Evangelists changing the way companies market themselves

Let the word go out from this day forth that I love and highly recommend the XYZ digital dongle widget. I recommend to all true believers that you all go out and buy it because it's going to change your lives. All say Amen.

"Cconsumer evangelists", or influencers, aim to persuade people to adopt a certain set of beliefs, so consumer evangelists can push buyers, through their belief in a product or service, to buy or adopt it.

Evangelism marketing has been described as an advanced form of word-of-mouth marketing. The way it works is that firms develop customers and specialists in their particular field who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely attempt to persuade people to buy it. Note: they don't simply like a product, they love it and almost seem to believe that life cannot go on without it. The customers essentially become voluntary advocates on behalf of the company who spread awareness.

Evangelism marketers make their recommendations and in effect recruit new customers based on an authentic belief in the product, and not because they receive any form of compensation. The evangelist sees his role as providing benefit to people by providing a neutral, but positive, opinion of the product. He is not paid by the firm or associated with it, and as a result their beliefs are viewed as being credible and trustworthy when members of the public are searching for information regarding a certain issue or problem. Because they are independent and impartial, evangelists are frequently able to bring about widespread influence in certain areas of business.

And in the era of social networks with easy inter-communication the views of evangelists are easy to find. Through the use of Facebook's 'Likes' or Twitter's 're-tweet', surfers are able to boost readership of evangelist's comments instantly.

How do evangelists go about converting people? A quick look at the characteristics of the blogs and other articles they create show that their work is similar to that of journalists and marketing communications professionals. They are essentially communicators and connectors. And they are also defenders of the product when criticism arises. Unlike customer services representatives, however, evangelists will not make attempts to hide the deficiencies. They will discuss them and be totally open about them.

1. The first rule is to make the information simple and easy to understand. In an era of information overload, consumers don't have time to waste. They want to know what the product or service is.
2. Rule number two is how exactly it improves consumers' lives.
3. What solution or value does it provide is the third rule.
4. Fourthly, evangelists, as with their religious counterparts who regale audiences with the ways of the Lord, there must be lots of stories. Note: no exaggerations or miracle tales that might be hard for some to swallow. Simply stories of how people derive real benefit from using the product.
5. Rule five: a monotonous, purely details-oriented article is about as interesting as an instruction manual. And just like the instruction manuals we have all received with every electronic product we have ever bought, it will stay untouched, unopened and unread. So, evangelists typically aim to make it sexy. They use language that causes an emotional reaction. Does it captivate, is it compelling? There's a fine line between making text strong and keeping it believable, so evangelists aim for the latter rather than the former.

And, because communication is an ongoing, never-ending process, so evangelists are continuously updating material. The moment they stop is the moment the product's competitors pass them by.

Perhaps the perfect example of consumer evangelism relates to the range of Apple products, and iPads in particular. Ironically, Apple does not have to spend vast amounts of money advertising iPads because the world is continuously talking about them. On any particular day, there are articles relating to iPads, or even Apple's stock price. It's good to be associated with Apple because the company will bring you publicity. And so a little-known financial analyst from a small company achieved global coverage by being the first to forecast the company's stock would hit $1,000 in the coming years from around $600 per share now.

Indeed, so strong is the Apple brand that even news that for other companies would be a public relations disaster bounces off Apple and has little effect. The New York Times ran a front page investigative piece on January 26 under the headline "In China, Human Costs are Built into an iPad" detailing how an Apple supplier in China was making employees work more than the legal number of hours. And the outcome? It appears that people have simply accepted that iPads will cost more in the future because the workers will have to receive higher wages.

Praise the Lord.