YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com
Content Marketing 14  |  Add Yours

Why You Need to Market Your Marketing

Content Marketing World Soundbites CMWorld Location3 Media e1348593505290 Why You Need to Market Your Marketing

Location3.com made this after my Content Marketing World presentation

badge jay says Why You Need to Market Your MarketingYou know what happens when the vast majority of mobile applications or any sort of useful content gets launched by a company?

Nothing happens. Nothing.

This is because companies treat the fact that they finished the content execution as the end game.

We finished our mobile application and it showed up in the iTunes App Store. Yea! Let’s take a victory lap!

The launch of your awesome content – so inherently useful that customers would pay you for it – is not the end of the journey, it’s the beginning.

To win the war of information you must market your marketing.


Phoenix Children’s Hospital has an exceptionally useful car seat application that helps parents figure out the best type of car seat to purchase, based on the size of their child. Imminently helpful, it’s a classic case of Youtility marketing that creates long-term loyalty (which is why it’s a featured case study in my forthcoming new book Youtility: Why Smart Companies Focus on Helping, Not Selling) Note: go to jaybaerbook.com to stay up-to-date on the new book progress.

The hospital’s car seat app was built by my pal and awesome mobile app creator Brian Berg from MediaKube. When it was completed, Phoenix Children’s didn’t simply throw it up in the app store. In fact, they developed an entire marketing plan around the launch and propagation of the app, starting 60 days before completion.

Here are just a few of the tactics they employed:

  • Email to employees via internal newsletter
  • Social media news release
  • Traditional news release
  • Appearances on several local television morning shows
  • Write ups in several national parenting magazines
  • Youtube demo (see above)
  • Mention in the hospital’s e-newsletter
  • Mention in the hospital’s printed newsletter
  • Appearance on the hospital’s website home page
  • Mentions on the hospital Twitter account and Facebook page

They marketed their marketing. You have to consider that when you’re attempting to break through the enormous amount of digital clutter, and it’s where social media and content really work together.

We often think about content and social media as different, but they are really two sides of the same coin. Content is fire, and social media is gasoline.

It’s much easier (and more effective in many cases) to use social media to promote outstanding content, than it is to promote your company.

pf button both Why You Need to Market Your Marketing
About Jay Baer

Jay Baer is a hype-free social media and content strategist & speaker, and author of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

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  • http://www.myblogguest.com myblogguestSWC

    Interesting concept, to marketing your marketing. Great way to illustrate how this has been done and how it can be done.

  • austindeep

    @Twylah @jaybaer great article!

  • http://flybluekite.com/ lauraclick

    This is yet another example why all of a company’s marketing efforts have to be integrated – social media, content, media relations, internal communications, etc. You MUST have unified messaging and all of these pieces working in tandem to get any traction.

  • ProjectBOSSorg

    @KeishaNYCPR Are you ready for iMentor Mondays? Topic~ What are ways to maximize leadership skills? Use hashtag #iMentor when replying!

  • http://www.marketingwise.ca MV06

    Besides always being interesting, your articles are very enjoyable and a reminder of things you could be doing wrong.

  • Syanika

    @DioFavatas @jaybaer https://t.co/shrOdJIS PLZZZZZZZ VOTE FOR THIS PHOTO PLZZZZZ

  • jaybaer

    @BrennerMichael @JasonFalls Thanks guys.

  • marketyourmarket

    What the heck is the difference between marketing your marketing and just marketing.What they need to do is market, period.

  • Catena Creations

    Oh, so true. I work with a client who’s been trying to accomplish this. He has a new marketing specialist starting in a couple of weeks, and we are looking forward to a new opportunity to have this person promote everything we’re trying to do with the website and social media.

  • itweetlive

    @KittermanMG Definitely not enough just being online anymore. Direct engagement is essential http://t.co/6Dk6uRdZ

    • KittermanMG

      @itweetlive very interesting tool, will put your website in my @Pocket for future ref. Plz follow us so we can DM a question

  • jaybaer

    @mediakube my pleasure !

  • angiepascale

    Thanks for including our image, Jay! Great article, too. Our industry sometimes overlooks (or worse, scoffs at) the offline part, but it is still powerful and must be integrated.

  • http://www.ecommercewarriors.net/ Jeff Bronson

    Ah, the marketing plan. A undervalued resource. 
    I see this all too often. A client wants to create the “next” big thing, and needs development work. When I ask what their marketing plan is……often, it’s a blank stare!
    I can relate this to eCommerce. I’ve seen many people (including myself), take far too long to build an intricate platform to manage online store operations, and too little time to marketing. Whereas, others have slapped up a free OsCommerce shop, marketing the hell out of it, and were successful!