Process

Evaluating the Product

Step Into Reading consists of five levels that progressively challenge the reader as they gain reading proficiency. However, this presumes that a child can already read, since the child must already have basic reading skills in order to begin the series. This left a huge opening for a tool that can help non-readers acquire and advance early reading skills.

Identifying Product Marketing Strengths

Step Into Reading also has the benefit of using many of Random House's licensed characters, such as properties from Little Golden Books, Dr. Seuss, The Berenstein Bears, Sesame Street, and Disney. These licenses can be leveraged for their brand recognition as a way to attract children with characters that they are familiar with and enjoy.

Analyzing Marketing Channels and Strategy

Step Into Reading traditionally markets itself to elementary schools, school and public libraries, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and online booksellers. Direct marketing, is an effective approach for targeting such large organizations. These customers are easily reached by regularly sending Random House Book catalogs. The old website was adequately serving this role, essentially serving as an online pamphlet.

However, direct marketing the series to homeschoolers, individual teachers, students, and parents would be difficult and far too expensive. For such a diversified target customer base, content marketing was the optimal choice. Adding content to the pre-existing Step Into Reading Website creates additional reasons for children to search out and engage with Random House characters.

Researching Data on Reading Ability

Next, I needed to understand some of the differences between how children learn to read in order to construct accurate user profiles. The main factors I used to define my demographic were age and reading ability. The typical age range for the Step Into Reading program is 5-10 years or kindergarten through fourth grade. Children in this age range vary widely in reading ability, from nonreaders/poor readers to highly proficient readers.

Creating a Learning Profile

I also looked at research on learning and processing information. From that I created a model to assess children's learning process that was based off of educational theories, in particular, David Kolb's Learning Style Inventory.

Understanding The User

There were three profiles that stood out from the data: the reluctant reader, the early reader, and the story teller. The data was first divided by ability creating a group of readers below grade level and a group of readers at grade level and above. The group of readers at grade level and above then could be split into groups by age from early readers pre-k readers to older readers who are at the threshold of reading advanced chapter books. Using the data I came up with three personas which were Amelia the early reader, Katie the storyteller and Brian the reluctant reader.

From evaluating the personas, marketing channels and the Step Into Reading product, it became clear that a good choice for the marketing campaign would be to bring readers to the Step Into Reading website with a reading game.

The game would help out readers who are beginning to learn how to read as well as being able to continually engage them throughout the process of learning the mechanics of reading and then to higher level skills of creating their own stories.

Designing the Process Flow

In order to construct the game, I considered the general interactions the user would have to perform and categorized the overall processes into three main actions: story creation, story output, and individual user account management (profiles etc). With the input from the personas and business needs, I came up with a list of all the elements that would be needed. I then used all that information to put together a map of how the user will interact with the game.