One of the most important parts of building relationships with your clients and prospects is keeping at front of mind, and keeping in regular contact with them. But regardless of how great, and regular your marketing is, sometimes people just don’t want to hear your advertisements.
However, this does not mean that you cannot interact with them as a brand. The key to interacting with these types of consumers is to provide them something they will find useful. This is known as utility marketing — where a brand intersects with a consumer at the moment of a non-commercial need.
We practice utility marketing here at Your Business Digital, with our free tools, guides, blog posts and more. It’s an incredible concept, and the possibilites are endless.
An overview.
- Utility marketing is offering a service or a product that is helpful to all your customers for free
- It’s a way of increasing your business’ relevance and reputation online.
- It has a focus on building loyalty, not on immediate conversions.
- Provides real value for the user.
- Helpful for building a customer base with a positive opinion of your brand.
- Helps to drive more sales from more people.
Examples of Utility Marketing
A great example of this would be the BabyCenter Pregnancy App from Johnson & Johnson. It provides a “baby development calendar app” to guide expectant mothers through their pregnancy.
An awful example would be the Vanish Stains Tip Exchange. An attempt at this which arrived dead in the water and provided no real value, of course it went unused and sits there dormant today.
You don’t have to go all out, here are some examples of small business ideas for utility marketing;
- A SEO company like Your Business Digital could create Marketing training videos on Youtube.
- A Vet or Animal Hospital could create a video series on Dog Training.
- A retailer of Dash Cams could create a video montage of “amazing moments” captured by their products.
Getting started
- Think about your audience
Find out what your about your audiences interests fit in with your brand.
Example: A clothing store’s audience loves fashion, and the company sells clothes. - Think about what needs they might have that are related to those interests?
Are they aware of the latest trends? Do they need fashion tips? - Create Content that meets those needs
Have a focus on providing the most informative, useful and intelligent content you can.
Example: Creating a video series on the latest fashion trends.
Think about where small businesses tend to invest their advertising dollar. It tends to be very close to the point of sale. So by using utility marketing, you can be ahead of the curve and reduce your advertising spend while really standing out against the rest. Utility marketing is the #1 way Your Business Digital has been able to grow so quickly as a business, and consistently attract new customers. Utility marketing paired with our great service has really helped us grow insanely fast over the past few years.
