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Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion

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Protect Your Library Marketing: 6 Smart Strategies for Turbulent Times

Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library

I will confess to you that I am worried about the future of libraries.

The news that the current United States Presidential administration intends to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library services is devastating. For some libraries, the funding from IMLS accounts for a huge percentage of their annual budget. In my day job with NoveList, I’ve heard that some U.S. libraries are worried they won’t have enough money to buy books, let alone pay staff and keep buildings open.

Libraries in other parts of the world are facing threats, too. Canadian libraries are beating back book censorship challenges. In the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, funding cuts continue to threaten libraries. It’s a scary and infuriating time to be a library marketer.

I’ve been compiling a list of things that library marketers can do to protect their jobs and prove the value of their promotions and their libraries. Putting a plan in place and acting on that plan makes me feel less helpless and hopeless. So, here’s what I want you to do.

Stay focused: Set goals and center your energy there

Focus is critical during turbulent times. You may be tempted to think that you must promote everything the library offers to fight back against budget cuts. But I can say from experience that this method is ineffective and exhausting for you and your audience.

This is where goal setting can be critical. Pick the three biggest goals for your library for the next six months. For example, you might say Summer Reading, opening a new branch, and increasing the circulation of print items.

Next, you set goals for each of those three items. Use numbers, active verbs, and decide on a timeline for when that goal will be completed. Do not set a goal of “We hope to get more people to participate in Summer Reading.” Instead, say, “By August 15, we will increase participation in Summer Reading across all age groups by 10 percent.”  

Next, use the divide and conquer method to focus your promotions on those goals. You’ll want to spend about 75 percent of your promotional time on these three key areas. What will you do with the other 25 percent?

Incorporate value-driven messages into your calendar

With the remaining 25 percent of your energy, you’ll focus on repeated messaging that conveys core library values. Use messaging that focuses on the library as a welcoming place where privacy is protected and where community members can pursue learning, creativity, and connection. Here are 4 ideas for how to do that.

1. Use positive storytelling

      Share real-life stories of how the library is a refuge for students, job seekers, new residents, and others who need a safe, quiet, or supportive environment. Give your patrons opportunities to share why the library feels like a safe and welcoming place for them through video clips, quotes, or social media posts. Need inspiration? Here’s how one library marketer does it.

      2. Feature library services that center on safety and comfort

      Promote meeting spaces, quiet study areas, free Wi-Fi, literacy programs, or social services partnerships that help patrons feel secure and supported.

      3. Celebrate the joy of reading

       A Scottish librarian once told me, “Reading for pleasure is fairy dust.” It’s magic. It transports you, teaches you, and inspires you.

      One way to connect with the readers in your community is to do more collection promotion, focused on the joy that the reading experience brings. Your readers are fierce library supporters, and they’ll be the first to defend you from attacks. Engage them with more reading recommendations!

      4. Use visual cues in the library

      Display signage that communicates safety and inclusivity, such as “All Are Welcome Here”, “Your Library, Your Space”, and “Come as you are. Stay as long as you like.” You can use AI to help you come up with short, non-political phrases that will convey the message of welcoming.  

      Build your email lists

      Social media platforms are more divisive, and many people are leaving them. You need a way to directly communicate with your community without algorithms! Right now, start working on building your subscriber list for emails. Here is a step-by-step guide for doing that.

      Track metrics to prove your value

      I know it’s time-consuming. But tracking marketing metrics helps you prove the value of your work by providing data-driven evidence of your impact on the community.  

      Metrics like email open rates, social media engagement, and website traffic show how well your library is connected with patrons. Compare your metrics to the industry averages to show the value of email marketing.

      You should also track event registrations, program attendance, and resource usage tied to promotions. These numbers will allow you to show how marketing drives participation. For example, if you track metrics, you can tell your supervisor and your board of trustees that the rise in participation in summer reading was the direct result of your promotional campaign. when requesting funding or staffing.

      Hard data will help protect the funding and staff you may have to work on marketing. If you don’t believe it, this library’s experience with metrics may cause you to change your mind.

      Remind yourself of your successes

      Library marketing always comes with setbacks, but remembering your past successes reminds you that you’ve overcome challenges before and can do so again. I have two ways that I practice this concept.

      Every two weeks, I write a post for our company Teams channel about the content and emails we’ve released and their results (if I have them already!). I also give shout-outs to the coworkers who helped us with different pieces of marketing. I don’t ever want to take it for granted that everyone I work with knows what my team does and why our work is valuable.

      At the end of every day, I take just a second to acknowledge everything I have done that day. It’s a simple but effective way to remind yourself that you are working hard and making progress… because progress in marketing sometimes seems very slow!

      Network with others

      This is the perfect time to join groups that relate to your work. You may need those connections if your job is threatened. And it’s always a positive boost to have people who understand library marketing in your circle.

      The Library Marketing Book Club is a great option! We meet every two months to discuss a marketing book and to share ideas about marketing. In between meetings, we celebrate successes and ask for help with projects on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages. You can sign up for the club here.

      Need more inspiration?

      How To Persuade Library Leaders To Take Your Marketing Advice

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      Behind the Scenes of The Library Marketing Show: Anyone Can Create Library Videos!

      Watch Now

      The Library Marketing Show, Episode 70

      In this episode, Angela answers a viewer question from Lori Hagen, who wanted to see how these videos come together. She’ll take you behind the scenes. It’s a lot easier than you think… in fact, anyone can create videos!

      Kudos in this episode go to the Tacoma Public Library for their innovative virtual programming for adults, including tutorials for how to use their digital resources.

      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.

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      Four Eye-Opening Library Marketing Lessons I Finally Learned When I Left My Library Job and Became a Regular Patron

      Photo Courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County

      It’s been six months since I walked out of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County for the last time as an employee. 

      You’d think that moving from library staffer to library patron wouldn’t be that big of a revelation. After all, while I worked at the library, I was also a patron.

      But there is a mindset shift that happens when you stop working on a library’s communication strategy and start seeing those communications exclusively from the customer side.

      Now, when I receive an email from my library, or see a library social media post, or watch a library video, or see a sign at the library branch drive-through window, I don’t know what goal my library is trying to achieve.

      I have no idea how long the marketing team worked on those promotional pieces.

      I don’t have any insight into the discussion over wording, image selection, and calls to action.

      I have no idea how many revisions they went through before they received final approval.

      Once I took off my marketing hat and put on my customer hat, I started to see things very differently. I learned some eye-opening lessons.  

      Patrons cannot fathom the breadth and depth of your services.

      Libraries really do offer an extraordinary number of services. It is impossible for a regular person to understand or remember all of them.

      I thought I had a pretty good handle on every service provided by my library. But I would be hard-pressed to list them all if I were forced to, even just six months out from my employment.

      With that in mind, library marketing needs to get laser focused. Pick your promotions based on your library goals for the year.

      With the pandemic, your goals likely shifted in the past few months. So, focus your promotions on achieving those goals.

      Release your promotions consistently over a set period of time and on as many channels as makes sense for your audience. 

      Most importantly, resist the urge to promote everything your library offers. It’s overwhelming to your community. Your message will get lost. 

      Organic social media is not your friend.

      I am a former library employee. I visit the library website at least once a day. I talk about the library on social media.

      And yet, I rarely (if ever) get served my library’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts organically. Most of the time, I must go looking for them.

      If I’m not seeing my library’s social media posts, can you imagine how many other people are not seeing them?

      In my new job, I talk with a lot of libraries who rely heavily on social media. I’m not saying that you should not post to social. I just want to remind you that social media is also fickle and imperfect.

      Be sure to distribute your marketing messages across multiple channels, including email, so you’re sure your whole community will see your message.

      In a crisis, more communication is better.

      The pandemic and the resulting shutdown came about six weeks after I left the library. And watching it unfold as a customer was interesting.

      My honest assessment is that my library did a great job of communicating when it went into shutdown and when it reopened.

      However, in the weeks in between those two major events, there was very little communication to patrons.

      And I was craving news, even if it was “Our physical buildings are still closed, and we don’t know when we’ll reopen.” In fairness, this is a criticism I had for a lot of organizations, including my church and my kid’s school.

      In a crisis, there is no such things as over-communication. Regular updates to your patrons and community are always better than radio silence.

      The more you talk to your customer base, the more likely they are to remember you and support you when the crisis is over.

      People just want to be informed. Silence feels like abandonment to your patrons. Communicate more often when your library is in crisis.

      A well-designed website is a gift to your patrons and essential to your library’s success. 

      The main digital entry point for your library is your most important asset.

      In my new job, I do a lot of research on libraries of all shapes and sizes. I spend a lot of time looking at library websites.

      Some are easy to use and some are not.

      It’s no surprise that the libraries with beautiful, easy-to-navigate websites report more engagement from their patron base in the form of circulation, attendance at events (even virtual events), and donations.

      If you have any say over your library’s website, it behooves you to spend time making it an amazing portal to your library. 

      As a patron, I am grateful when I can find exactly what I need when I visit a library website. Need a place to start? Here are some tips.

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      This Advice Will Boost Your Library Marketing Email Click-Thru Rates

      A few months ago, I wrote a post about email vanity metrics. Those are the statistics like open rates that make us feel good. But if we’re being honest, they’re relatively meaningless.

      The meaningful metrics like click-thru and conversion rates are harder to obtain and must be tied to your library’s overall strategy to provide any meaning. Humans naturally like doing the easy stuff! But it’s the hard metrics that make our work valuable and worthwhile.

      So, I want to spend the next two posts sharing some of my strategies for improving your library email click-thru and conversion rates. I learned most of these tips through trial and error and a lot of failures. Remember that failure is okay! It teaches us lessons that lead to success.

      This week we’ll focus on improving your click-thru rates. The click-thru rate is the percentage of people who, after opening your email, will click on a link. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to improve that rate.

      Promote the best possible content. Don’t send an email to promote every program or service your library carries. Choose your promotions strategically. Put the best content into your emails to make it more likely that your cardholders will click on your links.

      For collection-based marketing, make sure the books you choose to promote in your email are buzz-worthy, newer, have a great cover (you’d be surprised how much the cover art affects click-thru rates!). For program promotions, of course you’ll choose events that are fun and interesting. But the programs you promote through email should either in demand by your cardholders or unavailable at any other organization or community group in your area. If you are asked to promote new or existing services like databases, movie streaming platforms, or reading recommendation services, pick the best of parts of those services to promote. For example, I recently did a three-month series of emails promoting the Great Courses section of the Kanopy video platform. Instead of trying to promote the entire Great Courses section, I promoted three specific video series–yoga, family history research, and weight loss. Promoting parts of a service makes it easier to target your message. Speaking of which…

      Target your message. Click-thru rates skyrocket when the message you send is targeted to the audience most likely to be interested in it. Sounds like common sense, yes? But I still hear from lots of libraries who are afraid to stop sending emails to all their cardholders. If you have the technology to segment your audience, you should do so. Try to target your email messages to about ten percent or less of your existing email list. Don’t worry if that number seems small. If that audience is getting an email about something they’re interested in. you’ll see results in big click thru rates and engagement.

      Here’s my strongest example. A few months ago, my library started a short, monthly eNewsletter targeted specifically at young professionals. This newsletter goes to about 300 people once a month. For my library, an email sent to just 300 people is really tiny… that’s only about .10 percent of our total email list. But it pays off! This email gets huge engagement numbers because those 300 people are really, really interested in the contents of the email. In October, the click-thru rate was 37 percent. I wish all my emails were that successful.

      Give yourself time to create and revise your emails. This is the maybe the most important step. Plan your email schedule as far in advance as possible. Set aside time to write the copy. Then, walk away.  Come back later-preferably another day-and look over your work. Revise it. Walk away again. Repeat this process until the copy and structure of your email is as good as it possibly can be. Too many of us (myself included) rush through the creative process.

      If you recognize that you are the kind of creative person who feels like he or she can never release anything into the word because it’s never perfect enough, set some boundaries. Give yourself a deadline for when you’ll send the email up the chain for approval and tell your supervisor when to expect it so he or she can hold you accountable. That will help you break the endless cycle of revision!

      Write like a Buzzfeed blogger, not like a librarian. Write to entice. Make the text interesting. Use conversational language within your emails. Write short sentences. And don’t write too much! Less copy is better. Make your cardholders curious to find out more and then give them the means to do it by doing this next step, which is…

      Embed clickable links in more than one location within the email. My personal rule of thumb is to include a link to the book, program, or service about three times in varying places within the email. This gives your cardholder the chance to act at various points as their eyes or mouse or thumbs roam your message. It also increases the chance that they’ll be able to act, if they so choose, by making it super easy for them.

      Next read: How to improve your library email marketing conversion rate!

      Finally, would you be so kind as to answer a question for me?

      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.  

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