job description, but I think, to the other evangelists from other companies, it is more than a job or a daily to-do to check the bill.

Being an evangelist for a company is more than a job and this only depends on the one who is doing it.

2. The brand evangelist outside the company

This is the one that every company wants to have out there – a big fan who is telling everybody around them about the brand.

Before you create your brand evangelism plan, you must create your customer persona.

A good example I have in mind are Apple fan. And yes, I have a friend who is an Apple fan, too. Every time we meet and talk he will come up with something Apple is doing, has done or will do. He will talk about their marketing strategy, their product or their services. He stays updated on their website. He is the guy I call when I want to know something about iPhone, Mac or Apple Music.

And guess what, Apple doesn’t pay him to be the evangelist of their brand, but they have done such a great job in creating a love brand that you can see fans around the world loving and sharing the updates of this company.

I heard Seth Godin at an interview once, talking about how a brand should be, and he said

The brand should be tattoo worthy.

This is what Harley Davidson is doing with the brand. Being the greatest in their niche. Better than the other motorcycle brands.

Another example of a brand evangelist outside the company is me. Here in Romania a lot of marketing and social media people know me as the guy who started a project related to Instagram. How? I was the first to write about about Instagram (3 years ago) and I even organized an event about the Instagram Marketing Strategy. Then I launched a blog where I collected  national stats about the Instagram users and activity every month. Then I organized other projects that were related to the photo sharing app. And yes, only in Romania. Then I went to marketing conferences and talked about Instagram. Guess what? A lot of people thought that I worked for Instagram. Well my friends, let me tell you that I’m not working for Instagram. This is only a side project for me and the Instagram team didn’t know about this.

Conclusion

As Guy Kawasaki wrote on his book “Selling the Dream” about evangelism:

“Evangelism is the process of convincing people in your product or idea as much as you do. It means selling your dream by using fervor, zeal, guts, dream, and cunning. . . . Evangelism is the process of selling a dream”

It only depends on your company if you want to develop an evangelism program inside your brand and outside your brand.

But the mouth-to-mouth marketing is the second best marketing you can do, because the first one remains this – building a great product.

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