Table of Contents
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk is, like all books about marketing, about how to be relevant in a sea of noise. But what Gary does well in this book, is he tells us how media has changed, why what worked in the past doesn’t work today, and makes good arguments for how marketers should respond with specific tips for each platform. Instead of drowning us with theory,analogies, and philosophy – he tells us about the specifics, and does a great job at that. It’s hard to read this book, and not be better at marketing.
The Changing Nature of Media
The nature of media keeps changing. We have known this for a long time. Newspapers transformed TV a long time ago. But this transformation happened gradually, taking decades to properly manifest. In the age of computers, media transformations occur within months, even weeks.
It is not only media that is changing, but people too. Far more time is spent staring at screens than in the past, this makes all traditional forms of advertising less valuable, and social media advertising much more valuable.
This book was written in 2013, the trend has moved more towards mobile over the last 7 years.
In the early 2000’s people who cared about SEO were forward thinking. Today, it’s a different game. The rate of engagement you get from sending emails has been going down steadily since the early 90’s.
What is the Jab and the Hook?
The jab is the gift you give your customers. Gary compares business with boxing, since it’s something like an art form. There is no formula you can use in business that will instantly get you results. Things are always changing, you must keep adapting to where people are spending their time, you need to be entrepreneurial in the way you interact with each platform.
The jab is what you give to your customers for free through social media platforms. They’re microblogs, they’re links to free content that is helpful or engaging. A big mistake many businesses do is they start with the hook (the sale) and ignore the jab. But the jab is the most important part of marketing, it’s how you build trust with your customers.
If you have ever seen an email or an ad that demands you buy their product, and you don’t know anything about the person selling to you, then you’ve seen the hook in action. And more likely than not, you ignored it.
But it is very difficult and time consuming to keep jabbing, to build meaningful customer relationships across time, that is why people are tempted to jump to the hook, but by doing that, they lose out. Customers are not interested in random hooks, they see them all the time, and they associate them with spam.
After jabbing for long enough and building a relationship with your customers, you can introduce a hook. But even then, you need to do it right. If you are too bashful, it may not work. Own your hook.
Gary gives great examples of good and bad examples of what a good hook looks like. In fact, that’s almost half the book.
The Good News and The Bad News
The main message that I took away is that each marketer must contend with good and bad news.
The bad news is that things keep changing, so what may have worked before (SEO, Email Marketing, Banner Ads, Invasive Ads) don’t work anymore. If you’ve spent years honing your craft in those categories, tough luck.
The good news is that you have tools at your disposal today that no marketer has ever had before. If you use Facebook Ads, you are utilizing a platform that helps you engage your audience, and if you fail to engage your audience, they will make it more expensive to promote your ad – thus saving you money. No billboard company owner will ever do you that favor. If you take advantage of Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics, then you can gain a remarkable advantage over your competition.
If Content is King, Context is God
Remember that when you communicate to a customer, they have thousands of people trying to contact them at the same time. How are you going to stand out? If you are annoying, and interrupt their experience, they will just ignore you. Many brands do this. The only way to advertise is to do so seamlessly (native advertising).
This means that you need to tell a good story. And there is no easy way to do this. First, you need to have a good story (content) and second, you need to know how to tell it (context).
Some people think of social media platforms like indistinguishable commodities, so they post the same content across all platforms. It doesn’t work that way. You need to tailor your content to each platform. A post on Twitter should never be identical to a post on Instagram. And the reason is obvious. They have different demographics.
Twitter has an urban, ironic crowd. If you want to reach them, you need to be part of the conversation, you need to discuss the news, and watch what people are saying. Pinterest is for middle aged mothers.
Facebook and Instagram are different. You are targeting a younger audience and you need to include more images and less text. And your images need to stand out.
There is another piece of good news for marketers. Some of the rules of the past have not changed. Keeping your message simple, captivating, and original are still hallmarks of a great ad.
If you’re an entrepreneur and you want a quick guide to know what to think about before launching you business, check out The Myth of Entrepreneurship.