We caught up with Regina Yeo, Marketing Communications Manager at Marshall Cavendish, to hear more about her work in the publishing industry and Marshall Cavendish's recent rebranding.

As a marketer, you deal with textbooks and educational books from a variety of fields - what are the keys to success?
Understanding your products and your target audience are crucial to producing an effective marketing plan. Marshall Cavendish Education is an education solutions provider. We have a variety of educational books that cover core subjects designed to be implemented in schools. Our resources include textbooks, workbooks, teacher guides and even complementary digital resources. We also have a full suite of professional development courses made for educators to elevate their skill sets and knowledge so that they are able to deliver the curriculum effectively through the use of our educational resources.

Educators are our primary customers and are targeted by their teaching subjects and interests. We also have other customers to cater for such as parents, students and policymakers for certain campaigns.

Another important factor would be timing. Our customers are based all around the world. Every country has its own adoption period (the period also means that educators will start to search for new teaching and learning materials) and this is when we will increase our marketing activities.

Are authors a huge part of the marketing process? 
Definitely! Authors are well-respected and inspirational figures to educators. We work very closely with our authors to promote our educational books and resources. We have conducted webinars and training / educational events with authors to share teaching ideas and pedagogy used in the educational series. Thought leadership pieces were produced with authors that can be seen on our blog, social media and featured in targeted media outlets.

What are your thoughts on the rise of books in different formats such as e-books and audiobooks? How do you market / communicate these formats to the education industry?
Before the pandemic, digital learning resources such as e-books were not as widely used in schools. When the pandemic hit and schools were forced to conduct lessons virtually, educators turned to digital learning resources to support virtual and hybrid learning.

Our digital learning resources complement our core educational materials hence why we promote them as a bundle.

Our digital resources are hosted on our learning portal, MCEduHub and by comparing usage between year 2021 and 2022, we saw at least six times more time spent on MCEduHub by teachers and students.

Traditionally, book launches have been a staple when it comes to a marketing plan for books. How have you adapted to the restriction of events during the pandemic, and how have your communications and marketing strategies changed in the recovery of the pandemic?
During the pandemic, we started a whole series of webinars to educate and promote our newly launched educational series; educators were also more inclined towards online sessions. We also invested three times more budget to run digital marketing campaigns.

What was the motivation behind Marshall Cavenish's rebranding this year?
The motivation behind our rebranding exercise was triggered by how COVID-19 has changed the way schools around the world operate. Schools went into remote or hybrid learning, and some developing countries even stopped school entirely because students were not able to attend lessons virtually. This has changed educators’ aspirations and their challenges. As an educational solutions provider, we needed to rethink how we could align and relate to a post-COVID learning environment.
  
With this rebranding, we hope to bring back the joy of learning by creating learning content and solutions that satisfy the aspiration, address and support educators and school leaders’ challenges.

Lastly, what’s on your reading list?
I am currently reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle and a parenting book, No-Drama Discipline!