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Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion

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Advice for Jedi Library Marketing from Luke Skywalker

hello-there

I was in the same room as Luke Skywalker.

When I heard Mark Hamill was keynoting Content Marketing World, I may or may not have squealed out loud. Repeatedly.

When he walked onto the stage, the energy in the room went up by about 1000 megawatts. 4000 marketers got to their feet and cheered. I could not post anything on social media for 20 minutes, there was such a drag on the WiFi from everyone else!

What the heck was Luke Skywalker doing at a marketing conference? Show business is all about marketing and actors are more than men and women who stand up in front of a camera and read lines. They have to know how to appeal to audiences through unique storytelling and emotional engagement. That’s the oldest and purest form of marketing.

Hamill is every bit as gracious as you would imagine. And he had five great insights that apply to library marketing.

Love your job or don’t do it. Mark Hamill loves making and marketing films. He told us about how he enjoyed coming to the publicity department to watch the studio create marketing materials to promote the Star Wars series. During the latest movie, he thought of new ways to market the movie on Twitter, including a funny incident where he promised to unveil the trailer for Star Wars: Episode VIII on a certain day. When the day arrived, he shared a video of his trailer… his dressing room trailer. “How they thought we’d have a trailer ready for a movie we hadn’t even begun to shoot yet, I don’t know,” said Hamill.  Hamill said he was fascinated by the creative process involved in marketing a movie series with super fans who salivate, analyze, memorize, and deconstruct every single line. He says that energy made the work he had to do on camera more exciting. When you love your job and you are passionate about it, your library will benefit. If you have the privilege of hiring staff, make sure they’re passionate and energetic too.

Don’t be afraid of change or learning new things.  George Lucas told Hamill, “The thing is, in show business, nobody knows anything. The business is always changing and evolving.” That’s true for libraries too and Hamill says that’s a confidence booster for all of us. You need tenacity in any business, including library marketing. Said Hamill, “Sometimes I think tenacity is more important as talent, or at least as important. Can you survive all the failures?” In the end, Hamill says you must believe in yourself, work hard, never give up, and you can do anything.

If you hit a creative wall, take a break from it. You don’t have to have all the answers all the time. The answers will come to you when you aren’t thinking about it. Try to imagine what people want, keeping in mind that those wants may be very different from what your library is planning to promote.  Your marketing should create an emotional response in your cardholders. If it isn’t doing that, go back to the drawing board and keep thinking! Hamill says he also always tries to find a way to re-purpose old ideas with his own lens. Everyone comes at things with a different perspective. Follow your instincts. Trust yourself.

Understand the different facets that go into your library’s operation and function. If you’ve never worked on the front line with staff, take a few hours to job shadow someone at a branch. When you have a chance to sit down with a senior leader, ask questions about their job, the concerns, their hopes, and the direction they want to see the library take. Hamill wants us to remember that what we do is composite art. Marketing isn’t a disconnected endeavor. It supports and is supported by countless other people within the library system. You’ll do your best work when you know how all the pieces fit together.

Know that you’ll never be satisfied. Just aim to be less dissatisfied. Your work will never be perfect. The best you can hope for is to improve with each promotion. You never know what great thing is waiting for you around the corner. Hamill left us with this parting thought: “I never expected to be in a galaxy far, far away as I rocket toward Social Security, that’s for sure.”

Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on “Follow” button on the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on Twitter and Snapchat–it’s where I talk about library marketing! I’m @Webmastergirl. I’m also on LinkedIn, Slideshare,  Instagram and Pinterest. Views in this post are my own and do not represent those of my employer.

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Why Library Marketing Stinks and What to Do About It

I’ve been in the library marketing business for about 18 months now. Here is what I’ve learned:

1. Never call anyone without a Library Sciences degree a “librarian.” Librarians take their degree and their expertise very seriously, and some might be offended.

2. Librarians are passionate, enthusiastic people who have a deep, driving desire to help others and a curiosity for information that is unparalleled in most other businesses.

3. Most library marketing departments are struggling to showcase their wonderful organizations because of out-of-date tactics.

So there it is. In my first post on this new blog, I’m issuing a call to arms for my fellow Library marketers. There are some great examples of forward-thinking marketing happening in libraries all across the U.S. (I’m looking at you, David Lee King. Also see New York Public Library, and Troy Public Library in Michigan.) But most library marketing departments are still doing things the same way they’ve been done for the past 10-15 years. They push programs. They issue press releases. They send out monthly brochures chock full of text, listing every single branch program and story time (do you know how many story times the average library holds?? A lot!).

Libraries are failing to drive more circulation and increase program visits because they lack a marketing strategy. Without a clear-cut plan, you might as well throw spaghetti at the wall. It’s frustrating and unsatisfying, and it won’t increase your circulation numbers or drive more traffic to your buildings or digital services.

Okay, so let’s address the elephant in the room. Change is hard, especially for a library system. We’re not talking about Google here. We’re talking about an organization with a long-standing tradition and a history in the community it serves. The bureaucracy in a library rivals some giant companies I know. Politics can be brutal. New ideas are hard to pitch, slow to catch on, and don’t always have the full backing of the administration or board.

Listen, I’m right there with you.  I know how hard it is.  I took this job so I could sing the praises of my favorite public Library system. I’m inspired by the work that is done here, and I want everyone else to be too! It’s a dream job. But it sure is harder than I thought.

I’m lucky, though. I stepped in during a monumental shift in the greater marketing world. It’s what Content Marketing Strategist Robert Rose calls “The 7th Era of Marketing: Content-Driven Customer Experiences.”  Customers are looking for value from brands (yes, your library is a brand!). They don’t want to just check out items. They want an experience and a connection to the library. They want to feel like their library has their back. We can provide that!

So here’s what I propose. Let’s change the library marketing landscape together. We’ll start small and basic. Here are our first three steps.

1. We should create a strategy now and stick to it! The new year is coming. It’s the perfect time to try something new. Stop creating a promotional schedule based on events. Start creating content that promotes your biggest assets-your collection and your librarians. I’m not saying we should never promote a program again. But create a strategy and promote programs that fit into the strategy. We’ll talk more about this in a future post.

2. We should become content marketing enthusiasts. We work in buildings which are piled from floor to ceiling with the tales of people, animals, and events, both real and imaginary. We are literally surrounded by stories. Of all the industries that have tried to embrace the content marketing model, it should be easiest for us. It’s a natural fit. Our loyal customers are often super enthusiastic fans. Most brands would kill for fans like that. We should be curating their stories and turning them into customer success pieces and marketing them. Again, we’ll talk about this more in a future post.

3. We should learn from our for-profit counterparts. Do not isolate yourself in the library world. I would go so far as to tell you, library marketers, that you do not need to go to PLA or ALA. You should be attending marketing conferences like Content Marketing World and the Social Media Marketing World. You should be attending webinars and following marketing influencers. You should be reading books, white papers, listening to podcasts, and surrounding yourself with all things marketing. We should take the successes and failures that our for-profit friends have made and use them to our advantage. We won’t be able to do everything that Coca-Cola, GM, or Kraft can do with their massive budgets and extensive staff. But we can scale those models and use pieces that will work for us.

We work in the best business in the U.S. Seriously, I believe that. Let’s make sure the rest of the world shares our enthusiasm. It’ll be a journey we’ll take together.

Views in this post are my own and do not represent those of my employer.

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