Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force (Unabridged)

When customers are truly thrilled about their experience with your product or service, they can become outspoken "evangelists" for your company. This group of satisfied believers can be converted into a potent marketing force to grow your universe of customers.

Authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba know how to take your company's best customers and build them into influential, loyal, and enthusiastic evangelists. The year-long research project that led to Creating Customer Evangelists outlines the framework for developing evangelism marketing strategies and programs. The ultimate goal is to create communities of influencers who drive sales or membership for your company or organization.

From their research into the best practices of some of the most forward-thinking companies with legions of evangelists who spread the word, McConnell and Huba outline and explain the six basic tenets of creating customer evangelists:

• Customer plus-delta: Continuously gather customer feedback.
• Napsterize knowledge: Make it a point to share knowledge freely.
• Build the buzz: Expertly build word-of-mouth networks.
• Create community: Encourage communities of customers to meet and share.
• Make bite-size chunks: Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite.
• Create a cause: Focus on making the world, or your industry, better.

McConnell and Huba profile highly successful companies to illustrate these tenets and prove how solid customer relationships build and sustain companies through good and rocky times. These in-depth company profiles provide real-life examples of evangelism marketing at work, including the opportunities and pitfalls of specific campaigns.

The book is intended for marketing managers and directors, entrepreneurs, and customer champions inside companies large and small. It's also intended for students and professors who require case studies for their research.<...