Episode 27: Gaining Parents’ Trust With Marshall Bex of Vooks

Jun 21

In this episode of the Subscriptions: Scaled podcast, Nick Fredrick, President of Rebar Technology Solutions, is joined by Marshall Bex, CEO & Founder of Vooks, the first video streaming library of animated children's books.

What is Vooks?

Vooks is a kid-safe ad-free streaming service for animated storybooks. Co-founded by Marshall Bex, his longtime business partner and friend Russell Hirtzel, and his sister, Shannon Bex, Vooks aims to target their streaming service to kids from two to eight years old, as well as their parents.

Marshall has had a long, successful career in design and product development with companies like Nike and Gatorade. In those roles, he and Russell helped those companies develop new ideas and concepts for successful product launches, relying on their creativity and Russell’s animation skills. Shannon has experienced a long career as a singer, reality show personality, and professional dancer, and she injects her experience and creativity to the company’s mission of delivering animated storybooks to children.

The initial idea for Vooks came about from Marshall observing the differences in how each of his three children approached books, games, television, and ebooks. His oldest child loved to read stacks of books while his youngest, who was born in the iPhone era, wasn't nearly as enthusiastic. Using his background of studying consumer psychology and behavior, he knew that a streaming service for animated kids’ books that would appeal to all types of kids could take off.

An Educational Tool

Following along with an animated storybook can be a great educational tool for kids, especially the younger ones who are learning the spelling of new words and their proper pronunciation. Marshall says that it is important to get kids reading by reading aloud to them, and that is what Vooks gives the kids. Often, the parents and kids will watch a story on Vooks together and talk about it afterward. He has some inspiring stories of kids developing a love for books and reading, and their experience with Vooks makes them want to get the physical book.

The Business Side

As with any business, there is more to it than just using their creative minds to generate great content. Marshall spends a lot of time working on getting publishers and others in the book industry to license their titles and content to Vooks. He uses his experience and background studying consumer behavior for Nike and Gatorade to determine which licensing deals are worth pursuing based on whether he thinks those stories will be embraced by the end consumer, the kids and their parents.

He found a group of teachers early on who understood the value of the concept and immediately asked to have Vooks available for their classrooms. These teachers saw how Vooks engaged their students, especially the younger ones, and it opened up storytelling as a tool in the teachers’ toolbox to get the kids interested in reading and learning.

This early acceptance by teachers led Marshall and his team to focus on teachers and classrooms as their primary consumers. Then they have been able to pivot that focus to include the parents, who can put trust in the Vooks service, knowing that teachers are on board with it.

Social Media Marketing

Marshall and his team have been focusing on developing brand awareness through social media channels through traditional engagement strategies, paid advertising and influencer marketing. They have had positive results using paid media on several platforms, most notably Facebook and Instagram. Their winning strategy has been to focus on both the animated storybooks themselves as well as what kids are learning and doing from watching the streaming books.

With influencer marketing, Vooks has tried all the different influencer levels and, through careful study of the data points like engagement rates and reach, they have determined that for their business model, they get the best results from micro influencers with an audience of 100,000 or fewer.

He hypothesizes that the greater return on investment from this group of influencers is that their audiences are more engaged and more likely to interact with them than the bigger celebrity influencers. The smaller influencers tend to give more honesty and authenticity to the Vooks brand than a famous celebrity might. He says consumer groups are starting to respond to authenticity over glitz and glamour.

Subscriptions

Initially, Marshall and his team implemented a 30-day, auto-renewal subscription service which is typical of most streaming services. However, they are constantly looking at the data and researching the market, monitoring their results to see how they can improve their subscription rates.

This research includes analyzing different freemium streaming services like Curiosity Stream and Apple TV to generate ideas for fresh approaches that might work for Vooks. This research resulted in them recently offering a seven-day free trial that doesn’t require the customer to provide a credit card number.

They have found that being in the hybrid education/entertainment space, when they allow potential customers to experience what their service is and how the kids interact with it, they are more likely to convert those potential customers into paid subscribers. He says that it is important for the parents to really understand what their service is about and how it works to earn their trust—and get them to subscribe.

They are also studying their pricing model and conducting research on consumer purchasing behavior to ensure that they are priced at the optimal price point. Their research shows that a price above seven dollars is where consumers tend to take 24 hours to think about their purchase. Prices below seven dollars are usually an instant buy. Based on this research, they initially priced their service at $4.99 per month, but they continue to gather data to determine if that is the right price for their product, or if it should be higher or lower.

Subscriber Retention

Once they get customers to subscribe to Vooks, the research and study of their customer data continues. They study all the data about their customer engagement to determine which cohorts use the service the most, which titles provide the most engagement, and which ones create more churn.

Marshall says that creating a streaming platform, uploading content, and taking credit cards is the easy part. The real work comes in constant tweaking to deliver a better and more sophisticated platform for their customers that results in higher retention. And it’s not just the data. Data only tells them what is happening but it doesn’t tell them why. He says it is important to understand the emotions behind the behavior by having conversations with customers and engaging focus groups to gain insight and understanding.

To hear more from Marshall Bex about Vooks, their marketing, and their subscription models, tune into this episode of the Subscriptions: Scaled podcast.

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