Evangelistic marketing – A social approach

We often attach the word evangelists with Christianity and rightly so, as Christianity defines the word most appropriately. As a Christian I have understood the word and its in-depth meaning in its simplest form.

Who is an evangelist?
An evangelist has two qualities: –

1. He is sure of his own faith (faith is stronger than plain believe). Believe is about understanding and accepting the fact but faith starts with believing and then following the believe. Christian faith is just not only knowing that Jesus is God but accepting Jesus Christ as God and your personal saviour along with following His commandments. His faith is never shaken even if the current circumstance proves it wrong. He persists with his faith.
2. He does everything to transfer his faith to others, as he is sure of it. He not only shares his faith with others but also transfers it.

Social space, nodes, networks and cables
Before starting with evangelistic marketing lets understand social space. I consider the whole targeted and untargeted segment as “social space”, each person as a “node” in the social space and relations the social networking. Now look at the social space, it looks cluttered with different color nodes.

Now zoom in and look carefully, you will see nodes connected to each other.

The surprising factor is that each node is connected to every other node of the social space directly or indirectly (directly if is at one hop distance otherwise indirect with n-hopping distance). Look at orkut (best social network so far) stats,

As I explained that each node is connected to other with a network of some type of relations (some strong some weak). I started calling it a social network cable.

Establishing Social Network cables
Now this needs serious attention. How to establish connection between two nodes? In order to establish a reliable connection you need approval by both the parties. If node A wants to establish connection with Node C then there are two ways to do it:-

• Way 1: Node A approaches Node C and explains the desire. If A convinces C then it can be established. It is a very costly operation in terms of social space.
• Way 2: Node A is connected to Node B and Node B is connected to Node C. The transitivity applies (node A just need to make Node B active with the theme). Then Node B will connect to Node C and introduce Node A. The acceptance probability is much higher in this case. Once A and C agrees, the cable is established.

Lets take a social node graph

Now look at blue node and the orange node. If blue node (may be a marketer or a company team as a whole) needs to reach the orange node (may be a probable consumer) there is no direct way. Either he needs to establish a new network cable in the social space or use the existing one. As I explained that creating a new network cable needs approval from both the parties and is an expensive social operation (just like making friendship directly). Now using the existing indirect connection for approvals is better as the acceptance chances are higher (friends introducing you to another friend).

What is evangelistic marketing?
Evangelistic marketing is about accepting your products yourself and then convincing other social nodes that it is good. It is not about pushing sales it is about laying the networks (for sales). The company that believes in evangelistic marketing should get its first bunch of customers (nodes) from its own known nodes (employees, partners e.t.c). In other words your marketers should be your customers first (Always allow a channel where your customers can communicate for required changes). Once the marketers become customers they will turn other nodes into customers and customers into marketers.

Evangelistic marketing is all about making nodes active with your theme and establishing the thematic social network. Also active nodes will create other active nodes (you can call it viral marketing). Web 2.0 is empowering evangelistic marketing.