Product Evangelist: These Are the Champions

You know that person who can walk into a meeting room and make everyone believe in an idea — even if it’s still half-baked? Every product team has (or needs) a product evangelist: someone who sees the product vision so clearly, it becomes contagious.

That’s where product evangelism comes in. Not as some extra role within the product team structure — but as a real function. Sometimes it’s the product manager who is the product evangelist. Sometimes it’s the product owner. And sometimes…no one’s doing it at all. Here’s how you avoid that.

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What Is a Product Evangelist?

If you’ve ever worked on a product that was genuinely good — but struggled to get traction inside or outside the company — there’s a good chance you needed a product evangelist.

A product evangelist is the person who tells your product vision and product strategy in a way that gets people to lean in. They’re connecting the dots between what the product does and why it matters. They do this with product stakeholders, cross-functional teams, customers, partners, and often, the customers.

So is it a role? A skillset? A responsibility? The answer is: it can be all three.

Let’s break that down.

Product evangelism can be a job description

Some companies have a dedicated Product Evangelist or Developer Advocate — especially when they’re selling to technical audiences. These are usually senior professionals with deep product knowledge, excellent storytelling skills, and a strong presence in their industry. Think Heads of Product, Directors of Product, Senior Product Managers, or even Growth Product Managers.

They typically write thought leadership pieces, speak at conferences, and work closely with product marketing, sales, and product design teams.

This kind of role is common in:

• API-first companies and developer platforms: These companies often need to build trust and adoption among technical users (developers, engineers, architects). Traditional marketing doesn’t always work here.

• Open-source businesses: They rely on community adoption and contributions, which means someone needs to constantly advocate for the project, explain its use cases, and represent it publicly.

• Tooling or infrastructure products that require community building: Products that serve backend teams or require deeper integration—like CI/CD tools, infrastructure-as-code platforms, or observability stacks—often depend on strong technical trust.

Product evangelism can be a mindset or a responsibility

Even without a formal title of Product Evangelist, someone on the product team often ends up playing this role. It might be the product manager, the product owner, the product marketing manager, or the founder. What matters is that someone steps up to champion the product in a way that builds belief, alignment, and momentum.

This kind of evangelism looks like:

• Presenting the product vision clearly to execs and stakeholders

• Rallying engineering and design around upcoming initiatives

• Helping Product-led Sales or CS teams deeply understand new features

• Representing the product in communities or online channels

Think of Product Evangelism in business like this

Imagine you’re at a startup building an internal product analytics tool. 

You’ve got a sharp team, solid data pipelines, and a clean UI. But product adoption is slow — other departments keep defaulting to their spreadsheets. The product isn’t the problem. The problem is no one’s out there showing how it solves real pain. 

No one’s helping people see why it’s worth switching. That’s the gap a product evangelist fills.

They make the value visible. They connect the technical work to the human impact. In a product-led company, that connection can’t be optional.

To get a better idea of what motivates product evangelists, check out this webinar from John Cutler, Product Evangelist at  Amplitude:

Key Characteristics of a Great Product Evangelist

Not every product expert makes a great evangelist. The role calls for a unique mix of communication, empathy, and strategic thinking. Whether formal or informal, effective product evangelists tend to share these traits:

• Deep product understanding
  They know the product’s features, edge cases, and roadmap. More importantly, they understand its purpose and real-world impact. They might use a high-fidelity prototype to demonstrate functionality and generate enthusiasm before the product launch.

• Clear and confident communication
  They explain complex ideas in simple terms and tailor messages for different audiences without relying on buzzwords to make their point.

• Empathy for users and teams
  They listen closely, pick up on unspoken friction, and reflect those insights back into product development process and storytelling.

• High credibility and trust
  They don’t hype. They advocate with honesty, earning trust by being transparent about what the product can and can’t do.

• Natural storytelling instinct
  They frame features around outcomes and paint vivid pictures of how the product fits into people’s lives or workflows.

• Strong cross-functional instincts
  They know how to work with engineering, design, marketing, sales, and leadership and adapt their language and priorities to each.

• Passion for the mission
  They genuinely believe in what the product stands for. That belief comes through in every conversation, demo, and internal meeting.

• Bias toward action
  They don’t wait for the perfect moment to evangelize. They find everyday moments to share wins, explain context, and build alignment.

Who Should Be the Product Evangelist on Your Team?

Realistically, most companies don’t have the luxury of hiring a dedicated Product Evangelist, especially early-stage startups or lean product teams. In most cases, this role often lives inside someone’s existing responsibilities.

But here’s the thing: someone still needs to do it. Otherwise, your product’s value may never fully land. So, who should own it?

Start by looking at the team’s structure and priorities

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The right person to take on product evangelism depends on:

• How technical or complex the product is

• Who the primary users or buyers are

• How visible or vocal your team is externally (brand awareness)

• Whether you have support from product marketing, sales enablement, or DevRel

How it usually pans out in different product teams

In startups or early-stage teams:
The product manager or founder typically owns evangelism by default. They know the product inside and out and are often closest to users. Their job is to paint the product vision, rally internal teams, and speak about the product in a way that builds belief —  especially during product launches, investor updates, or early sales conversations.

In scaling product-led orgs:
This responsibility might be shared. The product manager owns internal evangelism (aligning engineering, design, and cross-functional teams), while product marketing takes the lead externally. Essentially, they translate product features into market-facing narratives, content, and product marketing campaigns.

In developer-first or technical companies:
A Developer Advocate or Technical Evangelist may take on this role full-time. They're usually part of DevRel or product marketing, and their job is to represent the product at conferences, in communities, and across content channels. They act as a trusted bridge between engineering and users.

In enterprise settings with layered org charts:
Sometimes, evangelism falls through the cracks. Product managers might be too busy refining the product backlog, while product marketing is stretched across multiple initiatives. In these cases, a strong Product Lead, Group PM, or even Head of Product should delegate and clarify who’s responsible for telling the story — both internally and externally.

A practical way to decide who owns product evangelism

If you’re unsure who should own product evangelism on your team, ask this simple question:

Who is closest to the product’s value and has the trust of both internal and external stakeholders?

That’s often your evangelist, whether or not it says so on their LinkedIn. From our experience, this decision is usually pretty intuitive for leaders across Agile organizations. 

In most cases, the right person to own product evangelism is the one who immediately comes to mind for the group of product leaders. 

If there’s hesitation, it’s usually not about their visibility or knowledge. It’s about whether they can move the needle on product culture, team effectiveness, and organizational health. When those qualities are in doubt, that’s your signal to rethink who’s best positioned to carry the message forward.

How to Do Product Evangelism Effectively

Product evangelism isn’t about being loud. It’s about being clear. It’s the art of making your product’s value obvious to everyone.Done right, it builds trust, drives product adoption, and strengthens product culture across the company. Here’s how to approach it effectively.

Know the product better than the pitch

You can’t evangelize something you don’t understand. The best evangelists speak from firsthand knowledge. That means:

• Using the product regularly

• Understanding its limitations as well as its strengths

• Knowing the product roadmap and the strategy that informs it

• Speaking confidently about real user problems and how the product solves them

Here’s a real-world evangelism example: Atlassian’s product leaders often write and speak publicly about their tools. If you go visit their profiles on LinkedIn, you’ll see they don’t just discuss what their tools do for customers, but also how the evangelists use them internally. That credibility matters.

Build user stories, not feature lists

Evangelism is a story about what matters. Focus on the bigger picture:

• What’s changing in your users’ world?

• What’s frustrating them right now?

• Where does your product show up to help?

Translate this into internal presentations, external talks, product demos, blog posts, or even casual team updates. The key is making the product feel real and relevant.

Here’s an evangelism example: When Notion launched its new databases, the team didn’t just show features. They walked through creator workflows, AI use cases, and small moments that made people think “I need that.”

Evangelize internally first

The tip Ashok Bania, SVP of Product at Soundcloud, shared on The Product Podcast, aligns well with what we advise for Product Evangelists:

“Stay deeply connected to your product teams. Not just what they’re building, but why they’re building it, and what’s standing in their way.”

If your own product team isn’t excited, no one else will be. Evangelism starts with internal alignment:

• Make sure sales, support, and marketing understand the “why” behind a feature

• Keep design and engineering connected to user feedback loops and success stories

• Share wins, small and large, that reinforce the product vision

This keeps product culture strong and creates natural advocates across the company.

Pick the right channels for your audience

Product evangelism looks different depending on your audience. A product update on Slack might work for your CS team, but not for your wider community. Choose wisely:

• Internal: Slack, Notion, company all-hands, weekly demos

• External: Blog posts, webinars, podcasts, product community forums, live streams

Be where your audience already is and meet them with content they’ll actually consume.

Don’t evangelize blindly, listen 

Great evangelists don’t just speak; they listen. They notice friction points, confusion, and unmet needs and use those insights to guide product messaging and even product decisions.

Stay close to:

• User feedback loops (support tickets, interviews, social mentions)

• Internal concerns or confusion

• Moments where the product’s value isn’t landing

Then respond to those gaps with clarity.

Make Product Evangelism Work for Your Product

You can have the smartest engineers, the cleanest roadmap, and the most feature-rich product, but if no one champions it, your impact will always fall short.

Product evangelists inspire confidence, rally teams, and build momentum.

Here’s the most important part: it doesn’t have to be someone with the title. It just has to be someone who cares deeply, understands the product to a tee, and knows how to bring others along for the ride.

So if you’re leading a product team — or you’re part of one — ask yourself: who’s the evangelist today? If no one comes to mind, it might just be your cue to step up. 

Remember, regardless of whether you choose a person, someone always has to tell the story.

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