Evangelize Your Customers
Published December 18, 2007

Photo by: iStockphoto

When you turn your biggest fans into customer evangelists, they'll reward you with positive word of mouth, brand loyalty and guaranteed referrals.

By: MATT ALDERTON

When they see Mr. Happy Crack, the mascot for St. Louis-based concrete repair franchise The Crack Team, customers can't help but talk. The concrete character's tongue-in-cheek slogan, "A dry crack is a happy crack," is a surefire conversation starter. When curious consumers hire The Crack Team, however, they get more than a funny line. They get excellent service from experienced professionals—and that really gets them talking.

"It amazes me how many people talk about what we do," says CEO Bob Kodner. "It's like Woody Allen says, 'Eighty percent of success is showing up.' If you not only show up, but you do what you're supposed to do, you come off like a superstar. People really do appreciate a level of attentiveness that very few companies provide."

Indeed, Kodner's company relies on attentiveness to breed brand loyalty. In addition to a goofy mascot and good service, its formula includes plenty of gratitude. The Crack Team regularly monitors the Internet for praise of its company, and when it finds folks who are saying good things about it—on blogs, on Angie's List or anywhere else where customers gather online—it says, "Thank you."

"What I will do personally is respond to customers and thank them for their nice words," Kodner says. The company follows Kodner's notes with T-shirts and the result is even happier customers who continue lauding the company, recommending it to friends and family, long after their own concrete job is complete. More than regular customers, these talkers are brand evangelists, and their endorsement is powerful, persuasive and, for companies large and small, absolutely priceless.

All About Evangelists

In The Tipping Point, his year 2000 tome about explosive pop culture trends, Malcolm Gladwell defines for American commerce "Connectors," sociable people who seem to know everyone who's anyone; "Mavens," who enjoy gathering and sharing information; and "Salesmen," subtly charismatic people who others tend to emulate. While everyone is a consumer, Gladwell argues, these three personalities are superconsumers who have a tendency to drive trends, behavior and information within their own social circles. In other words, when these people sneeze, everyone around them catches the cold.

"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics," Gladwell writes. "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."

In the modern-day marketplace, connectors, mavens and salesmen are collectively called "evangelists." Not unlike the evangelists who pray, those who purchase believe so fervently in something that they often feel compelled to preach to others on its behalf.

When they find a product, service or company that they love, evangelists "spread" it. For that reason, smart companies spend a great deal of time and energy finding, courting and encouraging them, according to Dr. Jeanne Hurlbert. A professor of sociology at Louisiana State University and head of Optinet Resources, a Baton Rouge, La.-based networking service for entrepreneurs, she suggests that reaching just one evangelist is equal to reaching dozens of average Joes.

"Everybody out there with few exceptions is embedded in a social network," Hurlbert says. "Most of us have networks that include several hundred people. If you can spread the word from your customer evangelist to even a portion of that network, then you've just spread the word not only among a whole group of new people, but from someone who has a high level of credibility with those individuals."

The result? An endorsement that's many times more powerful than your average advertisement.

Brand As Backbone

Alice Cunningham has been exciting customer evangelists for 30 years as the co-owner of Olympic Hot Tub Company in Seattle. For her, evangelism is all about making it easy for customers to buy, own and refer her products. Like Kodner of The Crack Team, her philosophy mandates having a good, reliable, service-driven brand.

"A customer evangelist is someone who's so wound up on your service and so enthusiastic that they just buttonhole the next 10 people they see and tell them about you," Cunningham says. "How do you tell who those people are? Well, you can't, which is why you have to give good service all the time."

More than good service, you must have good everything. A clean store. Innovative products. Competitive pricing. The whole package. "When you have the back end taken care of—when you know in your heart and soul that you absolutely deserve it—then you have the right to ask [your evangelists] for referrals," Cunningham says.

In other words, the backbone of successful evangelism is a successful brand. Your business must give its customers something worth talking about before it can expect them to turn on their virtual megaphone; it doesn't have to be the biggest guy on the block, but it should definitely be the best.

Strategies for Success

While the best evangelism is organic—growing naturally out of the power of a successful brand—small businesses can nonetheless employ several strategies in order to generate, harness and amplify customer enthusiasm. Here are five of the easiest and most effective:

• Talk to your customers. Minneapolis-based marketing consultant Kevin Stirtz, author of Marketing for Smart People, says that engaging evangelists is often as simple as listening to them. "Have real person-to-person conversations with as many customers as you can," he suggests. "That might mean inviting some to lunch. It might mean hosting get-togethers at your business. It might start with a survey and end with a phone call or a meeting. For others it might be virtual conversations using e-mail or Web 2.0 tools." The important thing is not how or where you let your customers talk, just that you let them be heard, as evangelists love nothing more than speaking their mind.
• Leverage your Web site. Perhaps the easiest place to find and engage evangelists is online, according to Kodner, who suggests that too few businesses actually use their Web sites to build brand loyalty. "You have to get the moths to the flame," he says, stressing that a well-done Web site is an awfully bright flame. "It's a commercial that's playing around the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week." On your Web site you can encourage customers to interact with your brand via e-mail, discussion boards and more. At the very least, Kodner suggests, you can publish customer testimonials, as consumers want very much to hear what other people like them are saying about your company.
• Involve your customers. If you really want to excite your evangelists, consider involving them in some aspect of your business. "You might get their help finding solutions to challenges you're facing," Stirtz says. "Or create communities for your customers to participate in." You might offer your most active evangelists an exclusive tour of your office or a newsletter with special coupons and behind-the-scenes information. You might even follow the example set by companies like Fiskars and create a formal "brand ambassador" program in which you actually arm customers with the tools—marketing collateral, blogs, etc.—they need to evangelize your business within their social networks.
• Reward referrals. Cunningham has found that thanking evangelists for their support—and rewarding them for it—can really motivate them. She has therefore created a formal referral program whereby both referred and referring customers receive discounts, coupons and rewards for spreading the word.
• Ask. Customers don't necessarily need rewards in order to generate referrals. Sometimes they just need reminders. "How do you let people know that you appreciate referrals?" Cunningham asks. "Well, you tell them, over and over again." If send out e-mails to your customers, include in them a giant "Forward to a Friend" button. If you invoice customers after giving them a service, remind them at the bottom of the invoice to tell their colleagues about their experience. When you answer the phones at the office, make it a habit to say, "Help us spread the word." If you ask, your customers will oblige.