Last week, we kicked off our new series of B2B book reviews by taking a look at Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The two cofounders of HubSpot delivered a convincing argument on why inbound marketing is the new outbound, and you can read our full review by clicking here.
Shah and Halligan are marketers turned businessman, but this week’s author approaches things the other way round. Vaynerchuk is a self-made multimillionaire who first rose to fame after growing his family’s wine business from $3 million to $60 million, but he’s also a bestselling author, an angel investor and a well-respected businessman.
This book, though, is mostly a marketing book, specifically focusing on social media and content marketing. The good news is that it’s a relatively recent release and doesn’t feel outdated. It’s a difficult balance to get right, but Vaynerchuk nailed the execution and the key concept behind it is likely to continue to be relevant for many moons to come.
The Concept
The big idea behind Jab Jab Jab Right Hook (or JJJRH for short) is that content marketing is a little bit like a prize fight. If you go out into the ring with your fists flailing wildly, trying to hit every inch of your opponent all at once, you’ll quickly be outskilled and outmanoeuvred.
Instead, Vaynerchuk argues that it’s better to use multiple jabs (value-adding content) for every right hook (direct sales messages), and it’s a tactic that seems to work well as far as his personal brand goes.
An example of this is Vaynerchuk’s Ask Gary Vee Show or his Daily Vee blogs that take you behind the scenes as he navigates the complicated world of entrepreneurship. These entertainment and information based pieces of content come for free with no questions asked, and then his audience is happy to respond when he releases a new book and asks people to buy it.
More On Jab Jab Jab Right Hook
That’s basically all you need to know about the basic concept, and that should be more than enough to give you an idea of whether you want to read it. The book itself fleshes it all out in more detail and gives practical examples of how to make it a part of your content marketing strategy.
You could argue that some of the examples are starting to grow outdated because they refer to specific social networking sites, but the beauty of the methodology is that it isn’t hard to adapt it for whatever you happen to be using. So if you’re reading this review in 2025 and there’s a hot new app on the market, don’t worry – you’ll still find something here that you can apply to it.
Jab Jab Jab Right Hook isn’t Vaynerchuk’s only book, and we’d also recommend The Thank You Economy and #AskGaryVee. But JJJRH is one of the best places to start, and you can grab yourself a copy on Amazon over here. If you’d like us to review the other two, let us know!.
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.