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How To Create a Marketing Plan for an Entire Year Even if Your Library’s Strategic Plan Sucks or Is Non-Existent!

Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library

This week, I’ll be able to see the world’s largest bottle of catsup. (Ketchup? Catsup? Is there a difference?)

When I learned that I’d be speaking at Reaching Forward South in Collinsville, Illinois, I Googled the area. That’s how I discovered the city is home to a 170-foot water tower shaped like a catsup bottle that just happens to be on the National Registry of Historic Places. It’s even got its own website and fan club.

If you’re like me, you do some strategic planning when you go on a trip. You decide to rent a vehicle or research public transportation. You purchase airline or train tickets and book a hotel. You pick restaurants to sample and decide which tourist attractions you’ll visit.

Some people just land in a city and let fates carry them where they may. (No shade from me. You do you!) I prefer planning because I don’t want to risk seeing or experiencing the best the area has to offer.

A plan, on vacation or in the library, sets clear goals and outcomes. It ensures your time, money, and energy are spent on the most valuable things. It gives you direction and purpose.

Marketing for a library works best when the promotions are tied to a library’s overall strategic plan. But that’s not always as easy as it sounds.

What is the difference between a strategic plan and a marketing plan?

A strategic plan defines targets and objectives for the entire library organization, including facilities, human resources, reader services, youth services, outreach, and more.

A marketing plan outlines your initiatives to support your library’s strategic plan. It clearly defines the collection items, programs, and services you’ll promote, who you’ll target, and how you’ll target them to reach your library’s overall goals.

In a perfect world, every library would have a strategic plan with clearly defined objectives and goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely (SMART).

But…

If your library lacks a strategic plan, has a strategic plan that’s very vague without clear goals, or is in the middle of creating one (that can be a lengthy process), you may feel stuck and directionless. How do you know what you should be promoting?

What to do when you have very little direction

You can ask your library director or board of directors what they want to accomplish. Without a strategic plan as a guide, you must understand the director’s and the board’s goals.

Even basic statements like “We want to increase program attendance by 25 percent” or “We want to make sure every child has a library card” will guide your marketing.

If you don’t feel comfortable approaching senior leadership, ask your supervisor to step in. Stress the importance of a cohesive plan for moving forward in all areas of your library. This really is the cornerstone of your work.

Once you know the goals of your library, it’s time to create your marketing plan. 

Step 1: Define your marketing goals. 

Lay out exactly how you’ll help those overall library goals be reached.

For example, let’s say your library has a goal to partner with schools to ensure all third graders in your town are reading at grade level. Your marketing goal might be:

Increase the participation in our library’s 3rd-grade reading program by 25 percent within the next 12 months, as measured by the number of 3rd-grade students enrolled and actively engaging with the program materials and resources.

Step 2: Write down what you know about the community you serve.

Marketers call this a “situation analysis.” This will give you a starting point for your strategy. Ask yourself:

  • What does your typical cardholder do with their card?
  • Where do they live?
  • How do they view your competitors?
  • How does your library currently fulfill a unique position in your community?

Step 3: Create a list of all your tactics and assets. 

Write down all the channels you use to promote your library. This list should include every social media platform you use, every website your library owns, and every print publication you send out, plus emails, print collateral, influencers, in-person events, press releases, podcasts, and videos.

Step 4: Set goals for each tactic and asset. 

Let’s say one of your goals is to make sure job seekers in your community use career resources at the library. And let’s say you have a print newsletter that you send every quarter to all the residents of your community.

Look at the specific marketing goal you created in step one. Underneath that, you might write:

“In each issue of our newsletter, we will feature a cardholder who used our library’s services to advance their own career, such as by taking our GED course or using our online job resume builder. We’ll do at least one story on library work as a career. Every quarter, we’ll highlight a service or program that will help our cardholders reach their career goals.”

Step 5: Populate an editorial calendar for the next 12 months.   

Now it’s time to plan content topics and themes for each month that will work to reach your goals. Planning a calendar for a full year makes it easy to coordinate promotions across channels. And it will help your supervisor and coworkers to understand what you’ll be doing, when, and why.

You may end up moving things around as you go through the year. That’s okay!

Step 6:  Measure success and failure. 

Accurately document the results of every promotion you do. This will help you to adjust your strategy next year.

Sometimes you won’t have a clear understanding of what’s working and what’s not working until you see the actual results in numbers on a paper in front of your nose.

One final note of encouragement

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t reach all of your goals. Marketing is an experiment. Sometimes the stuff you do will work, sometimes it won’t. Don’t repeat the things that don’t work! Spend more energy on the things that do work.

P.S. You might also find this helpful

Branding for Your Library: Stand Out From the Crowd With Smart, Strategic Placement of Your Brand

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I Spent 3 Hours in a Room Full of Curious and Committed Library Staff: Here Are the 4 Things I Learned From Them!

Teenagers and young people in the 1950s in a library. Some are sitting at a table looking at magazines, while others search through the card catalog.
Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County

This past week, I spent three-plus hours in a room with 38 library marketers.

We worked together on all those pieces of library marketing that we don’t normally have time for.

We identified our libraries’ strengths and weaknesses. (My weakness: spelling).

We named our libraries opportunities and threats. We set SMART goals.

We identified our target audiences (hint: your audience is not everyone!). And we talked about measuring promotions to replicate success.

These are the fundamentals of library marketing. These are the building blocks that ensure your marketing will be successful.

This was the first-ever pre-conference workshop for the Library Marketing and Communications Conference, which returned in all its in-person glory. Shoutout to the dozens of readers who took the time to say hello to me!

I told the group that I knew, without a doubt, that I would learn something from them. And I did.

A room full of library marketers, sitting at tables and waving at the camera.
My 38 new best friends

Here are the four things I learned from this fantastic, dedicated, intelligent, creative, and curious set of library marketers.

Library marketers need time to think.

We are all doing too much.

We must make print collateral, send emails, schedule social media posts, attend meetings, make press releases, do outreach events, and then attend more meetings.

I asked almost everyone I met at LMCC how things are going at their library. And I lost track of the number of times the response was, “It’s been a little nuts.”

The idea of setting aside time to consider what is to be done, how it will be done, who will do it, and how it can be more effective, is an entirely foreign concept to most libraries. 

We don’t give our employees the time to work through strategic planning. There is no rest. At many libraries, the marketing is done by librarians who also have other duties. There’s never any time to breathe.

And then we wonder why it’s so difficult to create successful library marketing and communications.

That happens because we never take the time to do all the fundamental work that is necessary to ensure our marketing is effective. We’re building houses without foundations.

So, the workshop gave these library marketers permission to ignore email, text messages, chats, and outside distractions. They got three hours to focus solely on building the foundations for strong library marketing.

It’s important to create that space for yourself as a library marketer. I know it’s difficult. If you can’t attend a workshop, you can set aside time on your calendar, like you would for a meeting, to do this important background work.

Put your phone in a locked drawer. Turn off your chat program. You can even leave your physical workspace if you need to. When I worked at the Cincinnati Library, I would hide in the stacks when I needed to do this work.😉

Library marketers face the same struggles.

We did a SWOT analysis exercise, where each library marketer identified their library’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And then we shared as a group.

How many of these do you recognize as your library’s weaknesses and threats?

  • A marketing team made up of one person, trying to do ALL the promotions
  • Difficulty getting people to take an action, like place a hold or register for a program after they engage with marketing
  • Having too much to do
  • Having no identifiable library branding
  • The approvals process
  • Threats to funding

The list goes on.

During this exercise, the library marketers in the room began to realize that they are not working alone on an island. There are thousands of library staffers out there who understand their struggles because they face those same difficulties. They felt truly seen.

Library marketers have a lot to celebrate.

As much as we struggle to do effective library marketing, we also have many, many, many wins to celebrate. We should be proud of:

  • Our social media engagement
  • Our impactful partnerships
  • The fact that people open and read our emails more than they do for any other industry!
  • We have so much great content to promote.

We don’t do enough celebrations in library marketing. That’s one of the reasons I started giving out Kudos in The Library Marketing Show and began recognizing libraries via #LibraryoftheDay.

You can help. When you see a library doing great marketing work, give them a shoutout on social media. Better yet, email them to let them know you noticed their amazing promotion. You can also nominate a library for Kudos on The Library Marketing Show.

A little bit of celebration goes a long way to boosting morale for library marketing. We can be each other’s cheerleaders!

Library marketers thrive when they have a friend.

Most of the attendees of the pre-conference session told me they are introverts. But when I asked this room full of strangers to pair up, the room got super noisy!

There were smiles. There was laughter. There were conspiratorial looks and nods of understanding. It was magical.

And it occurred to me… sometimes we just need someone who understands our work.

You may be wondering how you can find a library marketer to be friends with. One way is to join the LMCC Discussion Group. You can also join the Library Marketing Book Club.

Or you can message me on LinkedIn. Tell me a little about yourself and I’ll introduce you to a library marketing buddy.

Let’s support and encourage each other. When we work together, we strengthen the library industry and, most importantly, do a better job of providing service to our communities.

More Advice

Stop What You Are Doing! Before You Launch Another Library Event or Service, Take These 5 Steps to Define Your Promotional Strategy

Call It What It Is: Toledo Public Library Explains Their New Brand Strategy

Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.

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Stop What You Are Doing! Before You Launch Another Library Event or Service, Take These 5 Steps to Define Your Promotional Strategy

Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library.

Most libraries schedule programs, create exhibits, plan events, or buy services. Then they decide how they’re going to promote them. 

And that, my friends, is the opposite of what we need to do for promotional success. It’s one of the reasons why so much of our library marketing fails to do what we hope it will do.

Libraries must create promotional strategies during the planning process. And yet, many libraries skip this important step. Here’s why it happens.

When your library creates a program or implements a service, they are doing something. Doing something is productive. The results are immediate and obvious.

And when libraries decide to promote a long-standing event or service, like summer reading or personalized readers’ advisory, they may assume the key to success is awareness. Quite often, I hear my library friends say: “If we just told more people about this thing, they’d use/attend it!”

But it’s often not awareness that’s lacking.

Planning a successful library promotional strategy takes time, research, and critical thinking. But it’s absolutely essential. Without a strategy, you risk wasting your time and energy creating promotions.

A library promotional strategy is worth the effort. 60 percent of marketers who have a documented strategy with clear success metrics said their marketing was effective, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s most recent study. 

Creating a strategy may seem like an insurmountable task. The word “strategy” conjures up images of a daunting, intense, complicated process.

And I know library staff is often asked to do promotions in addition to their other duties. So, I’ve simplified the process. It should only take a few minutes of your time.

To create your library’s promotional strategy, open a Word document or get out a piece of paper. Then write down the answer to these five questions.

What are your library’s overall goals?


Let’s use summer reading as an example. Your library likely has a goal to increase registration, participation, and attendance at events.

The Everett Free Library put its summer reading program goals into its strategic plan. The plan said, “Completion rates for the library’s Summer Reading Program for youth will increase to 70%.”

That’s a great goal post for anyone working at that library. They know the promotions they create for summer reading must focus on youth. They also know they’re shooting for a specific numeric increase in completions.

Here’s another example: Let’s say your library’s big goal is to bridge the learning gap for children in K-3rd grade. They are doing this by increasing access to early reader services and increasing the circulation of children’s books by 10 percent.

To reach those goals, your promotions would need to target parents and teachers. The library’s goal would help you define an audience.

You’ll want to write the library’s goal or goals down on paper. They are your goalposts, your big concerns. Everything you do needs to be in service of reaching these goals.

What is your library’s current situation?

Write down what you know about your current cardholders and the residents of the community you serve.

What does your typical cardholder do with their card? Where do they live? Who is currently competing with your library to provide the service you provide?

These pieces of information will help you create promotions that reach your community.

What things can you use to promote your library?

Write down all the “stuff” you use to promote your library.

Include every social media platform you use, every website your library owns, every print publication you send out. Whatever you use to communicate with cardholders needs to be on that list.

How can you put your library’s promotional tools to work?

Now, you’ll take your goals, and what you know about your target audience, and match it to the list of promotional tools.

For example, you may know from past experience that most people register online for summer reading by clicking on links in your e-newsletters. So, you’ll want to be sure to include a summer reading promotion in every e-newsletter you send.

You know your community best. Pick the tools that will work best for your community, depending on the goals your library wishes to achieve.

How will you measure your success or failure? 

You’ll want to write down the specific ways you’ll measure the promotions you create. This will help you determine if they are effective.

For our summer reading example, you could measure success by tracking the number of people who click on the registration link you put into each e-newsletter. You might also track the number of registrations you get on a weekly basis.

It’s important to write down your success measures. This will keep you accountable and make sure your library is on track to reach the goals you’ve set.

Sometimes the stuff you do will work, sometimes it won’t.

Don’t repeat the things that don’t work! Spend more energy on the things that do work.

Next week: How to take this strategy and create your library’s promotional calendar to achieve your goals!

You May Also Want to Read These Posts

How to Create a Social Media Strategy That Actually Works

3 Easy Ways to Update Your Library Marketing Plan for the New Year

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Want To Improve Your Productivity and Feel Pride in Your Work? Here Are the 7 Essential Habits of Highly Effective Library Marketers.

Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Photo of West End Branch Staff, circa 1940.

I’m 100 percent certain that everyone who reads this blog has heard of the book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. Written in 1989, this self-help book has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.

Covey’s approach to attaining goals is to follow what he calls “true north” principles. Those principles are based on seven character ethics that he says are universal and timeless.

It’s a great book. But, because I’m a weirdo, I read it and thought, “There needs to be a list like this specifically for people who work in library promotion.” No joke. My internal monologue is strange.

We need some true north principles for library marketing now more than ever. We face uncertainty in every corner. Algorithms and budget shortfalls and virus variants can make our job seem impossible.

It may feel like the whole world is working against you and your library. So here are my true north principles for doing your best and most effective work.

Be good to yourself.

This is first on my list because it’s the most important and frankly, most library staffers could use a little morale boost. This year, I want you to celebrate the work you do. Every. Single. Week.

By the way, my boss gets full credit for this idea.

It’s pretty simple: At the end of the week, write down all the things you did. Then, pick a “gold star moment“: one thing that you did that stands out for some extra recognition.

Send your list to your boss or keep it for yourself. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you take the time to acknowledge all the work you’ve done in the last week.

And, rather than focusing on what you didn’t get done from your to-do list, recognize all the work you did do.

You’ll be surprised at how much better you’ll feel at the end of a workweek. And you’ll be motivated or excited about the work coming in the following week.

Be constantly learning.

I know that most library staffers are incredibly overworked. You’re promoting your library in addition to 100 other tasks, including cleaning the restrooms and acting as security. The idea of spending any time learning more about marketing feels overwhelming.

How does someone fit personal professional development into their schedule?

Set a learning appointment for yourself every single day. All you need is five minutes. Spend that very short but important block of time reading a blog, a book on marketing, or an email newsletter on marketing. If you’re a visual learner, watch a YouTube tutorial on marketing or work on a self-paced marketing course online.

For the typical, full-time library staffer working five days a week with two weeks of vacation, that will add up to 1,150 minutes or 19 hours of learning in a year! That’s plenty of time to stay on top of marketing and social media trends and learn new ways to engage your audience more effectively on all channels.

Best of all, at the end of that year of learning, you’ll feel more confident in your work and of course, your library’s promotional efforts will improve.

Need help finding places to learn about marketing in a short amount of time? Here’s a great list.

Be hyper-focused on your library’s overall goals.

What is your library trying to accomplish right now? Are you hoping to increase your circulation to pre-pandemic numbers? Are you helping to bridge the pandemic educational gap for elementary school students? Are you implementing a step-by-step plan to ensure your library is truly accessible to everyone? Are you undergoing a facilities improvement project?

Your promotions should be centered on whatever your library is trying to accomplish this year.

When you focus your marketing with precision on your library’s strategy, your marketing will be more effective. You will avoid spreading your message thin. You’ll be using your precious time and energy more efficiently.

Every piece of marketing you do needs to be in service of reaching your library’s strategic goals. They are the reason you come to work every morning. Make certain there is a solid connection between your promotional efforts and your library’s overall strategy.

Be a fan of data.

Block off five minutes in every workday to gather or analyze the metrics of your marketing and promotions. Just like with the professional development appointment you’re making each day, schedule this into your calendar.

This simple step will give you a very clear sense of what is working and what isn’t. You’ll have the numbers to back yourself up when you make decisions about which promotions to do and which ones to drop.

Be constantly experimenting.

One of my favorite parts of working in marketing is experimentation. There are so many ways we can test promotions to find the most effective means of communicating with our audiences.

I want you to think of yourself as a kind of scientist. Your experiments don’t have to be complicated.

For example, when you send emails, try sending on different days of the week and different times of the day.

When you want to promote an item in your collection or a service provided by your library, post on all your library’s social media channels. Then look at the insights to see where you get the highest engagement.

When you write blog posts, try experimenting with the length of the post, the length of the title, or the number of images you insert in the piece. Then look at views to see if your metrics are impacted by changing any of those factors.

Experimenting is fun. And it can lead you to create more effective promotions. Need some ideas about where to experiment with your promotions? Here’s a list of things to try.

Be open to change.

How many times have you heard someone say, “But we’ve always done it that way” in your library? Reject this phrase.

I think many times we get stuck promoting our library the same way we always have. Don’t be afraid to look at the data and say to your boss or co-workers, “This isn’t working. Let’s try this instead.”

In library marketing, change isn’t a bad thing. It means you are being responsive to your community’s needs and meeting them where they are as their lives are changing.

Be patiently persistent.

Sometimes it takes a while for fellow co-workers, senior staff, and your community members to respond to your ideas.

Effective library marketers set a timeline for how long they think it will take to increase engagement or reach a certain target audience with a message across multiple channels. A good rule of thumb is to give any new promotion about three months to catch on. If it’s not working by then, experiment with something else.

You May Also Want to Read These Posts

Three Easy Ways for the Exhausted Librarian to Figure Out What Your Community Needs AND Find Promotional Inspiration!

Fight for Your Ideas! Four Tips to Help You Get the Green Light for New Library Promotional Ideas

Angela’s Latest Book Review

Going There by Katie Couric

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3 Easy Ways to Update Your Library Marketing Plan for the New Year

Watch Now

The Library Marketing​​​​​​​​ Show, Episode 125

In this episode, I’ll share three tips to help you update your library marketing plans for 2022. This exercise will help you to promote your library in a way that is strategic and focused but also flexible.

Kudos in this episode go to the Saline County Library. Watch the video to find out why they’re being recognized.

Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.

Thanks for watching!

Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.

1

Six Years Later, Library Marketing No Longer Stinks! Here are Four Forward-Thinking Things Libraries Must Do Now.

Text of Four Forward Thinking Things Libraries Must Do Now over a vintage photo of library shelves. Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

I started this blog six years ago. Can you believe it?

When I published my first post, I really had one goal: To help other library workers. I believed that sharing tips, strategies, ideas, and best practices for library marketing would strengthen the whole library industry and help secure the future of libraries.

I still believe that.

And we’ve come a long way in library marketing. Many libraries are promoting their collection and services in ways they would have never imagined six years ago. They’re focused on strategy and innovation. They’re not afraid to try new things. They’re experimenting. They’re putting cardholders first.

Library marketing no longer stinks! Now it’s time to advance library marketing to the next level. Here are the four things libraries should do now to move successfully into the future.

Put your collection front and center on your website.

When I visit a library website, the first thing I notice is how prominently they promote their books, movies, and streaming content. When I must search for these things, it causes me real grief. It’s like going to the grocery store and finding the milk and eggs hidden in a back room accessible only to the most intrepid shoppers.

Most of the folks who interact with your library online are there for the collection. If you don’t believe me, check your website statistics. Look at Google Analytics. I’ll bet you the most visited pages of your website are the homepage, your catalog, and any page that showcases your collection items.

Don’t hide your collection on your website.

If you have a personalized reading recommendation service, put it right in the middle of your homepage. If you have reading recommendation newsletters, put your opt-in link right in the middle of your homepage. Post about your collection on social media at least 50 percent of the time.

Books are your brand. If your library wants to have a part in making the world more informed, more educated, and more empathetic, put your collection right where people can find it on your website.  

Shift your energy from library programs to library services.

I have shared many conversations in the past few years with library workers who express frustration over program promotion.

This reached a fever pitch in 2020, as the pandemic forced programs to move online. Library workers couldn’t measure attendance as they once did. And attendance and registration numbers dropped off.

The frustration is palpable. We put all this work into quality programs, and no one shows up. Doesn’t that bother anyone else? Why are we doing this?

Libraries need to have a hard conversation with themselves. Programming gets too much emphasis in libraries.

We should spend our energy instead on developing and promoting our unique services, like homework help, adult education courses, genealogy research, and small business support.

No one else in our community does these things for free. They are so important to our communities. These are the hidden treasures of libraries. And they are underused because people don’t know they exist.

So, let’s spend this year shifting our focus to strategically and systematically promoting these services. Add mentions of these services in your email newsletters. Post about these services on social media at least 25 percent of the time.

And use those precious in-person interactions to market your services. If you see someone picking up curbside items on topics like career, education, or family history, let the patron know about the appropriate matching service.

Use data to make current library cardholders happy.

Many libraries spend an awful lot of time focused on trying to get new customers. But once a person signs up for a library card, we take it for granted that this cardholder will use their card again.

It takes a lot of time and energy to get a cardholder signed up in the first place. That time and energy is better spent working to make current library users realize everything their magical library card can offer them. Because what would you rather have… lots of library cardholders or lots of library users?

This year, I want libraries to spend less time chasing new cardholders and more time gathering data about our current cardholders. Then target current cardholders with marketing messages that keep them coming back to the library.

We can create surveys to gather demographic data and psychographic data. Then we can use that data to ask ourselves: what do our current cardholders want and need from us? Focus on those things this year for maximum effectiveness in your library marketing.

Make it easier for people to use your library.

Let’s be honest: people must clear a lot of hurdles to use the library.

It’s hard to get a library card. Community members must provide proper identification. If they apply online, they must show up at a branch to claim their card, often within a specific amount of time. I was reminded of this just a few days ago, when I received this Tweet.

Library users also must have separate logins and passwords to use services like Hoopla, Overdrive, Kanopy, and Freegal.

And if cardholders don’t return items on time, they get fined. If a library user accumulates too many fines, they lose the ability to use their card.

All these things may seem like little inconveniences. But it is these little hurdles that stand in the way of advancing our libraries in the future.

I know some of these hurdles are not the fault of the library. We’re often at the mercy of our vendors. But our communities don’t know that and, frankly, I don’t think it matters. People expect easy access to library services. And they receive easy and convenient services from other companies.

Libraries need to make a concerted and deliberate effort to make it easier for people to use the library in 2021. We’ll have to do this to compete with convenient services that threaten to take away our market share.

First, let’s fix the things that are in our control. We can make it easy for anyone to get a library card online without ID. And we can eliminate fines and fees that serve as a barrier to many of our patrons.

Next, let’s band together to demand vendors create integration that allows library users to access their services from our website with one-step authentication: their library card number. Demanding this change as an industry will be one of the best ways to advocate on behalf of our cardholders this year.

You may also like these posts

The New Year is Here! Here are Five Things for Your Library to Promote in 2021.

Zoom Fatigue is RUINING My Library Programming! How the Heck Should Libraries Deal With That?

Latest Book Reviews

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by VE Schwab

Find more 60-second Book Reviews here.

Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on the “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

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🎉🥳The New Year is Here! Here are Five Things for Your Library to Promote in 2021.

Watch Now

The Library Marketing Show, Episode 75

In this episode, I’ll go over five library strategies for 2021.

Kudos in this episode go to the Elsmere Library for a Facebook post and their fun cookie recipe exchange!

Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week! Thanks for watching.

2

How to Create a Library Marketing Strategy from Scratch! The Library Marketing Show: Episode 20

Watch now!

Your library has no strategic marketing plan in place! What do you do? Emily from Berks County Public Library System in Pennsylvania asked: “I’m the Community Relations Coordinator for the Berks County Public Library System. Our headquarters provides support services to the 19 member libraries in our county. As someone who stepped into this role two years ago where there was no strategic marketing plan in place, could you give some suggestions on best practices when creating a plan from scratch?”

Plus KUDOS go out to the Evanston Public Library in Illinois for their free book distribution centers. Find out why this is a great way to reach non-cardholders and get them introduced to the your library! Read all about their efforts here.

Stay in Touch

Check the Upcoming Events page to see where I’ll be soon. Let’s connect! I’m doing a webinar soon, so be sure to sign up… it’s free!

Have an idea for the next Library Marketing Live Show? Submit it now.

Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.  

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Call It What It Is: Toledo Public Library Explains Their New Brand Strategy

A couple of weeks ago, a Tweet from the deputy director of the Toledo Public Library caught my eye.

Our marketing manager here at the library is leading a charge to “call things what they are” to reduce confusion for customers. We should be doing more of this in libraries and resist the urge for cutesy branding.

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Jason went on to explain, “When I joined the library three plus years ago, we had just launched a kind of umbrella branding for all of our making activities at the library. We called it Make U. It was clever, had a nice logo, and generally served a purpose… for us. Three years later, it’s still a confusing ‘second brand’ for our library (one of many tertiary brands, actually). Terri Carroll (our marketing manager) is working really hard to make the library’s brand the key identifier for all things library. Every time we roll out a new program or service, we have the urge to give it cute or clever branding. It’s just more education we have to do with our customers. So rather than trying to constantly educate people about our new brands, services, and programs, we focus on the library’s brand: a welcoming and accessible space where anyone has access to resources they need to make their lives, their communities, and their futures better. Now we call Make U what it is…tech tools. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Terri in the short time she’s been with us about how we cut through a very noisy marketplace to reach people where they are when they need us.”

This is a major hurdle for my team and library marketer’s across the country! At my Library, I’ve counted no less than TEN branded services. And each one requires education for the staff and public. The names are cute but their meaning is obtuse.

Library marketers struggle with branding. We need to do a better job of defining who we are. We must create a consistent emotional connection with our cardholders if we’re going to compete with the likes of Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Netflix, and Google.

Jason’s co-worker, Toledo Public Library Marketing Manager Terri Carroll, graciously agreed to share her insights on the process.

So many libraries have a set of tertiary brands for their various programs and services. Why is that a problem? Each day, our current and potential customers are bombarded with media messages from well-funded and sophisticated retail, fast food, snack food, entertainment, sports, news, and service companies. While these organizations aren’t competing with us to provide library services, they are competing with libraries for people’s time and attention. If libraries hope to have people notice our message in a noisy marketplace, it is imperative we have one clear brand that makes it easy for people to know who we are and what value we provide. Tertiary brands dilute our message and make it more challenging to connect with customers.

Before the redesign, the Toledo Public Library struggled to bring a host of tertiary brands together to create one cohesive brand.

What prompted you to decide to focus less on giving everything a cutesy name and instead develop and nurture an umbrella brand? I started working at the Library in November and was struck by the fact that each program had its own look and message. The emphasis was on program names and unique graphics, rather than the Library as a whole. For example, a great deal of energy was spent on “logos” for programs such as Kindergarten Kickstart, Ready to Read, and Make U instead of thinking about messaging that clearly connects a valuable service (early literacy or access to technology) with the Library. This approach puts the burden of connecting the dots about the Library’s value and relevance on our customers. It also keeps the Marketing team from thinking strategically as they instead spend energy making everything look different. This is an unfortunate use of resources. Having things look similar within a brand compliance strategy makes it easier for customers to identify Library materials and messaging.

Terri laid out brand elements to create a clear and consistent message that can be understood by staff and library cardholders.

Have you seen positive results from this type of strategy yet?  We’ve been working on implementing this strategy since December, so it is tough to extrapolate data yet. For now, positive anecdotal comments to Library staff and leadership such as, “The Library is doing so much,” (when in fact we are doing a similar amount of work) and increased earned media attention are indicators of success. Ultimately, we should realize increases in circulation, door count, and program attendance as well as community and regional stakeholder invitations to be at the table on important issues, speaking opportunities, organizational partnership creations, and election results.

How can other library marketers make the case to their stakeholders, like their board of trustees, the senior leaders, and their staff, that developing a strong brand sense is more productive than creating brands individually as services are unveiled? Stakeholders repeatedly express interest in making sure the community knows about everything the Library does. I have invested a lot of time meeting with all of our internal stakeholders to show them how strong brand management is necessary to meet that goal.

My staff and I also work to keep a focus on making sure all materials and messages are customer-focused. We ask ourselves and our colleagues if our materials and messaging are giving customers all the information they need to engage with the Library. Focusing on how customers understand our Marketing keeps everyone externally (brand) focused and not internally (tertiary brand) focused.

A clear, consistent look helps Toledo Public Library create a connection and makes it easier for their cardholders to recognize their messages.

Do you have any other advice for library marketers looking to strengthen their own brands? It is essential to have senior leadership support for strong brand management. If people are used to the tertiary brands and have enjoyed the creative process (either working with Marketing and/or doing their own design work at the department or branch level), moving to brand compliance can be painful. If those concerns/complaints are taken to senior leadership and exceptions are granted, then the entire brand strategy is compromised.

It is also important to expect some resistance and be willing to talk with people about their questions and concerns. In these conversations, something that seems to really resonate is when I say that we don’t want to re-educate people every time they see something from the Library. We want people to immediately identify a Library program or service. And while staff sees all the materials and, may in fact get a bit tired of the same colors and fonts, this easy identification and brand recognition is essential for customers who are wading through a marketplace of messages and materials.

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