In an ever-changing landscape of book publishing, direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales have become top-of-mind for many in the publishing industry. With little to no growth in the publishing industry, it is time to create direct lines with the customers and adopt best-practices from the tech industry to develop, grow, and maintain their digital distribution channels to secure digital sales.
Like any other sector, technology plays a vital role in the publishing sector’s current structure. Publishers are adapting their strategies based on both – new demand for digital content and new digital tools and platforms combined with powerful data analytics.
Instead of relying solely on a narrow, somewhat disconnected sales channel like Amazon, the business savvy publishers have started targeting new ways to combat the slow growth. To create more options for the consumer-base and regain control over the buying process, a direct-to-consumer sales strategy has been successfully implemented by many renowned publishers. Moreover, a direct channel provides publishers to reach B2B as well as B2C customers, offering them a larger pool of customers.
Today’s digital tools and platforms enable brands to develop their own direct-to-consumer channels far more quickly and cost-effectively, allowing them to move closer to the decision-makers, i.e. customers, and get complete control over the sales cycle.
Here are a few benefits of building a direct-to-consumer sales channel for publishers:
Offers Channel Diversity – Most publishers use Amazon as their sales channel to sell books, and most book sales are restricted to a handful of online locations. Big retailers like amazon hold most of the sales process’s power, and the sellers do not have any information about the buyers or the sales cycle.
A direct-to-customer sales channel enables the publishers to gain control over the whole sales process. Publishers would have access to the customer’s buying journey and could direct its progress.
Access to Wider Audience – Combining digital marketing with direct-to-consumer sales can help publishers reach a wider market, thereby increasing their customer pool. Publishers can sell their books directly to consumers online via various online-channels overcoming geographical barriers, allowing them to go global overnight.
Turn Data into Actionable Insights – Publishers can leverage the valuable insights generated from the digital tools and platforms to better understand their customers’ preferences, lifestyles, and purchasing paths. Control over the sales channel enables the publisher to control the data, which can be used to identify the pain points in the customer journey, thus allowing the publisher to nurture the relationship with the customers and open direct communication lines to enhance their buying experience.
Revenue Growth – Increase in the sales channel helps the publishers establish a direct connection with customers, increasing engagement and conversion rates. Once the publishers are able to establish a presence among their readers, they can scale up their business by providing promotional deals, loyalty points and offer attractive discounts.
Improved Book Discoverability – A direct-to-consumer platform allows the publishers to customize their book metadata and SEO keyword to control the destinations and create their own rules. With constant changes in market demand, it is important to react in real-time to meet the customers’ expectations.
Conclusion
Owning your own sales channel is essential for growing your company, and a decent amount of work can go into managing a direct-to-consumer sales platform. Using various sales channels can easily make your business more successful; hence, choosing the right platform with multiple options and services to fit specific needs is vitally important.
It is significant to ensure that the customer experience is as good as possible – regular review of the channel to note the progress and make appropriate changes to support the channel is a must.
Going Direct with Impelsys
Impelsys provides a gamut of turnkey solutions to publishers, organizations, professional associations, academic institutions and enterprises. Our technology capabilities in content and learning enable us to develop tailor-made solutions to meet your specific business needs. Impelsys is at the forefront in developing state-of-the-art digital solution such as –
- Ebooks: Ebooks are great for distributing your content and engaging your audience. It provides effortless publishing with powerful go-to-market tools while our state-of-the-art reader technology indulges consumers in an enhanced reading experience.
- eJournal: The journal management and publishing module help the publishers to manage and deliver their academic, professional and scholarly research content effortlessly. Allows you to publish your journals quickly and employ multiple distribution models to reach your audience wherever they are.
Digital Publishers Databases: Impelsys offers building databases for publishers which enable them to provide a wide collection of research papers, articles, whitepapers, and other collaterals on a single platform. Such databases offer a variety of subjects that can be used to locate specific journal articles and other publications on a topic.
Supports Complex Content Conversions Format: XML, EPUB, HTML 5 – Impelsys offers intuitive user interfaces and well defined workflows to manage digital content hierarchies. Our expertise in technology, media enhancement and content conversion helps publishers build content for multi-channel delivery to eReader devices, smartphones, and tablets.
Be it complex conversions to formats like – EPUB conversion services, Epub conversion, EPUB 3, EDUPUB, HTML 5 or XML – or creating rich media applications, our content solutions team can help support your every digital need.
Developing Digital Courseware: Impelsys offers customizable learning and training digital courseware that can be your branded online learning solution. Whether you are a publisher wanting to add courseware to your product line or an educational institution wanting to move from a traditional classroom model to blended learning and self-learning pedagogy, Impelsys can provide your go-to solution.
Impelsys reimagined the power edge-cutting technology with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Get in touch with our experts to know more about our unique features to create a seamless customer experience.
