Creating an Army of Evangelists was number eight in a recent list of the top ten reasons to build a movement.  Now this army shouldn’t be packing guns and these evangelists don’t need to be packing bibles (unless of course it is a Christian movement).  So what is an army of evangelists and what exactly do they do?

Movement Evangelists Defined

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba popularized the term customer evangelist in their aptly named book, Creating Customer Evangelists.  Customer evangelists are customers who are so blown away by their experience with your product or service that they pass the word about your company on to others.  Properly cultivated, they can become an invaluable word of mouth marketing tool.

Not convinced this is feasible for you?  Great on paper but not a realistic dream?  McConnell and Huba say that all the proof needed is right there in your mirror.

You are an evangelist. You tell others what movie to see, which computer to purchase, what restaurant to visit, which dentist you prefer, which cell phone to buy, which books to read, which clubs to join. Your recommendations are sincere. Passionate, perhaps. Perhaps you did not realize that you are an evangelist, a bringer of glad tidings, but your sphere of influence does. It is made up of friends, family, colleagues and professional communities.

The concept of a movement evangelist is very similar.  It is the people who are so excited about your Big Idea and the positive change you offer that they voluntarily tell others about your movement, your services, or your products.  Powerful movements cultivate loud Evangelists, and these Evangelists will recruit more and more people to your movement.

Cultivating Movement Evangelists

The trick is getting — and keeping — those initial movement evangelists.  If you have already committed to building a movement rather than running a traditional marketing campaign, the steps involved will come much more naturally.  In other words, the mindset of movement building is predisposed to cultivating and retaining evangelists.

Big Idea. The starting point for building a movement and for recruiting evangelists is to have an identity that is easy to understand, remarkable, appeals to your audience’s passions, and offers positive change.  In other words, you need the right Big Idea.  For more information on crafting and tweaking your Big Idea, check out some articles in our movement planning section.

Create a Buzz. Building the buzz is so important that McConnell and Huba devoted a full chapter to it.  This is an incremental process and each new “piece of buzz” should be leveraged to draw more attention to the next.  Don’t simply put up a great new video on YouTube.  Put up a great new video that directs people back to your website.  Then publicize that video in your newsletter.  Next, let the local paper know that your movement is getting national attention through a new video.  Then you put the newspaper’s article up on your website and publicize it in your newsletter. And so on.  Buzz is exciting, contagious, and a great way to attract movement evangelists.  Always build it.

Make it easy for your evangelists. The more exciting your movement seems, the more your audience is going to want to talk about it.  So make this an easy task for them.  That could mean an easy to remember web address, and extra pamphlet to give to a friend, or a widget they can put on their Facebook or MySpace profile.  Netflix gives you special referral coupons to pass on to family members.  The point is that you need to make it as easy as possible for your newly minted evangelists to pass your word along.

Create a community. This is another step that received a full chapter in McConnell’s and Huba’s book.  As humans we are always seeking community and connections.  Providing that will give your members a much stronger personal identification with your movement.  This is a significant added value, over and above accomplishing your Big Idea, and is a sure fire way to cultivated highly dedicated evangelists.

Have a dialogue (and take it seriously). As a reminder, a dialogue is a two way street.  You need to provide the members of your movement with regular updates, but that’s not all.  You also need to solicit their ideas and opinions.  What do they like about the way that things are going?  What don’t they like?  What would they like to see changed?  How would they like to be involved in making that change?  By making people part of the movement you deepen their identification and thereby increase the chance they will tell others about it.  (And knowing where your movement is succeeding and where it needs to improve doesn’t hurt either!)

There are many other, individualized steps that have worked wonders for various movements.  Please help us all out by adding some examples in the comments below.