Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype

It's time we retire "content marketing" as a buzzword because it does not help marketers understand what the heck they should be really doing on the internet to reach their business goals. When you start selling "content marketing", you get "content" as a result. Lots of it. Most of it is horrendous. We're living in the world of abundant, low quality content. We wanted companies to create content, we've got content. Be careful what you wish for. "Youtility" to the rescue! It is the next logical step on the evolutionary ladder of the modern internet marketing because it tells you exactly - and spares no useful, real life examples - WHAT and HOW you should be doing today (2013) to attract customers. "Content marketing" emphasizes the form, while "Youtility" emphasizes the desired end result (a marketing so useful and life enhancing people would pay you for it, but you're giving it away for free). Youtility is the most simple content marketing strategy I've ever heard of because it consists of only one rule: Find out what information your customers NEED so that they could make better decisions, and then give it to them CONSISTENTLY in the FORM they most care for. Youtility first tells you WHY you should engage in USEFUL MARKETING (because market conditions have changed: your customers are in charge now and they do now want to be advertised at). The book then goes to great lengths to give you practical examples of companies of all sizes who made themselves useful to their potential customers without expecting instant results. Smart marketers publish useful information in various forms (articles, videos, apps, real-time tweets...), hoping that by doing so consistently, that the customer will choose them over their competitor when the time comes to open the wallet. The future of internet marketing is to outteach, not to outspend your competitors. The bad news is that youtility marketing is not easy because your rewards are not in your immediate future. The (very) good news is that almost nobody is practicing youtility marketing, which means we all have the chance to "win the information war" (better today than tomorrow, better tomorrow than never). The book lacks in-depth strategy about creating, developing, maintaining and enhancing your youtility marketing, but it gives you enough ammo and food for thought to start brainstorming about the future of your company's internet marketing. No matter whether you're in B2B or B2C, the book tells you what helpful questions you should be asking yourself, where to find out what your customers really need from you, and expands your mind into territories you might have not considered before. From now on - and until the market conditions change again - I will be teaching all my clients about "Youtility" principles.

This is a great book for those who are discovering what it means to be a marketer or business owner today. I would highly recommend it for someone in marketing for small to medium sized businesses as well as small business owners. I enjoyed the book but as someone who works for a large firm, it was informative but not quite as applicable.

Jay Baer covers some basic concepts brought on by the pervasiveness of the web and customers’ changing habits. This may be old news to many consumer-based marketers, but this is ground-breaking stuff for the industrial marketer. Industrial owners and marketers instinctively understand the power is shifting from sales hype to something quite different on the web. Jay’s book does a great job of exploring inbound marketing and why the industrial marketer must pay attention to this book & create helpful content to generate leads from his digital marketing efforts. Although there are no specific examples an industrial marketer can relate to in Youtility, Baer gives a diverse set of examples that could be easily extended to the industrial market. Jay’s concepts can have even more dramatic results for the industrial marketer because of the low content saturation rate for such products as “Limitorque linear actuator repair” or “custom hydraulic manifolds”...etc,etc. Want to get a leg up your competitors, who probably have not even heard of inbound marketing? Get Jay’s book and change your mindset about industrial sales & marketing. From "Tom Repp" at [...]

Don’t let its age fool you – this book is perhaps more relevant now than it was a decade ago when it was published. Unlike many marketing materials, which tell you how you can (and should) sell your products or promote your brand, this book focuses on the why: and that is, to help people, a concept he calls “youtility.” While some of the examples may seem dated, his theories, concepts and ideas are still powerfully relevant to today’s marketers, content creators and aspiring creators. The author encourages marketers to ask, “how can I help?” and focus on creating reliable, free sources of information for consumers on their terms. He addresses how companies should not bombard consumers with products in the hopes of securing a one-time purchase. Instead, he advocates that companies build a lasting relationship based on trust, honesty, timeliness of information and necessity. The author provides many examples of how companies, both large and small, have used this kind of youtility to not only reach customers, but to genuinely connect and build relationships with them. While he doesn’t tell you exactly how to do this for your company, he does give you examples, principles and practices you can start implementing to reframe your marketing strategy. My only critiques would be that some of the content or examples can seem a bit repetitive or out of date. However, the concepts he is reiterating are timeless, and the multiple ways of examining them provide readers with several ideas for how they can implement the practices in their own businesses or organizations. I was personally inspired by his concepts to create a small blog for my employer, which has generated significant traffic for the website and created a referenceable information pool I can direct customers to and continually add new questions and content to. Overall, this book is incredibly informative for the marketer and creator alike. His concepts are easily understandable and the provided examples provide a great framework for how you can implement youtility into your business, whatever the size. I highly recommend this book!

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He definitely makes some good points and provides some useful info in here. But... it's kind of thin. Uses a lot of words to say things that could've been formulated WAY more concisely. Kind of a boring writing style in many spots as well. It's not a bad book by any means, and I definitely wouldn't urge you to not read it. Just don't expect to be BLOWN AWAY by what you read here. It's just not that profound of a marketing / business book.

Jay Baer’s Youtility is arguably the greatest contribution to the field of social media marketing since 2012. As an experienced marketer, he demonstrates how friend-of-mine marketing is reshaping our approach to traditional top-of-mind (AFLAC!!) and frame-of-mind marketing (lead nurturing) mindsets where readers can now understand the power of real-time marketing and apps. He also puts some real meat around the bones of topics like content relevancy and usefulness. What keeps this book from being number one on the list is the scope of its contribution to an entire MBA curriculum. The book was likely aimed at practitioners needing interpretations of how consumers work in the world of SoLoMo (social, local, mobile) context marketing. The book, in my opinion, qualifies academically as a supplementary reading for undergraduate and MBA level courses. The recommendation is based on the following: 1) As one of the most knowledgeable and current experts in the field of social content marketing, Jay builds a convincing argument that success in a social era is more about being “useful” than being “amazing.” 2) His friend-of-mine approach to marketing is backed by numerous large and small brand examples of apps that help us in real-time decision making. The spread of examples applied to his concept of “Youtility” build a case for “sideways marketing” (widening the funnel by solving related problems without being opportunistic) that challenges typical sales funnel approaches to content marketing. 3) This fresh approach to real-time problem solving is now being widely adopted but not well understood or convincing prior to Jay’s book release. Youtility demonstrates very well how branded content used in decision making apps offer the best hope for audience connection while widening the funnel in the process. 4) Jay uses real life experiences in his travel life to explain many points. The apps used to demonstrate his “Youtility” concept (e.g., Charmin’s Sit or Squat, Clorox’s My Stain, Hilton Suggest, etc.) are well known but previously underestimated as a powerful marketing tool. 5) Jay’s fun loving personality and fascinating life stories keep your interest cover to cover.

What I liked about this book is that Jay Baer presents real world scenarios of individuals and companies being useful by providing free information through blogs, mobile apps, white papers etc. He describes well the decline of traditional marketing (print, TV, radio) and the increasing importance of mobile devices and smart apps. We now live in a self serve information world, where companies need to be transparent and real time relevant and build loyalty with the customers through information. The book also provides advice on how to use social media and the own employees to amplify your useful information, create new leads and ultimately grow your business in the long run. Youtility is useful especially for those who still think that information needs to protected or sold to customers.

Not only did this influence me to create better communications, I have personally recommended this to colleagues of mine that are within earshot! Highly recommended!

Excellent book

Die 5 Sterne sind ein wenig subjektiv, da Jay Baers "Youtility" meine Sichtweise auf die Situation des Marketings im Web 2.0 bestätigt hat - also hat mir das Buch genau in die Karten gespiel ;) Ich empfehle es jedem Kleinunternehmer, der vielleicht eine andere Perspektive auf sein Geschäftsfeld erhalten bzw. neue Möglichkeiten der Kunden- und Fanakquise kennenlernen möchte.

This is one of my favorite books. The concept is so original. Jay is a great writer and a great speaker too.

The best book I've read related to marketing. Jay Baer nailed it! There is so much noise around marketing these days. Everyone is sharing the latest 'must do' tactics to supercharge their sales. It's all the same. This book is different. It's stripped back to the very basic principles of marketing and business. How can I be of service to YOU? It's that simple. Jay shares some wonderful examples that really add to the theory and the techniques shared. It really is a blueprint applicable to any business and any industry. After reading it, my direction moving forward has never been clearer and I'm actually excited about marketing my business in 2015. I can't recommend enough. This will save you months if not years in time trying to figure out a marketing communications strategy that actually works!