"Libraries must communicate their value to customers as well as the changes libraries are making to satisfy customer's expressed needs and wants." ~
"Marketing is not something a library does once, it's an ongoing process that must be assessed as the campaign progress...." ~
"Marketing is not an event, but a process.... It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But you never stop it completely." ~ Jay Levinson
"What makes you unique makes you successful." ~ William Arruda
"Getting people to talk often, favorably, to the right people in the right way about your product is far and away the most important thing that you can do as a marketer." ~ George Silverman
"If we treat our employees correctly, they'll treat the customers right. And if the customers are treated right, they come back." ~ J.W. Marriott
Blueprint For Your Library Marketing Plan: A Guide to Help You Survive and Thrive by Patricia Fisher and Marseille Pride.
Communications Handbook for Libraries by the American Library Association provides detailed information on how to create and share your good news.
Libraries, Mission & Marketing: Writing Mission Statements That Work by Linda K. Wallace. Solid with many good examples. Create a mission statement that really makes a difference.
Library Advocate's Handbook by the American Library Association includes good introductions to dealing with the media and library funders.
Library Marketing That Works by Suzanne Walters provides a comprehensive step-by-step approach.
Library Media & PR Articles by SSdesign includes ideas, tips, and good how to information.
Marketing & PR by the Mid-Hudson Library System provides information on audience, getting started, and displays.
Marketing Library Services is a fee-based monthly newsletter with at least one good free article in each issue.
Marketing Our Libraries provides a variety of interesting and useful content. Good for current awareness.
Marketing the Library by the Ohio Library Foundation introduces marketing concepts.
Marketing Toolkit by the Washington State Library Marketing Initiative [Flash presentation].
Marketing Treasures is an excellent source for tips and ideas. Mandatory reading for anyone interesting in marketing library services.
NSLS Library Marketing Center by the North Suburban Library System in Illinois has been especially successful in library marketing.
PRTalk is an ALA hosted discussion list devoted to library public relations and marketing.
Telling the Library Story Tool Kit by the Iowa State Library provides samples and shortcuts.
First, research and planning. Then, product selection based on market research. Next, create a marketing plan including goals, objectives, and promotion strategies. Promotion is the final P in the four Ps. Some use five Ps so that the last two Ps are public relations and promotion. Promotion includes:
The promotion strategy will vary with the nature of the audience. The purpose of library promotion is to expand the library's mindshare [the degree to which customers associate the library with certain products] and timeshare [how much time do they spend in the library or with library products versus other locations and other activities].
Which promotion strategies [how will you reach those who may benefit?] would work best for the home schooling parent audience? Which promotion strategies would work best for the products [which products?] aimed at this audience?
Stephen Abram provides ten essential steps for competing with Amazoogle:
Each of these steps has a substantial marketing component.
Be able to discuss each of these steps in terms of marketing, including promotion.
Dogs are products that "consume resources without being profitable. ... Such a product has low market share, little growth potential, and few customers. Identify any "dogs" in your product line and delete them or improve them. The thoughtful librarian will regularly review the product line to identify dogs and eliminate them. Such products detract from the library's brand and waste scare resources. Some large for-profit firms eliminate any product line, which cannot be a market leader. The key here is to focus on those products where you have a competitive advantage and can be a market leader or at least a market challenger. Don't promote library collections or services unless you are certain that there are no dogs.
Convenience and value are keys. A good product that is inconvenient lacks value and becomes a dog. While we wish to prolong the customer's stay in the library, we also need to make library use as easy and quick as possible. For example, long lines at the check out counter make it difficult to promote "free books @ your library." Poor policies and procedures may inhibit a good product and turn it into a dog.
Can you identify any "dogs" in the adult services provided by the public library? What criteria would you use?
Marketing is inclusive and includes all the steps needed to understand, attract, and retain customers. Promotion includes those marketing steps associated with making products more visible and more attractive. Promotion follows analysis, evaluation, planning, and the implementation of adult service products. It is difficult to promote unless you have good products and understand your markets.
Effective marketing and promotion must be both external and internal. Internal marketing focuses on the essential role of the library staff in providing great customer service. We must reach out to both the community and our own staff. Raising and rewarding customer-consciousness is a key component of marketing.
Another way of looking at promotion is to say that promotion is telling your story. Your story should be shared among those who work in the library, those who support it, and those who use it. Like the myths and legends learned in childhood, the story should be simple and powerful.
Word of mouth is the best way to promote the library. Encourage satisfied users to tell their friends. Collect testimonials.
Librarians have often felt uncomfortable with marketing and promotion. Some believe that the visibility and the value of the public library are so obvious that no marketing is needed. Given increased competition, including competition for scarce resources, this seems to be dysfunctional. Libraries have a tendency to be taken for granted. Few in the community understand that libraries are often technologically sophisticated and that librarians are experts and highly trained experts. Communities change. Libraries change. A few communities have lost their libraries because of financial problems. Marketing and promotion should guarantee that the library is not taken for granted.
"Touchpoints" are the interactions between the library and those in the community. A librarian giving a book talk to a literary group creates a touchpoint with all those encountered. We hope that these interactions are positive. It is a challenge to consider how many touchpoints exist between the library and those who enter our doors as well as those who interact with library staff beyond the library. "Each touchpoint offers you the opportunity to establish and build your library's brand into a positive experience and memory."
List the touchpoints for a typical library patron.The foundation for successful marketing is based upon the interactions that we provide with our customers. We need to examine these touchpoints to identify strengths and weaknesses. Focus groups are often helpful.
The library staff, at all levels, represent internal customers or an internal market. Staff must share and apply core values related to customer service and valuing the customer. Communication and suggestion systems need to be created to make it as easy as possible for customers to share their thoughts and concerns with the staff and have those thoughts collected and evaluated by management. Ideally, the library staff and library customers are true partners "in an individual's learning journey."
"A brand is the definition of your institution that exists in the mind of the customer." The library's brand is "the space you've captured in the minds of your customers." Brand identity is what your institution currently means to customers. Brand aspiration is what you want it to mean. Both incorporate:
The mission statement should be "a brand promise" to the customer. Consider Walmart's "always low prices," or Target's "expect more, pay less" as slogans or taglines that clearly send a message closely linked to their brand. Since the brand is a promise, it is important to be able to deliver. A slogan is a memorable, short phrase that captures the institution's identity, values, uniqueness, and promise. Here are the questions to be answered before developing a tagline:
From these answers, generate a list of of words and phrases. Arrange and rearrange. Test on staff and on focus group.
Create a slogan or tagline for the William Chandler Robinson Memorial Library. For Adult services.
Both in text and graphics, identity is captured in a logo. Here the image captures the associations found in the slogan. The brand message needs to be consistent and everywhere. It is fully integrated into the complete marketing program.
What words, good positive and hopefully unique words can be associated with the adult library experience?
What would be a good brand slogan for the public library, especially one with a strong commitment to serving adults? What is unique or different about our products [the experience]? Which words capture our identity? Our core values? What should the brand promise be?
Peggy Barder and Linda Wallace make the following points about the golden rule of promotional messages "make it easy to say and remember":
The library should have a clear strategy to generate positive word of mouth and all staff need to be involved.
Ideally, the library develops relationships with individuals and shows the adult how the library meets particular needs. Privacy remains a key issue, but with user completed interest forms [in paper and on the web] the library can individualize the message and make it seem more personal. Individualization means "getting customers to teach you what they want, remembering what they teach you, and then providing what they want." In the near future, customization and personalization of LIS collections and services will be expected.
Press releases/articles about various changes in the library will be send to specific individuals in local media. Each will contain at least one "hook" to link the library to a particular audience and provide a solution to a particular problem.
Developing and maintaining good relationships with local media is a continuing responsibility. It requires time and effort, but the payoff can be substantial.
The first step is to insure that the product is in good order with no snags. The product most be widely available and the staff must be well-informed and ready to provide cheerful assistance if needed. In some cases, a product specific training session is needed to insure that staff are well prepared. Without staff buy-in and enthusiasm, the product is not likely to be successful even if the promotion is well done.
Ordinarily, we promote the experience associated with the product or the outcome of product use rather than the product itself. For example, the appeal elements in a book review telegraph the sort of experience likely to be found. The appeal elements in a reader's pick will more directly focus on experience. The user experience [positive we hope] is the story. News about people is much more interesting than news about a product such as our new microfiche reader. Tia Dobi makes the point clearly when she says that
Nobody who bought a drill actually wanted a drill. They wanted a hole.
It is difficult to promote to the entire community. Promotion works best when focused on a particular audience or a group of similar audiences. The audience needs to be delimited, appeal elements need to be identified along with the particular benefits that the product will provide. The message needs to be simple, straight-forward, and easily understood.
Well developed slogans often help. Recall the brief discussion above. Here are three recent examples:
What slogan would you create for public library collections and services for adults?
It is essential to know which media sources are used by your intended audience. There is little point in promoting your product via local newspapers if your intended audience does not read the newspaper. Where does your audience get its news?
If your audience is likely to be involved in community activities, such as a pioneer days festival, the library should be involved with a booth, float or whatever. Repeated visibility in the community is a key component to success.
A highly effective approach is to identify organizations that already have a good relationship with your audience and work with them to share your story. Partnerships provide many good opportunities for promotion.
For relatively small but important audiences, personal visits and presentations can work well. However, the visit and the presentation has to focus on helping adults to be more successful and not just an opportunity to air a canned presentation.
A marketing promotion plan needs to be created with who will do what, when, and how as well as the length of the campaign and how it will be evaluated.
Ideally, the library develops relationships with individuals and shows the adult how the meets particular needs. Privacy remains a key issue, but with user completed interest forms [in paper and on the web] the library can individualize the message and make it seem more personal.
Library staff [the right manner is essential] promote collections and services as they interact with users. For example, a circulation clerk might mention that the library also has a good collection of SF films to someone checking out a new SF novel.
These are not ranked and are not complete. Rather they are intended to encourage thoughtful thinking and some innovation.
Ask well-know personalities to be library ambassadors, lending their name and good will to library promotional initiatives.
Create a generic library business card with URL, phone numbers, and a brief list of services. Place card on computer workstations and service points.
There are many opportunities here. Staff and reader picks in different formats can work well. Contests using unusual reference or trivia questions are another. Adult reading programs can offer small prizes and recognition in the same manner as those for children. Sponsors may be sought so that gift certificates for local restaurants may be the prizes.
Notifying community members of new content in areas of special interest is popular and creates opportunities for increasing collection and services use. The Amazon like notification of a new item based on past library use does raise privacy issues but that can be dealt with. Selective dissemination of information services for local government officials is also a possibility.
A traditional, but still popular approach, is for the library to provide the local newspaper with a weekly column on the book or information world. A similar approach could be recorded on audio media for use by local radio stations. We want to reinforce the notion that librarians are down-to-earth experts.
If well done and well promoted, each of these events or programs provides a reason to visit the library. Collections and services can be linked to each. Thoughtful work with local media will create positive "buzz" for the library and reinforce the notion that the library is active, innovative, and interesting.
In order to compete with the big box stores and to become an even better destination, the public library should serve light food and drink. While not likely to be especially profitable, and creating some housekeeping problems, food and drink will encourage patrons to stay longer and will make the library a more comfortable place to spend time.
Just as most museums have a gift shop, so should the library. It need not be large and could be staffed by library staff or friends of the library volunteers. This should be separate from the library's sale of unwanted gift books or other discards. Some of the items sold should reflect the library. Products might include:
The possibilities for products will be limited to some extent by what is available elsewhere within the community. Like the museum shop, items should be related to collections and services, be unusual or unique, and be of high quality.
Although perhaps not a "real" holiday, there are many commemorative days, weeks, and months [national model railroad month is an example] that provide opportunities for promotions, events, and displays. The free World Almanac Newsletter [digital] identifies many holidays, events, and birthdays.
Organize workshops for various adult segments to help them improve their information and computer literacy skills. If well done, these programs can generate considerable positive word of mouth. Whenever an adult enters the library, there is an opportunity to showcase collections and services.
The library should create and distribute in hard copy and via the Internet, a monthly or quarterly newsletter with interesting and useful content.
An open house is designed to provide a reason for members of the community to visit the public library. The open house could be build around an event or could simply be a time when the library welcomes the community and showcases collections and services. There might be light refreshments and door prizes [perhaps donated by local merchants].
An effective public library will have educational, cultural, and other partners in the community. These relationships provide promotional opportunities. For example, library events should appear in he the local museum newsletter and vice versa. Similarly websites should be linked. The open house mentioned above could be designed for those associated with a partner institution or organization. Joint programs and promotional initiatives are also cost-effective.
The library should take advantage of this opportunity to reach out to particular adult audiences with announcements of programs, events, and services.
RSS feeds provide updated content to those with a news reader. This means that a user does not need to go to the website to see if new content has been added. Typical feeds would be devoted to items added to the collection and today at the public library. Here us a good example at the Minneapolis Public Library.
Develop an interesting, looping slide show illustrating some interesting aspect of services and collections. Use a wall near a high traffic area for the screen. For example, one slide show might use interesting questions and answers from the reference department. Another might showcase topical websites. Slide shows need to be changed periodically so they remain new and interesting.
The library should provide a speaker bureau for the community. Libraries should be able to speak about trends in the information world, books, films, music and whatever. Obviously, they must be good public speakers and be knowledgeable as well. Still, librarians should be leaders in informing the community about issues and concerns in the global information world.
Library weblogs are growing in popularity and are an excellent way to reach both a general audience [new books and films] and a more specialized one [feminine fiction]. Here is an excellent example at the Waterboro Public Library with a focus on library and literary news. Ideally, each subject specialist in the library, the business librarian, would offer a weblog. This is a wonderful opportunity for advisory services.
Additional suggestions?
Last major revision: November 2005.
