Wiley

How can a publisher discover and engage with a niche audience and drive sales?

Challenge

Reach and engage people studying or teaching microbiology, while driving sales of microbiology textbooks.

Solution

Used Promoted Accounts to grow follower base. Used Promoted Tweets to maximise reach and engagement during key industry conferences.

Results

  • 14K new followers
  • 516% increase in brand mentions
  • 17x more sales
Tweet

Wiley is the largest publisher for professional and scholarly societies, serving the world’s research and academic communities. The company launched @microbiology to engage with microbiology students and professionals around the world.

The challenge

Wiley wanted to reach and engage people across the microbiology community – from students to teachers to professionals.

The solution

To build a bigger audience within the microbiology community, Wiley used its @microbiology handle to launch a Promoted Accounts campaign, geo-targeting UK users interested in science and biology. Wiley also targeted @usernames in the subject area (like @Microbeworld and @NatureNews) to connect with people interested in science. Finally, it targeted users similar to its followers.

Recognising its target audience would be particularly receptive during key conferences (like those organised by the Society of General Microbiology), Wiley used these as an opportunity to join and influence the conversation.

During conferences, Wiley used Promoted Tweets in search to engage users actively looking for the event hashtag (#sgmwarw, #sgmman) and information on relevant topics. It also used Promoted Tweets in timeline targeting users with the relevant life science interests. Promoted Tweets drove awareness of exclusive offers, such as 20% discounts and giveaways.

To join the conversations people were having, Wiley tweeted compelling content relevant to the workshops and programmes going on in real time.

To boost engagement, it included strong call to actions in its Tweets, embedding rich media content like links, images and Vines.

To keep the conversation going after the event, Wiley asked users to share their experiences, while giving them access to more exclusive deals.

“Twitter allowed us to reach an audience that we wouldn’t have been able to engage otherwise. The ability to capture conversations in real time and target Promoted Tweets to specific keywords is impressive. I now have students coming to me during conferences to discuss our Twitter handle, which tells me we are reaching the right people at the right time.”

Danny AslingDigital Marketing Consultant, Wiley

The results

After three months of activity, @microbiology had gained 14,000 new followers, behind its Promoted Account and Promoted Tweet campaign.

Wiley drastically boosted engagement with the life science community, with @microbiology mentions increasing by 516% over the previous three months (from 10 to 5,516 mentions). Importantly, engagement translated to sales, with book sales escalating from 7 to 122 units per month at peak.

3 keys to success

  1. Target your message.
    Wiley used interest targeting to scale its follower base of people interested in life science. During key conferences, it engaged users actively looking for the event hashtag and information on relevant topics with Promoted Tweets in search.
  2. Make your content relevant and timely.
    Wiley studied the conference programme and crafted its Tweets around that, so as to push the right content and the relevant offers at the right time. To maximise engagement, Wiley embedded rich content including links, images and Vines.
  3. Give access to exclusive offers. 
    60% of Twitter UK users* follow a brand to receive discounts and promotions. Wiley tweeted exclusive offers, discounts and promotions that its audience would find valuable, capturing their attention, generating word of mouth and driving sales.

*Compete UK, 2012