Did you know there are seven things that you can learn by taking a marketing survey? I believe library marketers should be taking surveys from brands and companies because you can learn a lot about how to survey!
I’m going to share some tips with you and why I think it’s really important to take those surveys in this episode of The Library Marketing Show.
Plus, we’ll give kudos to a library that received press attention for a unique outreach program.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Do you want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here. Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog, and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address. Then, click the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library
Whenever I am handed a survey, I answer it.
As a marketer, I understand the value of surveys. For the respondent, they are a rare chance to voice their opinion about a product, service, or organization. For the organization, they are a way to gather valuable information and create a better user experience.
For the past 9 years, I’ve sent out a survey once a year filled with questions that help me better understand who you are, and how this blog and The Library Marketing Show can be as helpful to you as possible. The posts and videos directly respond to the questions and concerns you share. For example, the 2025 Social Media Guide to Libraries was planned and published based on the results of this survey.
The struggles and goals of libraries shifted in some major ways this year. As we begin 2025, here is the state of library marketing.
Basic methodology
The survey was conducted for two weeks in September 2024. The survey was a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions. There were 109 responses.
Type of library
Respondents to the survey consist mainly of public library workers.
84.4 percent of respondents work in a public library.
11 percent work in an academic library.
The remaining 4.5 percent of respondents work in school, special, military, or state libraries.
Size of library
Respondents to the survey come mainly from small and medium-sized libraries.
33 percent serve a population of 25,000 or less.
19.3 percent serve a population between 25,000 and 50,000.
20 percent serve a population between 50,000 and 100,000.
14.7 percent serve a population between 100,000 and 250,000.
The remaining respondents work at a large library.
Marketing experience
Most of the respondents are experienced marketers.
79 percent of respondents say they’ve managed promotions for a library for 3 years or longer.
16.5 percent have worked in library marketing for 1-2 years.
4.5 percent said they have worked for less than 12 months in library marketing.
Time spent on library marketing
Half the respondents to this year’s survey say marketing the library is their primary job function. The other half say marketing is just one of many responsibilities they must complete.
Top five most pressing questions or concerns
#1: Staff and library leadership buy-in
The survey respondents this year identified struggles with other staff members as the most common issue. Library marketers specifically report having difficulties in getting their supervisors and co-workers to understand their roles. They find it challenging to communicate the value of their work and their expertise in library promotions.
“I have to provide a lot of education/context for them to understand why they should take marketing seriously,” said one respondent. “I suspect that, because we are a small library/community, they feel it’s not necessary.
Another respondent asked, “One of the biggest challenges is staff expecting the level of marketing for something will dictate how successful it will be. Everyone (including the library board) has their opinions about how marketing should be handled and are constantly pulling us in different directions with their own priorities. We end up spending a lot of time doing things we don’t think is a good thing to focus on, leaving us little time to work on what we think or know will be better.”
And yet a third respondent told me, “Staff expect us to create posters and Social media posts for every program but they’re also creating programs that the community didn’t ask for. So, when no one registers, marketing gets blamed. You have to have some tough skin to work in library marketing because everyone thinks they’re a better marketer and everyone is a critic.”
An academic library marketer said, “The university marketing department has completely shut down the library social media accounts and we cannot send mass emails. All print materials must be approved and abide by the campus brand book. We use a university portal to post announcements of library events and highlight a library database subscription or collection. We are cultivating advocacy efforts among library student workers to use their own dept/program email groups to share library information.” Great idea!
#2: Budget
I’m not surprised that this came up as a frequent problem this year. In my conversations with libraries, the budget has once again become a critical worry, as local, state, and federal lawmakers cut money from public services in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia. (Jerks!)
One respondent said, “It’s always a challenge to get experienced marketing/graphic design professionals to work for a library salary.”
Said another, “We’re a small library and most of our promotional efforts rely on us finding ways to do it without cost or coming up with sponsors for special promotional materials.”
#3: Time
We never have enough time to do all the things we need to do to reach our target audiences. And for those of you who work at a small library, this is especially problematic.
“I’m pretty much a one-person team, with one part-time assistant who does most of the print promotions,” said one respondent. “So, trying to do everything (website, email, social media, graphic design, etc.) solo is challenging. Really hard to do a really good job at all the things at once.”
#4: Reaching non-users
The age-old problem of how to reach people who don’t use the library continues to perplex library marketers. Said one frustrated respondent,” It’s easier for people not to attend programs, it’s easier for people to stay home instead of coming to the library. How can we motivate them to want to come?”
Another told me they struggle with… “reaching people outside of the building and convincing them that they are missing out on wonderful free programs and services, great materials, and saving money.”
#5: Social media
Respondents shared frustration with changing social media algorithms and the lack of engagement on the platforms where they post.
“Facebook is better at reaching patrons in our specific area, but fewer people are using it,” said one respondent. “Instagram isn’t working for us at all. I don’t have the bandwidth for more social media platforms at this time.”
Said another, “There are now way too many social media channels while traditional media is shrinking. We can’t be on every platform and do it well.”
A third respondent said, “I find social media to be less and less effective for promoting events and general information so I’m posting less often, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing since I can then dedicate that extra time to other, more useful tasks.”
Other concerns
AI, project management, fighting for relevancy, and keeping up with trends were also mentioned by respondents as topics of concern.
Social media use
Here is the percentage of libraries using specific social media platforms, according to the survey respondents.
Facebook: 98 percent
Instagram: 97 percent
YouTube: 67 percent
LinkedIn: 40 percent
Twitter/X: 22 percent
TikTok: 20 percent
Pinterest: 7 percent
Threads: 7 percent
Of note: The number of libraries using LinkedIn for promotion jumped 19 percent. The number of libraries posting videos to YouTube rose by 13 percent. And the number of libraries using X dropped by 15 percent this year.
Email marketing
I asked my respondents how often their library sends promotional emails.
Once a week: 35 percent
Once a month: 33 percent
Several times a week: 14 percent
14 percent of respondents said their library doesn’t send any email at all. That’s an increase of 5 percentage points from 2023. I’m curious: If you are a library that doesn’t send email, can you share a little bit about why in the comments?
The most important library marketing goals
For this year’s survey, I made a list of the marketing goals I hear most often from libraries. I asked respondents to choose the one goal they most wanted to concentrate on over the next 12 months. Here are the top four answers with their corresponding percentages.
Driving visitors to your physical location, website, or catalog: 27.5 percent.
Reaching non-patrons: 23 percent.
Getting current cardholders to use the library more often: 16.5 percent.
Driving the use of services like databases, Makerspace, Library of Things, etc.: 9 percent.
Use of AI
This year, I added a question to see how libraries are using AI for marketing, if at all. Turns out that most library marketers are NOT using AI. Those who do use AI log on about once a month and get help with developing new ideas and producing or editing text.
Effectiveness of promotions
This year, I asked respondents to gauge how effective their library promotions are. Most respondents, 72.5 percent to be exact, rate their promotions as “Somewhat effective.”
When asked to give more specific answers about why their marketing is either effective or ineffective, I got lots of insightful and interesting responses.
Here is a sampling of answers from people who ranked their marketing as “ineffective.”
“Social media marketing is pretty much the only marketing we’re doing and that doesn’t reach enough people.”
“Timing of emails–too late for patrons to register for events because marketing is sent out the day before. Inconsistency in what is being promoted and what message is being given because of too many people on the team and no direction from leadership. Insistence on only using social media to market (to save money) even though most of our patrons don’t follow us online and many don’t even have internet access at home.”
“There has never been a marketing plan before. I am trying to establish one, but it is not valued.”
“Our Marketing Coordinator does not have a coordinated plan, use social media calendars, or know how to write for today’s audiences. We aren’t connecting with new or old patrons because there is no defined target audience for any promotions. They throw money at Facebook ads if things aren’t going well. We’re not sure how to teach that skill and keep them up to speed with the rest of the team, who come across as more experienced because they use social media daily.”
Here is a sampling of answers from people who ranked their marketing as “very effective.”
“Persistence, having time, knowing which audience is where (email vs. Facebook).”
“I think we are very intentional about our goals and how we are using our tactics to achieve those goals.”
“Academic library: Our promotional is a mix of information and fun things. Students, faculty, and staff seem very engaged with our content.”
“A highly skilled marketing professional leading all levels of communication is imperative to our success. We have a cash budget to purchase paid media and marketing placement.”
“We have consistent messaging and branding and a very supportive community.”
“We’ve been using special events to reach non-patrons. It’s been largely effective to just get them in the door, offering an experience, courtesy of the library.”
What to expect from Super Library Marketing this year
Readers asked for more examples of libraries doing effective marketing. I have a whole series of library profiles lined up for this year… so stay tuned!
Readers also asked for more profiles of libraries outside the United States. I will be looking to find those libraries. A reminder you can message me anytime with suggestions if you see a library outside the United States that would make a good profile.
One reader commented, “I’d love to see more ideas on how to translate general marketing strategies to fit library structures.” I will continue to try to do this during Library Marketing Show episodes this year.
A reader said, “I’d love for you to discuss WCAG 2.1 Level AA and the new ADA law that was passed. Like– how do we implement (beyond just alt text)?” I will be sharing information on that in the coming months.
And finally, someone said, “I always feel like I need to up my lip color game when I watch an episode of The Library Marketing Show. It’s inspiring!” Thank you! I wear Divine Wine #695 by Maybelline.
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
You asked for it and this week, I’m sharing the results of the latest Super Library Marketing Survey.
Surveys are an effective form of market research. They illuminate the services that are needed to help a target audience. And you, my dear readers, are my target audience.
For the past 8 years, I’ve asked questions that help me get a better sense of who you are, and how this blog and The Library Marketing Show can be as helpful to you as possible. The Monday posts and Wednesday videos are direct responses to the questions and concerns you share in the survey.
The struggles and goals of libraries shifted in some major ways. As we begin 2024, here is the state of library marketing.
Basic methodology
The survey was conducted for two weeks in early September 2023. The survey response rate rose this year by a whopping 32 percent. The survey was a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions.
Type of library
Respondents to the survey consist mainly of public library workers.
86.6 percent of respondents work in a public library.
7.1 percent work in an academic library.
The remaining 6.3 percent of respondents work in school, special, or state libraries.
Marketing experience
Most of the respondents are experienced marketers.
69.3 percent of respondents say they’ve been managing promotions for 3 years or longer.
19.7 percent have been doing marketing for 1-2 years.
The remaining 11 percent said they have been in promotions for less than 12 months.
Time spent on library marketing
The average respondent estimated they spent about 60 percent of their daily work time on marketing and promotions. This means that many of you are also managing other job duties, such as programming and collection development.
Marketing as a priority
Every year, I ask respondents to tell me if their library has a dedicated marketing department. A marketing department can consist of one or more people, whose sole job role is marketing. The presence of a marketing department is a clear indication of whether marketing is a priority for senior leaders.
This year, the results were:
50.4 percent said no.
49.6 percent said yes.
The number of libraries with a dedicated marketing department fell two percentage points this year. That’s not enough to call it a trend but I will keep an eye on this.
The most pressing question or concern
Last year, the top concerns of my readers were how to reach new users, storytelling for marketing, email marketing best practices, and budgeting.
This year, the answers can be broken down by five categories.
How to reach new users
Respondents said they struggled to promote to community members through traditional means, like newspapers, as well as on social media. Several named specific target audiences they hope to reach, including young adults, parents and caregivers of young children, and non-English speaking communities.
One respondent said, “How do we make sure we are effectively reaching patrons and members of the community without overdoing it or over-communicating? I am a one-person marketing team for my library.”
Time
Respondents shared frustration over a lack of time to adequately plan, create, and analyze their marketing. They struggle with the coordination of tasks, especially when working with other library staff. Balancing priorities and goals is difficult.
Said one respondent, “We’re a progressive system that’s constantly adding new things (which is great) but it seems like there’s never enough time or space to share it all and get real awareness out there.”
Buy-in and strategy
Many of the respondents said they are struggling to get supervisors and co-workers to understand their jobs: the difficult parts of marketing, the time this work takes, and the value of doing it right.
“There are not enough marketers for everything Admin wants us to do,” said one respondent. “Others don’t understand how many priorities we’re trying to balance or how time-consuming our work is. I feel like some coworkers think we’re doing our jobs badly, but they don’t understand our jobs.”
Another respondent asked, “How can I best unify staff? My biggest challenge is encouraging everyone to follow our style guide or at least inform themselves about marketing best practices.”
Social media
Respondents shared frustration with changing social media algorithms and the burnout that can happen. “They’re showing more Reels, then they are showing still pictures, then they aren’t showing unless there are comments…you know what I mean?” asked one respondent.
Other concerns
Content creation, audience segmentation, reaching volunteers, burnout, budgeting, metrics, competing with nearby libraries for attention, and AI all round out the list of concerns this year for library marketers.
These topics will all be addressed this year.
Social media use
Here is the percentage of libraries using specific social media platforms, according to the survey respondents. Of note was the jump in Facebook and Instagram use this year, as many libraries moved away from Twitter/X.
Facebook: 97 percent
Instagram: 92 percent
YouTube: 54 percent
Twitter/X: 38 percent
LinkedIn: 21 percent
TikTok: 16 percent
Pinterest: 9 percent
Threads: 6 percent
In the open-ended questions, many of you said you rely on this blog for social media news and analysis. And I will continue to provide that this year.
However, I have made the decision not to promote the blog on Twitter/X anymore and will not cover any best practices for that platform this year, unless something drastic changes.
Email marketing
I asked my respondents how often their library sends promotional emails.
The big takeaway: more of you are sending emails. Only 9 percent of respondents said their library doesn’t send any email at all. That’s down ten percentage points from 2022!
Here is how the rest of the sending breaks down:
Once a month: 38 percent
Once a week: 36 percent
Several times a week: 12 percent
The most important library goals
Last year, I asked respondents if they set goals. This year, I got more specific. I asked respondents to check all that applied. Here is how the results break down.
Driving visitors to your physical location, website, or catalog: 76 percent.
Increasing program attendance: 67 percent.
Reaching non-patrons: 63 percent.
Getting current cardholders to use the library more often: 60 percent.
Driving the use of services like databases, Makerspace, Library of Things, etc.: 57 percent.
Advocating for the freedom to read: 18 percent.
Facing book challenges
This year, I added a question asking respondents if they’d faced a book challenge in the past 12 months.
55 percent said no.
30 percent said yes.
15 percent were not certain.
And though most readers said they hadn’t been targeted; this issue does loom large over the work you are doing for promotions.
“Our library is choosing to keep our head down on the book-banning issue, hoping no one will notice or bring it up,” reports one respondent.
Says another, “We’ve had to be careful about how we promote everything. For example, we used to hand out these fun rainbow-colored pens to kids but stopped because we were called groomers during the book challenges. We have also been having a rash of bomb threats to the libraries in our area which has also affected the feeling of security with our staff. I feel like my job is less about promoting programs and services and more about crisis management these days and how to communicate feelings of safety etc. This is not something I was really trained to do so it can feel overwhelming.”
More changes for Super Library Marketing this year
Readers asked for posts about how to create interactive and impactful community presentations to outside groups and tips for print promotions. I’ll cover these in the next year.
Some want the videos to be released as podcasts on Spotify. I will consider that if time and money allow.
Many of you requested more advanced subject matter in the blog posts and videos. I will try to do more of that this year.
I’m also hoping to more profile school libraries and special libraries this year. Do you work at a school or special library and have a library marketing success story to share? Contact me here.
I always try to share tips and strategies for library marketers who wear multiple hats, and that will continue in 2024.
Finally, someone asked for subtitles for the videos. This year, I started providing captions for all my videos on YouTube and LinkedIn. Click the “CC” icon on the screen to see the captions.
The CC button circled in white is where you click for captions on YouTube.
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page. You can also follow me on the following social media platforms:
The Library Marketing Show, Episode 172: In this episode, I’m going to share the results of the 7th Annual Super Library Marketing survey and talk about the value of surveying your community.
How does your library compare to others around the world in terms of library promotion? Watch the video to find out!
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 weekly video tip for libraries. Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email whenever I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
If there was ever a time when your library would need to survey your community and cardholders, it’s now.
This year has been wildly difficult for libraries and their communities. And the pandemic will be a factor in the lives of our cardholders into 2021.
To prepare our services, collection, and programs, we need to know exactly who is using the library and how they are using it. We must also anticipate our community needs going into the next year.
A customer feedback survey is the best way to gather this data. Here’s how to put one together.
Before you start
The first step in the survey process is to come up with a plan and answer some important questions.
Why are we doing the survey? You may use a survey to determine how people use your library. You may be testing to see whether there is a tangible need for a particular service before you invest in it.
Perhaps you are looking to gather demographic information about your service population. You might also want to ask questions to get at the psychographic makeup of your cardholders so you can better segment your marketing audiences.
Write down your reasons for creating a survey. You’ll also want to write down what you hope to learn from your community’s answers.
It’s important to put the answers to these two questions in writing to keep yourself accountable. The written answers will remind you of your goals as you write the questions, distribute the survey, and evaluate the results.
How will you distribute the survey? Distribution of surveys can be tricky for libraries because our populations are so diverse.
How do you make sure that people from all communities and demographic populations are represented? What about cardholders who don’t have digital access? Do you hope to have answers from non-cardholders? Create a plan for addressing these points.
What will we do with the results? The final step of this first phase is to plan for how you will work with the results of your survey.
Who will look at the results and aggregate them? Who gets to see the results? And who will be responsible for implementing changes to library services based on the results?
How many questions can you ask?
Survey Monkey analyzed more than 10,000 surveys to make their recommendations. And they found that fewer questions get better results. The more questions you add to your survey, the less time people spend answering each question.
To gather more thoughtful responses, you’ll want to use as few questions as possible. SurveyMonkey says an effective survey will take no more than 7 minutes to complete. Their data shows people will abandon surveys that take longer than that.
A 7-minute survey will be about 10-15 questions long, depending on the type of questions you ask. If you find that you need more than 15 questions, consider doing more than one survey.
Writing the questions
Writing your survey questions is like writing a blog post. For the final product, you’ll want a tightly written and concise set of questions. But to get there, you’ll need to get a little messy.
You should approach the first draft of your questions with no limits. Write down everything you want to ask your community about the library. Use whatever format of question first comes to mind.
This exercise will create an ugly but important first draft which you can mold into an amazing survey. Once you have that draft, go back through, and highlight the questions you absolutely must ask.
Be sure your questions don’t ask two questions at once. Doing so will confuse your respondents and lead to less reliable survey results.
For example, don’t ask “How would you rate our branch cleanliness and the wait time at the checkout counter?” Split those questions to get a more accurate picture of your community needs.
Consolidate questions that are repetitive. You may find you asked the same thing, or very similar things, but in a different way.
Once you have a final list of questions, mix the formats to create the best results. Data suggests that most of your survey questions should be multiple choice or matrix-scale.
Try to ask no more than two open-ended questions in a 10-15 question survey. The more time your respondents must spend composing their answers to open-ended questions, the more likely it is that they won’t complete the survey. While open-ended questions can be very insightful, use great intention when adding them to your survey.
Where to create your survey
With limited budgets, most libraries cannot afford to pay big money for a survey maker.
There are many free options, but most have limitations for how many surveys you can create and how many responses you can collect. Here are a few that have no such limitations.
Google Forms: Google Forms is my preferred free survey tool. You can create surveys and collect unlimited responses. It’s easy to create the survey and easy to export the data as a Google Sheet.
SurveyPlanet: Their free version allows for unlimited surveys, questions, and responses. They also have templates to get you started. Also, you can easily duplicate a survey. You cannot export your response data on their free plan, but you can look at it in a dashboard and use that data to create infographics, graphs, and other reports to communicate the results.
Free Online Surveys: This site has a limited free plan. I’m including it because they offer a substantial discount on their paid plan for non-profits. The paid plan unlocks some great features including unlimited responses and support. Their survey maker also has artificial intelligence to help you build an effective survey.
Launching your survey
Before you send your survey out to the world, be sure to thoroughly test it. You’ll want testers to look for spelling errors, confusing questions, and to make sure the order in which you ask your questions makes sense.
Send your survey to staffers outside of your department and to friends and family. Get as many people to test it as you can before you launch.
Once you’re sure your survey is ready, it’s time to send it out into the world. Email the survey to all cardholders. Place printed versions of the survey at the checkout desk for people who don’t have digital access.
For the duration of the survey, prompt patrons to fill out the survey in every interaction, including at curbside pickup, during virtual programs, and in reference emails and phone calls.
The amount of time you’ll leave your survey open for responses really depends on your community. You’ll need to monitor the results and be flexible.
In initial launch round, be vague with your respondents about how long they have to complete the survey. You might say “Take a few moments now to give us your feedback.” Then watch to see how well your community responds.
Once you start to notice a lag in responses, you may do another round of promotions that sound more urgent. “Complete this survey before Friday to make sure your voice is heard” or “We’re closing this survey in two days so be sure to give us your thoughts!”
In general, don’t leave your survey open for answers for longer than two weeks.
Have you done a library survey? Do you have other tips and suggestions for creating a survey? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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.
Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 