The Effectiveness of Content Marketing on Increasing Book Sales (Case study of Aban Book Publishing Company)

The business of the book is different from other ones. Books are uncertain products that have a high failure rate in reaching the target audience, with only a small percentage of them entering the customer's shopping list. Hence, such businesses should always seek low-costs and innovative strategies to attract their customers. Content marketing is one of these strategies that despite its important role in reaching the audience, there have only been a few books related to it and its effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of content marketing on increasing the rate of online book sales at a certain publishing company.

This study is a qualitative research; done by using a case study method. Content marketing strategies were performed at a publishing company for six months and its effect on increasing the rate of online sales of books was evaluated. For this purpose, among the active Persian publishing companies in Tehran, the Aban publishing company was purposefully selected as a case study. Data was collected using observation and online sales transactions.

The findings from the use of content marketing showed a 3.6% increase in book online sales rate compared to the previous state. However, it is also likely that people affected by different factors have decided to increase their offline purchases. This is justified by the consumer's behavior in online environments.

If content marketing is considered as a long-term effort, it will provide better results by integrating it with other book-marketing activities.