Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype [Kindle Edition]

Jay Baer

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Book Description

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters



If you’re wondering how to make your products seem more exciting online, you’re asking the wrong question. You’re not competing for attention only against other similar products. You’re competing against your customers’ friends and family and viral videos and cute puppies. To win attention these days you must ask a different question: “How can we help?”



Jay Baer’s Youtility offers a new approach that cuts through the clut­ter: marketing that is truly, inherently useful. If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life.



Drawing from real examples of companies who are practicing Youtility as well as his experience helping more than seven hundred brands improve their marketing strategy, Baer provides a groundbreaking plan for using information and helpfulness to transform the relationship between companies and customers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Baer soundly, effectively and skillfully proves that gratitude and good will are powerful incentives to lure new customers and keep them coming back."

--SUCCESS Magazine

"Trust us, this is interesting stuff, written via personal account, case studies, and other expert opinions in a way that's logical and inspiring."

-- 800-CEO-READ

"Youtility is a true masterpiece. This is a book worth checking out by all business owners and marketers."

-- JOE PULIZZI founder, Content Marketing Institute

"Youtility, the New York Times best seller by Jay Baer is one of the best business books I've ever seen on the dynamics between service and marketing. The information will change the way you think about marketing forever."

-- Multi-Channel Magic

"Two of my favorite business books of all time are Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Al Ries and Jack Trout's Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. A third may be joining them, which is Jay Baer's Youtility."

-- Geoff Livingston, author of Marketing In the Round

“In today’s always-on, hyper-saturated marketplace, product messages no longer break through like they used to. Providing helpful information to customers does. In this important book, Baer calls the art of being deeply valued by your customers Youtility. I call it smart.”
—DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
 
“What does it actually mean to create ‘engaging’ content? This book delivers both a broader vision and a specific road map to creating content your customers will thank you for.”
—ANN HANDLEY chief content officer, MarketingProfs and coauthor of Content Rules
 
“Useful is the stuff you reach for when you really have a need—this book is the encyclopedia of useful!”
—JOHN JANTSCH author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine

About the Author

Jay Baer is a marketing keynote speaker, consultant, and digital marketing pioneer. He has consulted for more than 700 brands since 1994, including 30 of the FORTUNE 500. 
 

In addition to Youtility, he's co-author of the social business transformation book, The NOW Revolution. Baer runs the popular Convince & Convert blog, and is host of the weekly Social Pros podcast. 

Product Details

• File Size: 3536 KB
• Print Length: 241 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1591846668
• Publisher: Portfolio (June 27, 2013)
• Sold by: Penguin Group (USA) LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00B1FG7VE
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,383 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #17 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales > Consumer Behavior
  • #33 in Books > Computers & Technology > Internet & Web Culture > Blogging & Blogs
  • #56 in Books > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales > Consumer Behavior

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Value Never Goes Out of Style July 9, 2013

By Science Fiction and Marketing

Format:Hardcover

Two of my favorite business books of all time are Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People, and Al Ries and Jack Trout's Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. A third may be joining them, which is Jay Baer's Youtility.

Youtility focuses on the customer, and the need for marketing to help customers. I love this because it begins building value for the customer right out of the gate.

In the end brands promise customers something, and that customer has to value that promise and resulting experience enough to buy it. Some call that a value proposition or a positioning statement, but in the end, customers need to receive something.

Dale Carnegie's book, while somewhat dated after 80 years, was the sales bible for many organizations. It brought a relentless focus on the customer, and serving them. And Positioning was about architecting brands to communicate that service promise in an attractive way.

What Youtility skillfully brings to the table is a modern view of these two core marketing tenets. Baer addresses the modern information and content marketing environments, and provides analysis of the tactics. Combined with his timeless approach of creating value by being helpful, brands can't go wrong.

Helpfulness is not the only way to build a brand, but is one of the very best methods. Any company that takes this approach will find itself on a path towards long-term relationships. There can never be too much value in a purchase.

I hope you check out Youtility. It's destined to be a classic book from the marketing blogger corps, the first text of this stature I've come across in a couple of years.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical insights on how and why customer-centric marketing can create or increase demand for the given offering June 27, 2013

By Amazon Customer HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I cannot recall a prior time when customers had more control over the purchase/pass decision-making process than they do now. There are several reasons why. Here are three: they have more choices than ever before (including passing), they know more about products and services than ever before (especially via consumer reviews and social media), and so-called "customer loyalty" is earned and retained or lost one transaction at a time. The essence of marketing remains unchanged (i.e. create or increase demand for whatever is offered) but just about everything else has changed.

Although the term "youtility" is a tad cutesie for my literary palate, it does correctly stress two key concepts: customer-centrism, and, usefulness. According to Jay Baer, "Instead of marketing that's needed by companies, Youtility is marketing that's wanted by customers. Youtility is massively useful information, provided for free, that creates long-term trust and kinship between your company and your customers." As one sign of the times, Best Buy has done that by providing useful information that many people then use when making purchases online...from Amazon.

Baer examines three types of consumer awareness: Top-of-Mind ("an overripe banana tenuously clinging to relevancy"), Frame-of-Mind ("an apple, worthy of eating, but not enough to sustain you"), and Friend-of-Mine (Baer offers no metaphor so I will suggest a cook book). He identifies and discusses 20 companies that possess a Friend-of-Mine mindset and demonstrate Youtility in their customer relationships. Listed in alpha order, they include Angie's List, Big Popppa Smokers, Charmin (Sit or Squat), Clorox, Columbia Sportswear, Hilton Worldwide (@HiltonSuggests program), Holiday World, Life Technologies, McDonald's Canada, Phoenix Children's Hospital, Scott's Miracle-Gro Company, Syncapse, and Taxi Mike.

However different these organizations may be in most respects, all of them -- in my opinion -- seem committed to achieve most of these strategic objectives:

o Identify and understand (really understand) customer needs
o Embed those needs within marketing initiatives that respond to them
o Market (promote, better yet celebrate) marketing
o Embed a Youtility mindset at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise
o Sustain Youtility as an on-going process, a way of organizational life, not as a special project
o Use quantitative analytics to "keep score" both internally and externally

Baer explains how to achieve these objectives, providing a blueprint for each in Part Three. As several of his exemplars (notably Big Popppa Smokers and Taxi Max) clearly indicate, Youtility can be created and then sustained by almost any organization, whatever its size and nature may be. Business leaders who read this book should pay special attention to how quite different companies have become Youtility-driven.

As I concluded my first reading of this book, I was again reminded of Fred Reichheld's research on the importance of trust ("glue") in all of an organization's relationships with stakeholders, especially those with its employees and companies. It was Reichheld who devised the "Ultimate Question," one that obtains customer data of ultimate importance: "On a zero-to-ten scale, how likely is it that you would recommend us (or this product/service/brand) to a family member, friend or colleague?" As Reichheld explains, the phrasing of that question is "a shorthand wording of a more basic question, which is, [begin italics] Have we treated you right, in a manner that is worthy of your loyalty? [end italics]' The results calculate what Reichheld identifies as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and so shall I. But the question really wasn't [and isn't] the heart of things. After all, no company can expect to increase its growth or profitability merely by conducting surveys, however the question or questions might be phrased." A Youtility-driven company will have employees as well as customers giving it a high NPS. If you purchase the book from Amazon, it will cost you only $15.55 (hardbound edition) to learn just about everything Jay Baer has learned about how to create and then sustain a customer-centric, high-impact organization. How high would your company's NTS score be?

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check Reichheld's The Ultimate Question 2.0 (Revised and Expanded Edition): How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World as well as Joseph Michelli's The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Awesome Guide to Helpful Marketing May 17, 2014

By coolinsights

Format:Hardcover

Can businesses be helpful without getting paid? After all, they are created to make money by selling a product or a service to a customer.

Well, Jay Baer, author of "Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype", seems to think so. And if you read his book, you're likely to agree with him too.

In Jay's words, Youtility is useful marketing from the perspective of customers. It is "massively useful information, provided for free, that creates long-term trust and kinship between your company and your customers".

To achieve Youtility, one should consider three different facets:

1) Self-Serve Information - Customers prefer to help themselves to information prior to purchase rather than talk to a sales person. In fact, shoppers in 2011 need 10.4 pieces of information before making a purchase - a doubling of the 5.3 sources of information consulted in 2010 prior to buying something.

2) Radical Transparency - Answering customer questions in an open, comprehensive and detailed manner helps one to gain the hearts and minds of customers. The more you provide, the better. Companies with websites of 101 to 200 pages can generate two-and-a-half times more leads than those with 50 or less pages.

3) Real-Time Relevancy - With the "app-ification" of the world, customers crave real-time information. This can be served through mobile friendly content and apps, especially in Asia with some 2.9 billion mobile subscriptions (compared to 969 million in the Americas).

Once these three principles are considered, Jay introduces us to six blueprints for businesses to create Youtility. They are:

1) Identifying Customer Needs
Using various online and offline tools to determine what customers need to eliminate their pain points. These can be anything from search engine results, social sentiment analysis, web analytics, survey results, focus groups to behavioural studies.

2) Mapping Customer Needs to Useful Marketing
Discerning what the best channel and mode of delivering useful content would be. These should consider the time, place and form in which customers best prefer to consume such content, as well as the balance between singular and multiple platforms.

3) Marketing Your Marketing
To ensure that one's Youtility platform is findable, one should seek ways to increase its visibility. Traditional ways include promoting one's link on emails, websites, advertisements, and stores, as well as engaging one's employees to be advocate. If content is fire, social media is gasoline.

4) Insourcing Youtility
Usefulness should be a part of a company's DNA, and this involves including a wide variety of employees to assist in creating such content. These can be done either circumstantially (on a need-be basis), voluntarily, with assistance (training and coaching), or by mandate (where it becomes part of the job).

5) Making Youtility a Process, Not a Project
Considered a long-haul strategy, Youtility needs to be woven into the culture, policies and practices of the company. Doing so ensures that the firm is able to keep up with changing customer needs, shifts in technology and emerging superior ideas.

6) Keeping Score
Finally, one should develop a way to effectively measure how Youtility assists in driving business performance. Here, consumption metrics (eg downloads, views), advocacy and sharing metrics (shares, likes, retweets), lead-generation metrics (filling up an online form), and sales metrics come into play. Using a simple example, we're also taught how we can calculate the ROI of Youtility.

To solidify his assertions, Jay provides numerous wonderful stories of companies which have successfully embraced the tenets of Youtility. Perhaps the most memorable story came from Marcus Sheridan of River Pools and Spas who wrote the forward for the book. Sharing how he overcame grave financial challenges in his fiberglass swimming pool business, Marcus sought to answer all the possible questions which potential customers may have and detailed them all in his website. This allowed him to achieve a massive US$4.5 million in swimming pool sales in 2011 with just US$20,000 in advertising, compared to US$4 million in sales in 2007 with US$250,000 in advertising.

Written in a highly readable prose that you can't help nodding your head over, Youtility provides simple yet refreshing ideas in a world swarmed with marketing gurus instructing us to "change the world" and be awesome without an inkling of gritty reality. It is a highly recommended book for anybody keen to embrace the new age of marketing in the social age. Read more ›