UnMarketing by Scott Stratten and Alison Stratten challenges traditional marketing paradigms and introduces the concept of 'unmarketing', a customer-centric, relationship-building approach. The book presents a shift from the typical transactional marketing strategies towards creating engaging, authentic relationships with consumers. The authors stress the importance of social media as a tool for establishing these relationships and highlight the need for businesses to become part of the conversation rather than controlling it. The book includes specific case studies from companies like Zappos and Apple to illustrate its points. This book's ideas are particularly relevant in today's digital age, where consumers have more power than ever before and demand authenticity and transparency from brands. The authors, possessing vast experience in marketing and social media, provide a unique perspective on how businesses should interact with their customers. They present quantifiable results from their own experience and various studies to further substantiate their claims.
• The Pull and Stay Marketing Philosophy: UnMarketing revolutionizes traditional push marketing by focusing on attracting customers naturally and maintaining long-term relationships. This approach prioritizes value creation over aggressive sales tactics, building sustainable business growth through genuine customer engagement and trust-based interactions.\n\n• Authentic Relationship Building Over Transactional Interactions: The authors emphasize that modern consumers demand authenticity and transparency from brands. Successful businesses focus on creating meaningful connections with customers rather than treating them as mere revenue sources, leading to increased loyalty, referrals, and lifetime customer value.\n\n• Social Media as Conversation Platform, Not Broadcasting Channel: UnMarketing transforms how businesses approach social media by treating it as a two-way conversation platform rather than a one-way broadcasting system. This involves actively listening to customers, responding to feedback, engaging in meaningful discussions, and building community around shared values and interests.\n\n• Trust Gap Theory and Consistent Value Delivery: The book introduces the critical concept of the trust gap - the difference between what businesses promise and what they actually deliver. Closing this gap through consistent value delivery, transparent communication, and reliable service creates unshakeable customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth marketing.\n\n• Customer Experience as Primary Differentiator: In today's competitive marketplace, exceptional customer experience becomes the ultimate differentiator. UnMarketing demonstrates how businesses can create memorable, positive interactions at every touchpoint, turning satisfied customers into enthusiastic brand advocates who drive organic growth.\n\n• Long-term Relationship Investment Over Short-term Sales Tactics: The methodology emphasizes building lasting business relationships that generate sustained revenue over time, rather than focusing on immediate sales conversions. This approach creates more predictable income streams, reduces customer acquisition costs, and builds resilient businesses that thrive during economic challenges.
The Evolution Beyond Traditional Marketing\n\nScott Stratten and Alison Stratten present UnMarketing as a fundamental paradigm shift away from interruption-based traditional marketing toward relationship-driven customer engagement. The book challenges conventional wisdom that views marketing as a necessary evil of pushing products onto reluctant consumers. Instead, the authors advocate for creating genuine value that naturally attracts customers and builds lasting business relationships. This approach recognizes that modern consumers have unprecedented access to information and choices, making traditional aggressive sales tactics not only ineffective but potentially damaging to brand reputation.\n\nThe Pull and Stay Methodology Framework\n\nAt the heart of UnMarketing lies the 'Pull and Stay' methodology, which operates on two fundamental principles: attracting customers through valuable content and experiences, then maintaining their engagement through consistent value delivery. The 'Pull' component focuses on creating compelling reasons for customers to seek out your business naturally, whether through exceptional service, valuable content, or innovative solutions to real problems. The 'Stay' component emphasizes the ongoing effort required to maintain customer relationships through continuous value creation, responsive service, and authentic engagement. This methodology contrasts sharply with traditional 'Push and Pray' marketing that relies on volume-based outreach hoping something will stick.\n\nTrust Gap Theory and Customer Relationship Dynamics\n\nThe authors introduce the critical concept of the Trust Gap - the measurable difference between what businesses promise and what they actually deliver. This gap directly correlates with customer satisfaction, loyalty, and likelihood to recommend the business to others. UnMarketing demonstrates how businesses can systematically close this gap through transparent communication, consistent service delivery, and proactive problem resolution. The book provides detailed frameworks for identifying where trust gaps exist in customer interactions and specific strategies for addressing them. Understanding and managing the trust gap becomes essential for building sustainable competitive advantages in crowded marketplaces.\n\nDigital Transformation and Social Media Strategy\n\nUnMarketing addresses the fundamental shift in how businesses must approach digital marketing and social media presence. Rather than treating social platforms as broadcasting channels for promotional messages, the book advocates for genuine community building and conversation facilitation. The authors provide specific strategies for listening to customer feedback, responding authentically to concerns, and creating content that serves customer needs rather than solely promoting business interests. This approach recognizes that social media success depends more on relationship building and community engagement than on follower counts or viral content creation.
Relationship Capital Generates Higher ROI Than Advertising Spend\n\nUnMarketing demonstrates that businesses investing in long-term customer relationships consistently outperform those focused primarily on advertising and promotional campaigns. Relationship capital - the accumulated trust, goodwill, and positive experiences customers associate with a brand - creates sustainable competitive advantages that cannot be easily replicated by competitors. This approach generates higher customer lifetime values, reduces acquisition costs through referrals, and creates more predictable revenue streams.\n\nAuthenticity Scales Better Than Perfection in Digital Marketing\n\nThe book reveals that consumers consistently prefer authentic, imperfect communication over polished, corporate messaging that feels disconnected from real human experiences. Authentic brands that acknowledge mistakes, share behind-the-scenes content, and engage genuinely with customer concerns build stronger emotional connections that drive loyalty and advocacy. This insight challenges businesses to embrace vulnerability and transparency as strategic advantages rather than risks.\n\nCustomer Experience Design Impacts Every Business Function\n\nUnMarketing illustrates how exceptional customer experience requires coordination across all business departments, not just marketing and sales teams. From product development to customer service, from shipping logistics to billing processes, every touchpoint influences customer perception and loyalty. Organizations that align all functions around customer experience principles create cohesive brand experiences that differentiate them in competitive markets.\n\nSocial Proof Amplifies Through Community Building Rather Than Broadcasting\n\nThe authors demonstrate that social proof becomes most powerful when businesses facilitate customer-to-customer interactions and community building rather than simply broadcasting testimonials or case studies. When customers become brand advocates who actively engage with and influence other customers, the resulting social proof carries exponentially more weight than company-generated marketing messages.\n\nValue Creation Must Precede Value Extraction in Modern Business\n\nUnMarketing emphasizes that sustainable business growth requires consistently providing value to customers before attempting to extract value through sales. This principle applies to content marketing, product development, customer service, and relationship building. Businesses that focus on solving customer problems and improving their lives naturally create opportunities for profitable transactions without aggressive sales tactics.\n\nTrust Recovery Strategies Differ Fundamentally From Trust Building\n\nThe book provides crucial insights into how businesses must approach trust recovery differently from initial trust building. When trust has been damaged through poor service, failed products, or broken promises, standard relationship building tactics often prove insufficient. Trust recovery requires specific acknowledgment of failures, concrete corrective actions, and sustained demonstration of improved performance over extended time periods.\n\nDigital Transformation Requires Cultural Change, Not Just Technology Implementation\n\nUnMarketing reveals that successful digital marketing transformation depends more on changing organizational culture and mindset than on implementing new technologies or platforms. Companies that focus solely on adopting new digital tools without addressing underlying cultural resistance to authentic customer engagement often fail to realize the benefits of their technology investments.
Week 1-2: Foundation Assessment and Team Alignment\n\n• Conduct comprehensive audit of current marketing practices and customer touchpoints across all departments\n• Survey existing customers about their experience with your brand and identify specific areas for improvement\n• Review all customer-facing communications for authenticity and value alignment with UnMarketing principles\n• Train customer service, sales, and marketing teams on the Pull and Stay methodology and trust gap concepts\n• Establish baseline metrics for customer satisfaction, retention rates, and referral generation to measure progress\n\nWeek 3-4: Social Media and Content Strategy Transformation\n\n• Shift social media approach from broadcasting promotional content to facilitating genuine conversations with customers\n• Create content calendar focused on providing value, answering customer questions, and sharing behind-the-scenes insights\n• Implement systematic process for responding to customer feedback, complaints, and suggestions across all digital platforms\n• Develop authentic brand voice guidelines that encourage transparency and human connection over corporate messaging\n• Begin building online community around shared values and interests rather than product promotion\n\nMonth 2-3: Customer Experience Optimization\n\n• Map complete customer journey from first contact through post-purchase follow-up identifying trust gap opportunities\n• Implement systematic feedback collection processes at every customer touchpoint to understand experience gaps\n• Create cross-departmental customer experience team responsible for addressing issues that span multiple business functions\n• Develop service recovery protocols that transform customer complaints into relationship strengthening opportunities\n• Launch customer advocacy program that encourages satisfied customers to share their experiences organically\n\nMonth 4-6: Relationship Building and Value Creation Systems\n\n• Establish regular communication rhythms with customers that provide ongoing value beyond sales transactions\n• Create educational content, tools, or resources that help customers succeed independent of additional purchases\n• Implement referral systems that reward customers for introducing others while maintaining authentic relationship focus\n• Develop partnership opportunities with complementary businesses that provide additional value to shared customers\n• Build feedback loops that involve customers in product development and business improvement decisions\n\nLong-term Strategy: Sustainable UnMarketing Culture Development\n\n• Integrate UnMarketing principles into hiring practices and employee training programs across all departments\n• Establish ongoing measurement systems for relationship capital, trust gap metrics, and customer advocacy levels\n• Create internal recognition programs that reward employees for exceptional customer relationship building\n• Develop industry leadership position by sharing knowledge and best practices about authentic customer engagement\n• Build systematic approach to scaling personal relationships as business grows while maintaining authenticity and individual attention
Scientific Research Foundation and Behavioral Psychology\n\nExtensive academic research in behavioral psychology and consumer behavior validates the UnMarketing approach. Studies from Harvard Business School demonstrate that customers acquired through referrals have 37% higher retention rates and generate 25% more profit than those acquired through traditional advertising. Neuroscience research reveals that authentic, relationship-based interactions activate reward centers in the brain more effectively than promotional messaging, creating stronger emotional connections that drive loyalty. The psychology of reciprocity, extensively documented by Robert Cialdini, explains why providing value before requesting value creates more sustainable business relationships than transactional approaches.\n\nMeasurable Business Performance Improvements\n\nOrganizations implementing UnMarketing principles consistently demonstrate superior financial performance across multiple metrics. Companies focusing on customer relationship building report 20-30% higher customer lifetime values, 15-25% lower customer acquisition costs, and 40-60% higher referral rates compared to traditional marketing-focused competitors. Research by Bain & Company shows that businesses increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by 25-95%, validating the financial impact of relationship-based approaches over acquisition-focused strategies.\n\nReal-World Success Stories and Market Evidence\n\nNumerous companies have achieved remarkable success through UnMarketing principles. Zappos built a billion-dollar business by prioritizing customer service and authentic relationships over traditional advertising, resulting in 75% of purchases coming from repeat customers. Southwest Airlines created industry-leading customer loyalty through consistent value delivery and authentic communication, maintaining profitability during industry downturns that bankrupted competitors. Buffer's transparent, value-first content strategy generated over 100,000 customers with minimal advertising spend, demonstrating the scalability of authentic engagement approaches.\n\nFailure Patterns of Traditional Marketing Approaches\n\nConventional push marketing fails because it operates against fundamental human psychology and modern consumer behavior patterns. Traditional interruption-based advertising generates increasing consumer resistance, with ad blocking software usage growing 30% annually and consumers developing 'banner blindness' to promotional content. Push marketing creates adversarial relationships between businesses and customers, leading to decreased trust, lower conversion rates, and higher customer churn. The approach fails to account for social media's democratization of information, where poor customer experiences can instantly damage brand reputation through viral negative feedback.\n\nDigital Age Amplification Effects\n\nThe internet and social media dramatically amplify both positive and negative customer experiences, making relationship quality more critical than ever for business success. Positive customer experiences shared through social networks can reach hundreds or thousands of potential customers at zero cost, while negative experiences can damage years of brand building within hours. UnMarketing principles align with these digital realities by creating authentic positive experiences that customers naturally want to share, generating organic growth that traditional marketing cannot replicate or sustain in competitive markets.