Brand Evangelist

Brand evangelists are customers who believe in a brand's product or service, repeatedly purchase them and endorse the brand to other people as well. The repeated purchase is attributed to the quality of the products and the positive experience gained from their association with the brand.

It is one of the oldest forms of promotion. They explain and inspire people to be associated with a brand. These customers have been associated with the brands for a long time, and this fact brings credibility to their opinion. Their trust and loyalty towards a brand make it one of the effective forms of promotion.

Brand Evangelist is a customer who purchases the product repeatedly and brings in new customers to the business through word of mouth. This is a form of marketing strategy, and they may or may not get paid for the promotion. These customers use personal brands they built on social media platforms for promotion. They indirectly guarantee the standard of the brand's product after using it, and this fact brings credibility to their claims. People are attracted to this type of promotion as the brand evangelists, as they speak for a product or service, are putting their reputation at stake. If the promoted product or service is of zero or substandard quality it will have a negative impact on their reputation.

There are other reasons also that contribute to the success of the strategy. The promotion is often done in accordance with the customer's personality, and this attracts people. Similarly, when there is a loyal crowd of people following the brand, people are inevitably going to be attracted as people generally tend to follow the crowd. This contributes to the popularity of the strategy, which results in enthusiasm or skepticism from people, and either of the emotions compels people to try the product or service. If people are impressed, they can potentially become brand evangelists.

The first and foremost step to creating brand evangelists is to have a base of happy customers. If the brand has a loyal base of customers, the following steps can be imparted for establishing brand evangelist marketing strategy:

#1 - Build a community

Brands can build communities and let customers interact with each other to create an active set of customers. This may involve asking their opinions or taking a poll of features they love to see and even conducting rewarding contests. This builds anticipation and enthusiasm for people. They start to believe that the brand listens to them once changes are implemented. This boosts loyalty.

#2 - Interact

Building a positive, enthusiastic community requires efforts from the brand. This may involve 24*7 customer support and commenting on comments posted by consumers, sending thank you emails, listening to the consumers, and actively engaging them. This may also include personalized offers. Establishing a team for boosting such interactions will help the brands go a long way. 

#3 - Encourage

Employees can be a good starting point. Training employees to have positive interactions with customers helps them convert customers into brand evangelists. Incentives can help them feel good about working for the brand and this enthusiasm can get transferred to the customers.

Let us look into some examples to understand the concept better

Example #1 - A Hypothetical Example

Dan is a salaried employee. He is health conscious but skips breakfast due to lack of time. This deteriorated his health, and he decided to buy energy bars from a brand called XYZ to take along with fruits to make a healthy breakfast. It had high protein content, it was crunchy and tasty, and this led to him ordering them again and again. He no longer felt lethargic or had to skip breakfast and instantly became a fan of the product. He started recommending them and sharing it with his colleagues, too, when they complained of being sleepy. Surprisingly, this energized them, too, and they started getting the bars for themselves. Eventually the company brought to their snack counter so that their employees feel refreshed. This increased the sales of the XYZ brand. 

Dan's coworkers trusted him to try it, and they liked it and hence bought it for themselves. This resulted in a boost in sales.

Example #2 - Real-Life Example

A study was done to understand the methods of converting millennial consumers to brand evangelists (through social media micro-influencers). Millennials were chosen for the study as they are considered digital natives and are a major target for increasing sales. The study suggests a three-step process to build brand evangelism through social media micro-influencers

1. Selection of the right influencers
2. Create space for bringing out emotional responses through building engagement.
3. Turning the customers into evangelists for the brand.

Below are some of the reasons why evangelist customers are important:

• Reference of personal recommendation - People are often skeptical about new products. This may be due to various reasons, unfamiliarity with the brand name, doubts about the quality, affordability, return on investment etc. The evangelists here put forth their personal experiences and share the positives and negatives. Sometimes, they even compare it to other products to display the brand's superiority. It is also known that people trust their friends, family and acquaintances more than a random advertisement.
• Power of personal brand - Brand evangelism (use of brand evangelists for marketing a brand) taps into the power of the personal brand the evangelists built for themselves. When people see other people posting their true opinions out of experience, they tend to trust it more.
• Bigger impact - If the evangelists have a huge social media following, it is a bonus for the brand. It helps them effortlessly reach millions of people. When one follower becomes a loyal customer, they will automatically refer the brand's products to other people. This will result in a chain reaction and have bigger impacts that are great for the company.

Differences between both the concepts are given as follows

Concept

• Brand evangelists are loyal customers who talk about the brand, purchase them often and bring in new customers.
• Brand ambassadors may not be customers of the brand; they promote the brand's goods and services to bring awareness and boost sales.

Method of Promotion

• Brand evangelists often use word-of-mouth promotion and often on social media platforms. Their promotion does not involve well well-thought-out marketing plan or execution.
• Brand ambassadors become part of marketing campaigns, promote them using various marketing techniques and collaborate with the brand's marketing team.

Position

• Brand evangelists may not get paid and they do it often out of loyalty. They are not official representatives of the products and services. They just recommend their usage.
• Brand ambassadors are a paid position and they represent the brand in real life for promotion.