/// Success Story

 

 

When new competitors began eroding market share and margins in the college textbook industry, Bookbyte recognized the need to reposition and diversify.

 

The Challenge

Bookbyte is a pioneer in the online sale of used college textbooks. While they are adept at selling textbooks online to their target audience, students did not easily recognize the Bookbyte brand. In addition, new entrants into the marketplace were stealing Bookbyte's market share, even though the student audience was growing.

 

What We Did

Our first strategic step to building a competitive advantage for Bookbyte was to better understand their target audience (the Millennials) and how to engage them throughout the course of their studies. We unearthed the insight that students care the most about saving money because of rising school costs. Based on this insight, we reshaped Bookbyte's brand and messaging to focus on how Bookbyte can save students money and that Bookbyte is the destination for textbook savings.

 

Knowing that the audience was trending towards non-traditional forms of communication, we developed student-focused online communities and used social media to connect students with the Bookbyte brand. We also updated Bookbyte's online presence to create a better customer experience by increasing the functionality of the website and making it visually more engaging. To ensure brand consistency, all new brand collateral was consistent with the message of saving money and that Bookbyte is The Textbook Way to Save.

 

Results

From July 2010 to Dec 2010, we helped Bookbyte grow site traffic by over 77% from the previous year. Email revenue grew to well over 220%, with an email conversion rate of 14.6%. Overall revenue grew by 20% over 2009. Our marketing approach contributed to these great results and a renewed energetic brand's response to the growing competition.