2. Sample Nicole
Background
I’m a full-time college
student working a
part-time job.
Identifiers
Can typically be found
using various social
media platforms.
Target Audiences
Sample Jennifer
Background
In addition to my
full-time job, I’m also a
full-time mother of 2.
Identifiers
Very caring and polite,
always appears to
be in a rush.
Age 30 - 49
Skews Female
Family income between
$60,000 - $75,000+
Family income between
$40,000 - $65,000
Skews Female
Age 18 - 25
Goal: Finding a nice stress
reliever after the day is over
Goal: Finding a way to juggle
work and relax
1 2
Our Task: Give suggestions for time
management through the use of a
planner.
Our Task: Introduce fun,
complementary items to make reading
more interesting.
3. 3 4
Big Idea
To show our audiences that
even if you don’t want to
come in and buy a book,
B&N has options that cater
to almost any device that
you prefer to read on.
4. 5 6
KPIs
The two main goals of Barnes &
Noble’s website would be to
raise awareness of the brand
and to generate sales through an
online platform. Overall clicks
(visits to the website) and clicks
leading to increases in sales can
be measured throughout the
brand’s online marketing.
5. 7 8
Tools & Tactics :
Suggestions:
– More consumer interaction on
Facebook and Twitter
– “Tell us what you think!”
– “What are you reading now?”
1,832,352 likes
1,677,230 followers
214K followers
209K followers
32,637 followers
Social Media
6. 9 10
Tools & Tactics :
Spanish Accessibility:
Add a section to Barnes &
Noble’s website that explains
what a NOOK is or why it is
preferred over other brands of
e-Readers.
NOOK Tab:
Add a button to the home
screen for Spanish Accessibility
to make the website easier to
navigate for Spanish-dominant
speakers.
Website
“Libros en
Español”
7. Tools & Tactics :
7,000 / 30.4 = $230.26 per day
Monthly budget / Average
number of days per month =
Daily budget
1
1
12
Online Advertising
8. 13 14
Tools & Tactics :
How to Budget Your Time With
Only 24 Hours in a Day
We get it. It’s hard to rush
between classes and work AND
still find time to read your favorite
books. But what if it wasn’t?
Inbound Marketing
Every Book Needs a Wine
Selection
Whether you’re feeling light with
romance or heavy with mystery,
every book goes better with a
glass of wine.
9. 15 16
Mobile Suggestions:
• B&N’s mobile app should be
available on IOS and Google Play
• Put all the NOOK-related
services in one app
Tools & Tactics : Mobile
Tablet Suggestion:
• Format the website closer to
the mobile website than the
desktop website
I chose to analyze Barnes & Nobles’ digital strategy this year. As you will see throughout this presentation, most of the suggestions that I am proposing are pretty minor, but I believe that they would have a positive benefit on the Barnes and Nobles brand if utilized.
Photo credits:
barnimages.com <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/133488379@N08/29249909032">Styled photo with iPhone</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>
While there is no specific target audience for reading, I have chosen to focus on two demographics for all of the suggestions I will be making. The first is your typical college student who has the difficult task of balancing school, work, a social life, and any hobbies they may have. The second is a working mom who capitalizes on every bit of alone time she can get after work if finished and her kids are asleep. For both audiences, our task will be to give scientific reasoning to back up the thought that taking breaks and relaxing through reading can make you both more productive and more relaxed.
Photo Credits:
Obtuse Photo <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12811864@N06/14047128137">Fairy Tale</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>
barbasboth <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/80239785@N03/26212704524">Alex [Stranger 107/200] Liberty Carnaby Street, London</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>
DougitDesign.com / Doug Aghassi <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/27000501@N08/5613967601">Open Book, Blank</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/">(license)</a> (Used on slides 2-9)
In this day and age when we have so many computers, cell phones, and countless other devices to occupy our attention, we are straying farther and farther from the belief that nothing is as relaxing as a good, paperback book. So what do we do about this? We show consumers that no matter how you prefer to read, be it through smartphones, tablets, laptops, or a good old paperback, Barnes & Noble can cater to your preferred reading style.
Photo Credits:
All screenshots taken from barnesandnoble.com
As with most companies or brands that have both a physical store and online website, the purpose of the official Barnes & Noble website is to continue to generate profits and promote sales for its many choices of books, as well as serving as a method of purchasing NOOK books. This being said, the two main goals of B&N’s website would be to raise awareness of the brand and to generate sales through an online platform. Looking from the viewpoint of those who have experience with NOOK and not much with the actual Barnes & Noble brand, the website is a good way to increase consumer exposure with the brand, seeing as how when you search NOOK in Google, the brand’s official website comes up as the first two available results. In terms of how Barnes & Noble can measure how effective the website is at accomplishing the goals of increasing sales and consumer exposure, the increase in clicks or visits to the website can be measured for all of the suggestions I am going to be making, whether they are referring to any changes to any versions of the website, online advertising, or changes to the brand’s social media pages.
After looking through the brand’s social media accounts, I have found that Barnes & Noble has no problem gaining consumers’ attention on any of their accounts. The brand has 1,832,352 likes and 1,677,230 followers on Facebook, 209K followers on Twitter, 214K followers on Instagram, and 32,637 followers on Pinterest. The only change that I can suggest is that there should be more consumer interaction on some of these platforms.
While there is more opportunity for Barnes & Noble to include its consumers in its Facebook and Twitter Accounts, I believe that the brand has a very good foundation across all of their current social media platforms for consumer involvement. On Instagram and Pinterest, the brand has done an amazing job of using the social media sites to both promote their brand and the products it carries, as well as connecting with their customers in ways that seem both effortless and well-though out. While B&N’s current strategy o Facebook and Twitter seems to lack consumer integration, this could all be changed by simply adding a phrase like “Tell us what you think!” or “What are you reading now?” Overall, Barnes & Noble has definitely claimed its corner of the Internet, and with a little tweaking, consumers will be able to share their thoughts and opinions of the brand in the same manner they can with many other brands.
Photo Credits:
Facebook logo taken from facebook.com
Instagram logo taken from instagram.com
Twitter logo taken from twitter.com
Pinterest logo taken from pinterest.com
There are two sections of Barnes & Noble’s website that I believe should be tweaked a bit: the NOOK tab and the Spanish accessibility.
One thing that I noticed with B&N’s website is that there is no page that explains what exactly NOOK’s purpose is. In this day and age, most consumers are familiar with the idea of an e-Reader, and those of us who use them already have concrete opinions about which is the best (NOOK, Kindle, or some other tablet by companies like Samsung or Apple). However, for those who are new to the idea of owning an e-Reader or tablet, it would be helpful to have a page on Barnes & Noble’s website that outlines what exactly their product does, and why consumers would be persuaded to chook NOOK products over other options available to them.
Moving on, the only thing that I would change regarding the usability of Barnes & Noble’s website would be the manner in which users get to the Spanish section of the website. When you go to barnesandnoble.com, there is a tab that reads “Libros en español.” From here, everything except for the basic website information is in Spanish. However, to get there, you first have to go to the “Books” tab. How are Hispanic users supposed to get to this area of the website if they don’t speak English? As a student with a minor in Spanish, I would say that when you are learning a new language, it is extremely difficult to try and find your way around a website if you are not already familiar with a lot of the vocabulary. Having only this one section of the website in Spanish would be seen as a great disadvantage to those who would like to shop from Barnes & Noble but can’t read sections of the website, especially the headers, which stay the same regardless of what page you may be on. While B&N has worked to make their website and affiliated products accessible in terms of those who may be colorblind or have any other vision impairments, I think that one area that could be better is catering to those who don’t speak English as a first language.
Photo Credits:
Nook picture taken from barnesandnoble.com
Kindle picture taken from amazon.com
Kobo picture taken from us.kobobooks.com
After visiting several website to see if any ads for B&N would pop up, I noticed that I primarily only saw them on social media platforms. To fix this, I believe that the best way for B&N to reach its target audiences would be for the brand to advertise on websites that complement its products. For this reason, the websites that I have chosen for the brand are the following: target.com, toysrus.com, goodreads.com, wine.com, artvan.com, and wayfair.com. Most of these websites sell things like bookshelves or lounging furniture, with the exception of wine.com and goodreads.com. Many adults may enjoy drinking a glass of wine while they read, which is why I think that B&N should consider display advertising on wine.com. Goodreads.com would also be a great place for the brand to advertise because rather than being seen as a competitor to Barnes & Noble, Goodreads is more of a website where people can go to share and create new ‘reading playlists.’ For the content of the ads, B&N should focus on promoting their sales initially (something like “Visit us today and save 25% off on all of your favorite books!). When there isn’t a sale or some big event coming up for the brand, it would help for B&N to promote their range of genres in separate ads rather than using an umbrella quote to encompass al of them like the brand might if they were focusing on the sale rather than the genres. For example, the mystery genre may say something along the lines of, “Searching for your next mystery to solve? We’ll help you find it!” While most of the advertisements would run on all websites, only the Science Fiction & Fantasy ads would run on toysrus.com, which I will discuss in more detail in the next section.
In terms of a budget for this campaign, I would recommend that Barnes & Noble uses a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model for this campaign. I say this because the brand may want to set up its campaign so that initially, all of the keywords that I have suggested are given the same bid amount, but as the conversion rate (which I will discuss more in the last section) fluctuates, B&N can change the bid amounts to give more of its budget to the keywords that are generating higher conversion rates. In terms of the actual budget numbers, I’ve chosen to use a monthly budget to determine what the daily budget of the CPC should be for this campaign. Since Barnes & Noble is a huge chain of stores that reaches a very wide audience, I have decided on a higher monthly budget of$7,000. Consequently, the daily budget for this campaign would then be $230.26. The calculation for the daily budget would go as follows:
7,000 / 30.4 = $230.26 per day (Monthly budget / Average number of days per month = Daily budget)
Photo credits:
Toys ‘R’ Us logo taken from toysrus.com
Target logo taken from target.com
Art Van logo taken from artvan.com
Wayfair logo taken from wayfair.com
Wine.com logo taken from wine.com
Good Reads logo taken from goodreads.com
In terms of inbound marketing, I believe that the best thing Barnes & Noble could do to increase the level of trust that consumers have with the brand would be to start a blog a that the its target audiences can relate to. And what is one topic we can all relate to as we get older? Stress. For example, college students have enough on their plates without trying to find time to read. The goal here would be to show them that reading doesn’t have to hold you back in terms of getting your work done. In fact, taking breaks to relieve stress has been shown to increase productivity. For this demographic I would suggest using the header you see here as an example for a blog post to show that sometimes, you need to take a step back from work and pick up a good book.
The same tactic can work for an older, working-class generation, as mentioned in the second consumer profile. Everyone is looking for ways to unwind after a long day at work. Some people choose to watch TV, others play videogames, and others choose to read. To some, reading may seem like the most boring option of the choices presented, which is why I am suggesting that B&N uses a bit of humor to attract this demographic to the brand. Here you can see a sample of what one of these blog posts could look like. The purpose here is to show that readers can use wine to make the activity of reading a bit more interesting without sacrificing sleep or suffering from any other stigmas associated with drinking wine. For example, as mentioned in the subheading of this post, a genre that’s seen as more light and airy may go well with a white wine, and a more heavy and intense genre such as mystery or thriller would find a red wine to be better.
Photo Credits:
Obtuse Photo <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/12811864@N06/14047128137">Fairy Tale</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>
barbasboth <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/80239785@N03/26212704524">Alex [Stranger 107/200] Liberty Carnaby Street, London</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>
After testing out Barnes & Noble’s mobile website and apps on both my smartphone and on a tablet, I have come to the conclusion that making the following changes would make the mobile website and apps more user-friendly:
I prefer Samsung phones (sorry to all the iPhone users), but I noticed that the B&N app is only available for Apple products, which is weird since Samsung makes a few different NOOK products. Speaking of NOOKS, I don’t think it’s necessary to have books and audiobooks in two separate apps. I think it would be better for B&N to combine the two apps so you can download a book or audiobook and then have the option to get a different version of the book, similar to how the Kindle app is used.
The last thing I noticed relates to using the B&N website on a tablet. The layout of the website is very similar to the desktop version of the site, which wouldn’t be a problem f it weren’t for the size of the buttons. The buttons are very small, making the website very hard to use for anyone with fingers bigger than those of a toddler. I think that if B&N changed these problems, everything would run more smoothly across all platforms.
In conclusion, I think that Barnes & Noble is already doing a great job of promoting their website and attracting customers. The changes that I have suggested in this digital strategy would allow for more consumer involvement and an increase in the relevancy of the brand in the minds of B&N’s target audience.
Photo credits:
barnimages.com <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/133488379@N08/29249909032">Styled photo with iPhone</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>
