Developing an Integrated Marketing System for a Illustration Book Publisher

When I was working as an independent marketing consultant I was able to secure a contract with an illustrated book publisher to help them make changes and add new marketing strategies to their acquisition program that would help the firm obtain more contracts with museums, galleries, individuals, and other institutions on developing publications relating to their exhibitions and/or collections, commission authors, photographers, and others to develop titles that are aimed solely at the regular book trade.

I met with the companies marketing and sales representatives to discuss their concerns about the drop in their sales number. The companies’ acquisition program had lost approximately 15% of the number of contracts that they had achieved in the previous year. I listened to the concerns of the companies marketing and sales team and did my own analysis of the company and the business as a hole. I asked the company sales representatives to collect sales information from the prospects that they were able to secure contracts with and the ones that they were not. From the information that I obtained I was able to make the following changes.

The clients wanted a very close collaborative relationship with the development of their illustrated books that were going to be created for their companies, or organization. Just about all of the clients believed that this approach would maximize the ability of all of those involved with the project, and would also maximize the message that the illustrated book is trying to portray.

I recommended that they elaborate to their clients the complete sales, promotions, and publicity plans that would be used to distribute and sell these books. I had found that they were not expressing them to the complete understanding and satisfaction of the clients. A complete service offering needed to be given through a personal presentation catering to each individual client in order to give the client a feeling of confidence, security, and trust in doing business with the publishing company.

In my analysis of the company I found that the company had lost some of their ability to maintain an integrated system. They had lost some of the consistent face that they had presented to their customers. I created a new marketing system to ensure that each division would not be doing its own thing; which was not only bad for production, but also time consuming and not cost-effective.

These changes and new additions that were made to the company’s acquisition plan created an increase in acquisitions by close to 20% in a 3 month period. The company decided to use this new approach with all of products that they were producing. Also the expense of promoting this new service and implementing it was about 10% less that the previous plan. The employees of the company enjoyed working with this new system as well. This increased moral and enthusiasm within the publishing company.

William F Dupree was the owner of IMPS (Interactive Marketing & Promotional Solutions Inc.) a sole proprietorship marketing firm located in New York City that specialized in developing interactive marketing, promotional and branding strategies for primarily publishing and publishing related businesses. Prior to founding IMPS in 2005 Mr. Dupree was a senior marketing manager at EDL Business Development Group for seven years. Before joining EDL he worked for Diamond Marketing Group where he developing sales strategies, branding, product planning, event planning, and created interactive marketing strategies for an assortment of businesses. William Dupree can be contacted at http://www.linkedin.com/in/wlliamdupree