Building a Successful Direct Channel

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Merry Neal
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1 Building a Successful Direct Channel Allen Noren, VP Online, O Reilly Media Groundrules: ask about tweeting controversial stuff, around retailers, pricing. Interactive.

2 Agenda Why do it? Some big questions to ask Goals Audience Building a funnel Tools that work (for us) Marketing materials and programs that work (for us) Using social media Customer service Your authors Beyond the book What s next (for us)

3 Why do it? Connection with customers Experiment and innovate Sell what others can t Revenue/Profit It s only w/ our own platform that we can innovate. Going direct provides you with a valuable connection to your customers, allows you to innovate and experiment quickly, and it can be very profitable. But there is much to consider before you begin. What s the business case? Will your customers care, and what s your differentiating feature? What tools and platforms are required? What s the optimal team? How will you define success?

4 Plan B Should still have a web presence. Be the authoritative source. Affiliate relationships. Partner with others. Deciding not to: nothing unique, no plans to own customer, no verticals, not efficient, lack of team and resources.

5 Some big questions before you begin Retail How are you relevant? Will anyone care? How are you unique? Do you have verticals and paths? Do you have a brand? If not, build one.

6 What are you selling? Don t sell products. Sell an experience.

9 What are your goals? What are your goals? Must be clear and measurable goals. Make them public. Stretch goals. Twitter. FB. Newsletter subscribers. Have goals! But there is much to consider before you begin. What s the business case? Will your customers care, and what s your differentiating feature? What tools and platforms are required?

10 Know your audience Know your audience. Who is your audience. In-person.

11 Who is your audience: Online Chartbeat

12 O Reilly: Countries

13 O Reilly: Cities 3 of our top 10 are in India. 5 of our top 10 are in the US.

14 What do they want to achieve? What do they want to achieve, and how will they get there? Verticals and paths to success. Repeat customers. Study your search terms, and poll website visitors. Call them.

15 What is your unique offering? If it s just the same thing they can cheaper at amazon, it s really hard. One of our unique offerings is ebooks.

16 Logos. Packages, bundles, e-only products.

17 Harlequin--eonly products.

19 Build a funnel Need to cast a wide net and build a funnel to attract customers.

20 What will attract people? Free content. Advocacy.

21 Free sampler. Great for customer acquisition, but you have to be intentional about it. Think about putting free content behind a signup.

22 Front matter and backmatter, in print and e.

24 Google TV, a new project.

25 and while they serve other functions, our FB, YouTube, Twitter, GoogleTV, are all parts of our funnel. But then it s what do you do w/ them. And you need to be intentional about what you want people to do.

26 Syndication. And our authors love it.

27 Book registration, no matter where they purchased. Then offers.

Tools that Work (for us) Jeff Peachey s book binding tools: http://jeffpeachey.wordpress.

28 Tools that Work (for us) Jeff Peachey s book binding tools: w/ reporting. Customization/user recognition. MyBuys Customer data and targeted offers. Affiliate program.

29 . We use ipost

30 MyBuys in-cart

31 Social media: Twitter w/ deals, promos, events. Facebook, which we re just starting to grapple w/.

32 Search is not just search: it s marketing. It s for display and marketing. Search is what most people use. It has to be excellent, and lots of opportunity for connection, cross-selling, and up-selling.

33 Analytics: Omniture. GA, Omniture, reporting, dashboards, social media. Tag everything for tracking. Constant tweaking and analysis. But measuring is meaningless if you don t have something to measure against.

34 Sharepoint customization. We re moving to MarketLive.

35 Reader reviews. An essential customer guidepost. Add legitimacy. Are also a customer service tool.

36 Get Satisfaction. Anyone can start one about your company, so you should be proactive. Community powered and public customer service and problem solving. Makes up better. Next up: affiliate program.

Creating marketing materials and programs that work (for us) Fundamentals: SEO, meta data that matters, relevant search ranking, landing and promo pages. Fundamentals: SEO, urls in all communication.

37 Creating marketing materials and programs that work (for us) Fundamentals: SEO, meta data that matters, relevant search ranking, landing and promo pages. Fundamentals: SEO, urls in all communication. s, tweets, landing pages, promo pages, catalog pages, and other elements of the experience. membership Campaigns: combine , twitter, fb, website. Integrated marketing campaigns. Sorting your lists. Newsletter subscribers are often very casual. Best lists are from past purchasers. What more will they want?

38 It s all in the language and presentation. Tried many discount levels--30, 40, 50. Buy 2, Get 1 Free, w/ Free shipping. Doubled our direct sales of print.

39 Ebooks.

40 Multiple formats. Have it your way.

41 DoDs. Create interest and excitement. Great for getting authors engaged. Great for customer acquisition. But you need a plan to engage them further.

42 Free to Choose

43 Training. People love a Free. Also move to other formats section.

44 Events. Go beyond the holidays. We do mother s and father s day, industry events, foreign holidays. Have fun w/ them.

Emails that Work (for us) Email philosophy: Permission based. Don t abuse. Very conservative. Target.

45 s that Work (for us) philosophy: Permission based. Don t abuse. Very conservative. Target. What doesn t work: New product announcements. Press releases. Lots of opportunity to test: subject lines, offers, language, colors, layouts.

46 Our customers love a deal, but also choice.

47 Targeted DoD package.

48 Best of

49 is an opportunity to create lots of relevant hooks. New edition s.

50 But be aware there will be those that don t work that well. Newsletters typically don t convert that well for us. Use them to educate.

51 New customer . Didn t work well at all.

52 Study what others are doing, especially retailers. Even if you don t have a contact there to ask, you can bet that they re repeating what is working. Gaiam, and free shipping offer. These people are relentless.

53 Taunton press engagement . Something free to get you in the door.

54 These people are relentless. Don t forget to forward...

55 Membership People become members because of security (AAA), Convenience and deals (amazon prime), Savings (costco), affiliation (NPR, Sierra Club).

56 O Reilly membership. It s where we can start to build a loyalty program w/ special benefits. Also a place to create offers out of sight of retailers. We don t need to rub their noses in it.

57 Using social media Image credit: Fred Cavezza, fredcavezza.net Anyone who says they have it figured out is... Time for lots of experimentation. It s not about press releases and the media. Youtube, fb. Make it easy for your customers to share, recommend, purchase. John of Newsweek. Best editorial twitterer I ever saw.

58 Make sharing easy.

60 Sharing via Twitter.

61 Got this idea from Thomas Nelson. Formalize and name what you already do.

62 Lonely Planet on Facebook. Study what they re doing. Lots of free, topical content, questions, etc.

63 Twitter: Engagement, outreach, deals, customer service. 44 pages of retweets. Can t pay for that kind of marketing.

64 Go to where your readers are. This an O Reilly publisher space on LibraryThing.

65 Create a culture of customer service All great online companies are customer service organizations. It s some of the most important marketing you can do. Empower everyone to fix a problem. Person answers the phone. Response policy. Empower everyone to solve problems.

66 All great online companies are customer service organizations. It s some of the most important marketing you can do. Create lots of touch points, and use them. Phone, I ve already shown most of these pages, but GetSatisfaction. After purchase survey. Get satisfaction, Twitter, Reader reviews.

67 How we respond to people. Anything w/ 2 stars and below.

68 Beyond the Book Selling beyond the book. Doing more w/ what you have. This also makes your authors feel really good. It s a point of differentiation between you and competition.

69 LP-Chapters

70 Harlequin-Lunchtime reads.

71 Logos: Systems and platforms.

72 Hayhouse. Clearly gets it: an experience company: multiple formats, classes, books, memberships, cruises, etc.

73 Other products. New short form ebooks/pod, and videos.

74 Online training.

75 Video

76 Experts

77 Apps and mobile.

78 Conferences. And we just created our first all-access pass w/ video of every tutorial and session and free ebookshelf.

79 Engage your authors In order to do all this you need to engage your content creators. Without them we are nothing. And as we ve seen they can often do more for you. So often we publish their books, like a diploma, and turn them loose in the world. Talent management, newsletter

80 Provide them w/ a platform, and promote them, and they ll promote you.

81 Make it easy for them to connect, and stay in touch. Help them promote themselves.

82 Provide them w/ information. How is my book doing? And what can I do to promote it?

83 What s next (for us)

84 Data By knowing who you are, and where you are, we can provide a relevant experience. We can also direct our production at your needs. Data, and how to use it intelligently.

85 Digital allows for a global audience. What do they want, and how? W/ digital, you can become a global player. New markets. But, how do they pay us?

86 mobile payments, geo-aware pricing.

87 The End

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