What Makes Marketing Utilitarian?

In an earlier post, I discussed the concept of utilitarian marketing, which can be defined as marketing that is useful (in a real-world, practical way) to the recipient. Utilitarian marketing has become a hot topic in marketing circles over the past several months, in part because of the publication of two books – Youtility by Jay Baer and Ctrl Alt Delete by Mitch Joel.

The basic idea of utilitarian marketing is simple enough, but beyond being useful, what are the major characteristics of utilitarian marketing? In Youtility, Jay Baer says that there are three distinct facets of useful marketing, and that every successful “Youtility” will include at least one of these features.

• Self-service information – This means enabling people to inform themselves how and when they wish. Useful marketing allows prospects and customers to determine the path their engagement will take and doesn’t funnel information to customers in pre-determined ways of the company’s choosing.

 

• Radical transparency – This means providing answers to nearly every question a prospect or customer could conceivably ask, including questions they haven’t thought of.

 

• Real-time relevancy – The ability to deliver information that is extremely useful at particular moments in the life of the customer. One example of real-time relevance that Baer discusses in Youtility is the Meijer Find-It application. The typical Meijer store includes more than one hundred thousand items, and with the Find-It app, consumers can local specific products anywhere in the store.

In my earlier post, I observed that implementing utilitarian marketing can present several challenges. Some of the challenges are primarily mental because utilitarian marketing requires a new way of thinking about marketing. With utilitarian marketing, usefulness is the paramount objective (the “prime directive” for those of you who are Star Trek fans), and the direct promotion of your products or services is subordinate, if it occurs at all.

Beyond the philosophical issues, utilitarian marketing can also present significant technological challenges. A core tenet of utilitarian marketing is that you must be prepared to deliver whatever information the customer wants, whenever he or she wants it, to whatever device (desktop, smartphone, etc.) the customer is using.

This means that you must create and manage information assets that will function effectively on multiple communications devices. More importantly, it means that you must be prepared to provide customers with broader and more detailed information than ever before, and this will likely require you to integrate multiple information systems.

For example, many enterprises manage “marketing assets” in a digital asset management system and product information in a separate product information management system. Customers, however, don’t distinguish between “brand” information and product information. They simply expect to find whatever information they want whenever they want it.

Utilitarian marketing is a new frontier for many enterprises, but those that learn to do it well stand to reap significant rewards.