Target Marketing Opportunities for ‘Book of the Month’.
Book of the Month is a subscription service where members choose one of five book titles to receive in the mail every month. Similar to a movie club service, members pay a monthly or yearly fee that turns into “credits” that they may later use to purchase a book. What is unique about BOTM is, if you do not like any of the 5 book choices, you can save those credits to use towards another month. This service is basically every book lovers dream, as you are purchasing brand new books at $14.99 a piece and just $12.50 if you opt for the yearly subscription.
Who is Their Target Market?
Book of the month has a pretty specific target market, that consists of mostly women ages 25–35, who love to read and have the time and freedom to do so. Marriage and multiple children come with a huge time commitment that might not allow them the leisure of reading 12+ books in a year. With this in mind, these women are most likely single and have no or very few children. Also, as this is a paying service, they are most likely at least upper-middle class, or in a situation where they are free from debts or financial responsibility over others.
How Can They Market Their Target Audience?
Marketing to millennial-aged women who love to read is super fun and has great potential. Considering 18–34 year olds are the most active age group on Instagram, that would be a great platform to host that majority of their social media content. There are also a great deal of opportunities on Instagram for encouraging and fostering user-generated content, which has a 4.5% higher engagement rate. Having subscribers send or tag photos of themselves with their most recent good-read would be a great marketing tool to increase credibility and begin to establish brand loyalty.
Another great marketing opportunity to take advantage of on social media would be Pinterest. Pinterest is a female dominated platform that 52% of millennials use every month. Even better, 89% of users use Pinterest for purchase inspiration — which means they want to spend money when they open the app! This is much different from platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where the primary purpose is not necessarily to make a purchase. Creating pins with popular or upcoming book titles would be a great way to increase brand awareness and turn leads into sales. According to HootSuite, 97% of Pinterest searches are non-branded, meaning there are plenty of opportunities to reach potential new customers.
A great niche platform that Book of the Month could collaborate with be GoodReads. GoodReads is the world’s largest social network for reviewing and recommending books. Readers are able to rate, review, highlight, and categorize books and share it all with their followers. Considering every user on the platform loves to read, this would be a great place for BOTM to reach their target audience with a few advertisements. Another great opportunity would be to partner with some of the major influencers on GoodReads such as Miranda Reads or Read with Cindy. In this partnership, they could gift an influencer one of the newest titles, asking her to include the BOTM services in her book review. This would be a huge reach opportunity since Miranda has over 132,000 followers and is rated the #1 most popular reviewer over the last 12 months. So, not only does she have a huge following, but she also has already established trust with BOTM’s target market. This will again, increase credibility and focus on building brand loyalty.
What Makes Them Unique?
Book of the Month has an “add-on” feature, where subscribers can purchase up to two additional titles a month for only $9.99 (each). This is a huge selling point because not only is the audience getting cheaper books, they also get more opportunity to do what they love most — read!
Book of the Month is not just a brand — it’s a community. There are multiple groups on social media, particularly Facebook, where subscribers get together to discuss books, upcoming selections, and make recommendations. Building a community is so important because it speaks to the brands integrity and maintains their reputation. BOTM is crystal clear on their website that you can cancel your subscription at any time, easily. This again, ties into brand loyalty, as they are confident that their audience will faithfully subscribe over and over again. They have successfully built a community of book lovers that plans to be around for a long time.
Sources
https://review42.com/resources/pinterest-facts-and-stats/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-pinterest-for-business/
