target marketing

*Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton* *County Public Library*

Do you feel like you’re playing a rigged game of hide and seek as you try to figure out how to reach target audiences?

Hide and seek is fun for kids. For adults working in library marketing… not so much.

Loyal library users and fans are likely subscribed to your library’s emails. They follow you on social media. They visit your library either in person or virtually.

But (and I know I’m stating the obvious here) finding community members who have no regular interaction with your library is incredibly difficult and costly.

This is where robots can be helpful. You can use ChatGPT to figure out the channels your target audience uses.

Here’s how this works

Let’s say your library has partnered with a health and wellness center to create a new, monthly program for community members with memory loss. The program will include activities for caregivers as well.

Your job is to make sure the right people know the program is available for free at your library. Specifically, your marketing goal is to ensure at least 10 people attend the program each month.

Who do you target?

Your first step is to figure out who your target audience is.

For this example, you could go to the Alzheimer’s Association website and search for statistics on patients with memory loss and their caregivers.

From this, you can create two focused target audiences.

Memory loss patients: Specifically, women of color over the age of 65, who are most likely to suffer from memory loss.
Caregivers: Women between the ages of 30 and 50 with a household income of $50,000 or less are most likely to be caring for someone with memory loss.

Double-checking your work

ChatGPT can help you check your work. Did you miss anyone who might be interested in the memory loss program?

In the ChatGPT search, you can type “Pretend you work at a library. The library has partnered with a health and wellness center to create a new, monthly program for community members with memory loss. The program will include activities for caregivers of those with memory loss as well. Can you give me the target audience for promotions of this program?”

ChatGPT will weigh in on whether you’re on the right track with your two target audiences. But it will also show you audiences you would have missed. In this instance, ChatGPT says:

With this information, you are ready to move to your next research step.

How do you reach these three audiences?

Of course, you would start by sending an eblast to the members of your subscriber list who match this target. You would also promote the program on your library’s website, through in-library digital signs, and bookmarks.

But outside of your library resources, what other channels can you use to reach these three audiences? ChatGPT can be a starting point for answering that question.

In ChatGPT, you can type, “What online blogs or publications are most popular for women in *your area*?” (For this example, I used Cincinnati because that’s where I work, which allows me to check ChatGPT’s accuracy.)

Now you have a list of publications to start your research. You can go to those websites, see what kinds of articles they publish, and determine if they would be a good place to pitch a story about your new memory loss program.

Radio stations are still popular with people over the age of 50. And your might be wondering if it would make sense to advertise your memory loss program on the radio.

There are 30+ radio stations in Cincinnati! I suspect there are a similar number in the city or town where you live. You’ll want to whittle your list down before you research. You can use ChatGPT for that too.

In the search you can type, “Which radio stations are most popular for people over the age of 65 in *your area*?”

ChatGPT identified four target stations in Cincinnati. That’s so much easier than going through the list of 30 radio stations!

Help from ChatGPT with another idea

There may be neighborhoods in your city or town that consist mainly of people over the age of 65. You can use ChatGPT to help you identify those neighborhoods.

In the search, you can type, “Which neighborhoods in *your area* have a population that is mainly over 65?” Here are the results for Cincinnati.

With that information, you can do some geo-targeting with your message.

For example, you can pull a list of cardholders who have named the branches in those neighborhoods as their home branch. Then, you can send them an email about the memory program.

You might also consider boosting a Facebook post and targeting users living in your target neighborhoods.

Finally, you can ask ChatGPT, “How do I reach an audience of doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals who work with patients with memory loss in *my area*?” ChatGPT will give you a list to use as a starting point.

The bottom line

ChatGPT won’t replace you. And of course, there are drawbacks.

While you will still need to do some research, ChatGPT is a helpful and free tool to help you get started as you identify ways to reach your target audiences. The results it generates for this task tend to be more focused and helpful than a Google search.

PS You might also find this helpful

How To Use ChatGPT To Build Target Personas and Hit the Mark Every Time With Your Library Promotions

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Terrance is a senior in high school, with a bright future ahead of him.

He’s gregarious, curious, and extroverted. He lives with his dad and two younger siblings. His dad is managing to make ends meet, but there isn’t a lot of money left over for things like vacations or extra-curricular activities.

Terrance doesn’t have a car, but he’s been using public transportation all his life. He really wants to go to college. He’d be the first in this family to go. But the application, the financial aid paperwork, interviewing, and essay writing required for admission feels overwhelming to him.

Terrance isn’t a real kid… not exactly. He was a target persona I built when I worked at a library.

Terrance was based on real teens who used our library. And when I read that description, I could clearly see Terrance in my mind. (I still can–can you?) More importantly, I could find the words I needed to say in library promotions that would reach Terrance.

Terrance helped me figure out how to create effective library promotions.

What is a target persona and why do we need them?

A target persona is a fictional profile of a person who represents one of your key target audience groups, based on the characteristics of your community members.

Target personas help us get granular about our target audience. Getting granular helps us create promotions that let our community members know that we see and hear them.

Simply put, we can use target personas to create marketing that convinces those community members to use the library.

A target persona is not supposed to detail one specific person. It should never be based on one specific individual. It’s a composite sketch, like Terrance, that should reflect most people it is supposed to represent.

How to build target personas for your library

Your community members can be broken down into core segments, or groups, based on their wants, motivations, and the problems they need your library’s help to solve. Those are your target personas.

The number of target personas your library will need will depend entirely on your library’s strategic goals and your marketing goals. Some libraries only need 2 or 3 target personas. Some will need more.

The first thing your library will do is gather demographic information about the community or target group for which you are building a persona. You may do this by researching census data or other data available from your city or town government. Settle on a general answer to these questions:

Age range
Income
Education level
Living situation (Married, single, living with multiple generations in one house, living in an apartment, unhoused, etc.)
Transportation situation (Do they have their own car or do they use public transit?)
Current library usage

Then you want to add depth to your persona. Write down answers to these questions:

Their motivations. Are they career or money-motivated? Are they family-focused?
Their attitudes. Can you identify their perspective on social issues like environmental welfare, human rights, or intellectual freedom?
Their pain points: What problems are they looking to solve?
Their aspirations for the future.
The activities they participate in, both inside and outside of the library.
Their religious and political affiliation.

Using ChatGPT to create target personas

Once you have gathered as much information as you can on your target audience by answering the questions above, it’s time to create your target persona. ChatGPT can help you get started.

Let’s say you want to build a target persona for someone who might use your library’s small business center.

Put all the information you have on your target persona together in a description and feed it into ChatGPT like this:

“Pretend you are a marketer. Build me a target audience persona for a person who is in their mid-50s, who was laid off from the job they held for more than 20 years. This person has always wanted to start their own business, and they figure now is the time. But they do not have a business or marketing degree, and they have very little money. They are single and are living off savings now. They do have a bachelor’s degree in English. They have their own car. They use the library to check out books about once a month. They could use library resources to help them start their small business.”

ChatGPT generated a target persona for “John Anderson, a resilient midlife entrepreneur on a mission!” ChatGPT assigned characteristics that I hadn’t considered, like tech savviness and media consumption.

Here’s the rest of the ChatGPT-generated target persona for John Anderson.

Goals and Motivations

Fulfilling a lifelong dream of starting his own business.
Achieving financial stability and independence.
Creating a legacy and finding personal fulfillment through his work.

Challenges

Limited budget and financial resources.
Lack of formal education in business and marketing.
Navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship later in life.

Hobbies and Interests

Enjoys reading, especially classic literature and business-related books.
Values community engagement and local events.
Appreciates the arts and cultural activities.

Media Consumption

Relies on traditional media like newspapers and local community bulletins.
Limited online presence and social media usage.
Listens to podcasts or watches videos for learning and entertainment.

Tech Savviness

Basic computer skills but may need assistance with advanced online tools.
Open to learning and adapting to technology for business purposes.

Values

Values hard work, perseverance, and integrity.
Desires to make a positive impact on the local community.
Values practical and actionable advice.

How the Library Can Help

Access to beginner-friendly business books and resources to guide him through the basics of entrepreneurship.
Workshops and one-on-one assistance on creating a business plan, marketing on a budget, and utilizing digital tools.
Free or low-cost online courses for building essential business skills.
Networking events to connect with local entrepreneurs and mentors.

ChatGPT also said, “Understanding John’s unique situation and tailoring library resources to cater to his specific needs will be crucial. Marketing messages should focus on the practicality, accessibility, and community support the library provides for someone like John as he takes the leap into entrepreneurship.”

If I worked at a library, I qould take this ChatGPT generated persona and add or subtract the things that apply to my community.

Are personas too generalized?

There is nothing that replaces a personal conversation with a community member. But it is physically impossible to talk to everyone who lives in your service area.

Personas allow us to find the commonalities of the different segments of our audience. This exercise will lead you to create promotional items that connect with your target audience.

Your target personas will likely change over time. They may be different for different programs or goals that your library is trying to reach. That’s okay! Your target personas should be like your library: adaptable, flexible, and able to change to meet the needs of your community.

But by having defined target personas, you are better equipped with the insights needed to build an experience that consistently and efficiently speaks to your patrons as individuals – with content that’s super relevant to them.

More advice

The Top 7 Tips for Library Emails That Are Guaranteed To Appeal to Millennials and Gen Z Readers

Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion

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A Guide to Uncovering the Best Channel To Message Hard-To-Reach Target Audiences Using ChatGPT