Jay Baer has written a real-time book about real-time buying. YOUTILITY: Why Smart Marketing is about HELP not HYPE is a must-read if you’ve been marketing the same way for even ten years. As you’ll quickly discover by picking up a copy, the times they are a’changing.
There’s so much crucial information in Baer’s tome that there’s no way to summarize or encapsulate it, so I’ll just touch on what I can and ask you to get a copy and get the rest from the horse’s mouth.
YOUTILITY reports that on October 6th, 2001 there were 35,771,454 blogs. On October 11th, 2011 there were 173,000,000 blogs.
Look at those numbers again. In a five-day period, the number of blogs quintupled. Chances are blogs have been rolling out at pretty much the same rate ever since.
Perhaps joking, Baer wrote that 50% of the blogs in 2011 were about cats. I’ll take his word for it.
But certainly not enough blog writers are using them in ways that actually help their readers. There are blogs dedicated to simply entertaining readers (which, granted, is a fun form of help, given the stressed-out lives that so many endure these days).
But it’s the blogs that offer truly useful information that earn undying loyalty. Blogs create fond bonds when they’re done right. They also set an expectation that the blogger knows what he or she is talking about and can be relied on to “tell it like it is”–the good, the bad and the ugly.
Blogs help keep businesses and entrepreneurs “top of mind.” Done right, this is a good thing. Done wrong, it can shoot you in the foot.
People can LIKE, SHARE and UNSUBSCRIBE with equal ease. The folks who write blogs merely to push their products and services are treading on thin ice. Those who are using their platforms to inform and help readers are the ones that get embraced, liked and shared time after time.
No one likes to be sold to–not even people looking to buy. In fact, according to Baer, today’s buyer makes his or her decision online before walking into a store or picking up the phone to call a provider. Baer calls this outside-the-traditional-consumer-box activity the zero moment of truth. Today’s buyers can easily research before they buy, thanks to the Internet and hand-held devices like smartphones and iPads.
According to Baer (and I heartily concur), every successful provider of goods or services in the 21st century and beyond will need to feature at least one of the following three strategies because each has been made mandatory by seismic shifts in consumer behavior:
Self-serve online information: You need to give people the information they need when they need it, even when they’re sitting in a parking lot waiting for their kids to get out of school.
Radical transparency: You need to answer every conceivable question that your target audiences have even before they think to ask them
Real-time relevancy: You need to be where the action is (online, in forums, and/or out and about) to notice when potential or actual customers ask questions you can answer or challenges you can help with, even if the answers you give won’t drive them straightaway to you. Becoming a help-mate in any way you can helps establish trust and fond bonds so that when they need what you have to offer, you’ll be top of mind because you’ve helped them without expecting immediate reciprocity.
Bottom line, according to Jay Baer: “If you don’t supply the information your prospects need to choose your company over the competition, they’ll get that data somewhere else, and the outcome might not be as favorable for you.”
So fight the information war on your website and on your blog. Run ahead of the pack. Inform your target audiences so they figure out that you’ll never steer them wrong and that you can be trusted to help them whenever and wherever you can.
