Tech marketing has become far more complex than it used to be. In the past, it could be boiled down to marcom (marketing communications) and “sales engineers” who went out on calls with the salespeople to help new users. Now marketing in an enterprise company likely has its very own org chart, with titles that split out into evangelists, advocates, and influencers, and functions that split into social media, paid media, and earned media.
In the early years of now-legendary Apple Computer, the nearly as legendary venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki served as its “chief evangelist,” touting the virtues of the Macintosh computer. His job was to go forth into the world and speak to both developers and customers about this revolutionary new machine.
I doubt that Guy was the first technology evangelist, but he certainly wasn’t the last. Because much new technology in the early days was unfamiliar to lay people and businesses alike, getting customers into the “top of the funnel” involved explaining to people what computers actually did, and why they needed to buy them. Guy went to conferences and trade shows for about four years, extolling the virtues of the Mac. As an evangelist, he stimulated demand for the machine. Evangelists are almost always employed by a company that pays them to carry a brand message that is usually not technical.
Burrowing down to a more technical level are those folks more likely to be called “developer relations managers,” who go out into the developer community and persuade it to develop applications. These people are usually engineers, and are usually employed by the company.
Where things start to get murky are in the realm of advocates, who are fans of the company or brand, and influencers. Advocates are usually not employed by the company, but want to see the product be successful (either because they are power users or because they’ve built a business on services to the company’s customers). Value-added resellers fall into this category, as do members of product user groups. The advocates form a community of practice, and that community can be very engaged with the brand.
But advocates can also be people from the company who go out into the community and bring back information from customers that can be used to improve a product or suggest new products.
Dig down a little further and you come to the role of influencers, people who are well-regarded by the industry and are either hired by the company because it wants a bit of expert luster to rub off on its marketing efforts (as when Microsoft hired Ray Ozzie, or are outside the company and independent (Gartner or Forrester). The best influencer campaigns are aimed at people who can’t be hired, (like Ray Wang of Constellation, who is an enterprise consultant with a great reputation) but who are given enough information to lend their reputations to the company.
Evangelists, Advocates, Influencers: Who’s Who was originally published in Influence Marketing Council Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
