University of Toronto Press: Brand Awareness
Increasing brand awareness and providing support for UTP's marketing team.
Overview
In January of 2020, Fractal was engaged, alongside partner Groundzero Marketing, to provide marketing support for University of Toronto Press’s internal marketing team.
Fractal was mandated with increasing site traffic and awareness of the UTP brand.
Project Scope
Objectives
Brand Awareness
Increase Sales
Services
Branding & Messaging
Creative Development
Campaign Strategy & Execution
Timeline
2020-2023
The Challenge
Our UTP campaigns needed to be anchored around UTP titles aimed at specialist audiences. Books ranged in topic from climate change to landscape architecture, to business and branding, making audience targeting uniquely challenging.
In addition, the budget for brand advertising was limited.
The Solution
We identified key audience segments for each in-market title, and used a custom-built tactical matrix enabling us to target difficult-to-define segments on social channels and display networks.
In consultation with UTP, Fractal also added a third campaign goal: driving as much direct revenue as possible through book sales, to in part defray the costs of brand advertising for UTP.
What We Did
Creative & Content Development
We developed video, infographic and still image creative, and wrote content including long-form interviews with authors, for use on social media and in paid advertising.
Campaign Strategy & Execution
Due to an abundance of titles, topics, content and promoted events, this media buy was complex. We deployed multiple instantiations of ad creatives addressing different audiences and thematic focuses, promoted organic content, produced either by the UTP team or by Fractal, as part of paid campaigning, and also promoted online sales and webinar events.
Audience Targeting
Audience targeting was key to the success of these campaigns. We dealt with these challenges in a variety of ways, including marketing books to non-specialist general audience by targeting key authors/figures and their followers in related fields. Display advertising was carried out by targeting specific third-party interest and behaviour-based segments as well as lookalike audiences on social media.
The Results
Fractal succeeded in meeting our mandate of increasing site traffic and awareness for UTP, and was been re-engaged for another full year of campaigning in 2021. Year-over-year, University of Toronto Press has seen the following results:
51%
Site Traffic Increase
66%
Conversion Rate Increase
101%
Online Sales Revenue Increase
Beyond the Campaign
University of Toronto Press has also seen increases in sales from third-party online retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indigo) as well as through Canadian brick-and-mortar retailers. All of this has taken place over the course of Fractal’s engagement, and despite the closure of most university bookstores, they remain one of UTP’s top sales channels.
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