Libraries and Marketing - challenges and solutions?

1
Libraries and Marketing- challenges and
solutions?

• Jens Thorhauge
• Danish Agency for Libraries and Media

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Problem

• Most libraries are weak in marketing. Thinking
  in terms of marketing in a public context is a
  relatively new trend
• Public relations telling about your services
  and products has a longer tradition, but
  marketing
• Involving an approach to product design that
  reflects the documented needs of the target
  groups seem to be a very appropiate foundation
  for modern library services

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The top professional way is based on Kotler

• Marketing is a managerial process involving
  analysis, planning, implementation, control
• It has carefully formulated programs not random
  actions
• Based on voluntary exchange, and marketing
• Selects target markets - not to be all things to
  all people
• Marketing is correlated to organisational
  objectives
• Emphasis on users needs and desires rather than
  producers preferences
• Product, place, price, promotion

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The everyday down to earth questions

• Do your community know your library?
  Users/nonusers?
• Did you plan activities and services in relation
  to the community?
• Do they have an appropriate image of the
  services?
• Can they find their way to the library in the
  city space?
• Will they recognize the library when they pass
  it?
• Does the library communicate the identity that
  you want it to communicate?
• Can the users find their way inside the library?
• Did you identify their needs and did you design
  products to meet them?
• Did you make a plan for communication?

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Commercial ways

• Danish supermarkets compet on special offers and
  market them weekly by advertising and brochures.
  
• A chain of hardware dealers - some 150 shops-
  organise their activities based on 12-14 bursts
  pr year. A burst is a campaign on season or
  trend related products communicating by
  advertising, brochures, display of products in
  the store. Price pr. burst 0,6 1,0 mio. Euro.
• A Swedish campaign on library lovers recently run
  to the cost of 1,5 mio. Euro Impact?

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Most libraries must find other ways due to budgets

• If you have none or random marketing activities
  it is time to do something
• Key activities are analysis, cooperation and
  planning and competence-development
• Analysis should be directed towards the role and
  potentials of your library in the community
• And you might in a group of libraries help each
  other to a service-check of the involved
  libraries
• By answering a list of down to earth questions

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Do your community know your library

• What do you know about your customers? Do you
  know why citizens dont use the library?
• Surveys can be made on many levels.
• Ask patrons coming in the library a few relevant
  questions,
• Ask them to fill in a simple questionaire
• Ask visitors at your homepage what they need and
  what they like
• Telephone interview to a number of random
  citizens
• Ask questions to reveal their image of the
  library (multiple choice questions)

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Planning activities in relation to your community

• Which activities are needed - where can you
  cooperate with other partners, what are the
  relevant target groups you can identify- how big
  are they?
• Families with pre-school children - kindergardens
• Schoolchildren schools, clubs
• Web-users
• Drive-in users, library lovers, students working
  in the library
• Elderly

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Can the citizens find their way to and in the
library?

• Programmes on sign boards?
• Do you take the classification system for
  granted?
• Do you use other ways to display material?
• Have you got a basic idea in your interior
  design?
• Do you have huge posters on exhiibitions, flags
  or any other eyecatchers on the library facade?

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Does the library communicate the image that you
want it to communicate - does it work?

• Or will you find a gap between the hybrid library
  profile with multimedia offers and web-based
  services that you are working hard to provide and
  the image among citizens of a bookcollection, an
  atmosphere from old days and librarians that act
  like keepers of the collection?
• If the answer is yes you need a strategy to
  overcome the gap- good stories on the new
  services told in any available place

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Did you identify needs and design programmes to
meet them?

• Needs should be identified within the frames of
  the mission of the library if children want
  sweets they must go somewhere else.
• Identify needs by statisticks, by self analysis,
  via partners. Ask users about preferences.
• Example on needs
• To stimulate language amond preschool-children
• To develop reading abilities among schoolchildren
• To develop webliteracy multimodal competencies
• To stimulate and inspire many different groups

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Did you make a plan for communication and
marketing?

• Some elements
• What image will you communicate?
• What messages?
• Which groups are you planning to reach?
• Which channels do you choose
• Schoolteachers, local papers (publicity, stories,
  advertising), cooperation with clubs and
  associations, brochures, leaflets, direct mail,
  web-based marketing

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A few Danish initiatives

• Marketing by national contests and quizzes among
  schoolchildren-
• Coperation on providing a toolbox for library
  marketing templets, grafics, models, drawings
  and photos etc.
• Marketing plans and programmes developped among a
  group af libraries the chain-shop model
• Web marketing on e-reference services