Author: Jay Baer
Publisher: Portfolio Penguin
Reviewer: Maria Burpee, director, EMEA healthcare marketing & strategy, Dell
Youtility is a book that gets you thinking in a new way. As marketers, it feels like 80-90 per cent of us are doing the same thing: content marketing, storytelling, social but nothing is breaking through. It’s harder to get leads these days, so what’s next? Youtiity proposes marketing should help not hype; that by providing useful, helpful information for free, you not only earn the attention and trust of your audience, but you earn a customer when that trust converts to purchase. The book is more geared to B2C than B2B; however, I truly believe any marketer can benefit from reading this because it is eye-opening, refreshing and thought-provoking. Jay Baer states: Youtility ‘turns marketing upside down’.
It’s a noble cause and there are many ways to go about it; in the book Baer provides ‘six blueprints to create Youtility’ with many examples. The author also points out the barriers to implementing Youtility: roles and responsibilities, expertise in unfamiliar areas and tolerance for the longer, harder to track ROI of Youtility.
However, my biggest criticism of the book is that there seems to be little proof that Youtility drives solid results. Baer asks us to take a leap of faith that increases engagement and will translate to customers. Despite those, I do believe it’s worth trying and I think that’s exactly his point; if you build it (become useful) they will come. But it is still your job to get them to buy once you have their trust and attention. Youtility doesn’t override or substitute other marketing tactics, it adds a level of differentiation; informing vs. promoting because ‘you can’t survive by shouting the loudest and relying solely on anachronistic, interruption marketing’ any longer.
Star rating:
4/5
