Unravelled: How Scott Stratten Dropped the Mic on Traditional Marketers Everywhere in 235 Pages

Scott Stratten is the real deal. 

I just finished reading his book "Unmarketing" and it should have actually been titled, "Love Auto DMs, Spam Bots, Scraping Tools, and Fiverr? You're Terrible, Don't Buy This Book". 

Stratten starts off with the bold statement that reminded me of one of my more recent blog posts about how relying on your social media manager is killing your business (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/relying-your-social-media-manager-killing-business-role-alexis). He writes,

"Marketing is not a task. Marketing is not a department. Marketing is not a job. Marketing happens every time you engage (or not) with your past, present, and potential customers." 

The foundation of Stratten's book is based on focusing on the top of the what he describes as the "Hierarchy of Buying" (https://www.unmarketing.com/2010/01/10/aiming-your-company-at-the-bottom-of-the-barrel). He believes that brands need to focus on being a recognized experts in their field, and on relationships with prospects & current satisfied customers. Competitors, he argues, are too busy aiming for the very bottom of the barrel, cold-calling and searching through ads to find and try to sell to prospects that you have no pre-existing relationship with. Scott believes that the old school interruption marketing method is inefficient and ineffective. One of my favourite lines from the entire book is,

"People still teach courses on how to cold-call better. That's like finding a better way to punch people in the face." 

Instead, Scott urges businesses to focus on what he calls "the trust gap", which is, "The amount of trust you have to earn before your potential customer will consider buying from you." Your brand needs to focus on making that trust gap as minuscule as possible so that people will feel comfortable and confident buying from you. He argues that relationships are incredibly important because if that trust gap is too wide, people will not even consider you.

What makes "Unmarketing" so awesome (ok, besides the hilarious footnotes), is that Scott sees the buying process from the eyes of the consumer, and even gives fantastic examples of multiple times that he has gone uncover for the sake of customer perspective.

He argues that there are multiple hurdles that we need to tackle to gain the trust and loyalty of a customer. We must eliminate risk, focus on our messaging, and simplify website navigation. We must make it easier for our audience to contact us, and to sign up for newsletters. Heck, he even goes into almost comically comprehensive detail about the importance of testing captchas! 

But most importantly, Scott believes that engagement is vital to a brand's success.

Your brand is not about your logo, or your website, or your Silicon Valley-esque new office digs. It's about how your brand makes your customer feel.

It's about validation, and making your audience feel like they matter with immediacy and relevancy.

It's about knowledge, and sharing useful information to better the lives of your customers.

It's about value, not taking your loyal customers for granted, and respecting people's time.

It's about authenticity, not just saying you care about your customers, but showing them at every single touch point. 

Lastly, it's about transparency, showing that your brand's core values are more meaningful than a PR ploy. 

Wondering how much that last sentiment matters in practice?

Scott sent me this insightful book for no other reason than just being a great person that believes strongly in helping others, and you just read an entire blog post about it. So get real, it's good for business!