BLOG
It’s been another busy year at TBI! We have delivered upwards of fifty projects across the team, including ongoing long-term partnerships, returning clients, and onboarding several new customers for the first time. Here, the team look back at some of the most notable highlights from the year, and what’s coming up in 2024. We want to thank every client who has worked with us through the year, and look forward to exploring more big ideas with you in 2024!
Did you notice our new website?
One of Lynne’s highlights from 2023 is our brand-new website. “It was very satisfying to carve out some time during the summer to refresh the TBI website. This long overdue project gave us the opportunity to reflect on our achievements and showcase the fabulous variety of projects that we’ve worked on with our many clients over the past few years.”
Catching up with new and familiar faces!
Conferences and exhibitions remain an important part of getting to speak to new and existing clients, as well a chance to soak up insightful industry and marketing trends. The team were out at a number of events in 2023, including Researcher2Reader; London Book Fair; UKSG; SSP; ALPSP; OASPA; Technology for Marketing; the B2B Marketing Expo; and the UKSG forum.
“Soaking up the atmosphere at both London and Frankfurt book fairs has been a key highlight for me this year,” says Kelly. “Connecting with new and familiar faces in person brings a unique energy that no virtual meeting can match. These events are a reminder to appreciate the strength of face-to-face connections—sometimes, the traditional approach is simply the best!”
Similarly for Mithu, “attending the SSP conference for the first time was a real highlight. As well as the chance to meet many connections, I was delighted to chair an insightful discussion with Wiley, AIP Publishing, and AGU on the transition underway for publisher marketing teams and how to navigate this. Being part of another panel on the topic of introverts in leadership was also incredibly humbling, it was clear there are a lot of us in scholarly publishing!”
As a remote-based team, we’ve also been enjoying a regular in-person team gathering in Oxford at a variety of locations. As Amelia says, “Our monthly in-person meetings are where we get the opportunity to talk all things TBI marketing, which often takes a backseat!”
New additions to the TBI family
It’s also been a busy year for the team outside of the virtual office! We were thrilled to welcome Rowan back after maternity leave. “Being able to reconnect with both the TBI team and our clients after 10 months on maternity leave has been a real highlight,” says Rowan. “It’s been a pleasure working with so many wonderful, talented people over 2023 and I can’t wait to make many more connections in 2024.”
Our furry friends make up a large number of the TBI team. Amelia’s new addition takes the prize for extreme cuteness: “Pawsonally, the new addition to my family, Jackson 🐾 has been the highlight of my year.”
Strategy, campaigns and results
Across the team, we’ve delivered impactful marketing and communications strategy, and campaigns and content that work.
As Amelia says, “supporting new and existing clients to understand and navigate the ever-changing social media landscape has been a real standout from 2023.”
In her first full year at TBI, Amber too sees getting stuck into projects as her highlight of the year. “Having the opportunity to be creative and produce a collection of visual assets for GetFTR including a video, infographic, and poster, working across a handful of campaigns for a World Congress, and getting to undertake a client’s social audit to round out the year, are just a few to name.”
So with that, here are some examples of the projects we’ve worked on across the team in 2023.
Consultancy
In a rapidly changing industry, publishers face increased challenges in determining priorities. Over the past year, we’ve conducted high-level reviews for society and university press publishers, focusing on aligning journal sales and marketing functions with strategic plans, evaluating skills, resources, strategies, and technology to provide recommendations for immediate and long-term initiatives.
Research and analysis
We’ve worked with several clients to deliver qualitative research through interviews, quantitative surveys, competitor audiences, and market data analysis. This year, that has included:
- Research on training solutions for open research
- Research perspectives on innovations in publishing (spoiler: AI featured heavily!)
- Setting in place ‘voice of the customer’ measurement and tracking
- Membership satisfaction
- Feedback from author communities on publishing with journal brands
“We were pleased to work with several scholarly societies to understand their communities this year, including delivering a survey with over 4,000 researchers for the American Physical Society,” says Mithu. “This kind of market insight work forms a critical step in delivering a customer-orientated marketing strategy, which we also worked on for APS, based on both the survey findings and wide-ranging market analysis such as open access publication trends and competitor activities.”
Marketing strategy
This year we’ve supported many clients with comprehensive marketing and communications strategies. We’ve conducted desk research, marketing audits, competitor channel and messaging reviews, and developed new goals and objectives for actionable marketing plans. That has included:
- New launch strategies for open access journals
- Portfolio marketing strategies for journals in the transition to OA
- Competitive positioning for a publisher in a dynamic and evolving OA landscape
- Development of a 3-year marketing strategy and tactical plan with additional implementation support for the first 6-months
- Delivering in-depth social media audits to evaluate the rapid evolution of channels, the effectiveness of current engagement, and to identify areas of opportunity and potential growth
- Creating a communications strategy for a technology partner to increase visibility with publisher clients, including taking on delivery of communications
Lynne describes one project we’ve undertaken to help a Society communicate an important milestone in their journey to open access. “We helped the Society develop directions for a campaign theme, devise a communications plan and implement many of the activities. It was great to have the opportunity to input into the design of the promotion materials, share ideas for raising profile at in-person and online events, and create engaging blog posts, press releases and social media content.”
Marketing implementation
The team have worked on campaign planning and management for many clients in 2023, covering social media, paid search, email marketing, paid advertising, PR, content marketing, and campaign reporting.
A notable highlight is the team’s delivery of registration marketing for an international congress. TBI were contracted 6 months ahead of the congress, with registrations falling below target. TBI was tasked with extending communications beyond their core community. Kelly commented that “our digital marketing efforts, which included paid social, Google Ads, paid advertising, and third-party emails contributed 46% of all conference website traffic and 58% of registration page views; which ultimately helped the organisation to exceed its original registration targets.”
Amelia has been working on an ongoing project with BJUI Knowledge to raise awareness of their urology platform and increase content readership and subscriptions. “In this longstanding relationship, we implement up to four multi-channel campaigns per month across social media, google ads, and email. We firstly deliver campaign plans comprising objectives, copy, creatives, and targeting where applicable, secondly launch the campaigns, and lastly deliver reporting.”
We’ve also worked on several thought leadership projects for clients in 2023. “Unsurprisingly, AI has been a notable topic of interest this year and it was fascinating to research the fast-moving landscape for Silverchair’s white paper on the topic,” says Mithu. “We’ve also been asked to support a number of DEI-related projects this year, such as Springer Nature’s report on researcher attitudes towards diversity, equity and inclusion.” Other key topics that continue to be of interest to our clients include:
- Explaining open access and open science
- Showcasing client success stories, notably for technology partners
Looking ahead to 2024
With many projects already queued up for 2024, what are we all looking forward to?
Lynne: “As China continues to increase its funding and production of research, there’s so much to learn about reaching researchers in China with readership and submission marketing campaigns. We asked Gin Li an experienced strategic marketer with particular expertise on China-focused marketing strategies to share her valuable insights which will be featured in an upcoming blog post on the TBI website. We’re excited about the potential collaborations with her on upcoming projects for China!”
Kelly: “I’m really looking forward to diving into the results of our industry survey that is currently running. It will allow us to delve deeper into pain points that our peers are currently facing across the industry to ensure we are supporting our existing and future clients as effectively as possible.”
Mithu: “2023 was a year of experimentation with AI tools. Spending more time understanding how to get the best from these and applying this knowledge through 2024 is something I’m really looking forward to.”
Amber: “I’m looking forward to seeing how social media continues to evolve as we head into 2024. 2023 has been the year of change for many social channels, with big changes coming to massive platforms like X (RIP blue bird logo), and new channels launching or becoming more apparent like Threads and Mastodon. It’s going to be interesting to see where all of these channels head next over the next year, and what will come out on top at the end of 2024.”
Amelia: “I am looking forward to learning more about solutions and adapting to the cookieless era. By 2024, Google Chrome will join Firefox and Safari as all third-party cookies will be phased out. This poses a particular threat to paid advertising– how can users be targeted online if they opt-out of tracking? Contextual targeting (ads will show on web pages relevant to your product/service) could be the answer – watch this space for updates in 2024.”
Rowan: “I am looking forward to being able to take a deeper dive into AI tools and investigate how they can support both TBI internally and our clients in the future. I am really intrigued to see what new developments launch next year and how the AI landscape will change.”
The TBI pets team: “we’re mostly wondering whether we’ll get invited to Christmas dinner.”
We wish everyone a successful end to 2023, and send best wishes of the season to you all!