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The State of Library Marketing in 2024: Survey Reveals Major Shift in Goals and Struggles for Many Libraries

Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library

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.

PS Want more help?

How to Create an Effective Library Survey to Pinpoint the Needs of Your Community

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Tips for the Biggest Marketing Conflict Libraries Face: How Do You Balance Your Library’s Needs and Your Community’s Needs?

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#LibraryMarketing Show, episode 222

Library marketing… it’s sometimes a balancing act.

There are things that your library wants to promote. And there are things that your community wants from your library. Sometimes, those two things conflict with one another!

In this episode, you’ll get some tips for finding the balance between building things that your cardholders and community need versus working on your library’s overall vision. Plus, a library gets kudos for a patron as hero story!

Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know here. And thanks for watching! 

Miss the last episode? No worries!

Will I see you soon?

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Survey Says: A Midwestern Library Marketer Shares Her Library’s Secrets for Uncovering Patron Motivations

Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library

Jenie Lahmann’s parents were DIYers before it was in style.

Growing up in Richmond, Indiana—”a fun midwestern town with rich history and endless green spaces to explore”, her family made weekly visits to Morrisson-Reeves Library (MRL) to indulge their need to craft and create.

“Dad would go to the Do-It-Yourself section and Mom would get cookbooks and the latest Erma Bombeck writings,” recalls Jenie. “My brother Pat and I were off to explore the shelves in the Children’s Department. We always left the library with an armful of books.”

“My father was a self-taught craftsman and could build anything. He drew plans for making a sailboat from library books and reference librarian’s tips. From concept to completion, he used the library every step of the way. He even sewed the sails with help from Mom’s sewing talents. It’s incredible what you can learn from the library!”

  • The infamous sailboat
  • Jenie’s dad making sails

Jenie started working at the library in high school, following in her big brother’s footsteps. She spent a year as a shelver. Then a manager started to mentor her on print promotion. “We created bookmarks, booklets, and other helpful printed tools for patrons before the age of library digitization,” explains Jenie.

“The first day, I was so nervous I fainted in her office, and we formed a strong friendship after that. She trained me in using all the printing machines and developed a trained eye for layout and design.”

Jenie now works as Marketing and Communications Manager for the library. This year, she co-led a team of five people during a major project: a survey of their community.

MRL was looking for data to help the library create a five-year strategic plan. They included lots of questions that are standard for libraries. But Jenie says they really wanted to get to the root of what motives their community members.

“We dug deeper and asked what services they enjoyed, and how their experience was when they walked through the door,” elaborates Jenie. “We want to see how we can improve our services to best meet our changing community’s needs and to help enrich their lives.”

“We asked them to prioritize a list of eight services we are thinking of adding or expanding upon. We asked them to rate what type of programs they wanted to see, what made them happy to use the library, and what didn’t work for them.”

MRL partnered with a local business consulting company to help them formulate the survey. Library staff met over the course of 6 weeks and looked at previous library surveys to determine which questions to ask. They added specific questions based on how often the community members used the library.

“It was difficult to formulate the questions while keeping in mind the end goal of having data we could use to formulate the BIG Strategic Plan,” confesses Jenie.

Jenie was kind enough to share the final survey with us.

v5_final_mrl-surveyDownload

The library released the survey into the world for a three-week stretch, accompanied by a carefully orchestrated plan to ensure they got the survey in front of as many community members as possible.

“First, we created a landing page on the library’s website,” explains Jenie. “It was the hub for all the content and links. Consistent graphics and wording were used.”

“We talked on radio programs, developed videos, e-newsletters, postcards with QR codes, and social media campaigns. We had staffers reach out to their contacts to ask them to fill out the survey personally.”

“The survey was also offered in Spanish. We canvased apartments, churches, and social groups too.”

MRL had a goal of 500 responses. But get this: they more than doubled their response rate goal, gathering 1,104 survey responses! About 11 percent of responses came from paper copies. The rest were filed online through a Survey Monkey page.

However, the survey wasn’t the only tactic MRL used to make decisions for their strategic plan. Along with their business consulting firm partner, MRL conducted focus groups. They gathered teens, parents of teens, preschooler parents, senior citizens, community influencers, community partners, and potential community partners.

These small groups gave robust input that was combined with the survey data to give the library an overarching sense of what their community wants and needs from the library.

“It was enlightening news that our regular library users love us,” exclaims Jenie. “We heard from many people who said they don’t know about library services beyond books and storytimes.”

“We heard that many people get their library info from e-mailed newsletters. Many people suggested that we needed to improve our message through marketing. Tough news to hear for me, but we see it as an opportunity to grow and reach people in new ways.”

“The main interests in the library were gathering spaces, a small business resource center, performing arts, and DIY maker spaces. People may not have access to these free services elsewhere and seek the library for these things.”

“A big surprise was about weeding. Many patrons don’t know how or why we weed books from the library. We use library standards for weeding, but we’ll need to do a better job of explaining that to our patrons.”

Jenie says if she could do anything differently, it would be to make the survey shorter. MRL’s questions took 15 minutes to complete.

Her advice for any library looking to conduct a community-wide survey such as this is to define your end goal. “Spend time formulating your questions for the outcome data you are seeking,” advises Jenie.

“Having a few narrative data entry questions and the rest with a rating scale can prove to make the data processing task easily graphed or charted to show trends and outcomes. Test the digital survey on mobile, desktop, and other digital devices.”

Jenie and the folks at MRL are now discussing a campaign idea they got from the survey, as well as an origin story campaign, asking library users to explain why they use the library, with a superhero theme.

Upcoming Appearances

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How Does Your Library Marketing Compare to Other Libraries? New Survey Results Released!

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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!

Kudos in this episode go to the Irondequoit Library.

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.

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How to Create an Effective Library Survey to Pinpoint the Needs of Your Community

Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County

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.

You may also like these posts

Your Website is the MOST Important Gateway to Your Library Right Now. Here Are Eleven Quick Design Tweaks to Make It Amazing.

Seven Cheap and Clever Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide and Promote Your Library to People Who Don’t Have Internet Access

Latest Book Review

The Daughters of Erietown by Connie Schultz

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.

8

Psychographics Are the Key to Powerful Email Marketing: How to Unlock the Motivations and Aspirations of Your Cardholders

Photo courtesy Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County

This is the second in a two-part series on email marketing for libraries. Read part one here.

At the Library Advocacy and Funding Conference in September, a new buzzword seemed to be on the lips of many of the presenters. They were all talking about psychographic segmentation of library audiences for email marketing.

I thought I knew most of the marketing buzzwords, but I confess this was the first time I’d ever heard the term. So, it was time to do some research.

What is psychographics?

Psychographics is the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria, especially in market research (Oxford Dictionary).

Psychographics go beyond basic demographics: location, age, gender identity, and library card usage. To segment by psychographics is to divide your library audience into groups according to their beliefs, values, and reasons for being. It delves deeper into your cardholder’s values, dreams, desires, and outlook on life.

Psychographics identify motivation. Why does your library community take certain actions? Why do they feel the way they do about the library? How do they see the role of the library in their life? And what activities do they participate in, both inside and outside of the library?

Psychographics lead to compelling email marketing messages because they focus on your community’s unarticulated needs and motivations.

Understanding psychographics

The term is new to me but it’s not new to marketing. In 1964, Harvard graduate and social scientist Daniel Yankelovich wrote that traditional demographic traits—sex, age, and education level—lacked the insights marketers needed to target their audiences.

Around the same time, market researcher Emanuel Demby began using the term ‘psychographics’ to reference variations in attitudes, values, and behaviors within a specific demographic segment.

In the 1980s, the Stanford Research Institute developed the Values Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS) psychographic methodology. It was hailed as a breakthrough in marketing.

One way to understand this concept is to find your own VALS type by taking this survey. My results show that I like to have historical context, that I buy proven products, and that I’m not influenced by what’s “hot.” I also like to experiment. Share your results in the comments.

The travel industry uses psychographics. Email marketing by hotels, cruise lines, and cities, states, and countries often focuses on why a person wants to travel: adventure, romance, curiosity, and relaxation.

Libraries can do the same thing.

Imagine if we started focusing our library email marketing messages not on what are cardholders want to do… but WHY they want to do it.

Uncover the psychographics of your library audience

How do you figure out what makes your library audience do the things they do? You must ask them! A survey is the best way to drill down on the psychographics of your library audience.

Most library surveys focus solely on demographics like age, location, and income. They generally ask people how they use the library now. They may ask people to predict how they’ll use the library in the future.

By adding psychographic questions, you’ll get a look at your audience’s true motivations. That may include questions like, “The last time you checked out a book, what was the reason?” “How do you feel about the library’s work with people experiencing homelessness?”

You can also use matrix-rated questions to gauge psychographics. For instance, you could include a statement like “The library helps people find a new job” and ask respondents to select an answer from a range of “not important” to “extremely important.”

How to Create an Effective Library Survey to Pinpoint the Needs of Your Community

You can also use outside data sources to get at the psychographics of your library audience. Take a closer look at the comments on your social media posts. Can you uncover any reasons why your followers are interacting with your library on social media? Do they share or comment on a particular type of post?

Check Google analytics on your library’s website. Are visitors taking the same steps to move from one landing page to another on your site? Do they spend a longer amount of time on one type of page?

Your circulation stats are a source of psychographics. Are you seeing a surge in the checkouts or interest of one genre of book, or one format? What language do your cardholders use when they ask for recommendations using your form-based readers’ advisory service?

If your library answers reference questions, what type of problems and language are your cardholders using when they ask for help?

Try to look at any interaction your library has with your cardholders, in any arena, as an opportunity to unlock their motivations and psychology. Then use those new insights to craft compelling email marketing messages.

Using psychographics in library email segmentation

Libraries can segment their email audience without violating CAN-SPAM laws. If your cardholders gave you permission to send them email, you can segment them into psychographic segments. As long as your email includes opt-out language (i.e. “If you no longer wish to receive emails about job services at the library, click here”), you are complying with the law.

Combine your demographic knowledge of your cardholders with the research you’ve done on the psychographics of your cardholders. Then divide your email recipients into new segments and try sending them psychographic messages.

For example, let’s say you are already sending a monthly email to parents about storytime at the library. Now let’s say your library decides to offer a new program, like a virtual family literacy night, to help families whose children are not attending in-person classes during the pandemic.

Without psychographics, your email message may have looked like this:

But, thanks to your survey results, you know that many parents are worried about the effect that virtual learning is having on their child’s education. They believe their child will need extra tutoring and classroom attention to succeed in life because of the impact of virtual learning.

Now you can combine your audience’s motivations for attending with your message about the new program.

This marketing message pivoted from a simple invitation to a message that strikes at the heart of the caregiver’s concern for their child.

Psychographics activate the motivations and aspirations of your cardholders. When you get to know your community better, you’ll do a better job of getting your community to know your library!

You may also find these posts helpful

Are My Library Email Metrics Good…. or Bad?! Here Are the Latest Stats to Help You Figure It Out.

The Emoji Experiment: The Pros and Cons of Adding Emojis to Your Library Marketing Email Subject Lines

Latest Book Reviews

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

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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