How to Create a Customer for Life
Consider using the "Youtility" and "go-giver" strategies.
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People have problems, real problems and “first world” problems, big problems and small problems.
The businesses that authentically and relevantly help potential and current customers with their problems perform better across metrics like customer acquisition costs and loyalty, customer lifetime value, word-of-mouth (i.e. free referrals), and more.
Jay Baer took this concept to the next level in his bestselling book, Youtility, whereby he explains that “the difference between helping and selling is just two letters, but those two letters make all the difference.”1
Baer’s premise is that, by making your marketing inherently helpful, customers will assume your business and its product or service will also be helpful for their needs and wants.
In reality, many businesses try to look and feel amazing, which certainly does work, but it is difficult to achieve and hard to maintain. “Home run” marketing, such as pinning hopes that a video will go viral, is a bad idea.
Instead of swinging for the fences and earning a whole bunch of strikeouts and maybe a home run once in a great while, you can provide content that helps consumers make better decisions in their day-to-day lives.
Hence why Baer suggests that being useful — making your marketing so useful that people would be willing to pay for it — is easier and more sustainable.
"Youtility is marketing upside down,” wrote Baer. “Instead of marketing that’s needed by companies, Youtility is marketing that’s wanted by customers. Youtility is massively useful information, provided for free, that creates long-term trust and kinship between your company and your customers.”
Baer provides a ton of real-world examples, three of which stand out. First there is River Pools and Spas, which launched a blog to help people learn more about the different aspects of pools and spas in general. They did not try to sell their pools and spas; they genuinely set out to inform and educate potential customers about these home devices at large. What happened? River Pools and Spas quickly became the industry leader of pool and spa installations in their market.
Then there is the hotel chain Hilton, which started a Twitter (now X) account called Hilton Suggests, by which they replied to users who were generally asking questions about travel and tourism on Twitter. For example, someone would tweet, “Does anyone know any good vegan restaurants in Chicago?” and Hilton Suggests would respond with a few recommendations that had nothing to do with Hilton or its hotels.
But the Hilton team knew that, by genuinely being helpful without any strings attached, more people would consider staying at Hilton’s hotels during their next travels.
Finally, there was the genius Youtility work of Charmin, as in the toilet paper brand. As you can imagine, marketing toilet paper is challenging, so what did Charmin do? It built a mobile app called “Sit or Squat” — designed to help users find and rate clean public restrooms in their area.
According to Baer, the three facets of Youtility marketing as a way to drive better results include consistently offering consumers (via your marketing channels) self-serve information, always being radically transparent, and real-time relevancy. The six-step process goes like this:
Identify consumer needs and wants, and how you can help them make good decisions.
Map actual consumer needs and wants to useful marketing; help them do useful stuff.
“Insource” Youtility by making being useful part of everyone in your business’ DNA.
Market your marketing to promote your helpfulness first and your business second.
Make Youtility a process, not a project; keep reinventing and refining it.
Keep score by measuring how Youtility is impacting your most important metrics.
Bob Burg and John David Mann described this concept similarly in their book, Go-Givers Sell More, writing:
“When salespeople prioritize their own needs and push for sales at any cost, they often fail to build trust and rapport with potential buyers. This approach can make customers feel like they are being manipulated or taken advantage of, leading to a breakdown in the relationship. On the other hand, when salespeople shift their focus to providing value and serving others generously, they create a positive and authentic connection with customers.”
The three most significant ideas from this book are (1) true success in selling comes from focusing on providing value and serving others generously; (2) building strong relationships is the foundation of effective selling, since people buy from those they know, like, and trust; (3) selling is about solving problems and meeting the needs or wants of others, not about pushing products or services onto unwilling consumers.
There is also the “law of reciprocity” which states that the average person tries to repay, in kind, what another person has provided them. For example, if you buy someone lunch, they feel obligated to buy you lunch next time. And at the supermarket, “free samples” encourage customers to buy something they might not have otherwise.
The same goes for Youtility and “go-giving” — or as Jay Baer put it, “If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life.”
There’s more where this came from at the Growth Marketing Institute.
Baer, Jay. “Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype.” Portfolio, 2013.