Youtility

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype

By: Jay Baer

Narrated by: Marcus Sheridan, Jay Baer

Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

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 700 brands improve their marketing strategy, Baer provides a groundbreaking plan for using information and helpfulness to transform the relationship between companies and customers.

©2013 Jay Baer (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

"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 audiobook, Baer calls the art of being deeply valued by your customers Youtility. I call it smart."(David Meerman Scott, best-selling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR)

Still very relevant information

Although we are now several years from the original publication (would LOVE to see an updated edition), this information remains both relevant and actionable for today's market.

The right approach to marketing

Jay clearly outlined the principles of effective marketing to today's buyers and give examples from real companies of how they are put into practice.

Incredible!!

This book is an incredible resource on how to make your company useful to the extent that makes customers want more NATURALLY. You aren't selling products.. you're selling your company and its values. Its usefulness. 10/10 recommend, hands down.

Lots of (similar) ideas for making an org useful

A colleague suggested our executive team read this. It wasn't like she thought it would be: She thought there would be more about why "hype" is NOT useful in promoting your organization. There's almost nothing on that angle of the subtitle. But I still got a lot out of the book, even if most of it was hammering one point: answer questions that people have about your industry, no matter how silly/dumb — and make sure you answer them publicly, transparently, and fully, with a dash of humor if you can. Do this, and watch your brand exposure explode. What made the book valuable to me were all of the real-world examples, which inspired lots of ideas that our nonprofit organization could try. Grade: B+

Good inspiration to be helpful to your customers

If you don't like selling, this is a great reference. I'd like to hear an updated version for 2016

Great Online Marketing Book

I really like this book. Many anecdotes supporting the book's premise. Excellent forward about the real world application. I highly recommend this book. After listening to the audio book version, I ordered the hard copy.

Good Framing, Examples and Supporting Concepts

What about Marcus Sheridan and Jay Baer ’s performance did you like?

I wasn't very keen on Mr. Sheridan's performance, but I enjoyed listening to Jay very much. Jay is a seasoned speaker who has always done a great job of sounding authentic and conversational, but still very clear and professional.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I really enjoyed the framing of mental models and juxtaposition of personal social relationships to that of relationships with a business.

Any additional comments?

I knew I already agreed with the premise of the book before buying it, but the way Jay broke a number of concepts down and supported them with great examples added a great deal of value to the book.

Jay tends to dive deeper than most into what could otherwise feel like a very shallow translation of the presented concept. You can depend on him not to exaggerate things and always ground it to things that even business owners that are skeptical of digital marketing would find compelling.

Interesting book

Interesting information. Make you think. I enjoyed it. Would recommend it if you are interested by that topic and redoing your website.

Good Concept. It felt a little repetitive.

Would you consider the audio edition of Youtility to be better than the print version?

Not really. Jay Baer is good writer but I felt like his voice was on the dry side and lacked emotion. You could tell when he was trying to sound excited, didn't seem natural. I would have preferred a trained voice actor.

What other book might you compare Youtility to and why?

Most other current inbound marketing books

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Marcus Sheridan and Jay Baer ?

I have been pretty pleased with Mike Chamberlain's narrations.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Throw out everything you thought you knew about online marketing

Any additional comments?

Again, I think a trained voice actor could have added some much needed energy to the book.

Perfeita

It is a great book to read and I do recommend this book for all marketing professional because it worth a lot thank you