» IHRSA 2016


“Youtility” is a word that catches one’s attention. Can you define it with respect to your book and IHRSA 2016 presentation, “Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help, not Hype.” Youtility describes marketing that’s


Jay BY JULIE KING


so useful people would pay for it. It’s marketing with so much intrinsic val- ue that, if you were to say to some- body, “Would you kick in a couple of dollars to receive this?”—they would! It’s marketing that people actually want to receive—rather than what we usually produce, which is market- ing that people simply tolerate. Once, when I was preparing a conference on useful marketing, I was searching for a word to describe this concept. While I was in the shower, “Youtility” popped into my head. Basically, it’s about marketing that has utility for you.


Baer


Marketing strategist and bestselling author Jay Baer will explain why “help” is more important than “hype” during IHRSA 2016


This interview was first published by IHRSA/Club Business International and is reprinted here with permission.


34 Fitness Business Canada November/December 2015


You describe the difference between helping and selling as “just two letters,” but note that they make all the differ- ence. What’s the connection with Youtility marketing? We’ve always been explicit in terms


of the relationship between market- ing and revenue. We say, ”Come on in right now and buy a car,” which is very overt and direct. The message is, “If you give us money, we’ll give you something.” However, technology now enables consumers to avoid, tune out, commercial-based interruptions. Youtility is sort of a sideways approach to marketing. It’s more about “How can we provide value?” and “How can we be your friend?” With Youtility, we’re going to give


you something for free, in hopes that, at some point in the future, you’ll give us some money. You have to funda- mentally believe that if you give some- thing away, some percentage of the recipients will one day purchase some- thing from you. Youtility increases the time between


interaction and outcome. When com- pared with the way we’ve tradition- ally done business, it’s something of a paradox, an inverse relationship, in that the more you sell overtly, the less you’ll sell long-term.


So selling is more “top-of- mind” awareness, while helping is more “friend-of- mine” awareness? If you provide value and commit


your company to being helpful and useful, the same way that your friends are helpful and useful, then custom- ers will reward you and keep you close—the same way they hold their actual friends close. In business, that means they’ll go to your website and bookmark it; they’ll subscribe to your emails and open them; and they’ll fol- low you on Facebook. You have to think about, “How can we, as a compa- ny, act more like the way we act with our friends?” That’s difficult some- times, because it requires companies to be more approachable, transparent, and human.


In describing how businesses can become more helpful and useful, you discuss the “3 Facets of Youtility.” What are they? Why are they so important? Self-serve information is the most


foundational and fundamental be- cause it rides on top of a larger con- sumer trend: the fact that we feel we need more information before we can make any serious decision. People are consuming more information because they have access to it, all of the time, via smartphones. Consumers want to research everything, so you have to provide more and more of it so they can make as much of the decision as possible without having to talk to a real person. Today, business relation- ships are based, first, on information, and, second, on people. If your infor- mation is good, comprehensive, and useful enough, you’ll be permitted an in-person or human interaction. Your job as a marketer is to prepare consum- ers for that with self-serve information.


And the second facet? The second is radical transparen-


cy, which has to do with trust. Trust is the filter through which all busi- ness success must pass; without trust, nothing else matters. One of the best ways to gain and maintain trust is to be disproportionally open and honest with your information. Be transparent or, at the very least, translucent with


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