Marketing in Publishing

Robin Birn, Patrick Forsyth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134746651
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Publishing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Marketing in Publishing, offers a wealth of practical information on creative strategies to increase book sales in a competitive and rapidly-changing marketplace. It is the first comprehensive study in this area to be published since the ending of the Net Book Agreement.
Patrick Forsyth, now a marketing consultant, draws in his many years' experience of the publishing industry to reinstate marketing firmly where it should be: as an integral and integrated part of the whole marketing process.
Marketing in Publishing gives expert guidance on different elements of the marketing process, including advice on promotional and direct mail options, and a step-by-step section on how to make an effective sales call. It includes a valuable discussion of fusing market research intelligently to identify new opportunities and market niches. The book also features an authoritative chapter evaluating the importance of electronic publishing.
Completely up-to-date, Marketing in Publishing will be essential reading both for those working in marketing and editorial departments, and for students of publishing studies.

Chapter 1

Marketing in context

Scope and definition

Let us start with what marketing is not. It is not a euphemism for advertising, nor a smarter word for selling. Our first objective here is to demystify the word before looking at its relevance and application within publishing. Not only is marketing an area in which there is considerable jargon, it is itself a word which can confuse because there is not just one straightforward definition of the word. It is used in several different ways; all are broader in scope and complexity than the euphemisms quoted above.

For any business, marketing first describes four things:

• first it describes a concept—the belief that the customer is of prime importance in business, that success comes from customer orientation, seeing every aspect of the business through the eyes of the customer, anticipating their needs and supplying what they want in the way in which they want it; not simply trying to sell whatever we happen to produce.
  This is surely no more than common sense (though manifestly not something every business embraces in its entirety) and is something that certainly should apply to publishing. In publishing, of course, the ‘customer’ encompasses a number of different people. These include the book buyers in all sorts of retail outlets (not just traditional bookshops— these days this includes supermarkets and a whole range of specialist outlets), the buyers of technical, reference and academic books for schools, universities and other institutional establishments, and also the ultimate purchaser and reader. The latter may be communicated with direct (via advertising, say), or communicated and sold to (via direct mail, for instance). Additionally, they must also be influenced through any intermediaries involved.
• second, marketing describes a function of business—to define it formally, ‘the management function that is responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably’, or in other words it is the process that implements the concept. This must clearly be directed at senior level and take a broad view of the business.
  More simply put, someone must wear the marketing ‘hat’. In publishing, especially in smaller companies, this may not be someone labelled ‘marketing manager’ or whatever—the responsibilities may be with such people as the general manager, sales manager or promotion manager, or they may be—often are—spread around amongst a number of people. Certainly editorial staff must have a marketing involvement. Whoever is involved and however it is arranged, the final responsibility must be clear and sufficient time must be found to carry it out.
• third, marketing is an umbrella term for a range of techniques—not just selling and advertising but all those techniques used in implementing marketing in all its aspects: market research, product development, pricing and all the ‘presentational’ and promotional techniques including selling, merchandising, direct mail, public relations, sales promotions, advertising and so on.
• fourth, marketing is an ongoing process, one that acts to ‘bring in the business’ by utilising and deploying the various techniques on a continuous basis; and doing so appropriately and creatively to make success more certain. Marketing is not a ‘profit panacea’. It cannot guarantee success, nor can it be applied ‘by rote’ —the skill of those in marketing lies in precisely how they act in an area that is sometimes rightly referred to as being as much an art as a science.

To summarise, and add a note of formality, here let me record that the Chartered Institute of Marketing has an official definition of marketing that reads: ‘Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirement profitably’. Marketing guru Philip Kotler has defined it by saying: ‘Marketing is the business function that identifies current unfulfilled needs and wants, defines and measures their magnitude, determines which target markets the organisation can best serve, and decides on appropriate products, services and programmes to serve these markets. Thus marketing serves as the link between a society’s needs and its pattern of industrial response’. These certainly express something of the complexity involved; marketing is more than just the ‘marketing department’ —though management expert Peter Drucker was content to say simply: ‘Marketing is looking at the business through the customers’ eyes’, and indeed everything stems from exactly that.

THE MARKETING SYSTEM

Now all this may well start to make things clearer, but it is still not the complete picture. Marketing has to operate as a system—not in the sense of a method of doing things, but rather things working together as a system— and involves variable factors that operate both inside and outside the marketing organisation. The system links the market (customers and potential customers) with the company, and attempts to reconcile the conflict between the two. A moment’s thought will show that the objectives of company and customer are not the same. For example, the publisher may want to sell its publications for a high profit, whereas the customer wants the best discount and margin, while the book reader/user seeks value for money.

There are four elements that comprise the marketing system and these deserve individual review:

1. The market and its segments
2. The company and its functions
3. The marketing mix
4. The external environment

We will look at these in turn.

The market and its segments

There is seldom a mass market for any product, though some companies presume that mass-marketing and advertising methods will successfully exploit such a mass market. Analysis has shown, however, that within each overall market there are actually a number of what are called market segments. This is true not only for common products which would be expected to have a mass market, such as breakfast cereals, soap and basic clothing, but also for other products such as industrial components and equipment, and for services such as hotels or accountancy. It is certainly true for the world of books: the range sold contains titles that are very clearly only appropriate for segments of the market, for example children’s books or, at the other end of the scale, textbooks directed at those training to be, say, a doctor.

Each segment represents a group of actual and potential customers with the same needs which can be satisfied with similar products. Compare this with some other everyday situations: for example, within one overall market for cars there are segments interested particularly in economy, status, carrying capacity or whatever; and with detergents there are segments interested in softness (for either the hands or clothes), cleaning power, persistent stain removal, economy and so on. In industrial markets the same applies. Instead of mass-marketing, therefore, such segments often have to be tackled selectively and individually in order to achieve maximum profitability and the least conflict over the image of the company and its product.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A SEGMENT

HOMOGENEOUS

All consumers in the segment share the same needs profile

DESIRABLE

It is sufficiently large to offer adequate opportunity for the fulfilment of corporate product objectives

ACCESSIBLE

The segment can be reached cost- and time-effectively

MEASURABLE

Its potential can be quantified and qualified

Segments are not something a company invents—they have to be researched and discovered, accurately identified, characterised and then exploited individually. The key characteristics of segments, inherently showing how they lend themselves to exploitation, are shown in the box.

Just to clarify a little more jargon as we go, it should be noted that ‘niche’ marketing refers to the smallest and most precisely identified end of market segments: so, within the children’s book segment there is a niche for full-colour, illustrated, educational books such as those published by Usborne (who also define a sub-niche of those who prefer to buy in the home). It also usually describes the most prescribed approach to marketing specifically to exploit such a group and build business from it.

The company and its functions

Every company has three basic functions—though in a well-directed company they do not operate in isolation from each other—and it has two major resources. The three basic functions are:

• Production
• Finance
• Marketing

The two major resources are:

• Capital
• Labour

Each function has different tasks and different objectives, often operates on a different time-scale, attracts different types of people, and regards money in a different way. So, despite their all contributing towards the same company objectives, there is inevitably internal conflict between, say, marketing and production (and thus the number of books it is thought should be produced and what may be sold), or between production and finance.

If you observe this within your own company therefore, relax—you are normal. In publishing, many companies subcontract the actual printing of books, that is, production; though ‘production’ also includes those parts of the business producing everything from covers to finished manuscripts –for the editorial department is in fact an aspect of production. Marketing must, therefore, work within the constraints imposed by the way the company functions operationally or must to some extent. Profits are, after all, only generated externally, and the organisation as a whole must be organised in a way that allows marketing to be market orientated. The market cares nothing for any internal inconvenience or confusion that may exist. It simply judges a company on its overall external image and the details that contribute to that. So things done for internal reasons that do not work in the market may dilute overall marketing effectiveness and thus be damaging. Indeed, the remainder shops offer testimony to some publishers’ failure to bear the market sufficiently strongly and objectively in mind. (Others, meanwhile, target and sell directly to such shops, in some cases producing special editions for them; nothing is simple.)

The marketing mix

This describes ‘the offering’ of the company to the market, and consists of three^* elements:

• Product range
• Prices, including policy on discounts and terms
• Presentation, or means of communicating with the market (selling, sales promotion, advertising etc.)

Juggling with these three elements enables a company to balance its internal objectives with those of its customers. There is clearly a complex and inherent relationship between these elements. For example, a company may want to charge higher prices, but only be able to make this possible with a product change that improves value.

The effect of technological development and the vigorous competition that exists in a capitalist society has resulted in products and prices of competing companies in many industries becoming increasingly similar. This so-called commodity problem is obvious with something like motor cars, so many of which appear almost identical, or hotels: ‘If it’s Monday, this must be Holiday Inn’. But it is also important for a publisher.

It operates in a number of ways. First, some books are themselves very difficult to see as distinctively different: as with, say, two dictionaries or two textbooks covering similar ground. But this factor also exerts an influence across a whole range with a retailer preferring to deal primarily with one publisher and then, as a result, not taking an interest in half the list of another. It can even operate in terms of small details—all publishers being seen to provide promotional support, similar credit or numerous other factors—so how does a retailer, say, tell them apart? The end purchasers of a title, too, may have little perception of the imprints they buy, much less of their relative merits—though some publishers have been successful at developing what is, in effect, a brand image; more of this later.

Consequently the first two elements of the marketing mix—product and price—are becoming less important to customer choice, and presentation (the way in which the company tells the market about products and prices) has become crucial. Often it is the only differentiating element between companies. Popular titles, which do make a difference (with only one publisher having the new Jeffrey Archer or Stephen Hawking), are at the same time more strongly linked to the promotional side of things.

Presentation includes the whole gamut of communication techniques including advertising, promotion (everything from catalogues to point-of-sale material), direct mail, personal selling, merchandising (controlled in publishing largely by the retailers), packaging (which includes physical packaging— getting books to stockists and customers in good condition— and covers and so on) and aspects of service (now often referred to as customer care).

All these have not only to play their part in persuasion, but must create a positive image and a difference in perception, both by emphasising real product differences and/or adding something extra. The extra element may well be intangible, but this does not make it any less real. For instance, all watches tell the time, and these days usually do so accurately. But some sell primarily on fashion considerations (Swatch) or status (Rolex). The fact that there is rarely one simple factor but a multitude of interlinking ones makes for greater complexity. Watches, to continue the example, are bought for many reasons—many as presents—and selecting a particular model may involve consideration of price, design, status, fashion, brand image, features (does it tell you the date, or the phases of the moon?) and many more.

The ranking of these factors will be different to a degree for different people; and many decisions about books—those bought for instance before Christmas—will be of similar complexity. (Indeed, it is worth mentioning that simplifying this decision-making is one of the appeals of Book Tokens, which thus might be regarded as a good piece of marketing, though another publishing entity affected by dynamic circumstances.) Overall, perhaps the most important factor, however it may be stated, is value for money.

All this may make it sound as if marketing people can elect to exert influence as and where they want. Not so; there are other restraints as the next section shows.

The external environment

We aren’t talking about ‘green’ issues here. No, this whole marketing system has to operate in an environment which restricts it, or actively works against it. Such restrictions include:

1. Total demand
2. Availability of capital and labour
3. Competition (including worldwide competition)
4. Legal requirements
5. Supply of raw materials
6. Channels of distribution (for example, retail power and practice, over seas agents and conditions)

The first two are clearly restrictions. If vanishingly few people want a book about Etruscan archaeology, then it is pointless to assume that demand justifies a massive print run—however worthy the volume in question may be. Similarly, unless financial resources are up to the job, development plans of whatever sort may need to be paced. And labour, in the terms we mean here, indicates the availability of specific expertise: so, for example, without the public relations capacity and skill that will get a title talked about, it is no good seeing such a PR effect as the main plank of the promotional strategy for the book.

Broad competition

Any such restrictions must be carefully considered, because of their effect on the business. For instance, competition is easy to recognise as a restriction. Few companies are monopolies; and if they are, many governments will try to stop that situation continuing—or starting, in the case of mergers. But what is competition? Other companies making and selling the same product? Yes, but it is more than this.

Take an example—a book, perhaps a novel or travel book, rather than a business book such as this. Who is the publisher competing with? Other publishers of similar books are only the beginning. Competition is broad. The publisher is selling a product that fills leisure time, so is in competition with the theatre, concerts, records, movies, television and video, magazines and newspapers. And, complicating the picture further, this leisure area overlaps with a growing range of electronic products these days; some of these are clearly alternatives to books and not all are being produced by traditional publishers.

Other developments in many areas affect the book market. For example, although sales of books at airports are currently rising, how much may the advent of improved in-flight movies and entertainment systems reduce the number of books passengers need and read in flight, and thus change the level of sales at airport bookshops in future? It might be mentioned, while on the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Marketing in Context
• Chapter 2: Setting a Course
• Appendix to Chapter 2
• Chapter 3: Action to Promote Sales
• Chapter 4: The Personal Touch
• Chapter 5: Managing Distribution
• Chapter 6: Chips and Change
• Afterword