Interview with Barbara Hartman

Barbara Hartman is a lifelong learner and all kinds of books enthusiast, BookScouter brand advocate, now working as a CMO and helping the web app reach full growth. You can connect with Barbara via LinkedIn.

Tell us about your brand. What business are you in?

I’m the CMO at BookScouter. It’s a web application as well as a mobile app helping compare book prices from multiple online sources in a single search.

How do you describe your brand to someone who was introduced to it for the first time?

We usually add the phrase “price comparison engine” next to the BookScouter brand name, and people understand the value of our website quite clearly. The primary value we promote is simple. People like to shop around and make sure that the offer they’ve chosen to buy or sell something back is the best bang for the buck. On top of that, we pretend to be not just a price comparison app, but an app that helps make purchase decisions, for example, whether to buy or rent a textbook, to buy now or buy later upon an email with a price change alert, etc.

What do you want customers to feel when they think of it?

Our motto sounds like “Buy and sell books the smart way,” and we would like our users to feel confident. With the BookScouter app, it’s easy to get rid of the feeling you are missing out on something. It’s not only about money or budget. It’s always a pleasure to make intelligent decisions and be sure you’ve chosen the best option.

How do you see your brand changing in the future?

The brand has been transformed heavily during the last two years. We’re positioning BookScouter as a book price engine and not just a book buyback offers checker as it used to be in the past. The audience segment intended to buy books is growing. We’re attracting book lovers and professional resellers way more successfully than before when the app was mainly for the student audience (built around the idea of making the most money on textbooks you no longer need). And it’s not just about the brand positioning, it’s about the product development as well. We’re growing our partnering bookstore network, working on our books database, redesigning the website, and have many new great features prepared for release quite soon.

Do you have an affiliate program on BookScouter?

I believe that BookScouter affiliate program development and promotion is an important part of the marketing plan for our brand in 2022, as well as for many other e-commerce companies. When implemented and managed properly, a robust affiliate program can turn out to be one of the most cost-effective marketing instruments compared to other online advertising methods that can generate even fewer leads, sales, and traffic.

For the time being, our partners generate about 10-12% of our total website traffic, demonstrating great conversion rates, and getting decent commissions. This is even though we haven’t put much effort into promoting the program and have worked only with a few content projects. We have a long history of collaboration with them and maintain direct communication. Just recently, we created the landing page and launched the search widget for affiliates.

With the launch of the ‘Affiliates’ page and online marketing campaign, we expect our affiliate network to increase by two to three times. The books and reading niche is flooded with content projects like blogs, recommendation services, book review websites, etc. They do not have a lot of alternatives to Amazon commissions monetization, while our web app, which is a price comparison engine, has a clear value, is favored by its users, and has a relatively high sales conversion rate.