Brands, businesses and even customers have already made marketing an essential thing to move forward. It is for that abundance and repeatability too, that lately it is difficult to stand out in this world and have the attention of the public.
In this blog, we are going to present the utility marketing. The main principle of utility marketing is:
If you sell something today, you will have a customer today, but if you help someone today, you will have a customer for life.
At first glance it seems, and of course it is, a very logical and useful thing to do, but at the same time you can destroy the image of the company.
To give an example, let’s talk about the BabyCenter app, which helps mothers around the world to track their pregnancy. If we are left alone with this, it has nothing to do with utility marketing. But the grace comes from being sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, a brand of healthcare products, with a division for babies called Johnson’s baby.
As we can see the company's strategy is clear: if a mother installs this app, most of them will feel supported and accompanied in a difficult and unique process which is pregnancy. So, in the end, what will the benefits or costs for Johnson's Baby be?
Basically, the mothers which are having the baby and needing personal healthcare products, will be more likely to buy and trust in the brand that has been helping her during the process.
On the other hand, as it was said before, if the app does not convince mothers, the company can lose its good reputation because of the bad service of an external company that they are sponsoring.
In conclusion, utility marketing could be summarized in the following sentence:
If, as a company, I offer you a product today for free, I will later have your trust and your attachment to the brand.
That was only one of the thousands of examples of a brand using utility marketing, but if you are interested in this technique, here it is a link explaining Adidas' use of utility marketing:
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