Library Marketing - Thinking Outside the Book

I am still alive! (Final blog post)

2008-10-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hello out there! For those of you who are still keeping an eye out on this blog for new posts, if there are any of you out there, I want to apologize for my unexpectedly long hiatus. I owe all of my colleagues and friends out there who have nurtured me professionally and personally (and blog-ally) a proper closing and final blog post.

When I left you in Februrary, I had all sorts of good intentions (as I always do). I figured with my new job that is fairly well confined to business hours I would have all kinds of time to blog and keep up with my emails. Well...it didn't quite work out as I planned.

Between February and June, I was adjusting to a new job in a new environment while planning for a wedding, which took and increasingly large amount of my time and energy as the date got closer. Both of these changes were good things, but demanded a heck of a lot more of my time than I imagined. I had a hard time with the idea of being on the computer all day and then coming home to respond to emails, Facebook requests, and all of that, especially as I got further and further behind. I needed a break. So I took one. And I'm glad I did. But I'm not glad the one of the results of that was that some of you didn't get responses from me and that the blog was left hanging. I owe you all out there a lot and am immensely grateful to each of you I met in creating this blog, little by little, everyday.

While on my little 'break,' I realized that I couldn't devote the kind of time I need to make this blog good while also giving my best effort to my home and work lives. In the quest for work-life balance, this blog and some related projects had to give. Ultimately, I think this blog served the purpose I had in mind for it. I was able to share some of the things I learned about marketing so that it might help others make their libraries a bit better. The content that is here is still useful, I think. And I will get back in touch with all of you who may have sent me an unanswered note as soon as I can.

I think I'll close this blog with an observation: Now that I'm doing library work in a new environment and meeting a new group of colleagues, I feel even more confident that the value we bring to our workplaces, our communities, and our world is greatly needed. So too is the need to prove that fact to our patrons everyday. That's what library marketing allows us to do. Directly, strategically, and passionately. Marketing helps us tell everyone else what we already know - that we information professionals can empower our communities to be better places. Marketing also challenges us to be better professionals by asking us to be accountable to patrons' needs. I hope this blog gave you a few extra tools to accomplish this. For me, I know each of you continually reaffirmed why I love this profession, and I sincerely thank you for the privilege and opportunity to share my thoughts with you.

Please be in touch, and be patient with me as I get reemerge from my time off. I wish you the best in all your endeavors!

In case you haven't heard, PLCMC won

2008-02-01T19:10:00.000-08:00

Congrats to the PLCMC for winning the 2008 Scholastic Library Publishing National Library Week Grant. PLCMC will partner with the New York Public library in utilizing the "Join the circle of knowledge @ your library" theme. You can read the full winning application here (Word doc). Their proposal includes a lot of community partnerships, a rock concert, and a joint blog with NYPL.

Some of the things that I like is that the campaign will help support some important local partners, including the animal shelter. Also, community members get to share the knowledge of their community via "knowledge boards" placed throughout the town. PLCMC: Do you have plans for how to preserve or share these insights? Perhaps you could stream quotes on your Web site?...Just a thought.

This news brings to mind an article I just read in Adweek about a study that found marketing events can raise purchase intent by as much as 52%. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"The special value of events, sponsorships and trade shows has to be considered," said Raymond Pettit, co-author and svp at MarketShare Partners in Los Angeles. "There are many connection points you can build at an event, whether it is emotional, aspirational or awareness building. It goes beyond just counting audience attendance."

So, research would suggest that sponsoring fun activities like those proposed by PLCMC might not just be good PR moves; they could also have a significant positive impact on the numbers of library users. If your marketing plan doesn't incorporate some form of outreach, you may want to give it a try.

Flightless in Toronto

2008-02-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

Well, in a past life I must have accumulated some bad airline karma. My flight was canceled due to one of the worst winter storms of the season here in Ontario. On the plus side, I have some unexpected blogging time.

So now that I have a moment, I'd like to share an announcement with you. I'm going to be leaving my position at VCU Libraries effective this Tuesday, February 5th. As you can imagine, I have a lot of mixed emotions about the job change. I'm both excited about my new job and also sad to leave all of the wonderful people I've met at VCU. Many of my colleagues are also my close personal friends, who truly care about me and want the best. (Thanks, guys.) My advisory group (CLUAC) has always been an inspiration and I know all my students will go far. I can't imagine a better place to have begun my career and I want to thank VCU Libraries and those I've worked with in the VCU community for how supportive they've been to me throughout, both personally and professionally.

The good news is that I'll still be in Richmond and I'll be able to keep in touch with everyone. What will I be doing? I'll be working for a company doing research and analysis on, guess what? Marketing info! My new employers have been extremely welcoming and I know the work is going to be incredibly exciting and fast-paced! I'm looking forward to jumping into this challenging new role with a group of really bright people, and getting a taste of another side of the information profession that I love.

Now, on to what you might care more about: What about the blog? I plan on keeping it up as long as I have something worthwhile to write. So, there's no change there. I anticipate my writing might become more of a weekend event, but I think my new role will give me a great perspective to bring to the news and marketing strategies that apply to libraries. I'll also continue writing for Designing Better Libraries (in fact, I hope I'll have more time to do so!).

Thanks for letting me share a bit of this personal stuff. Now, on to our regularly scheduled blog content...

Greetings from Toronto!

2008-01-30T18:58:00.000-08:00

I'm so grateful to be here in Toronto to speak tomorrow at the Ontario Library Association's Super Conference (best conference name ever, by the way!). My session is called "Unleash Your Inner Marketer." I'm hoping it sparks some imaginative ways to approach marketing, rather than just dwelling on promotional tactics. I'll let you know how it goes and reflect a bit on our discussion. If you're in the area, please drop by and say hello!

What a bunch of cards! Guest post from Rebecca Metzger

2008-01-25T11:58:00.000-08:00

While at ALA Midwinter, I was lucky to meet Rebecca Metzger, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. She took part in my committee's discussion group where she shared her library's fun approach to promoting their individual research consultation service. Rebecca graciously agreed to write up the initiative for LM, which I'm copying here in its entirety (with permission, as always):

A Service and its Public Face
For the past seven years, the Lafayette College Libraries have been creating and mailing humorous collectible postcards to students as a way of publicizing PRA (Personalized Research Assistance) sessions, which are essentially individual research consultations with reference librarians. PRA cards get the faces of reference librarians out to students in a comedic format that shakes up the stereotype of librarians as stodgy and serious, hopefully making us more approachable. The service and its publicity strategy developed hand-in-hand. Before Spring 2001, private student appointments with librarians were rare, but welcome. In a meeting, the reference staff agreed that we should make appointments a more explicit service. It took one brainstorming meeting to create the PRA name, which is similar to that of the WA (Writing Associate) peer tutoring service offered through our Writing Center. The first PRA postcard came about informally. As a joke, one of the librarians mocked up a spoof of the film Conan the Barbarian and the tagline, "Make an appointment with a reference barbarian today!" It was basic humor, it was typical of the library staff at Lafayette, and it just kind of stuck.
Pop Culture Appeal
The postcards, which are mailed to all students a few weeks into each semester, feature the faces of reference librarians superimposed on movie or TV stills, thus appealing to the visual and pop culture interests of most youth. On the back of each card is a URL directing students to an online sign-up form and witty text advertising the service that plays on slogans from the movie or TV show. For example, the recent "Mary PRAppins" card reads: "We may not be able to get the chim-chiminey back in your chim-chim-charoo, but a Personalized Research Assistance session with a reference librarian can help you find the books, journals, and online resources you need for a well-researched project that will make your professor say: SupercaliPRAgilisticexpilalidocious!"

Student Input

After that initial postcard, student workers were brought on board to execute the Photoshop manipulation and layout of the card, as well as to coordinate the printing and mailing with campus Reprographic services. It's time-consuming work for them but more fun than shelving books, and it helps bridge the generational gap. Thus, us "old" librarians don't make too many mistakes with movie and TV references that 18-22 year olds don't know. The reference staff still collaborates as a group to generate the ideas and content for each card, and I'm in charge of executing those ideas and overseeing the student worker. We're lucky here to have the budget and support that allows us to move forward relatively quickly on ideas without having to go through committees.

Building Traffic

For the first few years, a surge in appointments immediately after the mailing date was a clear indicator of the cards' impact. Being a small liberal arts campus helps, since our students are a relatively homogeneous group of approximately 2400 undergraduates who talk amongst themselves. When the PRA cards hit their mailboxes, which are all located in one setting, there is a mass visual impact even if the majority of the cards end up in the recycling bin. As the branded service has become more integrated on campus, there's less of an obvious peak in appointments immediately after the mailing. Traffic to the online PRA sign-up form is steady now throughout the semester, and generated not just from the cards but from outreach during instruction sessions, reference desk interactions, articles in parent newsletters, targeted correspondence with honors students, word-of-mouth, and the library website. While it remains an ongoing challenge to reach those students who have never heard of PRAs, students have been known to put the postcards up in their dorm rooms or diverge from a campus tour script to tell visitors about them. Some favorites among students are: Harry PRAtter and the Prisoner of Research and the SoPRAnos.

A gallery of the cards can be viewed online at http://www.lafayette.edu/~library/pra/gallery.html.

Thanks for sharing your library's efforts, Rebecca! There are a couple of elements here I'm especially fond of:
1. Student involvement helps to make sure the promotion makes sense to the intended audience. 2. No committees! Sometimes, committees are necessary I guess, but promotions need to be timely so staff flexibility is key.

Got a marketing initiative you want to share? E-mail me!

Promotion. It's not just for stuff.

2008-01-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

Contrary to popular perception, promotional activities (advertising, public relations, etc.), are not always about convincing people to buy the latest and greatest [fill in the blank]. Often, promotion objectives include changing attitudes and behaviors. Such is the case with the "Use Only What you Need" campaign launched by Denver Water this past summer. Though summer is a distant memory for Northern Hemisphere-dwellers like myself, the campaign is nevertheless a timely reminder for librarians that marketing has the power to change minds.

Denver Water acquired the services of Sukle Advertising to get customers to do something a bit unusual. Namely, use less of their product by conserving water. An article in the Denver Business Journal describes the campaign, which uses humor to make its point,

"About 50 customer comments have come in so far, McGuire-Collier [community and media relations manager] said, and despite the irreverent tone of the ads, "We've had some real positive responses. ... [Some say] it's not the sort of campaign you'd expect from a, quote-unquote, bureaucratic organization. We're able to have fun and still deliver an important message."

The promotions truly are pretty funny. Check out this YouTube video, "Drunk Flowers," and this one, "Running Toilets Waste Water." You can see other promotional elements at the utility's Web site.

Denver's campaign is a good example of the promotional aspects of social marketing, which is basically a type of marketing that attempts to change people's attitudes and behaviors for the benefit of individuals or society. Sound familiar, librarians? For Denver, striking at the funny bone seems to have worked, as residents cut their water usage by 21%, just 1% shy of their goal.

Here are some of the things I took away from this campaign:

Advertisements need to reach people on an emotional level. Sukle did this by doing something unexpected from a government organization (being funny).
Sukle's ads communicated volumes of information visually. The "using only what you need" theme was reinforced visually by partially used billboards, for example.
Social marketers aim to change behaviors by changing attitudes. To do so, it's important to understand existing attitudes and behaviors that would indicate success (lower water consumption, etc.). These goals should be included in promotion strategies.
All aspects of a promotion campaign should be integrated and reinforce one another to have the most impact.

Did this campaign give you any good ideas? Please share!

[For more info: Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on Social Marketing]

Getting to the point with MarketingProfs

2008-01-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

If you haven't explored them yet, MarketingProfs now offers a plethora of tidbit-sized chunks of information in its free (registration required) Get to the Po!nt newsletters. The thematic newsletters are really neat, covering topics such as:

Customer Behavior (must-read for sure!)
E-mail Marketing
Marketing Inspiration (love this!)
Small Business

These other topics are forthcoming, but you can subscribe to them today:

B2B Marketing
Marketing Optimization
New Media (social networks, mobile devices, video, audio, etc.)

These newsletters are great ways to get just enough marketing information in your area of interest without overwhelming you or flooding your Inbox (most appear to come out every 3-4 days).

Bonus tip: Why not start your own mini newsletter for your colleagues? An e-mail once a week that briefly covers THE most important trend/news item/report/... you think people need to know would help keep staff up-to-date, and may even deliver the jolt of inspiration needed to come up with great ideas.

I blog, therefore, I am

2008-01-15T13:43:00.000-08:00

It's funny (and nice) that I took a break from blogging for a while and a number of people thought that some tragedy befell me. Not to worry, loyal readers! I blog, therefore, I am. Everything's fine with me, but I have a whole lot of personal and professional stuff going on (some of which I'll be sharing on LM in the near future), and I thought the holidays would be a good time to relax, take a good chunk of time off, and come back to the blog refreshed.

That said, I have content up to my eyeballs to share with you, so I'm going to start with an initiative from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as described by trendcentral.com. The initiative sprang up from a new trend: blog bars. Blog bars are computer terminals set up on-site so that attendees can respond to what's going on in real time and receive responses right away.

The Met offers a blog bar for its show blog.mode: addressing fashion. The blog seems to be doing its job in that there's a flurry of comment and conversation. The idea of a blog bar, however, adds an extra layer of immediacy and relevancy for participants, and could be a great way to enhance library programs too! Trendcentral also points out,

"Additionally, expect physical spaces to increasingly include virtual components, creating a mash-up hybrid environment."

This trend reminds me of the importance of thinking about patron experiences, rather than focusing on distinct technologies and tools. It's the marriage of technology, great services, and community engagement that will continue to shape library services.

Bonus tip: Every librarian needs to pay attention to what museums are doing and how they're applying technology. They're doing fascinating stuff!

Thank you readers for your understanding while a took a break! I'm glad to be back in the blogosphere.

Get your creativity on!

2007-11-19T15:08:00.000-08:00

I had a blast last week getting my creativity on at NEASIST's program on guerilla innovation in Providence, RI. My gig was to talk about the theoretical/conceptual aspects of creativity, including techniques for enhancing one's innate creativity and the need to adopt creativity as a core professional competency. I had so much fun because NEASIST members are awesome, my fellow co-presenters were terrific, and because this topic (creativity) is very near and dear to me these days. Why, you ask (and even if you didn't)? Creativity is at the heart of every new service or 'a ha' moment in libraries. Ideas begin with creative thought. If we're not thinking creatively all the time, we're missing opportunities and letting problems hang around. Creativity, or ideation, are also accepted components of the marketing process, particularly in new product development. With all of the promotional clutter and competing services we face, unique, compelling ideas keep us competitive. Creativity, unfortunately, doesn't just magically happen. It takes an organizational effort and conscious practice to foster ideas and let the good ones see the light of day. It also takes a strong stomach because creativity is inherently risky as it usually means disrupting the status quo.

So, my talk had a lot of personal and professional significance for me and it allowed me to explore another marketing avenue. You're welcome to view the PowerPoint presentation here:

Off the Wall But On the Mark: Using Creativity to Make Libraries Better

Since I try not to load my PowerPoints down with text, you probably have no clue what these slides mean, which is why I'm also going to make my script available. Important Note: I use my so-called-script so that I don't forget the major points I want to make but I don't read from it! So, what you'll read is hardly a verbatim account, but it should give you a sense of how the talk went. I don't claim to be the best speaker ever, but I figured if I didn't mention this fact, you'd all be a tad horrified by what you read. :-)

NEASIST Script (PDF)

Jessamyn posted a brief account of the program on her blog, and I'll be recounting the major themes from all speakers on the Designing Better Libraries (DBL) blog. I'll also describe how to run a successful brainstorming session on DBL.

Best of luck with all of your creative endeavors!

Update: Here's an attendee's notes on the session.

Update #2: I posted my notes from the talk on DBL. I'll also feature creativity practices on DBL to help you generate lots of ideas!

Using library books as direct marketing vehicles - huh?!

2007-11-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

This article from the UK's Guardian entitled, "Libraries to be 'new channel' for direct marketing" describes how some libraries have agreed to allow advertisements to be placed next to the due date slips in the books they circulate. To clarify, these ads don't come from the libraries themselves, but from private businesses. Here's what a director at the direct marketing company had to say about this tactic:

'"The inserts are put in the book at the first page as you're handed the book to check it out," he explained. "They're going to be inserted right next to the panel with the return date on it, which means that everyone will look at them at least once."
"We're looking at somewhere between 500,000 and 300,000 a month at the moment," he said, adding that if 300,000 slots were sold a month the participating libraries could hope to see income of around £10,000."

There are hopes to take this idea nationwide, though not everyone is happy with it, as noted in the article.

I'm not a fan of this approach at all, and I'm a marketing enthusiast! The proponents suggest that this kind of advertising promises big revenues, which may be true, but at what cost? One of our most substantial assets, in my opinion, is our brand - a brand that is based on more than books. Our brand also represents trustworthiness and unbiased information services, which these external ads undermine. No matter how much we need additional funds, we should never relinquish our competitive advantages for short-term gains, particularly when doing so could damage those advantages in the long-term.

This direct marketing approach hasn't reached the U.S. yet, but it's not a stretch to say that it could do so in the future. We've already had similar debates over corporate sponsorships and 3rd party entities like coffee shops occupying our buildings. But this crosses a line, in my opinion. I'm interested to know how this might strike you UK readers out there.

Twitter time?

2007-11-01T06:32:00.001-07:00

Marketing Profs set the stage for a debate over the marketing merits of microblogging, available in podcast form: MarketingProfs Podcast: Is Twitter a Valuable Tool, or Waste of Time?

Disclaimer: I haven't listened to the podcasts yet, but will try to later today and add any 2 cents I may have. However, I would argue that we have a responsibility to seriously play with all of these Web 2.0 tools, whether or not we choose to implement them for library marketing purposes.

Making the unfun fun: A marketing lesson

2007-10-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

This news from Florida Radiology Imaging should give any librarian a boost of inspiration. The creative people at FRI held a brainstorming session in which they devised a way to persuade women to get those pesky but important mammograms done. Their solution? Throw a party! FRI now offers Midnight Mammogram & Manicure sessions where women can invite up to 13 of their friends for an evening of wine, food, pampering, and mammogramming. According to a local news article,

"The idea came about as employees at Florida Radiology Imaging brainstormed for ways to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.

"You have heard of women going to Botox parties. Well, we decided this is way more important than that," said Melody Huffman, marketing director for the radiology group. "I have friends myself, moms who work and are so involved with school -- the last thing they do is take care of themselves. But you can always get a girlfriend to go to dinner. So we're trying to make it easy and fun to come out and take care of your health."'

The service, scheduled to run through October, is now booked through November, and then who knows? Their event site even features e-mail invitations, easily allowing women to spread the word.

Ok, librarians. We have our challenge! If a medical facility can make mammograms fun and actually motivate people to want to have them done, then making libraries fun and rewarding to use should be a snap, right? This is another EXCELLENT example of Triumphs in Marketing. Notice that this had little or nothing to do with promotion, and everything to do with rethinking services so that they appeal to women's needs and preferences. Also notice that this program is the result of a brainstorming session. Brainstorming is not fluff - it can have real and significant consequences and is a technique we should make more good use of. Kudos, FRI.

Bringing in non-users: A report from WLA

2007-10-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

As you may remember, I recently got back from a trip to Green Bay, WI to speak at the Wisconsin Library Association Conference. It was awesome to be back in the Midwest, and in true Midwesterner form, everyone was extremely gracious and welcoming to me - thanks, WLA!

I thought you might like to see the PowerPoint presentation I gave in my session called, "Taking the 'Non' Out of Non-User: Increase Your Library's Reach with Creative Marketing Strategies."

I'm sure some of this will make no sense out of context, but you can always drop me a note if you have questions. I would like to make a couple of points based on some of the questions from the attendees (which I'm quoting liberally here):

Q: What if you have no money to draw in non-users?
A: None of the ideas I talked about in the presentation involve a lot of money unless you're thinking about designing new services for completely new patron bases (doing that can take a lot of staff time and resources). The key things I can advise people is to talk to as many people as you possibly can all the time by viewing all of your contacts as means of learning something new, and make the most of the contacts you do have. For example, you could form partnerships with other public or private entities who can help offset costs. There tends to be a lot of goodwill out there for libraries - use it!

It's all about building relationships, and that doesn't always involve money. If you're very concerned about cost, branch out slowly. Start looking for patron needs that are related to needs you're currently filling, and then fill those needs in a slightly different way by only modifying current offerings rather than overhauling them.

Q: What's the 'big idea' for libraries?
A: I talked a bit about how important it is to approach potential new users with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm for what you represent (your library's 'big idea'). It may sound cliche but it's absolutely true: If you don't care about what you're doing, no one else will. Someone then asked me what I thought the 'big idea' for libraries is. I then proceeded, in a very bad-marketing-like way, to ramble on about libraries as creativity labs, to which my colleague responded, "I was hoping for a slogan!". I told him I had nothin'. After thinking about it for a while, I did come up with some possibilities:

Your ideas. Your library.
Build ideas @ Your library
Creativity counts @ Your library
Your library: Where good ideas grow
Try something new. Visit your library. [Especially good for non-users, eh?]
Try-on-for-size; Realize; Harmonize; Patronize your library.
Libraries are built with ideas. Find yours here.

Ok, so these are just some starting points, but don't you hate it when you think of things long after the situation where they'd be useful has passed?! I guess what I'm saying is that I think libraries' big idea is ideas. Unfortunately, nobody in the group had other thoughts on what our 'big idea' is. So, I ask you, daring readers: What IS the big idea and do you have a slogan to add?

Some changes on LM

2007-10-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some changes on the LM blog I thought you might like to know about:

1. Good Marketing Reads - This widget contains some interesting books from my newly-created LibraryThing account. To be honest, I can't claim to have read all of them YET. I ranked the ones I've finished reading and the others are on deck. Lately, most of my reading has been on creativity in preparation for at talk I'm giving in November, so expect to see some titles that will help you tinker with your thinker (wow, the lack of sleep last night must be catching up with me...).

2. Drop Jill a Note - This Meebo widget will allow you to get in touch with me and/or leave me a message (if you leave me a message and want me to get back to you, please include some contact info). This widget replaces my previous one to the Library Marketing Exchange Chat Room. I'll probably still use the chat room in the future, but I found that a number of people would pop into the room, ask a question, and find no one there. That's not very nice so I thought this was better. So far, it's been working out well in that I've received some questions and comments.

Happy reading and thanks as always for dropping by!

Wild Wyoming libraries

2007-10-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

I was Meebo-ed by an anonymous tipper who asked if I had heard about the Wyoming Libraries Campaign - thanks anon.! I wrote about it last year, but was glad for the reminder to review their new campaign materials. I think the campaign is pretty funny and relevant for the patron base. I also really like the slogan: "bringing the world to Wyoming." Nancy Dowd has some thoughts on the campaign too.

Cultural institutions tackle memory loss

2007-10-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

Good morning, campers! It's the wee hours of the morning (at least for me). I'm at RIC ready to fly to Green Bay, WI to give a talk on drawing in new users for the Wisconsin Library Association - how fun! Ever on the lookout for great marketing inspiration, I had to whip up this post after reading a great story in USA Today. An article called, "Alzheimer's program is one from the art" describes how Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art offers special programming to persons with dementia and their caregivers. The program is called Meet Me at MoMA. According to the article, the specially-designed tours have been shown to aid recall and open people up who might otherwise be too nervous to express themselves.

Not only is this program inspirational, it's brilliant marketing. Great marketing serves important needs. In this case, museums are addressing a significant health issue and nurturing people's well-being, while providing caregivers with a well-deserved respite. Wow! This example is sure to be featured in my talk as a creative example of how we librarians could segment our market and fill unmet needs, even in our overcrowded marketplace. What a wonderful way to draw in non-users and benefit the community at the same time.

I hope to blog a bit from the conference and share any marketing-related goodies with you.

Persuasion through education

2007-10-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

The "Small Biz" section of BusinessWeek offers an article called, "Education-Based Marketing Sells" and it is definitely worth a read. In my reference desk experiences, I've often witnessed how teaching patrons about a technique or tool they didn't know they were missing can endear them to the library. It's during those so-called teachable moments that librarians can prove to patrons that they have something to offer that's relevant to their specific personal needs. Education is powerful marketing stuff, as the BusinessWeek article author, Christine Comaford-Lynch describes. She says,

"Sales is about building rapport, not breaking it. When you sell or pitch, you're often breaking rapport because the prospect may be skeptical—no one wants to be "sold." When you educate, you are building rapport. Your credibility is increased significantly when you begin meetings with data that is of value to the prospect. Launch all your meetings by teaching your prospect something or by offering data that establishes that you've done your homework." [Emphasis mine.]

[Ok, so this article is laden with overly-businessy terms. Here's a translation that should help:

Sales = Service
Sell / Pitch = Promote
Prospect = Patron/Customer/User/Client/Whatever Term is Popular These Days
Meetings = Meetings or Classes or Service Transacations
Data = Information]

These are great points that go along with another marketing principle that I strongly believe in: Never underestimate your patrons! I never approach service encounters assuming that patrons are unmotivated to learn something new or potentially challenging because if I do so, they'll easily pick up on my low expectations and become disengaged. If, however, I begin every interaction as a teachable moment, I demonstrate my expectation that they should be actively involved and also that I have confidence they can learn unfamiliar material. Not everyone will be enthusiastic about getting a lesson when they ask a seemingly-straightforward question, but I can always adjust my strategy after testing their reactions.

In fact, most people appreciate it when I point out a helpful advanced search tip or other extra tidbit of information. I suspect that some of this desire for educational opportunities relates to the trend that TrendWatching calls Status Skills. TrendWatching defines Status Skills as:

"In economies that increasingly depend on (and thus value) creative thinking and acting, well-known status symbols tied to owning and consuming goods and services will find worthy competition from 'STATUS SKILLS': those skills that consumers are mastering to make the most of those same goods and services, bringing them status by being good at something, and the story telling that comes with it."

In short, education is empowering. By empowering our patrons through education, we gain their trust, respect, and repeat use. The question, then, that librarian-marketers should keep in mind as we interact with patrons in classes, presentations, meetings, and on the desk is: What can we teach patrons in this moment that will give them an edge in their projects? In doing so, we give ourselves an edge over the competition too.

Need some inspiration?

2007-10-02T07:26:00.000-07:00

If your creativity needs a jump start, take a look at Springwise.com, billed as " required brain food for entrepreneurial minds." Springwise, a sister site of TrendWatching, enlists springspotters who scour the worldwide business landscape to unearth the neatest of the neat business-to-consumer (B2C) endeavors. Here's more from the site:

"Springwise scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation. Ferociously tracking more than 400 global offline and online business resources, as well as taking to the streets of world cities, digital cameras at hand...So whether you’re a budding entrepreneur, head of a start-up, management consultant, marketing manager, business development director, trend watcher, or anyone else interested in creating or expanding companies, Springwise will instantly inspire you by getting the world’s most promising young ventures right in front of you."

They also offer a free weekly newsletter so you can easily keep up with all of the innovative ideas being put into practice. For librarian-marketers, you can scan their idea database by topics like Education, Non-profit/Social cause, and Marketing & Advertising.

This is quickly becoming my favorite Web site because I always feel recharged after seeing all of the inspiring ways in which businesses are serving customer needs. For example, the latest newsletter contains an article about a moving company that helps senior citizens relocate with a suite of specialized service options. It's a fascinating example of how one could target this booming demographic by adding special touches to existing services.

User-generated libraries

2007-10-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

IG TrendCentral reported on a new social networking/media sharing site called Uber.com. Here's what TrendCentral had to say about the online community:

"The sleekly designed, user-friendly site offers innovative functions and features currently unrivaled by other popular social networking sites. Not only can users discover, publish, collect, store, and share all forms of content (e.g. art, photos, videos, blogs, and bookmarks) all in one place, but the site also provides them with capabilities to consolidate, manage and store profiles, pages and media from YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, and Facebook all in one place. In other words, Uber is a virtual library where users can store their digital footprints.

Inspired by community members’ ideas and fueled by their desire to create, express and share, Uber’s unique Visual Index is organically generated through the compilation of user-generated pages. As such, the platform is quickly evolving into a next-generation media publishing company that, by fostering creative collaboration, allows users to emerge as stars."

I've played around on this site a little bit. You can log in with your Facebook account. It's really neat to see people experimenting with photography and other media, and to see the collections people are putting together. I'd love to see libraries allow patrons to do something similar on library sites with library materials. For example, libraries provide the resources and information for patrons to produce their own media, and then provide a forum like Uber.com so that they can share their collections with others in a library-hosted platform. The idea appeals to me because it's a great way to demonstrate how information resources are brought to life, and to showcase patron's creative efforts at the same time. (Not a bad marketing strategy either...).

Marketing: It's more familiar than you think

2007-09-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

Not to toot my own horn, but the kind people at the Readex Report featured an article I wrote for its Fall 2007 newsletter on the similarities between marketing and teaching called, "Worlds Apart? The Relationship Between Teaching and Marketing and What It Means to Academic Librarians." The point of the piece is to demonstrate that librarians are conducting activities that resemble marketing practices in their instructional roles, at that these commonalities ought to encourage librarians to embrace marketing as a familiar friend. This piece expands on a blog post I wrote with the same theme. I hope the article will help to win over reluctant colleagues who may not understand how marketing works in a non-profit context. I welcome your thoughts on this, as always!

My "big move" into my first home is this Saturday, so I'm hoping that I'll have more time to blog once I get settled (there's so much great marketing stuff to write about and so little time!). That is, if I can break away from painting the walls...

Creativity as responsibility?

2007-09-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to be taking a Marketing class on new product development this semester. What's most intriguing is that our instructor is emphasizing creativity and innovation, which has never been directly addressed in any previous course I've taken.

My professor made one comment on this topic that stuck with me ever since. He said that most companies seek small innovations. These innovations typically revise existing products, but don't result in anything dramatically new. This makes sense because these types of incremental innovations are low-risk and relatively cheap. He added that this approach prevents companies from exploring the more risky and costly radical innovations that could result in new product categories. As a result, companies are neglecting opportunities to improve society with breakthrough products.

His words made me think that librarians have a social obligation to be creative and to innovate. This obligation may entail approaches to service that are dramatically different from what we've done in the past. Continually revising services may not be enough to achieve the benefits modern patrons seek.

This week, I'll make a guest post available from a librarian who is helping to radically redefine library services, which will lead into further discussions about libraries as creativity labs.

Get a dose of this Tylenol promotion

2007-08-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

I saw a Tylenol ad on T.V. today that features employees promising to do right by customers. Nice idea and all, so I went to check out the Tylenol "Promise" Web site. Here, you can find employees talking about their work and perspectives. Overall, it appears generally unscripted. What struck me most is what a fantastic idea this format would be for librarians. As you well know, we suffer from some fairly annoying stereotypes (like the glasses-wearing, bun-sporting, shhh-ers). I think it would be nice idea if patrons could find their librarians talking about the issues they're concerned about, projects they're working on, hobbies they have, and so on, to put a friendly face on our services. I realize there are privacy issues implicit in this, but I just like the idea of patrons getting to see a more-well rounded version of us has human beings rather than one-dimensional bookish-types. And what a great tool for recruiting to the profession! Just a thought. Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Flying high on outstanding customer service

2007-08-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

The CBS Early Show aired a segment this morning called The Friendliest Skies. The star of the piece is a United Airline pilot, Captain Denny Flanagan, who takes it upon himself to bring customer service up to a whole new level. Here are the highlights:

Flanagan...

buys McDonald's hamburgers for passengers on delayed flights.
takes pictures of pets stored in cargo to reassure passengers.
makes sure children flying alone get window seats; calls their parents if there are unexpected delays.
asks passengers to play in a contest in which they write down their best or worst flying experiences; he later posts them on United bulletin boards so that employees can learn about customers' experiences. (Contest winners, by the way, get a bottle of fine wine).
writes personalized thank-you notes on the back of his business card for first-class passengers who are frequent fliers.

Flanagan insists it only takes a minute to provide these little extras that put the "service" back in customer service. Makes one think about what small surprises we can add to our own services to make them exceptional.

Playing the marketing game...and winning

2007-08-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, I put up a post on the Designing Better Libraries blog called Playful Design. I'm sharing it with you on LM as well because the post's theme is highly relevant to librarian-marketers. In it, I outlined 12 learning principles discussed by James Paul Gee at the Gaming Learning and Libraries Symposium. These learning principles can be applied to library services to make them more enjoyable and widely-used. Play is a serious consideration as we develop meaningful patron experiences. Employing playful elements in our services can:

Create a feeling of community; Bring together people of various backgrounds
Engage and excite users by making them active participants
Nurture word-of-mouth communications
Increase the value of educational services by improving learning outcomes; Teach patrons how to effectively use our services
Make using the library fun. :-)

Let's get game and play around with our services!

Building a community creativity lab

2007-08-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

In case anyone's been wondering what happened to me, I did not fall off the earth! It just feels that way since I've been wrapped up in beginning of the school year craziness and starting my second-to-last Marketing class before completing my certificate - yeah! While it's been insanely busy, I've still been cooking up ideas for the blog and I think there are some exciting developments in the works.

The next project I want to tackle is building on the concept of a community creativity lab as a model for library services. I got some fairly good responses to my previous post on the topic, so I decided to take the concept a bit further. I can't claim to be the first to come up with this general idea, and there's already a lot of outstanding work being done along these lines. However, I thought it was a little unfair to say that libraries should become creativity labs without giving any specifics as to how they could work in reality.

So, in a series of posts, I'm going to tackle questions like:

What would the founding principles and purpose of a creativity lab be?
What would it look like in terms of physical spaces, both public and non-public?
How would the community be involved?
What services would be offered?

You get the idea. Since there's already evidence of these labs taking shape, I'm going to start with examples I've seen and point out their key elements and build up from there. (I already have a guest post or two coming up that describe some outstanding initiatives). I have no idea how many posts it'll take to fully explore this idea or how long it'll take, but I'm just going to keep plugging away at it. At the end, whatever that may be, I'll assemble the posts into a document that you all can do with what you wish.

Care to be involved? I would really love it if you readers would contribute your thoughts and ideas as we go along. Please comment on any post of interest and I'll incorporate your thoughts into the final paper. If you want to be involved sooner, please send me examples you've seen in libraries or elsewhere that you think resemble "creativity labs." I'll feature them in my posts and use them to define this concept.

Final note: What does any of this have to do with marketing? Faithful readers will know that in marketing, the most important piece of the marketing mix is the product. This series on the library as creativity lab will essentially explore new product ideas for libraries that resonate with today's patrons and their increasingly sophisticated needs. Here's hoping it works! :-)

Let's chat about attracting new users

2007-08-20T07:09:00.001-07:00

Well, last week's brainstorm was more like a sprinkle, so I think I'll go back to the usual format where I set a date/time and facilitate a discussion. Let's get together on Tuesday, September 4th at from 4-5pm EST in the Library Marketing Exchange. In October, I'll be presenting to the Wisconsin Public Library Association on the topic of reaching out to new users, so this topic is a timely one for me anyway. I'd love to hear what's worked and what hasn't in terms of gaining new patrons and what questions you have about reaching out to new user groups. If that sounds like a fun talk to you, you know where to go!

Also, the topic of the last brainstorm was innovation. In the chat room, I pointed out some helpful links I'd like to share with you:

Designing Better Libraries has a great post called Feed Your Hunger for Innovation Inspiration. The post contains bookmark-worthy links on getting your creative juices flowing.
I found some free mind mapping software that may come in handy when plotting out all of your good ideas. You can learn more about mind mapping here.
I'm a huge fan of the pen-and-paper approach to creative thinking. This post from DIY Planner discusses the Advantages of Keeping an Analog Work Journal. Awesome!

Have a great week, everyone! Please don't hesitate to send me your ideas for discussion topics.

The big brainstorm begins tomorrow

2007-08-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

I hope you'll get a chance to spend a minute or two in the Library Marketing Exchange tomorrow (Thursday) to talk creativity. I chose the topic of creativity not only because it's an ongoing interest of mine, but also because the ability devise original solutions to marketing problems is a must-have skill for librarians. I asked 2 questions that I invite everyone to answer:

1. How can librarians improve their ability to innovate?
2. How can libraries support their patrons' own creative pursuits?

More details on how to participate are here, but it's pretty simple. Just show up anytime and share your thoughts. I'll be in and out of the room as I can tomorrow. After the brainstorming session, I'll summarize the themes that crop up on the blog. Sound good? See you there! :-)

Get your game face on: Understanding and serving gamers

2007-08-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

As fellow library marketing enthusiasts, I'm sure most you will agree that attracting new library users involves much more than a "build it and they will come" service mentality. In terms of gaming and gamers, it isn't enough just to plug in a Nintendo or two and hope that masses of people will flood your building. To attract this population we need to truly understand who they are and what value-added services we can provide to connect with them on their terms. Here, then, is my next post in my gaming series that takes a closer look at gamers and what we can offer them.

By the way, if you want an EXCELLENT primer on gaming and library services, you really have to read Jenny Levine's Library Technology Report, Gaming & Libraries: Intersection of Services. In fact, most of the demographic data I'm sharing with you comes from that report, but you'll learn much more by picking up a copy and reading it over yourself.

That said, who the heck are gamers? As Jenny and others point out, most of us are gamers of some form or another. If you play cards, checkers, video games, or Sudoku, you're a gamer. This fact flies smack dab in the face of common stereotypes that make gamers out to be basement-dwelling, socially awkward teenage boys. In fact, Jenny cites a CNN study that found women over 40 years old are the biggest group of online gamers! Furthermore, according to other reports, the average gamer is 33 years old, and 67% of American heads of household play video and computer games. What's so amazing is that gamers span in incredibly wide range of ages, ethnicities, educational backgrounds, and income levels. And you don't have to look far to find just how monumental a force gaming is in the marketplace. Just look at this recent article from GameSpot that says the game Halo 3 broke the all-time record for preorders in North America. If these sheer numbers and demographics don't get your marketing senses tingling with excitement, I don't know what will. This is definitely a significant segment of the population we librarians should be taking a close look at.

While it's all well and good to know who gamers are, it's often not enough just to circulate copies of Mario Kart (though it's definitely not a bad place to start...). Good library marketers know that to be really successful, we must take a look at gamers' underlying motivations and tailor our services to accommodate those needs and preferences. Through some reading and attending the GLLS event last month, I have some ideas about how we can add value to the gaming experience to make it worthwhile for this group to come to the library. Most of my conclusions are based on the exciting case studies and research I heard about that were extremely inspirational. Here are my thoughts, but I also welcome comments from experienced librarian-gamers who have other insights:

Scale: It's amazing what altering the scale of an experience can do to draw people in. This point was driven home by the gaming initiatives at GA Tech and Lori Critz's summary of their Unreal Tournament. The Tournament featured a gigantic screen (also pictured here) that attracted many students because it created an ambiance they couldn't duplicate in their dorm rooms. It's sort of like the difference between going to a park and going to Disney World. Disney does things big, and sometimes big (big audiences, big attractions, and big events) are better.
Competition: Surprise! Gamers like to compete. And librarians can help them do that. Just take a look at Ann Arbor District Library's homegrown tournament scoring and management tools. Tools include a leaderboard and blogs that allow gaming patrons to keep up with how they stack up. By facilitating competition, librarians are structuring meaningful experiences for patrons - a HUGE added value. Fortunately for library-land, AADL is making its GT System available free of charge in the near future, and even hoping to have multi-library synchronized tournaments!
Community: What sold me completely on gaming in libraries is how games draw diverse people together. I was amazed by Eli Neiburger's account of a senior citizen challenging young patrons in DDR Tournament. (Apparently, he was a big hit). To my mind, libraries are not only great at bringing diverse groups together, but doing so is a responsiblity. Community is also an added value because it's not something that many people can find easily, but it's something that most people seek.
Fun: Ok, this is an obvious one, but fun can be a major attraction. Fun doesn't just happen though (I wish it did! And students in my library instruction classes probably do too! ;-) ). Fun, it turns out, is the result of planning and structure. Consider an article by my #1 librarian hero and the reason I got into reference work, Lisa Norberg. Lisa's article, Play Matters: The Academic Librarian's Role in Fostering Historical Thinking, describes how to make research fun by creating digital sandboxes and other tools that allow students to explore primary resources in a risk-free, engaging format. Digital sandboxes and the like don't create themselves. Librarians need to think strategically about how to make using their services and resources enjoyable.
Validation: Even though we're not therapists, we have an opportunity to provide some psychological support to patrons by validating their interests and hobbies. At the Symposium, I heard story after story about how just by offering games instead of chastizing patrons for playing them, librarians turned disgruntled youth into fervent library fans. In large part this is because by supporting activities like gaming, librarians give those people who engage in them the recognition and approval that they may not be getting elsewhere.
New Perspectives: If you haven't heard of Big Games, do yourself a favor and check out Gegory Trefry's talk from the Symposium. Basically, Big Games move games from boards and TV screens to real-life environments, even entire citites. Trefry talked about how libraries themselves could become gaming grounds where patrons could search for codes in books, for example. This point is related to the previous one about scale, but Big Games and related activities are more than just big - they force people to look at everyday objects and places in new ways. Framing environments in new ways is a value-added service (it's tough work and loads of planning!). Portraying the familiar in unfamiliar ways is a great way for librarians to attract gaming audiences.

My next post on this topic will be about how gaming principles can be applied to designing quality library services, and it will appear, appropriately enough, on the Designing Better Libraries blog. In the meantime, let me know what you think: How can we add value to library services for gamers?

Facebook: Where socializing and monetizing collide

2007-08-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

Marketplace.org aired a piece yesterday on how Facebook and Buy.com banded together to provide a new service called Garage Sale - a service that allows people to buy and sell their stuff from their Facebook profile pages. The move is yet another example of a growing trend where the online worlds of socializing and consumerism are merging together. I think these developments will change people's expectations about having product and service providers in online networks since now members are becoming the marketers. The Buy.com Chief Executive states,

"We see tremendous growth opportunities in providing the millions of users on business and social networks with an alternative to eBay, and the ability to transform their personal profile pages beyond information-sharing."

Perhaps the changes will also make reluctant librarians more comfortable promoting their services through social networking sites. Whatever the case, if Facebook is part of your library marketing strategy, these changes are good to know.

[Also see an article from WebProNews about Garage Sale.]

Insanity:

2007-08-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If it's crazy to do keep making the same mistakes, then stop making these Eight Classic Marketing Mistakes that May Never Go Away as outlined by Paul on KnowThis.com.

My favorite of these mistaken marketing ideas are:

2. All We Need to do is Pump More into Promotion
Usually, if no one wants what you're "selling," it's because the product or service is bad, not because you need to spend more time and money telling people about a lousy product.

6. We Know Who Our Competitors Are
As Paul says,

"Companies not viewed as competitors are potentially the biggest threat to a company..."

This is why being broadly knowledgeable about market changes and new products and services is important for librarians, even when those new developments have seemingly little to do with libraries.

and 7. The Only Thing That Matters Is ROI

"For many companies investing in a marketing decision must have only one payoff – profit on the investment. Yet if this approach drives all marketing decisions the company is at best an underachiever and at worst vulnerable to competitors. Why? Because not all marketing decisions should be tied to a positive return on investment. Sometimes a firm must make strategic decisions that sacrifice profits in order strengthen other parts of the company."

Even in library land, obsessively focusing on profits, or outcomes, in terms of numbers like gate counts and service point transactions may blind people to more important matters. A BIG mistake!

Rules were made to be broken

2007-08-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

About.com has an excellent piece called, "Getting Rid of the Rulebook." In it, the author talks about the perils of losing customers just because of never deviating from the company rules. One example she used involved a dry cleaners that was so insistent upon locking up the store precisely at the designated closing time that owners ignored one harried customer who arrived 10 mins. late due to traffic. Despite his frantic knocking on the door, and the fact that the owners were inside cleaning up, they pretended he wasn't there. They lost that customer's business for good. As the author points out,

"Contrast this cleaners story with one that Mike, the bell captain at the Hotel Algonquin in New York City, told me about his experience in a new Nordstrom store that had just opened in his New Jersey neighborhood. Mike and his wife were looking around the store and stopped at the customer service counter to ask what time the store closed. The associate smiled and said: "Whenever you're finished shopping, sir." What a very customer-friendly answer! Mike and his wife felt like royalty. Doesn't Nordstrom have an official closing time? Of course. But apparently you won't get thrown out of the store with bells going off."

The author concludes with a sound piece of advice from the retailer:

"The employee handbook of Nordstrom, the Seattle-based store group, consists of a central rule:
Rule #1: Use your good judgment in all situations. There are no additional rules."

Update: I decided it might be a good idea to give you a more illustrative example of what an appropriate "breaking of the rules" in service situations means to me. This is a true story (names have been withheld to protect the innocent). It was a rainy day. At lunchtime, I ventured a few city blocks in the damp weather to a local fast food restaurant for a bite to eat. I ordered my made-to-order meal and as I dug around my bag to find my wallet, I realized I'd left it in my office - argh! The cashier held my food while I hurried back to my office in my uncomfortable shoes and dreary weather (did I mention I don't like rain?). I finally made it back to the counter, winded and breathing heavy from the hike. The server hands me my food, which I paid for, and a cup for a fountain drink. I said, "Oh, I didn't order a drink." She responded, "I know." Bless her! That free drink was one of the kindest, most sympathetic gestures I've experienced in a fast food place and I always remember that small broken rule that has endeared me to that restaurant.

An internal marketing recap and the next chat!

2007-08-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

Before I continue my posts on the values of gaming in libraries, I want to relate the feedback I received on our last chat about internal marketing. As you may remember, I asked internal marketing expert Sybil Stershic to review our chat and comment on the issues that sprouted up. She generously did so and now I'd like to share her insights with you.

One participant mentioned that her library is working on a logo redesign, and she was concerned that there was little staff buy-in since the process did not involve their input. My inclination is to encourage staff involvement in the planning stages, but I acknowledge that doing so may put too many cooks in the kitchen and stall projects. In her e-mail to me, Sybil noted that staff input does not necessarily mean getting full staff consensus. Rather, at minimum, staff should be told of the process and rationale for the design. They should also be the first to see it. As Sybil summed up,

Bottom line: employees should be considered an organization’s "first audience."

I thought this was a great tip and one that is simple to implement.

Another concern raised was that there exists an aversion to risk, or "culture of fear" as I put it, that precludes good ideas from being implemented and devalues experimentation as a part of the daily routine. We discussed that some staff feel like it's a waste of time to try out new technologies that don't seem immediately beneficial, for example. Sybil brought up a number of ideas that apply to this problem. First, she noted that internal marketing involves aspects of "attitude management" and "communications management." Attitude management means getting staff to buy into the organization's mission and goals, while communications management means giving staff the information and tools to do their jobs. Sybil pointed out that management needs to address each of these areas and be attentive to staff perceptions and concerns about technologies and other aspects of service. She mentioned a report from the Marketing Science Institute called, "Paradoxes of Technology: Consumer Cognizance, Emotions, and Coping Strategies." The study sounds like a good primer for managers about how technology can be a source of excitement as well as anxiety for their staff. It's easy to overlook the fact that staff perceptions count as much as patrons' perceptions. If they perceive a technology as irrelevant even if it isn't, they won't be inclined to investigate it further, which could ultimately hurt library services. Sybil also suggested that better communication is needed to clarify policies so staff feel comfortable taking some risks.

Finally, Sybil recommended treating staff like any other target market by doing some market research to identify how to best engage them. She states,

As for what helps motivate staff or what's holding them back from learning or moving forward, just ask them. I'm a big believer in internal surveys (whether formal or informal)...ask your staff: What barriers are in the way to [fill-in-the blank here]? And what suggestions do you have to get around these roadblocks? (Of course, the quality of answers will depend on the organization's culture, particularly in how open communications are, how well management listens and responds, etc.)

What a terrific point! Sometimes we forget that the simplest way to solve a problem is to first have a clear understanding of what it is.

My hearty thanks to Sybil for taking the time to share her years of experience in this area!

I'd like to build on some of the topics that came up in the last chat and develop them further in our next one. To that end, let's chat about transforming cultures of fear into cultures of creativity. How can libraries improve their ability to innovate and how can they also support their patrons' own creative pursuits? I'm to conduct the next chat a little bit differently. Instead of having a set time for the chat, I'm going to leave the chat open for an entire day. Just stop by the chat room, leave your comments and suggestions, and the next person can build on your ideas or just leave their own. I envision it as a sort of day-long brainstorming session. (You can also feel free to chat with anyone who happens to be in the room). By the end of the day, I hope to have a monster list of ideas. I'll review them and pull out the themes and most intriguing ideas, which I'll share in a blog post. Sound good? If you're game, here's how it'll work:

Go to the Library Marketing Exchange on Thursday, August 16th (anytime).

Introduce yourself and where you work (optional).
Leave your answer to the question, How can libraries improve their ability to innovate and how can they also support their patrons' own creative pursuits? I'm interested in your creativity tips and how you can inspire a creative culture in libraries.

Build on previous responses or leave ideas that are entirely your own. Chat with anyone who may be in the room.

That's it! I'll summarize the responses in a LM blog post.

I'm hoping this approach will allow more people to participate and be involved in the conversation. I'll be poking in throughout to day to deposit my 2 cents. Hope to find you there!

[By the way, please feel free to suggest a theme for an upcoming chat! I'd love to get your ideas.]

Marketing 101 for geeks

2007-08-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

InfoWorld reports on a keynote speech delivered by Steve Yegge, Senior Software Engineer for Google, at OSCON's open source convention. You can view the 20-minute-long-or-so presentation on Blip.tv. Most of it is in geek-speak, but the branding lessons are good for anyone. The InfoWorld article describes the talk and some major branding principles, including this one:

But branding is much more than product name or PR. A brand stands for the experience customers have with a product.

It also lists two recommended readings, the first of which Yegge refers to in his talk:

1. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
2. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

Enjoy!

Forget about being the third place. Be the first lab!

2007-07-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

For reasons I won't bother to bore you with, today is the first day I've been able to post (or really, spend any extended amount of time on a computer) since returning from the ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium. This is unfortunate since the Symposium really pumped me up and gave me no shortage of library marketing inspiration. So much, in fact, that I anticipate discussing gaming and related marketing issues over a number of posts. To begin with, I'd like to share with you the over-arching message I took away from the event: Forget about being the third place. Be the first lab!

After listening to speakers like Eli Neiburger, Jim Gee, Greg Trefry, and many others, I learned that games, perhaps better than any other pursuit, build community and spark intellectual curiosity. Eli spoke about how gaming brought seniors out from their retirement homes to challenge teens to Dance Dance Revolution contests; Gee described how students who wouldn't crack open a textbook in school eagerly poured through tedious gaming guides teeming with sophisticated language for hours; Trefry told stories of how big games dramatically altered the ways in which people perceived their physical surroundings. Do you know of other media that are so transformative? I sure don't. Games and the application of gaming principles capture the essence of what libraries are all about. They engage patrons' imaginations, and allow them to play around with ideas in an interactive, risk-free format with wide cross sections of the community. In the process, gaming patrons actually construct a series of unique experiences, thereby turning the library into a laboratory of sorts.

This "community creativity lab" is where where I see libraries' future and competitive advantage. I can't think of any other free, publicly-accessible place (except perhaps for museums, which we should be partnering with), where people can come together for purposes of serious play and creative enterprise. Unlike other "third places" like Starbucks that attempt to be a home-away-from-home space, libraries are much more. They are where old and new knowledge are explored, created, and re-envisioned. Our duty is to recognize and facilitate the many varied creative pursuits of our patrons and give them the value-added spaces, resources, expertise, and community engagement to explore them in greater depth. Gaming represents one avenue for libraries to look into, but there are many others as well.

Some of you may be skeptical about the potential of gaming and libraries, which is fine. I wasn't entirely sold on it either until I understood it better. So, I will continue to analyze how gaming makes sense from a library marketing standpoint based on what I learned. My next post will address who makes up the gamer market segment and what value-added services draw them in.

Game on!

2007-07-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to be in Chicago for a few days for the ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium. I have to admit that I know very little about how gaming and libraries work together, so I'm here with an open mind and a lot of note paper! I plan to transcribe my scribbles for you here on LM to explore how gaming could relate to library marketing efforts. Should be fun!

Learn to see what's not there for marketing success

2007-07-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

I mentioned that I've been doing a bit of research and writing on the topic of differentiation. I also referenced advice from the book Zag that suggests looking for the "white spaces" or underserved/ignored markets. Now I want to share with you an outstanding article I read that identifies 6 ways in which marketers can find those "white spaces" by looking at familiar information in a new light. In doing so, organizations can find competitive advantages and new opportunities to apply their services.

The article is called "Creating New Market Space" by Kim and Mauborgne. The authors examined the marketing strategies of successful firms like Home Depot and Cisco Systems and found 6 common innovative tactics for finding what's not there. I highly recommend grabbing a copy of the article, but here is a brief outline of the main findings:

1. Look across substitute industries - Customers make trade-offs when selecting products and services. By looking across substitute industries and why customers choose option A over option B in certain circumstances, they can find new market space. The authors point to the example set by Home Depot, the company that noticed customers had 2 options for home improvement. They could either hire a contractor or buy the tools to do the job themselves. Home Depot blended these options by giving customers the knowledge, training, and sales expertise to improve their skills. As the authors put it,

"By delivering the decisive advantages of both substitute industries - and eliminating or reducing everything else - Home Depot has transformed enormous latent demand for home improvement into real demand."

2. Look across strategic groups within industries - Strategic groups in an industry as defined in the piece are groups of companies that act on a similar strategy. The authors state that these groups are usually based on price and performance. The idea here is to figure out why customers trade up or down across these groups and, like in the previous tactic, offer a unique mix of their advantages.

3. Look across the chain of buyers - This strategy involves challenging the notion of who the target customer is. To do so, it's important to know who actually uses the service versus who purchases it, and who influences these decisions. The authors state,

"By questioning conventional definitions of who can and should be the target customer, companies can often see fundamentally new ways to create value."

This point reminds me of a recent brainstorming session I led for a regional meeting of my local chapter of ACRL. One savvy participant came up with the idea of reaching out to university staff as an overlooked patron base. I admit I usually forget about this important audience, but it could be a new niche just waiting to be carved out.

4. Look across complementary product and service offerings - This is one area where I think librarians could find a lot of missed opportunities! With this strategy, marketers identify the total solution customers seek by consuming a service. The authors point to a couple of illustrative examples. For instance, they state that finding a babysitter is a hindrance to attending movies in a theater, and so theaters should concern themselves with addressing this need as it affects demand for their service. Similarly, they point to Borders and Barnes & Noble - companies that realized customers want more than just to purchase books. They want a complete book-buying experience.

5. Look across functional or emotional appeal to buyers - In this approach, marketers attempt to turn functional products into emotional ones and vice versa. The authors point to Starbucks as an example of a company that turned a functional product, coffee, into an emotional experience, which in turn stimulated much more demand. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Body Shop stripped away the emotional aspects of its cosmetics such as packaging and advertising, leaving only its functional, all-natural products behind.

6. Looking across time - Fortunately, this tactic doesn't require a crystal ball or any special foresight. It only requires the ability to hone in on significant, clear (observable) trends that are irreversible. Moreover, marketers must be able to envision how the trend in question will change how they will deliver value to their customers tomorrow.

Seeing what's invisible and how you might fill in those gaps is a talent librarians can benefit from as they define and differentiate themselves from the many alternatives patrons have at their disposal. While challenging, this is not an impossible task. As this article demonstrated, there are concrete strategies for finding your unique niche in the marketplace, which will sustain libraries and create real value for patrons as no one else can.

Beyond "telling and selling"

2007-07-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

If you want an insightful summary of what modern marketing is about and where it's headed, you have to read this Forbes article about Proctor & Gamble's marketing chief, Jim Stengel, and his approach to marketing, which is all about building relationships with customers. Stengel summarizes the P&G approach this way:

'"We need to think beyond consuming ... and to really directly understand the role and the meaning the brand has in their lives," Stengel told The Associated Press in an interview. "If you're always asking that question, 'How can I be more relevant, how can I have a deeper meaning, how can I build this relationship between brand and consumer to a higher level' your marketing gets better, you innovate.'

In its effort to be more relevant, P&G marketers are immersing themselves in customers' day-to-day lives to find out where they fit and what people really need. Their on-the-ground investigations yielded amazing insights into women's lives, for example, and inspired innovations like decorative tissue boxes, Tide "To Go" stain removal sticks, and cleaning wipes that dispense like tissues. They even found that bunco's renewed popularity among women offered some unique sponsorship opportunities.

In modern marketing, the name of the game is dialogue, and to engage in conversations with customers, you have to be able to speak their language by understanding who they are beyond the surface level - a lesson P&G learned and that librarians should act on as well.

Thanks for the chat! Here's the summary...

2007-07-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who turned out for the chat last Tuesday. I thought there was some good discussion and some promising ideas came out of the talk. However, I do understand that the chat room format can get a little unwieldy, and we lost a person or two I really wanted to follow-up with ("Kate:" If you're out there, feel free to get in touch with me to follow-up on the question you had!). I want to summarize what we talked about and point out the major issues we identified when marketing to internal staff.

A major point of discussion was the observation that many staff are reluctant to try new technologies because doing so is seen as waste of time, a source of stress, and a distraction from serving patrons. Participants offered up a number of ideas to get staff into a "play" mode where they can experiment and make some discoveries that may ultimately help patrons. Some of the librarians in the chat room mentioned that they have no funds to pay for incentives, so our ideas focused on other means of motivation. Here are some of the highlights:

Have a bragging wall
Sponsor competitions with other libraries
Get people together to talk about what they learn
Put people in teams
Let managers and staff know what the ROI is (Return On Investment) for their time (it's not a waste of time to try new things!)
Partner with patrons who are familiar with social technologies so that they can teach staff (someone suggested that this could count as volunteer hours)

Have an "open mic night" where patrons can share their tech knowledge with staff

Integrate "play" into daily routines

"Kate" and I were the only two academic librarians in the bunch (I think), and she brought up a really good point but left the room before we could get into it more (darn!). She said that in her library, time and the learning curve do hinder experimentation with social technologies, but more of an impediment is the desire to move slowly because no one is sure how to proceed with these trials. There is no policy in place and people are a bit nervous to enter uncharted waters. Kate's observation stands out to me because in the past couple of weeks I've been hearing similar comments in a number of different contexts, which makes me think we have a pervasive problem on our hands when it comes to marketing: a culture of fear. I want to think on this some more and get Sybil's take on this before I write more (I'm being cautious - ha!), but essentially I hear from librarians that they are afraid to move ahead with ideas because they stop themselves by thinking of all the ways things won't work instead of considering their potential and reserving judgment. In part, I think the lack of clear policies or at least parameters can increase uncertainty and therefore fear. This problem is definitely not unique to libraries, but that doesn't make it any less problematic. For internal marketing to work, people need to feel free to fulfill their brand promises and confident that they'll be backed up by higher-ups.

Finally, our conversation didn't stop at tech talk. Some participants talked about branding projects their libraries are working on. The general consensus was that it's important to involve staff during the planning process, and that it could be more difficult to rally staff support when they are simply offered a finished logo they had no say in. One person mentioned that in a former position, the library redesigned its Web page, involving staff in the prototype stages. To top it off, staff were given nifty t-shirts with the Web address, which they donned enthusiastically. I know that having too many cooks in the kitchen has the potential to stall projects, but involvement could be structured so that it's productive. Today, I was just thinking that even something as simple as letting staff vote on one of a few prototype logo designs could give them an investment in the project that would pay off during implementation.

Feel free to read the full transcript of the talk and contact me with questions or other ideas. Also, I'm going to contact my internal marketing guru, Sybil, to get her take on our exchange.

Thanks again for showing up! I'll post a new chat time and topic soon.

Free library marketing class

2007-07-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

I thought I would pass this along after seeing it on a discussion forum. It's free; it's a marketing class; it's led by Pat Wagner who knows her stuff. Wish I could go...

Let's chat

2007-07-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

How does today 7-8pm EST sound?

Tonight's Library Marketing Exchange chat is all about internal marketing, or, marketing to your most important audience (staff). For some background, see my previous post.

As a special added bonus, Sybil Stershic, THE expert in internal marketing as far as I'm concerned, has graciously offered to respond to any issues and/or questions that come up as a result of the chat, which I'll communicate with her and share her answers in a special post.

Hope you'll be there! (It would just be sad if I were talking to myself...).

And how are you any different?

2007-07-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

Whether consciously or not, patrons are always comparing you to your competitors and asking themselves how you're different from them. They're also asking how you're better than them regarding what they care about most. Have you taken steps to stand out from the crowd? If not, you may need to give some attention to your differentiation strategy. Being different (in a good way) can give you a competitive advantage. If you don't have a competitive advantage, then you probably don't have any business being in business!

Because differentiation is so important, I chose to write a chapter on what it is and how to do it in a forthcoming ACRL publication, The Desk and Beyond:
Next-Generation Reference Services, which is due out sometime next year. In the process of working on the chapter, I learned a lot of important stuff about being competitive and I want to share what I discovered with you all (without giving away the chapter, of course!). So, you'll be seeing a number of posts on this topic in the coming weeks.

To kick off this theme, let's first consider why librarians should worry about competing. Being competitive is not a sneaky or underhanded tactic of any kind, but simply a means finding ways to fulfill needs that have been neglected or that no one has ever noticed before, and doing so better than anyone else. While addressing these needs in the best way possible, service providers like us challenge themselves to think hard about what they do, who they're doing it for, what they excel at, and how they can creatively satisfy their target market. Being competitive then, makes service providers more useful to their customers and also more innovative. It's a healthy thing to do, which is why I encourage every librarian look at the marketplace as a game of chess where you have to think a few steps ahead of the other player and execute moves that catch him off-guard. The best competitors not only do things differently, they do things differently for the benefit of their customers. There's no point in being different for the sake of being different. Patrons have to care about those things you stand for.

In his book, Zag, author Marty Neumeier explained competitive strategy/differentiation in a very illustrative way. He noted that talented artists have the uncanny ability to see not only the space an object fills, but also the negative space it creates, which he calls "white spaces." He says that our marketplace is full of white spaces that have yet to be discovered by marketers. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to hunt down those white spaces and stake that territory for libraries. Librarians have so much that is unique and worthwhile to offer, but we just need to make what we do connect with patrons so that we can stand out in their minds from all of the alternatives they have at their disposal. Easy, huh? ;-)

Since I go into a lot of detail in the book about how to find your competitive advantage, I won't repeat all that here, but I will share some of the terrific stuff I've read that you can benefit from taking a look at. Stay tuned.

Chat room date changed due to reality check

2007-07-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

After digging out from two big projects that were due today, I poked my head out and checked in with reality. What did I discover? I realized that I scheduled our LM Exchange chat for tomorrow at 7pm. While this may work for some of you die-hards in the crowd, I figure most of you will be getting ready to enjoy the July 4th holiday. So, I'm moving the chat to next Tuesday 7/10, 7-8pm EST.

The topic this time is going to be internal marketing. Many people forget that getting your marketing plan down on paper is only half the battle. The other half is getting buy-in from the people who matter most: your staff. Doing so is not always an easy feat, to say the least. While the value of library marketing may be self-evident to us, it can be viewed by others as a (gasp!) waste of time. I'd like to discuss ways in which we can do better at making marketing a total organization effort. Here are some ideas I have about possible talking points (please do bring your own):

Staff recognition programs and other incentives.
Creating an open, collaborative marketing planning process.
Innovative approaches to staff training (Sybil Stershic had a terrific post on this topic recently).
Improving communications and information sharing
Writing internal marketing plans

To get you thinking, take a look at these two short pieces and just imagine different wordings and examples to fit the library environment: The Power of Internal Marketing and Making Internal Marketing Work.

Hope to "see" you next Tuesday in the chat room!

Reduce risk; Increase usage

2007-06-28T07:01:00.001-07:00

To librarians, it may not seem like using our services is risky in the least, but to time-starved patrons, that's not always the case. Like other services, library services are intangible and it can be difficult for patrons to understand the benefits we have to offer. Why, then, should they spend their time participating in a research consultation, for example, if what they're "paying" for?

One way to persuade patrons to spend their time with us instead of alternatives is to clearly spell out what they can expect if they take a chance on our services. As an example, I'll share with you a project I've been working on for new instructors in our University College.

I've been creating a Blackboard site just for new University College instructors that, among other things, describes the services we provide them. One service is our individual consultations, which can be very valuable for instructors working on developing their teaching skills, keeping up with their fields, and doing research. To reduce the perceived risk of taking me up on my offer, I've outlined all of the expectations and outcomes from the service encounter. Here's a list of the items I describe:

Reasons for scheduling a consultation. Not everyone realizes when they have a need to see us, so I tried to spell out situations where our services will come in handy.
What to expect before, during, and after your research consultation. Here, I tell instructors that they can expect a prompt response from me in setting up a time to meet and that they should tell me as much about their research question as they can prior to the meeting so I can be adequately prepared. During the meeting, patrons can expect that we will meet for about an hour and they may be exposed to a lot of information, but that follow-up sessions or questions are welcomed. Finally, I tell patrons that they can expect an e-mail from me one week after their session to determine if they have any other questions or needs.
Patron responsibilities. While I'm here to serve patrons' needs, I want to establish the notion that service interactions require that both parties are active participants. Therefore, I ask the patrons schedule their sessions about a week in advance (if possible), that they bring documentation and/or objectives for the session with them, and that they inform me as soon as possible if they're unable to attend. The goal here isn't to give patrons a laundry list of things to do, but to encourage them to be prepared so that the session is rewarding for them.

In doing this, I hope that instructors won't be intimidated meeting with me one-on-one because they know how the process works and what they'll get out of it. Also, I want them to know that sessions may feel a little overwhelming at times because they're absorbing a lot of new information, but that this is normal and that it's not a one-shot deal. Hopefully, this will make them feel comfortable and confident seeking assistance.

I'll let you know the response to this once the Blackboard site goes live. I encourage you to think of ways to make your own services more transparent. Perhaps a video of a scripted, representational reference transactions can ease new students' hesitance to ask for help at the reference desk, for example. You could post it online so that before coming in, students know the drill. It will help to ease anxiety and make the interaction more fulfilling for both parties.

More on Meebo chat

2007-06-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

As a newbie to Meebo, I didn't realize that chats are saved in handy logs. This is a great (new?) feature, and one worth knowing about if you plan on using it for your own library marketing purposes. This also means that I didn't have to copy/paste/e-mail the (incomplete) transcript for those of you who participated in the Library Marketing Exchange branding chat (sorry!). Here's a complete and much more attractive transcript of the branding chat that took place on June 14th: http://chatlogs.meebo.com/room/librarymarketingexchange/logs/2007/06/14/

See you in the next chat!

The relationship's the thing

2007-06-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Hello, readers! I'm glad to be back blogging with you, though vacation was quite nice...

I wrote up a post for KnowThis that I wanted to discuss here to add a librarian perspective. The post is about what we're really selling to customers as we promote our services to them. There's the obvious stuff like resources, information literacy, and so on, as well as benefits like "write better papers" and "make informed decisions." But I think we provide patrons with more than that. As librarian-marketers invite patrons to co-create their services with them (a modern marketing phenomenon), and as patrons take it upon themselves to define the library brand and promote the library through word-of-mouth, they actually become a part of services we provide. Therefore, when we "sell" library services to patrons we're actually selling a part of our patrons' creativity, ambitions, and accomplishments. In effect, we're selling a relationship. Why not highlight how both patrons and libraries benefit from that relationship and showcase our relationship-building skills as a selling point for our libraries?

Need some examples? A recent one that comes to mind occurred as I was doing some freshmen orientation outreach earlier this week. I overheard one girl say that the library is her favorite part of campus. I immediately approached her and asked if she would be interested in joining my undergraduate advisory group, which is in need of some freshmen representation. She eagerly applied. From a marketing standpoint, I was glad I was able to offer an enthusiastic patron a relationship that allowed her to increase her involvement with our services, thereby keeping her engaged. The selling point, in my mind, is the fact that I have a relationship, in this case a formal one, in place to attract users.

Other ways to highlight relationships with patrons are to keep the promotional focus on the customers themselves and how you allow for interaction/involvement with them. At least, that's how I'm seeing things today. Am I striking a chord? Or just singing to my own tune? :-)

On vacation

2007-06-15T12:50:00.001-07:00

In case anyone should miss me ;-) , I'm on vacation starting today and I'll be back on Monday, June 25th. Blogging may be light or non-existent during that time. I'll catch you when I get back!

Meet me at the library

2007-06-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

In the latest of my all-too-frequent travels to Starbucks, I picked up one of their publications called, Let's Meet at Starbucks. The publication refers to a Web site where you can find out about SBUX events, learn about the latest drinks, and, my favorite part, send a customized e-mail invitation to your friends that asks them to meet you at a selected SBUX. Perhaps I find too many good ideas at Starbucks, but this particular one seemed like it was custom made for libraries. In public libraries, I could see this functionality being an easy way for patrons to identify library events and nearby branches for groups to gather. In an academic setting, it could help facilitate study group meetings and perhaps be linked to an online room booking system. I don't know about all of the technicalities involved, but isn't this a great concept?!

The SBUX publication also mentioned the Web site Meetup.com, where people can identify groups by interests and location. There's a group for just about everyone, including for those interested in books, education topics, languages, and music to name just a few. Wouldn't it be nice to reach out to these interest groups and offer library space and services to them? It's possible to advertise in Meetup, sponsor a group, or create your own group. There are also some MeetUp tools you can feature on your Web site including a widget that lists all of the Meetups in your area. At first glance, this service appears to be somewhat similar to Facebook and MySpace, but the major difference is that Meetup aims to get people together in person.

Whether or not you use these tools, it's worth considering how the libraries can do a better job of connecting the virtual and the physical while supporting the interests of their communities. Something to think about!

[Ooh - I just found numerous examples of people using Meetup to arrange meetings in the library: here, here, here, and here.]

Thanks for the talk! Mark your calendars

2007-06-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of you who showed up for yesterday's Branding 101 chat! I had a great time getting to know those of you who stopped by! As an experiment, I thought it went fairly well. A number of participants are working on branding projects, so we had a good deal to talk about. Much of the transcript is still available in the Library Marketing Exchange chat room, so feel free to peruse.

Based on yesterday's talk, I've decided to keep doing thematic chats once or twice a month, while dropping by and posting questions, comments, ideas, neat examples, etc. whenever I have a chance. I'm usually logged into Meebo, so odds are you can usually catch me hanging out there. (My Meebo ID is jsstover, so you can tell if I'm logged in and in the room). I'll also try chats at different times of the day so those of you in time zones other than EST aren't left out.

One participant remarked that the chat room is a little clunky for in-depth discussions, but great for community-building, and I agree! So expect to see a pretty casual exchange of ideas, chitchat, and some meeting-and-greeting going on. Here's the scoop for the next chat:

You're invited to talk library marketing!

What: The theme will be internal marketing (a.k.a. getting staff buy-in). Plus, anything else you'd like to discuss.
Where: The Library Marketing Exchange
When: Tuesday, July 3rd, 7pm-8pm EST
Who: Me, you, other library-marketing enthusiasts!
Why: To share ideas and get to know colleagues
Directions: Click on this link and type. You can also access the chat room directly from LM.

Hope to see you there!

Chat prep: Branding 101

2007-06-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Thursday, June 14th), I'll be hanging out in the Library Marketing Exchange chat room from 12-1pm EST to say hello, talk library marketing, and get to know what you're up to. To get the ball rolling, I'm making the theme of the chat Branding 101. If you have a different topic in mind (or no topic) that's fine, but I figured having a theme would help get the conversation moving.

In my recent branding talk, I distilled some of the lessons I'm learning into a few Branding 101 points, which are:

Know your customers: Understand what makes your customers tick by finding out what's important to them and what they hope to achieve.
Know yourself: Come to grips with who you are as an organization and who you aren't. By doing so, you'll see where you and your patrons meet, and where you may need to make some changes to better accommodate their needs. Remember, you can't be all things to all people, but you can do a better job of being yourself
Find your inspiration: Great brands stand for something big. What gets you up in the morning? How can you get patrons excited too? If you don't care about something, you have nothing to build your brand on.
Find your aspiration: What, ultimately, do you hope to become? Great brands connect their aspirations with those of their patrons. Think beyond today to the possibilities of tomorrow. Develop your vision with patrons and involve them in getting there.
Write it down: Everyone inside and outside of your library should know what you stand for. Communicate it every chance you get.
Live it: Here's where brand-building happens. Some ways you can live your brand include maximizing every point of contact you have with patrons and becoming their advocate in everything you do. Let's talk more tomorrow about how we can practice what we preach!

How can you participate in tomorrow's chat? Very easily! Just go to this address: http://www.meebo.com/room/librarymarketingexchange/ or the Library Marketing - Thinking Outside the Book homepage (you'll see the chat box in the sidebar) and type away! If you can't make it this time around, leave a message anytime about questions or comments you have, projects you'd like to get feedback on, or other topics you'd like to see addressed in future chats. Your message will be available in the chat room for a while, so don't hesitate to leave a note!

P.S. You don't have to stay in the chat room for the entire hour, of course. Drop in, drop out, stop by in the middle, it's all good! :-D

Can marketing make better researchers?

2007-06-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to share with you a marketing research project I've been working on with Dr. Deborah Cowles of the VCU Marketing Department. The project evolved from a research paper I wrote for a Buyer Behavior class I took with Dr. Cowles. The topic of my paper was self-efficacy. Self-efficacy, as defined by Albert Bandura, is

the certainty one possesses that he can successfully execute a behavior that will result in a desired outcome.

Unlike self-confidence which is a more general feeling of mastery, self-efficacy is task-specific. Moreover, the more self-efficacy one possesses, the more likely a person is to persist in the task and be more successful at it. Therefore, high self-efficacy is linked to improved performance.

Many academics and practitioners are interested in self-efficacy. Marketers are interested in it as a means of encouraging people to use self-service options. Librarians and teachers have studied self-efficacy as a factor in achieving improved learning outcomes.

Why did I choose to write about this topic? And what does it have to do with libraries? There's been a lot of talk in library circles about the need to promote electronic resources (i.e. databases). I thought, perhaps, that boosting students' self-efficacy as it relates to electronic library resources would encourage them to utilize them more often and more effectively. According to Bandura, there are 4 main ways of fostering self-efficacy: (In order of effectiveness) past performance, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. The problem is that it's difficult to give students the benefit of past performance because, at least at my library, it's impossible to reach every student through library instruction. However, it's possible to use promotional methods to model behavior (vicarious experience) and persuade students that they are up to the challenge of using e-resources (verbal persuasion). Our study will test our hypothesis that promotional treatments can be used to beef up students' library e-resource self-efficacy, which in turn will encourage them to use those resources more frequently and effectively.

Our initial study, in a nutshell, found that library e-resource self-efficacy is positively related to students' intention to use those resources, their attitude toward them, and the amount of time they spend using them. Also, we found that instructors' encouragement and expectations played a significant role in shaping students' self-efficacy.

So far, this research has been well-received. Our first report of the findings won the O.C. Ferrell Marketing Award/best paper on the track for the 2007 Association of Collegiate Marketing Educators Conference. To top it off, we received a grant from the VCU School of Business to continue work this summer on testing our promotional treatments that could foster self-efficacy among students. I'm grateful to Dr. Cowles for introducing me to marketing research design and analysis. It's been quite a learning experience!

I hope this project demonstrates that marketing can be used to achieve positive ends, like more sophisticated researchers. Granted, there is some self-interest at work here (I'd like for students to use our stuff), but the ultimate aim is to equip students to participate in the research taking place on campus in an informed way. Ultimately, by being knowledgeable about the possibilities available to them through online databases, students will become savvy about how the find, use, and evaluate information - a skill that will help them further their goals throughout life.

Library Marketing has a chat room!

2007-06-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

After seeing mentions of the new Meebo chat rooms on Walking Paper and BWL I just had to give them a try. So, I bring you the Library Marketing Exchange. It's also embedded in my blog, so you can chat with me and/or amongst yourselves directly from LM.

It's a highly experimental feature right now. My intent is for the Library Marketing Exchange to be a mechanism for librarians and marketers to get together and generate marketing ideas. Also, you can always use it to get in touch with me, though I doubt that's the biggest appeal! If it seems to be working well for fostering ideas, I'll keep it around.

To kick off the new room, I'll be donating my lunch hour this Thursday, June 14th at 12pm EST to get a conversation going. The topic du jour will be branding. This week, I plan to expand on the ideas from my recent branding presentation through a series of posts, and so I think we'll have some good food for thought prior to the chat on Thurs. (and if not, we'll just make something up!).

Hope to "see" you there!

Update: Please let me know if you have ideas for chat topics you'd like to participate in. I'll see about hosting some additional thematic chats if there's enough interest. You can leave your ideas in a comment or via the chat room.

Everybody lies

2007-06-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

I mentioned earlier that marketing can be weilded to accomplish social good. I was reminded of this while I was (what else) watching T.V. I saw an American Express ad that asked card members to submit their ideas for worthwhile, socially significant projects. ClickZ News has a good write-up of this promotion, called The Members Project. Eventually, the top 50 projects will be put up for a vote, and AmEx will fund the winner. As ClickZ reports,

"When it first announced The Members Project last month, AmEx said the idea will allow its Cardmembers to "come together as a community by submitting and sharing their project ideas for making a positive impact in the world." That idea fits in with the Are You a Cardmember? campaign's goal of illustrating the values inherent in carrying AmEx."

There are already over 3,700 really creative ideas out there that you can review and rate. What I absolutely love is that it taps into the creativity and aspirations of customers. (Remember that I said good brands should be aspirational?).

What a great idea for libraries to steal (in a completely well-intentioned way, of course)! For those of you who do community work, why not let patrons help pick your projects. It's a terrific way to build your brand while getting people involved.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the title of this post, "Everybody lies" is a quote from my favorite T.V. character, House. The quote is a reference to the fact that I have yet to talk about my do-gooder-marketing research project even though I promised a week ago it would be my "next" post. I will write about it, but it's going to be a long-ish post, which is why it's been getting pushed to the backburner in the midst of a lot projects I'm working on, but it's coming! I just (unintentionally) lied about when. ;-)

Make every touch point count

2007-06-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

As may of you librarian-marketers know, any time a patron comes in contact with your library in any form, be it signage, newsletters, or advertisements, is an opportunity to build your brand. A few blog posts remind us of this and give some tips on maximizing points of contact:

Market Genius asks why voicemail has to be boring. Instead, author Emily Bennington suggests using voicemail to differentiate yourself. I argue it's also an excellent way to live your brand by showcasing your personality. I guess I have another project waiting for me when I get back to the office!

Marketing Profs asserts,

Brands that deliver general interest newsletters filled with tips, tools, and advice—but not unique brand-differentiating content—should rethink their approach.

I'd say this accounts for a lot of newsletters I've seen. Fortunately, the author provides 6 ways in which you can make your newsletters do more heavy-lifting as a brand builder. My two favorite tips are:
Tell about-the-brand stories:

"Next-generation relationship marketing will tell more "about-the-brand" stories—always in the interest of the reader. Unbranded content has its role, but it must be balanced with more brand-specific stories."

and Inspire!:

"Guide your team to inspire the lives of your readers and strive to generate positive, hopeful feelings by promoting the benefits of using your product."

In addition to making touch points count, it's also a good idea to add more of them! Marketing Genius describes how one YMCA achieved marketing success by using a strategy that utilized numerous different tactics. Each of these points of contact worked together to achieve a "synergistic result."

'Bout branding - thanks GPLLA!

2007-06-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Greater Philadelphia Law Library Association (GPLLA) for inviting me to speak about library branding on Friday. GPLLA was an outstanding host and audience - I can't thank you enough for your kindness!

I also want to thank all of you who shared your insights into the wonderful world of law libraries with me. You opened my eyes to a fascinating area of librarianship and your input was invaluable to me in preparing the talk.

For those of you who may be interested, my talk is entitled, From Superfluous to Substantive: Marketing that Matters. In it, I outline what real branding is, why it's important, and how to do it. During my presentation, I tried to get across the following key points:

1. How you execute your brand is highly context-specific. Your brand depends on your personality and abilities, your competitors, your patrons and their perceptions, and your organization.
2. Every marketing decision you make and every contact you have with patrons is an opportunity to live your brand and to do something remarkable.
3. Brands are not just descriptive, they're aspirational.
4. No one cares about what you have; Patrons care about what you can do for them.

Point #4 is particularly important and where I think most librarians have trouble. It's easy to fall into the trap of demonstrating features instead of benefits, but doing so puts our own ambitions in front of our patrons', which in turn makes our libraries irrelevant to them. A better approach would be to apply the model/equation I outline here:

If we focus all of our marketing/branding efforts on C (and a bit on B), we position ourselves as vital partners in our patrons' success, which in turn makes us relevant and necessary to our users. If we focus on A, we lose sight of what marketing is about: patrons' needs. And that's plain bad marketing.

I hope the GPLLAers took this to heart (and that I made sense!). If any of you readers out there have questions about the items in the presentation, let me know and I'll be happy to answer them! Since I've done so much branding reading lately, you can bet that the topic will come up more here on LM, so stay tuned.

Space-age library marketing: An interview with Julia Cooper

2007-05-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

Marketing consultant Julia Cooper contacted me a while ago about an article she wrote for Marketing Library Services called "How to Evaluate Your Library's Physical Environment." In her article, Julia outlines 5 broad areas librarians should address in managing their spaces: the big picture, the outdoors, the public services landscape, the target market landscapes, and the internal customer landscape. Space management is critical in marketing services because spaces are one of the few tangible indicators patrons have of the service quality they should expect from you. For this reason, I was happy to link to Julia's article, but I was even happier that she agreed to an e-mail interview so that I could ask her some follow-up questions. Here is our exchange:

Jill: From a marketing standpoint, what role does space play in service transactions?

Julia: Marketing is all about tapping into and meeting customer's needs, so SPACE is one method by which service is delivered. Designing different spaces is a form of communication to the user. Thus, by conducting space planning, a marketer can help direct service. For example, by laying out the parking lot with a round-about at the entrance--the implicit communique is "this is where you stop and drop off or pick up passengers." The service is implied and intuitive. The easier it is to tell [customers] what to do in the space the better the service experience! Putting barriers, such as service desks and displays in the pathway of foot traffic is important too.

Jill: What is the most common mistake librarians make in designing their spaces and how do you recommend overcoming it?

Julia: Well, in general, I would recommend that librarians take a more strategic and active approach in designing spaces for their patrons, rather than depending on other professionals to lead the design process. Architects or salespeople, for example, have their own professional goals and motivations (such as winning design awards/sales quotas). I recommend employing consultants or other 3rd parties to gather information from the end-users, including both internal and external customers, and using library day-to-day operations on the front lines to direct design strategy and implementation.

Jill: I believe that understanding your patrons' basic demographic characteristics (age, gender, etc.) can give you some insights into how to manage your spaces, but demographics alone only scratch the surface and rarely result in compelling or innovative strategies. That's why I was particularly interested in the fact that your article addressed patrons' lifestyles. You ask, for example, "If there is a large population of young parents, should you add a stroller parking pad? Is everyone a pet owner, but you have no pet-friendly space?" Have you seen any examples of how libraries or other businesses have done an exceptional job of addressing lifestyle with their spaces?

Julia: Jill, this is a great follow-up question to my point in Question 2. Whether one is considering an addition, using space already available, or starting from scratch, focus on the customer's needs and activities, that come together to create their lifestyle. (That is why doing marketing research is so important.) There are lots of examples in the corporate world, such as providing workout facilities with windows overlooking busy avenues/nature or walking paths around the grounds for employees. Employees are customers too and by focusing on healthy lifestyle choices, workers are more productive.

In general, people with similar belief systems congregate at work, but especially where they live. That means that lifestyle activities can be supported by the community library as well. We have always excelled at focusing on the children's area of the library, for example having solitary reading nooks, a giant plastic whale to climb, castle doors opening to a collection, beanstalks with reference to fables, etc. that lead to a fairy tale land of make-believe. We can be just as creative with other spaces too!

Jill: Those of us working in the same setting day-to-day might have a difficult time viewing our spaces with fresh eyes. In addition to evaluating the items you mention in your article, what approaches do you suggest for keeping a fresh perspective so that we can identify new opportunities to make our spaces more user-friendly?

Julia: First, one has to be receptive to taking a fresh look or to ask someone else for feedback. It really starts by the vision of the leaders in the library and if the physical environment of the library is considered to be part of the service mix or not. Also the atmosphere is important in staying responsive to customer needs, rather than the attitude of "that is how is always has been." To keep a fresh perspective, though, it starts by thinking that 1) not everything is set in stone, furniture can move, shelves can move, books can move, etc.2) you can make small changes in baby steps and see a difference 3) if you witness certain behavior patterns, observe & record it over a specific amount of time and then act--for example, if everyone cuts through the grass to reach your front door, then add a sidewalk there or brick path and 4) when in doubt, ASK the customer--not just one, but a sample. Finally, doing nothing is an option--but what is important is that you don't get complacent and don't stop looking for better ways to help people.

Jill: Could you talk more about the concepts of style and atmosphere and why they're so important in managing spaces effectively?

Julia: I could write a book on this topic--and maybe I will one day! Basically, style can be produced by manipulating principles and elements of design to create a balanced look and evoke feelings at its core. Atmosphere is more encompassing by adding the "personality"--through people, ambiance, all the senses in the setting. For example, Barnes & Noble Booksellers design a store with an alcove that can be used as seating for reading with coffee tables (to set your Starbucks, of course) and large windows for natural lighting. This area, too, can be converted to an author-signing space, a guest lecturer, a poetry night, a book club meeting, a guitarist solo on a stool, etc. The multi-functionality of the space presents a venue for adding to the bookstore atmosphere and acts as a destination place within the store itself. Thus, in this example, creating a certain atmosphere can bring about goodwill and brand loyalty in addition to repeat visits and sales. Likewise, the library can add more value to the patron experience by de-cluttering spaces to make them more visually appealing and approachable or add photos of historical sites in the community to create the sense of stability.

Jill: Is there anything else you'd like to say about the relationship between library spaces, patrons, and marketing strategy that wasn't expressed in the article?

Julia: Just to keep an open mind and to look around at examples everywhere--in your community or across the world--to get inspired. Then get focused and implement the ideas!

A big thank you to Julia for sharing the expertise she's gained from 10+ years of consulting experience. If you have additional questions, you can contact her at (614) 406-2252 or jfcooper15@hotmail.com. I know these interviews take a considerable amount of time and thought on the part of interviewees, so I extend my sincere thanks to all of you who have taken the time to share what you know on LM. I think we all benefit from sharing our ideas. I hope this information helps you think through your spaces strategically to make them more effective for your target audiences!

Non-profit marketing book to read

2007-05-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sybil of Quality Service Marketing, recommends a stellar book on non-profit marketing called Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes. The title alone floats this book to the top of my reading pile. The author will be speaking at the AMA Nonprofit Marketing Conference as will Sybil - I SO wish I could be there! Maybe Sybil will be kind enough to share the highlights? I'm excited to crack this book open! Please let me know your thoughts if you get a chance to read it.

Speaking of do-gooder marketing, my next post will (finally) describe the research project I've been working on with a professor from the VCU Marketing Department. I hope it will provide yet more proof that marketing can and does contribute toward the greater good.

Update: The author of Robin Hood Marketing, Katya Andresen, also writes a Non-Profit Marketing Blog that would be perfectly at home on your aggregator. :)

Everything I need to know about marketing I learned from teaching

2007-05-23T14:11:00.001-07:00

I was reminded recently that the bad reputation marketing has among librarians is still alive and well. I heard some colleagues talking about confusing library terminology when someone said something to the effect of, "Yeah. That phrase is just a marketing thing anyway." As a marketing cheerleader, I was understandably a little taken aback by this comment. Not because I was surprised, but because I realized just how entrenched the idea of marketing-as-meaningless-fluff still is within library circles. Why on earth would librarians concede that confusing jargon and marketing are synonymous when the whole point of marketing is to make services and communications more understandable?

This incident led me to think about more ways in which we marketing fans can do a better job of convincing our colleagues of its merits. One way to do this is to compare marketing to something more familiar and friendly - teaching. This comparison is not a stretch; it's something I've thought about for some time. Think about it. When preparing for a library instruction session, you engage in a number of actions that roughly mirror marketing activities:

Teaching: Set objectives based on the outcomes you want to achieve. Marketing: Ditto.

Teaching: Understand your students and the tailor your lesson plan to their unique learning styles, needs, and experience levels. Marketing: Understand your target market and segment them into groups to tailor your offering to them based on their needs. Create a marketing plan to fill those needs.

Teaching: Make a complex topic or task easy to understand. Marketing: Make the benefits of a complex product or service easy to understand.

Teaching: Encourage student-teacher and student-student interaction for a richer learning experience. Marketing: Encourage marketer-customer and customer-customer interaction for a richer service experience.

Teaching: Empower students by giving them the tools to succeed. Marketing: Empower customers by giving them the tools to succeed.

I could go on for pages with even more similarities but that wouldn't make for a good blog post. ;-) It's no coincidence that marketing theory borrows heavily from learning theory. What we're actually doing as we market library services is teaching our patrons about what we have to offer, why it's valuable, and how to take advantage of it.

As I was surfing around, I found a post from the famous Kathy Sierra who addressed the marketing/teaching topic in a post called Marketing should be education, education should be marketing that's well worth reading. Perhaps we can win over reluctant colleagues by drawing out the similarities between things we're already doing, like teaching, and things we should be doing, like marketing.

A lot of to-do about transparency

2007-05-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if this is against blogging etiquette or not, but I'm once again going to refer you to a post I wrote on another blog because it's very relevant for librarians, but it saves me from repeating myself!

I wrote a piece about a the most recent TrendWatching.com report, Transparency Tyranny. In a nutshell, the report explains how customers are using technology to instantly compare prices, share opinions and reviews, and compare the quality of products, to name some popular activities. Customers now more than ever can expose the inner workings of organizations and how what they do stacks up to the competition. Thanks to technology, customers are in charge.

This phenomenon is both a good and bad thing for marketers/librarians. It's good if you're already a terrific, innovative organization, but it's a terrible reality for organizations that are just eking by by being good enough. In response, librarians will need to look for ways in which they can make themselves more transparent and give patrons an inside view of how we do things. Relationship-building will become an increasingly important skill as a result. Also, instead of being at the mercy of what people are saying about them, librarians should host forums for people to share their ideas and criticisms about their libraries.

The transparency trend will certainly be addressed more here on LM. To get you thinking more about how we can adapt and thrive in a transparent marketplace, you may want to check out the article I pointed to called Listening to Online WOM: A Primer from the New Communications Review (they have an RSS feed, by the way). It's a decent overview of how WOM analytics tools work, which is important to understand when trying to identify and interpret what customers say online. Monitoring online chatter is not only useful for finding out what people say about you, but also for market research purposes so that you can better understand customer needs and viewpoints.

Tune in to teen views

2007-05-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

If teens and/or college students are in your target market, take a listen to what's on their minds via the podcast series Acorns & Merlot. I learned of this production in an issue of TrendCentral.com's e-mail newsletter, which describes the series this way:

"This is the high school you're not seeing on TV. For a first person candid account of what’s on the minds of teens, check out the podcast series Acorns & Merlot. Anchored by two 18-year-old Pittsburg shock jocks, the weekly show—which is self-described as a podcast for the "adolescent aristocrat" —started in Fall 2005 when co-host Lucian Wintrich IV wanted to share a funny story about his homecoming dance. He continued podcasting whenever he had another story worth telling, and a few months later, he met his co-host Marc Werner. With guest hosts and friends sometimes joining them on air, the (semi)consistent weekly show is now broadcast live so that listeners can call in or participate in a live online chat room on the show's site.

The show has at times attracted 5,000 listeners/episode, and in a recent 30-day period, was downloaded almost 9,000 times. Wintrich and Werner plan to continue the show when they head off to college, so stay tuned next year for an insider’s look at freshman collegiate life."

I've only had a chance to listen to a small snippet, but did notice that some episodes are labeled "explicit," so listen at your own risk. ;-)

Branding your unique flavor

2007-05-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know what's up with dentists these days, but I've certainly found a lot of good marketing advice from their circles. (Although who am I to talk?! What's a librarian doing writing about marketing, after all? :-)). The most recent is a branding article called, BRANDING: How to keep your practice from being plain vanilla. It's actually quite an excellent piece. It gives some modern, and I'd argue accurate, definitions of branding, along with the rationale for why you should brand, how to develop your Unique Selling Proposition, and how do deliver on your promises. SWEET!

No one cares about you

2007-05-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

It's harsh to assert that no one cares about you (and by you I mean librarians and by extension, libraries), but it's a marketing reality we all confront. The cold truth is that patrons don't conduct themselves with the assumption that libraries are intrinsically good or something they should naturally care about. The question is how do we get patrons to care at least enough to take advantage of some of our services some of the time?

One answer is to communicate with them in terms of things they do care about, namely, benefits. Patrons probably don't care about your interlibrary loan service, but they do care about getting that tough-to-find book in time to finish their report. Saving time and writing top-notch reports is a benefit; offering interlibrary loan is a service or feature. In marketing our services, it's important to focus on the former instead of the latter.

Some people may think this is an obvious statement, but after having completed a personal selling course, I can tell you it's not. When making a sales pitch, it's extremely tempting to rattle of lists of features as though their usefulness is obvious. In my selling course, we spent a great deal of time developing our Initial Benefit Statement (IBS). Essentially, an IBS is a statement that tells customers why they should care, and in sales it's often used as an opener in sales presentations and sales calls. In library work, I try to remember to open with some form of an IBS when I make presentations, write promotional materials, or try to "sell" an idea. I'm also thinking I will develop an IBS for my orientation outreach activities this summer when I have about 1 second to get the library on students' radar.

Not all marketers believe in the value of an IBS, with good reason. I'll even admit, it's a little stiff and one-directional, which is the opposite of what marketing should be. But, I contend it's still useful because developing an IBS forces us to think in terms of what's most important to our patrons from their point of view, which then frames our activities and communications.

The Marketing Genius blog had a nice little rant against selling based on features instead of benefits. Try examining the marketing communications you're exposed to and see if you can figure out what the benefits are. I think you'll be surprised by how many advertisers don't communicate them at all.

How do you develop an IBS?
There's no real secret to creating an IBS other than to focus relentlessly on the "So what?" aspect of your services.

Here are a few pointers that might help you:
1. Think about the services you offer or are featuring in your newsletter, etc. Make a list of all of the reasons your patrons should care about the service. You may want to ask patrons who use a service why they do so.
2. Develop a statement that explains in a sentence or two what the most important benefits are. IBS's may start with phrases like, "Gives you the ability to," "Saves you [time, stress, hassle]," "Increases your [productivity, profits, marketability]," and so on. You know you're on the wrong track if your IBS starts out with phrases like, "Our library features...," "We provide access to...," "We house X number of...," you get the idea. Notice that good IBS's emphasize the you (customer), whereas bad IBS's emphasize the we/us (librarians/libraries).
3. Consider your competitive position. Sometimes, the best IBS's are based on a competitive advantage. For example, "Devise sound business plans and save money with Great Local Library - the only local organization to provide you free one-to-one research assistance with highly-trained information professionals who use the latest market research tools."

Even though it's difficult to presume that no one cares about us, doing so gives us the perspective we need to ensure that we communicate only what patrons value, and drop the stuff that's only meaningful to us.

[Update: Apparently, the phrase "no one cares about you" is one that marketer extraordinaire Seth Godin uses in just about every presentation he gives. I must have had that sentence ingrained in my subconscious because I only just discovered this fact after reviewing one of his talks. If I had remembered, I would have given him credit. Just when you think you're being original... ;-) ].

What's in a question? (Or, how to get better answers).

2007-05-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso

I sometimes find myself in a situation where I want to know more about X, but can't think of the right questions to ask to get me to the kind of answer I want. For example, when trying to learn about about patrons' needs, what questions do I ask and how do I ask them to get an honest answer that gets beneath the surface? I wish it were as easy a saying, "Hey, Patron! What do you need?" but alas, it's not. Some of the best marketing breakthroughs come from questioning assumptions and the way things have always been, which is why good questioning skills are also good marketing skills. What are the best questions to ask to get to the best answers?

In my quest for questions, I came across a Web site, ChangingMinds.org which has a page on the art of questioning. It lists 19 types of questions (Did you know there are types other than open and closed?!). My favorite for marketing purposes, particularly when looking for new insights and innovations, is Socratic questioning. Socratic questions prompt people to reevaluate assumptions with inquiries like, "How could you look at this differently?", "Why is __ important?" and "What are you assuming?"

Personally, there are a few questions I'm partial to for generating ideas:

Why?
Why not?
What else is like this?
What's the opposite of this?
What's the point?

Questioning truly is an art that can yield amazing insights. Please share your favorite questions!

Lovin' the library at the University of Tennessee

2007-05-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I'm biased because my manager is a UT grad (Go Vols!), but I was really intrigued by a promotion campaign at UT's Pendergrass Library. In search for ways to enforce library regulations that are agreeable to both librarians and patrons, library staff came up with a clever promotion campaign that features a simple stick figure design.

Shown here is one graphic in the series. It encourages students to throw away their trash.

What appeals most to me is that this seemingly simple image conveys a lot of meaning to its target audience, which was evident after speaking with library supervisor Allison Roberts who worked on the design. For instance, UT Knoxville is located near the scenic Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The green color of the image is a nod to the respect the UT community holds for the environment. Furthermore, the "Pack it in; Pack it out" phrase is well-known among hikers, a popular pastime in the Knoxville area. Plus, heck, the image is just plain eye-catching to me. So, I was extremely pleased that Allison graciously gave me some of her time to talk to me over the phone and respond to some follow-up e-mail questions I sent her. The following is our exchange:

Jill: Your deceptively simple-looking image actually communicates a great deal to your target audience. Could you discuss how the "Pack it out" message and eco-friendly green color resonate with your patrons?

Allison: "The idea is derived from the hiking symbol used by park services and the idea of low impact use of resources. If you love your park you make strides to reduce your environmental impact. The same should also apply to facilities and resources we use everyday. If you love your library you should reduce your environmental impact. A library is a resource that deserves conservation and respect like a national park. Individuals that use Pendergrass Library have recognized that they share the responsibility and strive to make a difference in their impact."

Jill: You mentioned that you selected a stick figure for its simplicity and visual impact. What can librarians learn from your example about graphic design?

Allison: "It is important to convey an idea simply and succinct to reach all audiences."

Jill: How do you use this image and where do you display it?

Allison: "We currently have a large "Pack it out" poster on display as you enter the library, placed several posters on study tables and decals on trash cans. In addition, we created desktop wallpaper for all the workstations in the Library."

Jill: You said that the campaign has been effective and well-received. Can you give some examples of feedback you've received and changes in patrons' behaviors? Also, why do you think this campaign works so well?

Allison: "When we decided to allow food in the library a heavy weight was lifted. The staff no longer had to police for violations. The individuals that use the library were relieved that they no longer had to hide food. Overall the atmosphere is lighter. By allowing food we created a better environment for the users; however, the problem of pests was a concern. I felt that if we could try to eliminate food trash in the library the pests would not become a huge problem. I tried to create a message that would help the users share the responsibility. I think this idea works well because our users can identify with the message of conservation."

Jill: "Pack it out" is part of a series of planned promotions that seek to educate patrons about library policies. What other pieces are you planning?

Allison: "Currently, the stick man is presenting our "Love your Library: Quiet Zone" notification on the door to the stacks study area. It is also on our "Love your Library: Respect Books" bookmark. The design is versatile, so there is no limit to its future applications."

Jill: Is there anything else about this project you'd like to share with colleagues?

Allison: "In addition to posting "Pack it out" notices we have asked housekeeping to remove the trash twice a day and increase vacuuming in the high use areas. Our collaborative effort has made a difference in the amount of trash and debris from study time munching."

Way to know your audience, Allison! And kudos on creating a campaign that can be recycled for many uses. I love how UT was able to translate popular environmental sentiments to library issues and to draw in patrons as partners in making the library a more comfortable place for everyone. Also, note that a good promotion campaign is always backed up by sound services, in this case, housekeeping. Promotion alone can't make much of a difference but it can be powerful in combination with real action.

Allison kindly shared two other images (below) from the series as well as a link to their bookmark promoting preservation (PDF). Please note that you need permission from Allison if you wish to use the images in any way. Thanks so much for sharing this well-planned and executed campaign!

Give your patron engagement skills a Swift Kick in the...

2007-05-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

well, you know what! An advisor-friend of mine turned me on to this outstanding blog produced by an education company called Swift Kick. The company actually has two blogs, but the one of most interest to us is one called Swift Kick Technology: Increasing Engagement in Education through Technology, Community, Leadership and Training. The content is Web 2.0-centric, and any librarian seeking to engage patrons through online communities and/or technology in general could greatly benefit from reading this blog. Consider some of the most recent posts:

Lest you think that this blog is all Facebook all the time, there are posts on video game learning, personal blogging, and collaborative learning.

These readings will hopefully ignite (or, as in my case, reignite) your enthusiasm for participating in social networking sites for library marketing and relationship-building (which are pretty much the same thing anyway).

The art of conversation is a marketing competency

2007-05-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

There's a must-read article at BusinessWeek called, It's the Conversation Economy, Stupid. In it, author David Armano of the popular blog Logic+Emotion discusses how marketers must now become conversation architects to be effective in today's economy. It's one of those pieces that should make us rethink how we do our jobs. I wrote about it on KnowThis, so I won't repeat the summary here, but I would encourage you think about one of Armano's main points:

"Conversation architects move marketing beyond the idea of one-way messaging. Traditional marketing efforts were founded on this tried-and-true format and are still prevalent within the industry. Consider the example of a typical creative brief template, which usually says something like, "What are we trying to communicate?" Can you see the old-world residue in the word "communicate"? It lacks the dimensions of experiencing something and having an ongoing two-way dialogue. "What are we trying to communicate?" implies a one-way conversation. Maybe we should ask ourselves: "How can we facilitate?"'

I can't think of a better charge for librarians who are in the business of helping people succeed. In this way of thinking, we allow patrons' goals to become our goals, rather than letting our idea of what we want to accomplish dictate how patrons should interact with us. Makes sense to me.

Getting a handle on WOM through focus groups

2007-05-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

Though the usefulness and applicability of focus groups continues to be debated, one market researcher contends that they are an excellent tool for understanding how word-of-mouth works. George Silverman's article, How and Why to Research Word of Mouth outlines a methodology for uncovering the WOM process including the source, sequence, and content of messages.

In other WOM news, I found an article from Pittsburg's Post-Gazette.com that gives a good overview of how modern WOM marketers use technology to track buzz, and it describes the history of the company BzzAgent (Marketing: 'Word of mouth' enters 21st century). BzzAgent, by the way, is an interesting company and I recommend reviewing their site as well as how it works. I think the company has some lessons to teach about how we can engage our own patrons and support them in spreading the word.

New blog of note on social networking and library services

2007-04-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

The new blog Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services promises to be a robust source of information on all things Web 2.0-ish. According to the inaugural post, Friends...:

"will include announcements and general news about online social networking sites and services within organizations, with a focus on their use by libraries and librarians. It will also include citations to significant articles, books, presentations, and other publications, and, when available, link to the full-text of these items."

The blog is produced by Gerry McKiernan, Science and Technology Librarian at Iowa State University Library. (Gerry: It would be nice and friendly to have a little more information about who you are made available on the blog. The only identifying info I found was on your post to a listserv). Good luck! It's off to a terrific start and I'm excited to follow it.

Update: Another social networking find from Library Garden here.

Read this second: Finding balance in library marketing

2007-04-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

[Read this first]

It seems to me that most professional, personal, and social efforts concern finding just the right balance between competing forces. People must balance the demands of their personal and professional lives; their desires and their available resources; their opportunities and their existing commitments; their selfish impulses and the greater good; and that's just for starters. Librarians are no strangers to balance-seeking. We've traditionally sought to mediate opposing tensions such as the responsibility to make resources readily available and the duty to preserve materials for future generations. The search for balance is a hallmark of professional work, and it also raises some important questions about marketing libraries in contemporary society.

I often mention the fact that modern marketing is customer-driven. In many ways, this trend meshes well with librarians’ service ethic in that we strive to meet patrons' needs, preferences, and demands. For many of us, it's only natural to involve them in our marketing efforts and to seek their feedback. Patrons, after all, are the reason we're in business, and they can be incredible sources of insight. I do, however, have concerns about this open-source trend when taken to the extreme of giving patrons what they want, whatever that may be, without regard to our professional judgment and a larger vision of libraries' potential. Innovations that lead to new service developments - the most important marketing function – are the sole responsibilities of librarians. Patrons can give us a nudge in the right direction, but they can't be expected to carry the weight of advancing our libraries.

This point is described best by Marty Neumeier, author of the book on innovation and differentiation, Zag. In the book, he discusses the danger of relying too much on feedback in the form of focus groups saying,

"What stops most companies from zagging is the cloud of uncertainty that follows innovation. In an effort to remove the cloud, marketers often conduct focus groups, which, while helpful in some situations, are notably unhelpful for encouraging innovation. This is because radical differentiation doesn't test well in focus groups. When you ask people what they want, they'll invariably say they want more of the same, only with better features, a lower price, or both. This is not a recipe for radical differentiation. This is a recipe for me-too products with pint-sized profit potential."

I can attest to this based on a number of focus groups I've attended in which our patrons typically express their desire for things like more computers, better printing and photocopying, and more online materials. While these are important needs to recognize, they don't do anything to make our libraries more compelling places. Innovation simply isn't patrons' job. They aren't as invested in libraries as we are and it's difficult for them to imagine what's possible in a library context. If we want our libraries to continue to be transformative places, it's our job to envision and realize possibilities that inspire. Doing so requires restructuring our internal operations, confronting risk head-on, and staying ahead of trends in the marketplace. To put it simply, if library marketing is a two-way street, librarians still control the traffic signals.

Services require both patrons and librarians to perform important roles, but not the same ones. Here's a brief summary of how I see our service relationship:

Patrons' Job	Our Job
Communicating unmet needs and complaints	Listening and responding
Suggesting service improvements	Imagining and implementing compelling services
Actively participating in service creation/delivery	Making it easy and rewarding to participate in services
Helping to refine and effectively execute library marketing tactics	Providing meaning and context for participation
Spreading word-of-mouth	Doing something worth talking about and providing the means to pass it along
Involvement	Innovation

Today's marketing realities rightfully elevate the role of customers and the power they have over how marketers do business, but open source marketing implies more than just giving people what they want. Modern librarian-marketers must be innovators who dig beneath expressed surface needs to create libraries that delight users in unexpected ways.

Playing catch-up with MarketingProfs

2007-04-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

MarketingProfs consistently provides some of the best and most practical how-to marketing articles out there. Unfortunately, I've been less consistent in passing along the highlights to you. The following are the MarketingProfs articles I recommend putting on your to-read list:

Marketing via Stories: The Selling Power of Narrative in a Conceptual Age
The author emphasize the importance of story telling to stand out from other marketing communications. She notes that stories provide context, common ground, brand intersections, increased relevance, and future chapters. Interestingly, she advises that marketers look for stories before they need customers' attention. I would have liked to hear more about this...

Twelve Tips for Conducting Effective Surveys
There's nothing earth-shattering here, but those of you who are new to survey methods will find this brief checklist useful.

Starbucks at the Crossroads: Disruption Junction
Insightful summary of how and why Starbucks became derailed from its core values. The author discusses disruption and how SBUX left itself vulnerable to the next disruptive innovation. It's a cautionary tale of what can happen when an organization loses its focus. (Note: Paul at Idea Sandbox has been writing great posts that suggest solutions to SBUX's problems).

Two Ways to Engage Prospects Online
Read this! And also read the LifeHack article it mentions to learn more about how to use the right social media for the right jobs - it's definitely an article to save!

How to Market on YouTube
Many librarians are dipping into the YouTube waters, and this article features lots of examples that are a great source of ideas on how to get started, even with a modest budget.

Eight Ideas for Revitalizing Your Blog
Sound advice.

Segmentation in a Web 2.0 World - And Beyond
Fascinating! The author argues in favor of more refined and detailed segmentation given today's social technology stating, "Giving a user control to tell you what matters to them will be the key in the future. Over the next 10 years, this will be the key source of marketing power-getting to the point where we can derive ways and means to let the customer tells us who they are, what matters to them, what features they want, what things they need solved, and how we can best be of service."

Creativity at Work: Why It's Important and What it Takes
Creativity is a crucial competency of the librarian-marketer. This article is a good introduction to what it's all about.

I hope this summary helps you keep up with the excellent writings from MarketingProfs by highlighting the stuff that's most useful to librarians. I'll keep pointing them out for your convenience in my Shared Items.

Davenport Public Library gets an M+ for marketing cooperation

2007-04-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

It takes a library to market its services, a fact that's not lost on librarian Angela Campbell, Public Relations & Programming Coordinator at the Davenport (IA) Public Library. Angela formed an interdepartmental marketing team called MarketingPlus (M+ for short). The group meets once a month to brainstorm on PR issues and plan events. On a PR listserv, Angela noted that having representation from many departments and administration helps to keep everyone on the same page and to generate innovative ideas for improvements. I contacted Angela and asked her to describe in greater detail how M+ came to be, how it operates, and what projects it tackles. The following is the description she gave me in full. If you have any questions about this approach, Angela provides her contact information. I'm very grateful to her for taking the time to share her efforts! I hope M+ will spark some further thinking on internal marketing approaches. From Angela:

"Public relations and programming efforts at the Davenport Public Library used to be spread across many departments and people. The Youth Services Department did their thing; Reference did their thing; and Special Collections did their thing. There was no cohesiveness to the Library's publicity and programming efforts. Due to the retirement of a few key staff in 2004, Library administration re-evaluated some of the job descriptions and also began working on building plans for two new neighborhood libraries that would open in 2006 and 2009. The focus of the two new neighborhood libraries would be to offer leisure reading materials, homework help, and excellent programming; with the goal of becoming the neighborhoods' community center. Because of this change in focus, administration decided it was time to centralize PR and programming efforts; thus creating the PR Department in January of 2005.

I had worked in the Reference Department ever since I graduated from graduate school in 1997. I have a MLIS and a BA in Corporate Communication. When the PR/Programming Coordinator position was announced, I was up for the challenge to be a one-person PR machine.

First task – updating all internal and external forms and publications. Before I was hired the Library had an "old school" graphic artist who did excellent work – but did it all by hand. Nothing was digitized. I did a major inventory of all our forms and publications. Each department went through their "department-specific" items and either threw them away; told me to keep them the same; or made notes for updating. I ended up digitizing all of these items by redoing them on Microsoft Publisher; I then pdf'd the items and indexed them in a joint folder on our computer network, so that they were accessible to anyone at any building. Finally, I reprinted everything with our new logo; contact information; and a standardized look, to aid in our branding efforts.

Second task – the MarketingPlus Committee. The internal MarketingPlus Committee (M+) used to lack direction and focus. I was on this committee while working in the Reference Department, and I speak from experience that it was one of those meetings I dreaded going to. They used to be weekly, and last for hours. One of my personal goals in this new position was to reach out to supervisors and have them assign an interested staff person from each department. I wanted committee members who wanted to be on the committee. I thought everyone would want to help – who doesn't want to market the library? I was wrong. It was actually hard to get people to volunteer because of past practice and perception. It took almost two years to create a reliable core committee. We now have representatives from each of the following departments: reference, special collections, youth services, customer services/circulation, administration, branch(es), and public relations. As the PR/Programming Coordinator, I head the committee, which meets the third Thursday of every month at 2:15 p.m. at the Main Library. The consistency of the meetings is important because of the scheduling issues and the diversity of the committee-members. The meetings last no longer than 3:30; and we have a proactive agenda that everyone can contribute to via the computer network. The meeting agenda lists the topic; the person responsible; the projected outcome; and a due date. Even though it is a highly structured meeting, it's also a lot of fun (especially the sharing of treats)! The departmental diversity of the members really adds to the brainstorming sessions, and the communication channels have really opened up. M+ Committee members are encouraged to share their experiences during their department meetings, not only to help create staff buy-in, but to communicate what is going on at both Libraries. For example, at one meeting, a staff person from the Customer Service Department told us that the staff was unhappy about all the handouts laying around on the service desk. Was there any way to combine these into one master handout? From that initial discussion, and after many revisions, the PR Department came up with a monthly 11 x 17 calendar format that would be easy to read, have the same amount of info (if not more!) as the flyers, and become less of a time-commitment to the PR Staff. This never would have happened if it weren't for the M+ meetings. Patrons and staff both benefited from this wonderful idea. Another example of the M+ productivity came during the planning of the Summer Reading Program. Our frontline folks expressed concern over the size of the program's finishing prize - that there was not enough room to keep the prizes behind the Customer Service desks. Because of concern, the Youth Services and PR staff found smaller (and even better!) prizes to offer to our patrons. Again, this would have never happened if it weren't for the M+ Committee, and is a good example of how important it is to communicate with all departments on a regular basis.

Third task – Get some help! It took only a few months for the Library to realize that even though I was doing a great job, I needed some help. Administration decided it was time to hire on another PR professional. My full-time assistant was hired in June of 2005, and we've been a two-person department ever since. Because we are responsible for all media communications, internal communications, graphic arts, most partnerships, special events, and ongoing adult programming, we’ve divided up our tasks by our strengths. My assistant (who has a BA in journalism) works on all written publicity – writing press releases, posting the releases to online community calendars, and compiling the releases onto a monthly calendar we hand out in the Library. She is also responsible for distributing printed items to staff and the public. I am responsible for portraying the programs and events graphically, on posters and handouts. I also edit two bi-monthly newsletters Main Entries (a general Library newsletter); and Booktalking, a bi-monthly readers’ advisory newsletter. I'm also responsible for media relations and placing stories; building partnerships; looking for grant opportunities; and coordinating the rest of the Library's programming efforts, including Reference computer classes, Youth Services programs, Special Collections' programs, and large "all-ages" special events that we do on an annual basis. Finally, when our budget allows for advertising, I look for the best deals in our local media outlets that can get us the most reach and frequency for the least amount of money.

We are never bored! Last year our Library offered more than 300 programs between the two buildings, with more than 15,000 people attending the programs. My goal is to continue getting the word out so our statistics continue to increase. This includes library use statistics, walk-in statistics and programming statistics.

If you have any questions about implementing a PR Department from the ground up, please don't hesitate to email me at: acampbell@davenportlibrary.com; or call at 563-888-3371."

Thoughts and prayers go out to VA Tech

2007-04-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

I can't say enough how saddened we are at VCU over yesterday's tragedy at our sister school, VA Tech. I definitely have you all in my thoughts and prayers.

The good of customer service

2007-04-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

After all my talk about Delta's horrific customer "service," it's worth noting that great service is not dead. One of the best service encounters I've had recently took place at a Famous Dave's restaurant. Our initial interactions with the staff began well. They greeted us pleasantly and promptly and seated us right away. While the service to this point was good, it was not exceptional. What made it so was our waiter and the extra attention the restaurant gives first-time customers.

It was a slow time of day for the restaurant, but rather than be discouraged by the lack of tips, our waiter used the opportunity to talk in-depth about the menu. This was my first visit to Famous Dave's, and I was unfamiliar with the food. Knowing this, our waiter sat down next to us and discussed his personal favorite items and got to know my tastes and preferences so that he could make a recommendation. I asked him all kinds of questions about the meats and BBQ sauces, and he was able to confidently answer each of them. He really seemed to be passionate about his love of the food served there, which in turn made me more enthusiastic about the place as well. In fact, he was so knowledgeable and attentive that I made it a point to tell the manager about what exceptional service we received.

To top off a great meal, Famous Dave's does something that I thought was remarkable. They give each "first-timer" a free bottle of their best BBQ sauce (it's not sample-size either!) as well as a packet full of information about the company's history, it's catering service, and menu. The envelope that contains the information reads as follows:

"Dear First-timer,

Was it as good for you as it was for us? We hope so. Because as far as we're concerned, this is just the beginning of a long and happy relationship.

We want to see your smiling face at our door for many years to come. So, be sure to tell us if there's anything we can do better to keep you coming back.

In the meantime, check out the information in this envelope. We'll be waiting for your next visit with open arms and mouth-watering 'que."

Those few short paragraphs speak volumes about the company's brand and personality. This personality even carried over to the phone survey I was prompted to call on my receipt. The recording reflected this casual, conversational tone and whimsical attitude that now defines Famous Dave's for me. Notice too that the letter solicits feedback and emphasizes the notion that dining is more than transactional, it's a relationship.

To keep the relationship-building momentum going, the restaurant has a P.I.G. Club (Pretty Important Guest). By signing up, members get e-mails with important news, free gifts, and a birthday message (kids get their own birthday gifts).

I may be a pushover, but I was blown away by the entire experience. They nailed every aspect of service quality including Responsiveness, Assurance, Tangibles (the décor was very fun!), Empathy, and, well, I'll evaluate Reliability on my next visit. Furthermore, the little extras for first-timers are the definition of word-of-mouth moments (I'm telling you all about it after all!). They truly made me feel appreciated as a customer. It make me think about what we do and don't do for first-timers in our libraries. What can we do to communicate to patrons that we want a relationship with them? What kind of a welcome can we and should we give these patrons that will make them want to come back again? At my school, I'm involved with freshman orientation, but what about those who wander in for the first time? On numerous occasions, patrons say to me, "This is my first time in here..." I usually say "Welcome" and give them a map of the building, but perhaps we could have prepared materials that include vital library information and contact information so that they are encouraged to reach out to us with future questions. When someone identifies themselves as new to the library, we should recognize what a great opportunity we have to make a good impression that could last a lifetime. A light bulb should turn on reminding us that we need to make a special effort to make our fist-timers feel important. Thanks for the lesson, Famous Dave's!

Guest post from Emily Clasper on reaching connected moms

2007-04-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

Thank you to librarian Emily Clasper for her recent commentary to the post "Mom power." In her response, Emily mentioned that she could relate to the experiences of on-the-go moms and their use of social networks to stay connected. I asked her to tell me more about her perspective and how librarians can do a better job of reaching out to moms like her. Fortunately, she took me up on the offer and contributed this guest post on the subject, which I'm copying in its entirety here (with permission, of course):

As a parent of a young child, I definitely use social networking a lot as a parenting resource. I started when I was pregnant and joined a forum for mothers with a February 2006 due date. About 40 of us from all over the world got to know one another, and it's still going strong as we now all have children the same age and can relate to one another really well. These ladies are now some of my very best friends and I don't know what I would have done without their advice and support!

From there, it was a slippery slope...I've also gotten involved in the "Mommy Blog" (or Daddy Blog!) subculture that is thriving online. We post pictures of our little ones, along with our thoughts on the trials of motherhood, and a lot of advice and information that's helpful to other parents (we hope!). I am constantly researching parenting topics online, everything from developmental milestones to the best toys for a one year old (I've come to rely on recommendations from other parents for that one). Being involved in online parenting communities has enriched and informed my offline life immensely!

So how can libraries use the power of online social networking to reach out to young, modern mothers...not only to provide them with more and better services, but also to take advantage of the word of mouth buzz such ladies can give your library?

In her post on Mom Power, Jill summarized the important aspects of providing services for savvy Gen-X and Y moms well: "Make services for this group quick, convenient, and online if possible by creating more specialized online content and taking advantage of the social networks they rely on for quality information."

Some tips for attracting young mothers to your library (and keeping them there!):

1. Provide programs and services that interest Gen-X and Y parents.
Children's programs are terrific. There is nothing like a good storytime! But I don't often see programs that are geared towards the parents of young children and the issues that we face these days...and I'm not going to take the time to participate if I'm not really interested. What about programs on juggling work and family? Or choosing a good childcare situation? Or dealing with food allergies? Or using social networking to get support and information from other parents? And why not hold one of these really good, topical programs for parents at the same time as a children's program so that both the children and parents can participate? Bibliographies of parenting resources are found in most Children's rooms...why not take these a few steps further and publish a wiki for your patrons? I’d love that!!

2. Make us aware of these services.
My library's monthly newsletter generally goes directly into the garbage with the junk mail when it reaches my house. It's not that I'm not interested in my library or what is going on in my community, but we are (like most people, I think) completely bombarded with junk mail each day and it's hard to make a distinction. Therefore, putting a mention of an upcoming event, program, service, or collection targeted at mothers is going to completely unnoticed in my house. Libraries need to find other ways to reach out to busy young parents. Go where we are, and speak our language. I'm more likely to notice a library event on the local newspaper's online events calendar, or from a brochure at the pediatrician's office (sometimes the only place I ever get to sit down and rest for a second!). If your library has a blog, publicize it and encourage patrons to subscribe...but give us something interesting to read while you plug your programs and services, and encourage us to participate in the conversation! A blog that reads like a string of press releases won't hold our interest for long.

3. Go by our schedules, not yours.
One of the main reasons why online social networking appeals to me more than the "live" Mommy group has to do with time. With the hectic lifestyle most young moms find themselves leading, it's nice to be able to participate when we can - whether that's for fifteen minutes at 11:30 at night or at work while we take a lunch break. Scheduling programs for young moms (especially for those who work) should respect the difficulties many of us face in squeezing anything extra in. In addition, providing online resources and opportunities for online participation are great because we can access them at any time that is convenient for us. That great parenting program you had last week? Put the video up online so that those of us who couldn't make it can still participate!

4. Put it online!
I do not bring my son to library programs. There are too many rules, signups are a pain, and I can't fit the programs into my schedule as they're all when I'm at work. So I take him to music classes on the weekends instead. We were able to sign up online, pay online, and we can schedule makeup classes online. I got my references for the program online, too. If the library would give me the same options, I'd be there in a flash. Until then, I can't be bothered. IM or email reference help is a good idea, but often seems a second thought and is not often consistent. Not only that, but it is generally pretty poorly publicized, and I don't know that I would be aware of these services if I weren't a librarian myself. I think good library blogs, wikis for resources on topics that interest me, and more consistent online reference (paired with marketing to raise awareness) would be a great way of catching the attention of parents these days. It would also be great if libraries could help parents create online communities as well. With all of the YA departments getting involved in MySpace, etc for the teens, this seems like a natural direction for libraries to go. We talk a good game these days about libraries as community centers...why not libraries as community creators?

5. Make us want to come again.
I've often heard that the most effective marketing tool we have is customer service. If you can give us a good experience while we are in the library, we will come back. And we'll bring friends. But if we don't have a great experience, you're done. We won't be back, and we will tell everyone we know how awful it was to boot. This goes double for online content. If we find what we need, it's interesting or useful and easy to access, I just might come back. Especially if there's a way to subscribe.

I appreciate Emily's insights and am grateful to her for sharing these useful ideas. She touches on a lot of themes addressed here, and it's nice to see a personal account of them in action. As you probably noticed from her post, Emily has no shortage of ideas and is a terrific writer. That's why I was glad to find she started her own blog, Library Revolution: The Status Quo Most Go (nice title!). Though less than a month old, the blog is off to a great start and I'm looking forward to watching it develop.

Good luck in your efforts to reach those busy moms!

Calling all law librarians: Your insights needed!

2007-04-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

Hello, law librarians! I'm going to be giving a talk to a law library association in June and I'm doing some "market research" in preparation. I'd like to know what marketing topics keep you awake at night (or, at least those that would keep your interest for an hour!). I'm also curious to know about your work environment - what kind of library you work in, what pressures you face, what communication channels you use, and anything at all that would be of help. Also, what do you wish you knew about marketing and what would you like your marketing to accomplish for you? I have a pretty good idea about the academic setting, though I welcome input on that front as well, but I'm less knowledgeable about other settings such as law firms. I'm finding some useful information in my research, but there's nothing like some personal anecdotes to help me put things in perspective. In a nutshell, I'm looking for some insights into the life of a law librarian and any feedback would be much appreciated! Please leave a comment, e-mail me, or let me know a good time to call you. THANKS!

Read this first: The big balancing act

2007-04-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

Traditionally, marketers (librarians) and customers (patrons) have engaged in turf battles, of sorts. Both sides want more control over end products and processes. An obvious though simplified example is price: Customers want the lowest possible prices, and marketers and their companies want profits. Today, this tug-of-war is taking center stage on the Internet. Customers are sharing their ideas, media, and complaints/compliments with the wide world and their voices carry a lot of weight. Overall, this is a good thing, but it does raise some issues about how to balance organizational goals with customer needs and wants. If this is a topic you think about too, take a look at a post I wrote on KnowThis where I take an initial stab at this topic from a broad marketing perspective. I'm going to follow up that post with one here on LM that takes a closer look at this "balance of power" topic from a librarian point-of-view. It's truly an issue that I've been bandying around in my mind quite a bit and talking with marketers about to get their take. I hope you'll share your ideas on this too!

Become a pro at promotion

2007-04-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

About.com offers a piece on planning a promotional camaign in 7 "easy" steps. I'm always suspicious of claims that marketing functions can be done in easy steps (they're not easy at all!), but this summary isn't bad. I'll add a couple of additional notes, and feel free to do the same.

When determining your budget the best, but probably most rare, way to do so is by determining what you want to accomplish and then developing a budget that will let you reach that goal. Instead, I'm assuming that most of us, unfortunately, have a fixed promotions budget. To stretch those dollars, consider the lifespan of the promotion vehicles you select. For instance, a patron might keep a flyer for a day or so, but she may hold onto a pen for months. If your campaign is intended to raise awareness for an upcoming event, a flyer might do. If, however, your goal is to increase the visibility of your library in general, put your dollars into something with staying power. Since those items will cost more, be sure to carefully target your intended audience to get the most bang for your buck.

I was taught to develop promotions objectives so that they have a verb, a number, and a time frame. Here's a sample goal: To increase behavioral intention to try X database by 5% over 6 months. Also, be sure your target audience understands what action you want them to take.

Finally, I tend to favor using multiple vehicles to reach your audience. It may take more than one exposure in one vehicle to get the message across. Given the state of today's marketplace, those vehicles should also be as interactive as possible so that your audience can talk back and engage in conversation. Try not to think of promotion as a one-way street, but as a dialogue that respects the fact that there is a human being on the other end of the channel.

Good luck!

When things go bad: Making it right

2007-04-05T07:09:00.000-07:00

Has it really been almost an entire week since my last post?! Yikes! Time is really flying and there's so much interesting marketing news to discuss. First, I wanted to conclude my series on the bad/ugly of customer service by outlining the steps in the service recovery process. These steps come from this book, and I think we can agree that these are sound strategies.

According to authors Clow & Kurtz, there are 4 steps on the road to recovery.

1. Firms need a recovery plan. Within our department, we certainly have procedures for handling complaints, but nothing in the way of a formal plan. A plan, in my mind, would anticipate problems and also include a means of following up. If a patron calls to complain that she is having problems logging in to our databases remotely, for example, we could correct the error, obtain her contact information, and follow-up with her within 24 hours to ensure that the problem has been resolved to her satisfaction. In fact, a key to successful service recovery is a quick response, ideally during the service transaction itself. Referring to my travel drama, Delta should have known that it was going to have a plane full of unhappy customers and sent someone to our gate to immediately put out any fires. Planning like this requires commitment from managers as well as employee training. Importantly, customers should not be shuffled to numerous departments and staff members, but one staff person should see the situation through to the end.

2. Encourage complaints. One of the worst things that can happen in a service transaction is that a patron walks away dissatisfied but never tells us about his grievances. As painful as complaints are to hear, they're the only way we can identify and remedy a problem, and so we need to make patrons feel at ease in turning to us when they're upset. It's far better that they talk to us instead of their friends and colleagues!

3. (This one is key.) Identify the problem and fix it! I'm sure all of us hear similar complaints over and over again, but what are we doing to make the source of the problem go away? By collecting data about service failures and analyzing the root causes, we can prevent problems in the first place, which should be a top priority. If the problem truly can't be fixed (for the record, I think this accounts for only a very small number of problems), then consider changing your communications to explain to patrons why the situation exists so as to adjust their expectations accordingly.

4. Finally, allocate the resources to do service recovery right. Service recovery can require a great deal of time and effort, so staff should be provided all the means necessary to carry it out. Interestingly, the authors point out the service recovery can actually become a firm's strength, which I read as "competitive advantage." Certainly, service recovery is an opportunity to showcase our commitment to and concern for our patrons, so let's highlight our responses to patrons' problems by making them our own and seeing them through with all the means at our disposal. [Update: What I mean here is let's highlight our recovery efforts in publications and other library communications and demonstrate how we take on patrons' problems as our own.]

Coming up: A description of one of my best service experiences from a customer point-of-view, what made it so great, and what we can learn from it.

Update: Brian of the UL and I must have been reading each other's minds. He blogged yesterday about being proactive in assessing how satisfied our patrons are in a post, Librarian as Quality Assurance Agent. One point I neglected to mention is that it's great to respond quickly to complaints, but it's even better to be proactive and seek out problems and suggestions. Some companies have dedicated people, like the Quality Assurance Agent model Brian talks about. Should every library have one person devoted entirely to service recovery?

The ugly of customer service: A closer look

2007-03-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

Now that I've thoroughly laid out my grievances with Delta (aka, complained), let's pick this experience apart a little more using marketing theories and principles so that, at the very least, we can take turn this nightmare into a positive learning experience.

As we saw with the RATER model in my other post, Delta fell flat in every dimension of service quality. There are other factors too that came into play during this service failure. One factor was customer expectations. Customers expect a certain level and quality of service based on a number of factors including their past experiences, needs, promotion messages and promises, their moods, specific circumstances, social context, and so on. Clearly, customers' expectations can be all over the map and it's difficult to make everyone happy all of the time, but service providers have certain responsibilities nevertheless. These responsibilities occur during the 3 phases of purchasing a service: pre-purchase, the service encounter, and post purchase.

First of all, companies need to figure out what their target customers want and expect. It doesn't take a genius to understand that airline passengers want to get to their destinations in a safe and timely manner. Of course, the most successful companies have a deeper understanding of how to please their customers than providing the bare minimum, but that's for another post. During the pre-purchase phase, organizations need to tell customers what to expect. And forget about that under-promising and over-delivering stuff. Companies should give customers a reasonably clear, accurate idea of what to expect before they do business with them. This is exactly what Jet Blue is doing with its Customer Bill of Rights. During the service encounter phase, organizations need to communicate with their customers and make adjustments to the service as the encounter unfolds to make sure expectations are being met. (In fact, one of the nice things about services, as opposed to products, is that they are created in partnership with the customer. Take advantage of this opportunity by asking questions and listening carefully to make sure the end result is the best it can be for both parties). In my experience, this is the stage where Delta began to take a nosedive in customer service. Yes, the captain did make us aware of mechanical trouble and the status of the problem, but he set unrealistic expectations by suggesting that we would get another plane and even keep our same seat assignments. In doing so, he set us passengers up for major disappointment, which will become clearer in a moment when I discuss zones of tolerance. Instead, the captain should have been completely honest with us and explained what the next steps would be, rather than turning us loose to fend for ourselves. Finally, during the post-purchase phase, companies should follow-up with customers and address any dissatisfied people promptly. I never received a letter or call or anything to indicate that Delta has the least bit of concern that I made it home alright. They knew I was on that cancelled flight, that I never took another flight to Richmond, and they have my contact information, but they chose not to use it. Delta utterly failed to manage expectations throughout this experience which only amplified our frustration.

Speaking of dissatisfaction, its worth keeping in mind that people have what's known as a zone of tolerance (ZOT). Basically, the ZOT is the range between a person's idea of adequate levels of service (the bare minimum a person will tolerate) and the desired level (what service a person wants or hopes for). If you're below adequate, you're in trouble. By hinting to us that we'd probably get on another plane and keep our seats, the pilot raised my adequate level of service, thereby shrinking my ZOT and making me all the more upset when my expectations weren't met. There is some wiggle room within ZOT's, which Delta should have recognized. For example, I understand that parts fail and that problems arise from time to time under even the best of circumstances. I would have been much more sympathetic to Delta if the company would have made efforts to tend to my needs and provide alternate means to my destination. Since Delta took no remedial action, I attributed the entire service failure, and directed my anger, to them. (If you’re intrigued by this idea, do some reading on Attribution Theory).

What can we librarians take away from this discussion? First: communicate, communicate, then communicate some more. We need to give patrons our full attention before, during, and after their visit to the library. Second: Set realistic expectations. If you set expectations too high, you're bound to disappoint. If you set them too low in hopes of surpassing them, patrons probably won't find your service appealing to begin with. Just be honest and do the best you can. Patrons will remember your efforts and will cut you some slack if they know you at least gave your best effort. Third: A service isn't over even after it's over. Delta still could have recovered some of my good will by following-up with me after the flight cancellation, but their silence has pretty much cemented my opinion of them as an uncaring, inept organization. I know we can't follow up with every patron but when I have lengthy research consultations, for example, I set a reminder to contact the person a week afterward to check on his/her progress and make sure there are no further questions. Finally, be flexible. So Delta's plane had mechanical problems. What else could they have done? Rented a bus? Helped us find rental cars? Made hotel accommodations on our behalf? Good service providers can think on their feet and adjust the service as need be.

Next time, I'm going to talk about service recovery and what service providers can do to make sure that when things go bad, organizations respond well and fix the problem so it doesn't happen again. I'll conclude on a positive note with my Best Service Experience Ever.

Mom power

2007-03-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

We hear a lot about Gen Xers and Yers, but what about Gen X and Gen Y moms? This influential, Web-savvy consumer segment is the topic of an Intelligence Group report, Mom Intelligence, which is discussed in a recent iMedia piece. These busy moms rely on the Internet to conduct banking and other transactions, learn about child care, socialize with other mothers, keep up with family, and get the scoop on products and services. Even though their schedules are full, they make time for using the Internet in search of people and things that will make their offline lives better, according to the research findings. They're also more likely than non-moms to spread the word on the useful services and products they encounter.

If these women are among your target patrons, this report offers lots of service ideas for you. For example, why not provide online tutorials, blogs, or webcasts to teach parents how to identify and evaluate quality information on child care? Librarians could also sponsor reading groups (online or in-person) that focus on childhood development issues and that perhaps draw in local service providers. The key, it appears, is to make services for this group quick, convenient, and online if possible by creating more specialized online content and taking advantage of the social networks they rely on for quality information. Is anyone currently reaching out to Gen X/Y moms with stories to share? Post them in a comment!

Note: The Intelligence Group offers a free daily newsletter on its Trend Central site (registration required). The focus is on youth culture, and recent topics include smartpox, gaming theaters, and popular music artists. This newsletter looks like it would be particularly great for you youth services librarians in the crowd, or those interested in pop culture.

Update: I just found a Trend Central report on Teen Websites to Know - neat!

The good, the bad, and the ugly of customer service

2007-03-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

Today: The ~~bad~~ UGLY!

In the past couple of weeks I have experienced the absolute best customer service I've ever received and the absolute most horrible. Each example teaches us something value about how to treat and not treat our patrons. I'm starting this discussion today with the bad so that I can end on a positive note. Plus, it'll be cathartic because I'm still in shock about how poorly I was treated by the company in question! Without further ado, here's the story from my viewpoint:

Last week, I traveled to San Diego for a conference without incident, that is, until the return trip. The first leg of the trip, a red-eye Delta flight to Atlanta went off without a hitch. We were not so lucky on the second leg. We boarded the flight from Atlanta to Richmond promptly and on time Sunday morning. After being seated, the pilot informed us that the maintenance crew was investigating a mechanical problem and he would update us shortly. After about 15 minutes, the pilot declared that there was a fuel leak that was outside of established tolerances and that we'd have to de-board. He assured us that Delta would try to find us another plane and that we could even retain our same seat assignments. However, no sooner did we all step off the plane then we heard that our flight had been canceled and that we were to proceed to the nearest service desk for assistance. This is where all the fun began. We formed a seemingly-endless line at the Delta service counter. Behind that counter was not a friendly service staff member, but a telephone. My understanding is that we were to use the phone to call for help, though some passengers in line used their cell phones to do so only to be greeted with a recording that stated their call would be answered in about 8 hours. My perception is that the line never actually moved forward, but that people simply left the line to find an alternative means of transportation, which gave the illusion of progress. In addition, there were no available one-way rental cars and we heard through the grapevine that the next available flight would be Tuesday. We were fortunate in that we were able to get a ride to Richmond with two generous strangers ahead of us in line who happened to be able to obtain a one-way car rental through their special membership. Were this not the case, I would have been stranded in Atlanta with no help from Delta whatsoever. The icing on this cake of mishaps was that my fiancé spent 3 hours on the phone with Delta and Continental (a Delta partner, apparently) trying to obtain a refund, only to be bounced back and forth between the two companies, each denying responsibility. (My ticket, by the way, stated, "Delta flight.")

To be fair, we were not the only passengers with travel trouble last weekend, and we were lucky, relatively speaking. There were some passengers in line who had been trying to get home since the previous Friday! I'm sure Delta had trouble locating a plane with all of its tie-ups in the Northeast. However, these circumstances do not excuse the terrible lapses in customer service that resulted after the flight was canceled.

In order to understand what went wrong here from a marketing perspective, it's useful to analyze this experience using a customer service model referred to as RATER. RATER stands for:

Reliability – Doing it right each and every time
Assurance – Making the customer believe you can do it right each and every time
Tangibles – What the physical evidence suggests about the quality of your service
Empathy – Caring about customers
Responsiveness – Taking the initiative to help customers and anticipate needs

(Note: If these sound familiar, the LibQual survey attempts to measure service quality in each of these areas).

In reviewing each piece of the model, it's clear to me that Delta failed in each and every aspect. Individual customer will weight the importance of these components differently, but for me, I was most shocked by Delta's lack of empathy. Most of us were exhausted, under time pressures, and without any means or assistance to get to our destinations and no one cared! In my next post, I will go into more detail about customer service principles as they apply to this case and how Delta got it wrong. I'll also offer suggestions for how the company could have done a better job, which I hope will provide a useful example for evaluating our own services. I'll conclude with my experiences with a company that got it 100% right and the inspirations I took away from the experience.

Serving patrons with disabilities

2007-03-20T15:20:00.000-07:00

I returned to work yesterday after a harrowing journey back from a marketing educators conference in San Diego. The trip provided material that will be the subject of 2 upcoming blog posts: 1. What makes good customer service? (Hint: My return trip is an example of how NOT to please customers!) and 2. How marketing can make students better researchers (I co-wrote an award-winning paper with a VCU Marketing professor on a topic related library marketing, which I presented at the conference. I'll discuss what the paper's about and what our next steps will be).

As usual after a long trip without Internet access, I returned to volumes of interesting marketing news and information, which I'll be working to get up shortly. In the meantime, I'm grateful to Matt Navitsky who contacted me today on behalf of the National Library Service, or NLS. I'm grateful because Matt highlighted an important segment of patrons that I've neglected so far on this blog -- patrons with disabilities -- and informed me of tools to help reach out to this diverse group with its own specialized needs.

The NLS offers library services for those who are blind or otherwise physically handicapped through its network of regional and sub-regional libraries. Specifically, it delivers braille and audio books along with playback equipment to patrons free of charge via its Talking Book Program. Most impressive to me is that the NLS offers talking book clubs where patrons can get together with other patrons physically, by phone, or online, and they're geared to all age groups from kids to centenarians! These clubs give patrons an important lifeline to others in their communities and help them to form new friendships. You can check out the NLS' press release for more details.

I admit that though I work with patrons with disabilities, I was unaware of what the NLS has to offer. This example reminded me to think about ways in which we can engage this audience with our materials and services. In my role, I've brought in speakers who work primarily with people with disabilities to educate our staff on the perspectives of patrons who have varying physical limitations and how we can make the library more inviting. There are a few of key things I've learned about disabilities services that have influenced my work. First, by making the library more accessible to people with disabilities, the library space tends to become more accessible for everyone. For example, adjustable-height tables can accommodate wheelchairs, but they can also accommodate patrons of varying heights. Second, we all have limitations of some kind or another and it's important to remember those experiences as we approach service and space design. If you've ever sprained an ankle and had to be on crutches, you have some idea of what it's like to have to navigate flights of stairs and carry armloads of books, or wait for someone assist you. It can be frustrating! Imagine having to deal with that frustration on a regular basis and consider how we can reduce some of those aggravations in our libraries. Finally, just as with any other segment of patrons, it's necessary to seek out and understand the points of view of those with disabilities in order to best serve them. Last year, a member of my undergraduate advisory group used a wheelchair and it was very enlightening to hear from her what it's like to get around the library. Her perspective was completely different from mine and it helped me see the library in a new light, which I could not have imagined on my own. If you need help getting an outside, professional view, consider contacting local agencies such as departments for the blind and vision impaired. When I did so, a representative offered to come to the library to identify problem areas we may have free of charge.

My role and experience in this area is somewhat limited, so I would appreciate knowing what you've done to reach out to patrons with disabilities with library facilities, equipment, and services, as well as any other insights you may have.

Update: Alice Hagemeyer, Founder and President of FOLDA (Friends of Libraries for Deaf Action) posted a note to some listservs about a PBS documentary airing tonight (3/21) called Through Deaf Eyes (9pm EST). The filmmakers intended to portray the variety of stories and issues in the deaf community, including the role of technology in social change. Please post your comments about the film if you watch it!

A marketing metrics primer

2007-03-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

Since I'll continue to address marketing metrics here on LM, it's important to have an understanding of when and how to use metrics, generally speaking. To that end, there is a concise summary of the characteristics of helpful metrics in the MarketingProfs article, Five Fundamentals for Useful Marketing Metrics (free registration required). The author argues that metrics should focus on these 5 areas:

Essential metrics criteria
Customer-acquisition metrics
Product "wow" metrics
Customer-retention metrics
Strategic accountability

It's important (and a bit of a relief!) to acknowledge that you can't and shouldn't measure everything. We need to be selective about what we measure in the context of our goals and go from there. This article helps focus metrics on only the most significant aspects of our work. We should keep this in mind as we continue discussing marketing metrics. Happy measuring!

Give this a squeeze

2007-03-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

I finally finished reading the popular book on creativity, Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage. I reviewed the piece and highlighted some interesting points about creativity on Designing Better Libraries. I mention it here because creativity is directly related to marketing. In fact, the authors of the book contend that creativity is one of the few remaining ways to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. In my opinion, this is especially true of services like ours which compete with a number of alternatives and lack large marketing budgets. Necessity is the mother of creativity after all, right? ;-) I do recommend reading it (it doesn't take very long), with special attention to the Lessons Learned section at the end. If you've already read it, please share your opinions!

Mobile marketing grab bag

2007-03-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

For many reasons I won't bore you with, I'm still working on my series on mobile marketing. In part, this is due to the ever-changing nature of the medium. Everyday, there seems to be some new development to consider, which means I change my views on this topic often. In preparation for the series, I'm presenting some of the recent news on mobile marketing, and I encourage you to take a look at the articles that interest you. These lay a pretty good foundation, which I'll build on in the series:

Mobile Marketing: Back to the Basics, ClickZ
A good, brief description of what mobile marketing is.

Mobile Marketing: A Balancing Act, DestinationCRM
"A new report finds that as advertisers' interest in mobile marketing increases, carriers must find a way to increase mobile advertising while keeping customer trust."
On Advertising: Mobile phones are new frontier in advertising, International Herald Tribune
"Now, with the next iteration of the Internet, the mobile Web, spreading around the world, publishers and other content providers are trying to keep up, lest they get in late on another advertising bonanza."
For more on mobile advertising, see Mobile ads: The next Internet gold rush?, InfoWorld

Social Networking the Mobile Way, E-Commerce Times
"The real momentum and industry hype didn't start building until mid-2006. It was around that time that MySpace, a unit of News Corp., launched a mobile portal to its gigantic online community through Helio, a wireless service geared toward a younger crowd that's willing to spend more than the typical cell user."
You may also want to look at any of the articles in E-Commerce's M-Commerce section.

I have some evolving ideas about what libraries can do with this medium, but the bottom line is that we need to pay attention to the mobile world and find our place in it. Hopefully, the upcoming series help spark some discussion on possible approaches.

Marketing metric: Attitudes

2007-03-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

One fun way to measure attitudes is by using a Semantic Differential Scale (at least, I think it's fun). This scale is used by marketers to measure things like attitudes toward a brand. If you're interested in finding out what patrons' image of your library is, this could be the scale for you.

It works like this: Subjects make judgements about your library based on a series of 7-point scales (Note: Some scales have more or fewer points). On either end of the scales, there are polar-opposite adjectives, such as "Fast"/"Slow", "Modern"/"Old-Fashioned," and so on (example). Patrons indicate how strongly they relate to these concepts by marking the point on the scale that most closely matches their attitudes. You could also ask patrons to evaluate your library and a competitor of interest to see how attitudes vary.

You would score the scale by assigning scores (7,6,5,4... or +3...0...-3) then take the mean or median to compare results with a competitor, if you'd like. (There are other statistical tests you can perform also, but I would recommend getting a book on the topic for details).

I terrific and concise article, Considerations When Constructing a Semantic Differential Scale by Jayne Al-Hindawe delves into more detail, including how to pick appropriate adjectives, how many pairs of adjectives to present, etc.

It's nice to share

2007-02-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

Sharing is not only a good marketing strategy, it's good blogging practice too! I've been adjusting to using Google Reader as my aggregator of choice and I'm loving it. One nice bonus is that the Reader makes it very easy to share what I'm reading with others. Now on my blog you can see what I'm reading on the sidebar, or you can subscribe to the feed. I'm glad to do this because I often read so much that I want to discuss with all of you but I can't always find the time. This way, at least you know I'm thinking about it! Since I'm still getting used to marking things to share it's a fairly short list now, but it'll grow. The real trick is keeping up with it all! Hope it helps.

(By the way, if you're sharing your cool finds through Google Reader, let Library Stuff know about it).

Spoof this!

2007-02-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

Granted, I watch too much T.V., which is why I derive a lot of marketing inspiration from television programs, for better or worse. I happen to be a big fan of the Discovery Channel, and I particularly like the shows Dirty Jobs, It Takes a Thief, MythBusters, and generally anything narrated by Mike Rowe. Last night, I watched a Discovery show consisting entirely of viewer-created videos called You Spoof Discovery (also hosted by mikerowe!). What I liked about this special is that Discovery could poke fun at itself (as the ads state, "Discovery Channel discovered its sense of humor"). The shows are the Discovery's bread-and-butter, but it still allowed viewers a forum for having some fun with them. There's also a message board where viewers can chat about the spoofs. Even the individual fan sites like this Dirty Jobs one, for example, allow viewers to get involved by talking to the host, posting programming ideas, and reacting to episodes through their discussion boards. Discovery leads off the discussion board with this statement:

"Discovery Channel is a huge fan of message boards — it's not only your chance to talk to us and each other, but it's also our chance to communicate with you and to hear your ideas."

This is a good example of open-source marketing in practice. Here, Discovery lets viewers have a say in the product (the shows), facilitates community-building (letting viewers talk to each other in a company-sponsored forum), and builds relationships between viewers and the talent (mikerowe! - Did I mention I was a fan?).

Librarians can learn a thing or two from this example. Our profession is rife with stereotypes and misperceptions. Why not make fun of them and get patrons in on the act? Rather than try to ignore or get huffy about the things in our profession that are irritating, let's engage those nuisances through our patron communities and open discussions.

Update: I wrote a post on the KnowThis.com Marketing Blog today on the topic of social media and marketing that fits with this discussion. I propose some ways in which marketers can interact with customers in these venues. You may also be interested in the free social media PR templates I mention offered by Shift Communcations. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how, when, and why we librarians should use social media marketing.

What will it take to get real with marketing?

2007-02-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

I've been really thrilled with some of the great commentary on LM of late. This comment from Anonymous in response to a post about metrics really snagged my attention:

"In the business world marketing routinely reports to the CEO because it is deemed very important function. Yet, in the library world marketing is at a low level within the organization, almost an afterthought. Until the library directors of the world recognize, understand, and support a true marketing function, little will happen in the way of change."

I can't say that I disagree with this position. The question that I'd like to raise is, what would it take to get real marketing entrenched in libraries, and what does "real" marketing mean? To me, real marketing is:

Pervasive. Marketing should be entrenched in all aspect of library service design and delivery. In other words, marketing is NOT posters and press releases.
Iterative. Marketing planning is ongoing and marketing plans must be revisited on a regular basis. Staff at all levels should participated and be involved in marketing activities.
Measurable. Marketing is meant to accomplish something. Measurements are needed to determine of those goals were achieved or if a different approach is required.
Proactive. Marketing isn't something to fall back on when times are tough. It's a way of doing business that gets libraries from Point A to Point B using strategy and environmental analysis.

My question for you: How will we know when libraries have achieved real marketing, and what does real marketing mean to you?

Update: Shame on me for not mentioning another important characteristic of real marketing: meaningful. Real marketing derives from patron wants and needs and delivers relevant services in a meaningful context. In short, real marketing matters to patrons, not just us.

Learning from marketing in unlikely places

2007-02-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, so please bear with me and give this idea a chance. One strategy that I strongly advocate is that we should learn about marketing from every source available. Sometimes ideas come from businesses, other times they come from Psychology literature, while other times they come from non-profit organizations. In fact, we can often learn from marketing in unexpected places. Today, I want to discuss what we can learn from church marketing. Now, I'm specifically not getting into any discussion of religion or advocating any one religion or another, but there are some lessons we can glean from what's going on in modern churches.

The marketing of churches crops up in the news all the time, and it's as controversial (if not more so) as in the library world. There's actually a blog devoted to the topic called Church Marketing Sucks. In doing some reading on the site, I found that there are a lot of similarities between church marketing and library marketing:

Like libraries, churches are often trying to expand their reach in their communities to draw in non-users.
Monetary profit is not the ultimate measure of success for libraries or churches and there is usually no direct cost for services
Both libraries and churches are "selling" what is, for some, an unsought product.

Surely, there are more similarities, and plenty of differences, but overall we have enough in common to learn from one another. In fact, take a look at Church Marketing Sucks' definition of marketing and see if it doesn't strike a chord with libraries. I especially like this definition:

"Marketing is the study and practice of better, faster, cheaper and friendlier. "Making things go more smoothly," as I put it to my students. The product or service a company provides is the "what" of its existence. Marketing is the "how."'

Also, under the section "Is Marketing a Dirty Word?," the author argues,

"Likewise, the process of marketing happens no matter what. We can either realize that and make sure our marketing doesn't suck, or we can ignore it and live in ignorance."

And,

"Remember that the goal here isn't to introduce slick and polished business marketing that ruthlessly targets pockets and cashes in on souls. That's marketing that sucks. Lousy clip art and typos are just as bad as glossy photos of people prettier than your congregation. The goal is being authentic and effective."

The blog is well worth taking a look at for the marketing discussions and analysis that takes place. Again, librarians can find marketing inspiration anywhere and everywhere, so keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to look at marketing in different lights that enrich our own points-of-view.

Check out the comments!

2007-02-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

There have been some thought-provoking comments posted to the blog in the past week or so that I'm not done addressing yet, but the latest came in today from William in response to my post, "Genius" branding moves and it deserves some special attention. William brought up some insightful points and I did my best to respond coherently. I thought you'd like to take a look at the discussion and add your own thoughts. The topic of branding (or re-branding) libraries is an interesting and important one, so I hope you'll weigh in.

Also, if you want a crash course on branding, stop by KnowThis.com's Branding and Brand Management page, which has some excellent links, including a link to one of my favorite branding sites, AllAboutBranding.com.

Request for help answered

2007-02-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

Nancy Dowd asked me to help her in library marketing record-breaker:

"Listen we need your help. Over here at the NJ State Library we’re conducting a marketing experiment to see if we can break the record for the most comments posted on a YouTube video. The idea is to have people post their three reasons and then pass the word to five friends. Of course what makes it even better is that it will be a library video that breaks the record! Hope you post and pass the word! Thanks, Nancy"

The 3 reasons are reasons you love the library. Here's the link to the YouTube video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZeQI25n8qPQ. You can read more about the initiative on Nancy's blog.

Ok! You know what to do. Hopefully, there are more than 5 readers out there, and I added my comment, so I've done my part. Good luck, Nancy! :-)

It's here! It's here!

2007-02-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

The new collaborative blog project I alluded to last week is now up and running! I'm hopeful it will be a terrific complement to the marketing content on this blog since the topic is design. Designing Better Libraries addresses methods and strategies for developing meaningful user experiences. The opening post sums it up nicely:

"That's what Designing Better Libraries is all about; adapting new ways of thinking and acting that will promote the development and implementation of ideas, strategies and services that will create a better library experience for the users."

You can also learn more about DBL Philosophy here.

I'll be contributing to this blog with colleagues I have loads of respect for, including Steven Bell, Brian Mathews, John Shank, Jeff Trzeciak, and Michael J. Giarlo. For the next week or so, you can expect introductions from all of us, including descriptions of the topic areas we're going to be focusing on.

What does design have to do with marketing? I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say that marketing isn't all just making posters and putting on events. There's a lot of strategy and research that goes into developing meaningful services and coherent experiences for patrons. Design, as we're talking about it, is a methodology for addressing patron needs. For my part, I'm going to be discussing creativity and innovation (and I'm pretty sure marketing will come up too!). I'm extremely excited to be involved in this project because it gives me a chance to explore these topics and identify techniques that will help librarians come up with unique, differentiated services that precisely target patrons' needs and wants, which is what marketers are always shooting for. Other DBL authors will delve into topics like instructional design, technology, and multimedia, to name some.

I hope you'll find it useful and that you'll share your own thoughts on the DBL blog. Of course, I'll still be blogging away here on LM and tying in what I learn about creativity and innovation in the marketing context as well. Enjoy!

More on metrics

2007-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Judith Siess of Information Bridges International for sharing with me a previous issue of her One-Person Library newsletter on the subject of metrics. The issue called, Statistics and Library Advocacy is a useful one as it addresses not only those statistics we should collect for assessment purposes, but also those numbers we should collect for marketing purposes. Judith advises,

"Statistics can serve a valuable purpose—proving your worth to your parent organization. When presenting your case to management, you must use techniques and terms that they understand: cost-benefit analysis, unit-cost analysis, value added, and the like. Use spreadsheets to illustrate your points. By using statistics and relatively simple calculations you can show that the value of what you do easily meets or exceeds the amount your institution spends on the library (including salary and benefits, the collection, subscriptions, online services, floor space, air conditioning, water/sewer, and telephone). But you must be specific and have the data to back up your case."

Also, Judith suggests (and I agree), that you should back up stats with stories whenever you can. Doing so makes the numbers more meaningful. Ultimately, it's necessary to figure out why you're collecting statistics before you start considering how to go about it. Otherwise, you could get buried in numbers that serve no purpose and don't help your case, whatever it may be.

Judith kindly allowed me to post her articles in full (PDF), so enjoy!

In case you noticed

2007-02-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

In case you noticed, my posting has been a little more sporadic than usual. That's because I'm working on getting a collaborative blog project off the ground that I think you'll really enjoy. It will be a nice complement to the topics presented in this blog. I hope to be able to tell you more about it early next week. 'Til then, you'll just have to wait in suspense. ;-)

A matter of metrics

2007-02-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, a colleague at a school library contacted me asking about marketing metrics - what's out there, how to select them, etc. It occurred to me that this might be a common question among librarians, so I'm throwing out this offer:

E-mail me or add a comment to this post about your marketing assessment challenges and questions. I'll do some digging into your inquiries and see what relevant marketing metrics could be of use to you and how you can employ them.

I'm just getting my feet wet in this area, but I'm very interested about learning more and have some experience, both practical and academic, that I can offer. Hopefully, it'll be useful for you too! If I don't hear from anyone within a week or two, I'll go ahead and start a series of posts featuring different marketing metrics.

Customers and customer service

2007-02-02T09:14:00.000-08:00

Sybil of the Quality Service Marketin blog writes about her take on a Maritz white paper called "Delight or Defection: The Pivotal Role of People Inside the Customer Experience" (PDF). In it, Maritz argues that companies need a better way of understanding "people issues" to properly motivate people on the front lines, which in turn increases customer retention and differentiates the service. As the executive summary states,

"By putting "people problems" at the strategic forefront, companies can turn customer experience initiatives from frustrating flops into manageable and scalable programs – programs that, if executed correctly, create a major competitive advantage in today’s less differentiated reality."

Sybil will offer more analysis of this approach in a later post, but give the piece a read in the meantime.

To round out your weekend reading, stop by the MarketingProfs Book Club Group Review. (You can learn more about Group Reviews here and the Book Club here). The book of choice this time around is Citizen Marketers. You can join in on the conversation by signing up, or you can just browse through the discussions on social media and related topics. Either way, it's pretty interesting. I have to admit, I didn't get around to reading the book in time to participate in the Book Club, but I do want to give it a try at least once. The next book will announced mid-February. MarketingProfs is being secretive about the title for now, but promise that it will be about branding and innovation (two of my favorite topics!).

Take a whiff - Marketing's in the air

2007-01-30T15:35:00.000-08:00

The latest MarketingProf's newsletter has an article on Scent Branding that's definitely worth a read. Scent branding is, apparently, a discipline of its own (there's even a Scent Marketing Institute!). Author Leigh Duncan explains, "Used in the right way, scent branding can enhance customer (or personal) experience in a pleasurable manner. The use of scent branding in consumer purchasing environments has been shown to be influential in driving consumer purchasing as well." She also cautions would be scent-marketers to make some considerations before heaping on the perfume, such as don't depend on scent alone to build your brand.

What I found most fascinating are the organizations putting scents to work. Duncan mentions a company called Scent Air that is a provider of "in-store scent solutions." When I discovered that one of their clients is a museum, I did a little digging on their site to find out more. The Children's Museum of Indianapolis used scents of the rainforest and dinosaur dung (yep, you read that right) in its dinosaur exhibit. Also interesting, Florida Hospital used scents to decrease patients' stress and cancellation rates when they came in for MRI's. They decorated their MRI department with a beach theme, complete with the smells of coconut and ocean.

Do we think about smells when we design our spaces? Would the eye-opening smell of citrus perk up students during late-night study sessions? Would the relaxing smell of lavender make leisure reading more pleasurable for patrons? Scent is not a magic bullet, but it's fun to think about how a subtle waft of fragrance can help reinforce and define spaces while reinforcing and shaping our image.

Update: LISNews mentions an article that describes what libraries can learn from bookstores, including how to use scents.

"Genius" branding moves

2007-01-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

In case anyone was concerned, I didn't fall off the face of the earth after Midwinter. I'm back and bloggin'. :)

I've been thinking a lot about branding and what it means to have a strong brand. Much of this thinking was prompted by the excerpt from Peter Fisk's book Marketing Genius, called "Finding the big idea that defines you," which I referred to previously as the best piece on branding I've seen. I reviewed Fisk's work more thoroughly and considered how it might relate to libraries, which I'll discuss in this post.

First, let me summarize Fisk's argument about the nature of branding. Fisk contends that powerful brands resonate with customers' aspirations and derive their value from their ability to engage and inspire people. He states, "A great brand is one you want to live your life by, one you trust and hang on to whilst everything around you is changing, one that articulates the type of person you are or want to be, one that enables you to do what you couldn't otherwise achieve." The foundation of these super-brands is what Fisk calls "the big idea." This "big idea" is the thing that the brand helps people achieve. The thing could be a skill or feeling of confidence, for example. As Fisk summarizes, "If brands are about people rather than products, then the big idea around which they are formed is more to do with what it does for people rather than the company." Furthermore, each brand has three components: Rational ("What you do for people"), Comparative ("How do you do it differently?"), and Emotional ("How do people feel about you?"). Once marketers hone in on the big idea that defines the brand and that appeals to people in one or more of these areas, they use every means at their disposal to communicate the idea. These means include everything from language to logos.

This brief synopsis doesn't do the piece justice, but hopefully you get the idea. I think I was so excited by reading this because it strikes a chord with my beliefs about how librarians can reinvigorate the library brand. I believe that libraries are services that provide people the tools and training to grow socially and intellectually. They're vast frontiers ripe for personal exploration. The more we can help people realize their goals, the more successful we become. Generally speaking, libraries' "big idea" could be summed up something like this: "Achieve your best through information and discovery." Of course, under this big theme, each library has its own big idea with roots in its particular community. (To uncover your unique branding big idea, Fisk maps out a Brand Definition strategy).

For too long, the library brand has been linked to stuff instead of people. Patrons are more likely to associate libraries with books, information, and facilities than with community and personal achievement. While there’s nothing wrong with books and information per se, these strong brand associations are limiting, as Fisk points out, "Of course, if you define your brand around your customers, based on a belief or attitude, a benefit or aspiration, rather than it being a descriptor of your existing business or product, then it gives you far more scope and flexibility in the future." Being aligned with objects rather than with aspirations makes our brand static and difficult to adapt to environmental changes, as we're finding.

To those who may argue that these sentiments are nice but a bit too esoteric and impractical, I ask that you think about your favorite brands and consider what it is about them that attracts you. My bet is that the appeal comes from one or more of the sources Fisk mentions, including: reinforcing your self image; helping you become what you hope to be; enabling you to do something, or connecting with others. For libraries to have a great brand, the brand needs to be based on great ideas. The practical decisions we make should stem from those ideas in order for people to care about what it is we can do for them. Without those ideas, we might as well just become information storage units.

To revitalize our brand, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and ask tough questions. For example, do our communications say, "We want a genuine relationship with you," or "We want to retain formality"? Do our spaces say, "Welcome! Come in and explore your potential," or "If you do come in, you must follow our rules"? How much of our branding efforts originate from a desire to support patrons' ambitions, and how much originate from our desire to showcase ourselves and our stuff? By turning the spotlight on patrons' success, we can in turn build more successful library brands.

I’ll be reading Fisk’s book, Marketing Genius, and I’ll report on other thoughts and findings in upcoming posts.

Best branding article...ever

2007-01-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

Here it is (from allaboutbranding.com): Marketing Genius: Finding the big idea that defines you by Peter Fisk.

I'll have much more to say about this piece and its relationship to marketing by helping patrons succeed, once I fully digest this meaty read.

A taste of small things to come

2007-01-18T12:10:00.000-08:00

[Note to readers: I've been working on this post for a while now. Every time I think I'm close to publishing it, I read a new article about mobile marketing that I should include. It goes to show how hot this topic is. It also goes to show that my aforementioned series on this topic will be pretty lengthy! This post is a preview of the my upcoming mobile marketing series as well as a taste of what's going on in the news.]

Verizon Wireless is opening up by allowing advertisers to push their ads to its customers' mobile phones, according to a NYT article. Reporter Matt Richtel writes, "The interest of advertisers in the medium stems from a theory that ads placed on mobile phones could create a particularly intimate bond with consumers. The gadgets are ubiquitous, personal, and messages could theoretically be tailored to individuals based on demographics like age, gender and location." Mobile phone advertising is a growing business, and like any such business, there is uncertainty. However, I do think librarians need to consider mobile marketing vehicles and their implications for our services and promotions.

In other news, Forrester Research released a report indicating that US consumers are primed to adopt mobile marketing. According to a research news report, " Although 79 percent of consumers find the idea of mobile ads annoying, early efforts at mobile marketing indicate consumer acceptance -- as long as marketers deliver valuable information or content, according to a study by Forrester Research." If you research mobile marketing long enough, you'll find this reoccurring theme: mobile marketing can be effective IF (and only if) marketers respect the personal nature of the medium and avoid spamming unsuspecting customers. After all, mobile phones are not just communication devices. Customers also view them as personal symbols of their individuality, and they understandably get a little upset if they perceive that symbol is being abused by marketers. (In my upcoming series, I'll talk more about people's relationship with their cell phones and mobile devices).

ClickZ summarizes the Mobile Marketing Association's (MMA) annual attitude and usage study on mobile marketing effectiveness (released only to members). The report yielded results somewhat similar to the Forrester report, stating, "Although mobile marketing participation rates may be down, mobile consumers are becoming more educated about the features and functionality of their devices and are engaging more frequently in mobile marketing campaigns. The mobile phone is becoming an essential element in a consumer's everyday life. This increased dependency on the mobile phone is expected to lead to increased utilization." The ClickZ article contains some excellent links to MMA guidelines and and common short codes (I'll explain all this in the series).

Finally, as these trends continue to grow, we'll see many more mobile marketing services providers getting in on the act. And I don't yet know what the impact of Apple's iPhone will be in this arena.

The series I keep mentioning is based on research I conducted for a services marketing course in which I wrote a marketing plan for a proposed new library service. Specifically, I looked at SMS/text messaging and its potential use as a library reference service delivery vehicle, although this technology is also used for promotional purposes by an increasing number of companies. The series will address the following topics (although I may change the number and/or order of these):

Mobile marketing & SMS: What it is (the nature of the medium)
What the research says
Why librarians should care & the competitive landscape
Examples and possibilities
Libraries: Going mobile
Resources, tools, and readings

The reason I'm so determined to explore mobile marketing is that technology is becoming integrated into our physical environment, and I believe we librarians are going to have to discover new ways to succeed in this new reality. Mobile devices offer one promising way to target interested patrons and reach people and their time and place of need. I hope you'll feel free to add your own insights and opinions, and ask questions about mobile marketing as the series unfolds.