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

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Citizen Markters and Creating Customer Evangelists, popularized the term “customer evangelism.” The Seth Godin-edited New York Times bestseller The Big Moo featured them among 33 of the world’s smartest business thinkers. They live and work in Chicago.

Turn Buyers into Believers!

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

Authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba know how to take your company's best customers and build them into influential, loyal, and enthusiastic evangelists. In Creating Customer Evangelists, you will learn how to develop evangelism marketing strategies and programs that will create communities of influencers who can drive sales for your company.

From their research into the best practices of some of the most forward-thinking companies, 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 eight 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.

Creating Customer Evangelists explains how organizations as diverse as Southwest Airlines, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, The Dallas Mavericks, IBM, and others successfully built their customer base and created targeted marketing programs to involve their biggest fans. These programs have produced legions of unofficial salespeople and a cost-effective and powerful marketing force.

By deepening customer relationships, successful organizations create communities that generate grassroots support and value for their products and services. Creating Customer Evangelists focuses on this ultimate marketing approach. McConnell and Huba demonstrate how you can convert good customers into exceptional ones who willingly spread the word.

Business Reader Review

In the best book of the month, marketing consultants McConnell and Huba offer six practical tenets for turning customers into evangelists: gathering customer feedback; information sharing; building word-of-mouth networks; creating customer communities; offering samples; and, embracing causes. Over half of the book is devoted to chapter-length case studies, including Southwest Airlines, Krispy Kreme, IBM, etc.

	Foreword
	Acknowledgments
1	Customer Evangelism: A Manifesto	1
2	When Customers Believe	11
3	Customer Plus-Delta: Understanding the Love	21
4	Napsterize Your Knowledge: Give to Receive	35
5	Build the Buzz: Spreading the Word	41
6	Create Community: Bringing Customers Together	53
7	Bite-Size Chunks: From Sampling to Evangelism	63
8	Create a Cause: When Business Is Good	67
9	Hot Marketing Now: Krispy Kreme Doughnuts	79
10	The High-Flying Solutionman: Solution People	91
11	The History Lessons of O'Reilly's Wars: O'Reilly & Associates	109
12	The New Mavericks of Marketing: The Dallas Mavericks	123
13	A Bear Market for Retailing: Build-A-Bear Workshop	139
14	A Cause, Not Just an Airline: Southwest Airlines	155
15	The Billion-Dollar Cause: IBM	169
16	Customer Evangelism Workshop	179
	Appendixes	185
	Endnotes	197
	References	206
	Index	208