Inspiration

Beyond Contact: Why a Former Performance Marketer is Focusing on Brand Marketing

Beyond Contact (hereinafter referred to as B-Con) is a specialized book publishing marketing agency. Typically, when you think of a marketing agency, tasks like running ads and managing media come to mind first. However, B-Con believes there is greater value in creating original content and generating viral buzz.

< Beyond Contact's Landing Page >

In other words, they focus more on content marketing rather than paid marketing. Interestingly, Han-Gul Lee, the CEO of B-Con, has a background in performance marketing for food brands, making us curious about why they are now concentrating on content marketing.

So, shall we dive into the online marketing strategies for the book publishing industry, as envisioned by CEO Han-Gul Lee at B-Con?

The Era Where Owned Media Matters

I originally came from a performance marketing background. One thing I realized while working in performance marketing is that this method inevitably relies on media platforms, and if efficiency drops, you have to keep searching for new media.

Initially, ROAS was good, but as time went by, no matter what media we found, the overall ad efficiency kept declining. Especially with Google planning to block third-party cookies from the second half of 2024, I felt it would become even more challenging in the future.

These days, the publishing market values not just ad channels but also content. I’d like to take Minumsa as an example, which has grown into a channel with over 200,000 subscribers by consistently uploading content.

< 220K Subscribers on Minumsa TV >

From the second half of this year, cookie collection will be restricted, which means if you don't have your own customer base, you'll have to start from scratch.

There's also something unique about online marketing in the publishing industry. It's challenging to track ad conversion data through book sales platforms. This makes performance marketing difficult because it's not measurable. Hence, it's even more crucial to build owned media to establish a customer pool that will listen to your story.

Branding with Content in the Publishing Industry?

The barrier to entry for publishing a book has significantly lowered. For instance, Amazon offers a self-publishing service called Kindle Direct Publishing.

Moreover, with the widespread adoption of e-books, the need to print and distribute physical books has diminished. You can now publish a book just by creating a PDF document.

Whenever I give lectures to marketers in the publishing industry, I always emphasize the importance of strengthening the brand of the publishing house in this market situation.

Each publishing house has different directions and limited resources, so marketing approaches may vary. However, given the nature of publishing, it's easy to focus marketing efforts on new releases. But rather than aiming for short-term results, if we strengthen our publishing house's branding, it creates an environment where potential customers are interested in whatever book comes out.

Perfect Match: Text-Rich Publishers and VideoStew

The book publishing industry continues to face challenges, especially as it's sensitive to economic fluctuations. Despite this, publishers have an advantage: they are rich in text resources.

Publishers already have a wealth of text materials, so they have ample resources for content marketing. Our company focuses on easily transforming these rich text materials into content using VideoStew.

< Viral video produced by Beacon >

Since the concept of VideoStew is to easily convert text into videos, we believe it is the perfect tool for publishers looking to do content marketing. Especially since most publishers often lack marketing resources, they can create impressive quality video content without much effort.

In our case, preparing a single piece of content requires reading the book and planning, which takes a lot of time. However, the actual editing through VideoStew can be completed in 15-30 minutes, making the content marketing process very efficient.

Considering the Best Exposure Strategies for Publishers on YouTube

As we aim to build our clients' brands by running Instagram Reels and YouTube channels, we've recently encountered some challenges. This might be specific to the publishing industry.

Publishers handle books across various industries. Therefore, introducing a novel one day and an economics book another day on a single channel might not align well with Instagram or YouTube algorithms.

Generally, YouTube and Instagram algorithms are interest-based, and 'novels' and 'economics' might not easily be grouped together.

So, while it's not an issue for those publishing books in a specific category, for clients publishing diverse genres, we're considering strategies like running channels for each popular genre and are conducting various tests.

This year, I plan to actively use VideoStew to create viral videos. Although I'm already using it well, I have one suggestion: it would be great if an automatic subtitle feature could be added to edit booktuber videos.

Looking forward to working with you, VideoStew!

Conclusion

Through the interview with CEO Han-geul Lee of Beacon, we were able to hear in-depth stories about book publishing marketing. Especially since our VideoStew team also focuses more on content marketing rather than advertising, we could really relate to many points.

From feeling the limitations of performance marketing to focusing on content marketing, and reaffirming the importance of owned media through success stories like Minumsa, there was a lot to learn.

It was also impressive how he specifically explained how publishers can convert their text-based content into video content for effective marketing. It was a delightful interview, seeing how well VideoStew is being utilized in the field.

During the interview, I felt that CEO Han-geul Lee is truly dedicated to the publishing industry and seems to be on a mission to enlighten it. In fact, he is continuously conducting publishing marketing lectures hosted by Hankyoreh.

We look forward to seeing the significant changes that Beyond Contact and CEO Han-geul Lee's efforts will bring to the publishing industry!