The anti-list list

Ironically, I had the idea for this post before finding out that I made the LISNews 10 Blogs to Read in 2006 list, which is quite an honor for me considering all of the wonderful work librarians are doing with blogs! Thanks LISNews and all of you for reading!

Suffice it to say, not all lists are bad, but I wanted to discuss the use of lists, or checklists, when it comes to marketing. After blogging about marketing for over a year now, I've read my fair share of articles with titles like, "Five Steps to Marketing Success," "The Top 10 Tips for Targeting Markets," "7 Steps to Writing a Newsletter That Readers Can't Put Down" and on and on. In fairness, lists like this can be useful in that they attempt to break down something complex (like marketing) into something simple (like a boxed brownie recipe), and this can actually be good if it helps people to better understand and manage the complex stuff. However, the danger here is that lists make it tempting to think that if one does A, B, C, and D one will end up with a fluffy and satisfying marketing strategy, but alas, that's not the way it works. So what follows is my anti-list list of marketing tips:

1. There are no steps. This Matrix-esque tip is a reminder that marketing is above all a creative process. You can no more create lists and steps for making a good marketing plan than you can for creating an inspiring work of art. Models like the 4 P's can be useful in helping to think through your strategy, but good marketing is driven by visions, instinct, and sincere commitment to serving patrons.
2. Get to know your patrons. Better yet, get to know what it is they need from you. This doesn't require detailed strategy, just open eyes and ears and a willingness to approach patrons on their terms.
3. Live your marketing plan. Don't let your marketing plan languish on paper or (gasp!) on to-do lists. Embrace marketing as a part of your everyday work and make it come alive for patrons in all that you do.
4. Don't copy off your neighbor's work! To my knowledge, no organization or person ever became great because they wanted to be just like "the other guy." In fact, most acts of greatness arise from the desire to "go where no one has gone before." Doing so involves risk and going outside of comfort zones, not adopting a successful strategy that someone else dared to try. You can look at other marketing plans and strategies for inspiration, but don't forget what makes you and your patrons' needs unique because recognizing and capitalizing on those very things is what is most likely to bring you success.
5. Let go of attachment. Buddha said it, and it's still good advice! Don't get bogged down by a marketing plan or series of steps and procedures, since circumstances will inevitably change and what's a great strategy today may be a flop tomorrow. Being true to libraries' missions and patrons are constants, but the ways in which you realize those constants will change. The good thing about change is that it keeps you on your toes, which is crucial in the creative process (see tip #1).

There you have it, an anti-list list. The point here is to take a step back from the "marketing process" to see more as the "art of marketing." Tips, steps and lists can serve as important reminders of essential principles, but they cannot substitute for the creative thinking, inspiration, problem-solving and service that should be at the core of any marketing effort, which also just happen to be the things that you can't capture in list form.

What's this ad selling?

If you've ever watched a commercial or seen a print ad and wondered what the heck the product in question is, you may be interested in this article from Forbes called Advertising Vs. Entertaining. In it, the author expresses his frustration with "fluff" ads that try to be funny or otherwise entertaining but neglect to explain the features and benefits of the product being pushed. At the beginning of the year, marketing-types were coming out with their marketing predictions of the year, one of which was that marketers would become entertainers and that companies would put on concerts, etc. to promote their products in more subtle ways. I've noticed some libraries also getting in on the entertainment game with hosting music events in their coffee bars, etc. There's nothing wrong with this, in my opinion, so long as key messages about products and services are not left out of the equation, as the author of this article points out. I suspect that promotion efforts that try too hard to be funny are either a) hiding a flawed product and/or b) assuming that the audience wouldn't be interested in knowing about "boring" things like facts and product features. The latter is really not giving audiences enough credit. Library services may or may not be the most exciting products to sell (relatively speaking), but if they are well-designed for the right market, detailed information about them would be welcomed and greeted with enthusiasm. To use the oft-cited car buying example, I may not be enthralled by the ins and outs of air bags and seat belts in and of themselves, but if I am a consumer who is interested in these features in the context of safety, I may very well want to know the details and could care less if they are presented in a funny way. It's helpful to keep in mind that promotional efforts are intended to flaunt our great services, not hide them behind jokes (although, a sense of humor is definitely not a bad thing!)

Start a trend: Become a trend spotter

Trendwatching.com offers another installment of a series of pieces I've noted before on how to spot trends. This latest addition includes incredibly useful segments on what trends are, challenges in spotting them, the necessary tools and mindsets for uncovering them, and how to understand and apply them.

I can't say enough how important these skills are for librarians to have and how they are only going to become more important in the future as the pace of change continues to accelerate. If your marketing plan doesn't include an assessment of external threats and opportunities, then you could be in trouble. Making trend spotting a part of our daily routines and viewing the world in terms of possibilities will drive us to take on creative new challenges in our work that will keep libraries relevant no matter what changes are in store for us.

Good stuff from the blogosphere

There were a couple of good relevant-for-librarian-marketers posts on Church of the Customer recently:

The first mentions a recent study that reports 68% of people in the U.S. trust "a person like me" as their most credible source of information (I was hoping it would be librarians :) ). Most impressively, this figure is up from 20% just 3 years ago!! This is a mammoth, flashing sign to librarians that in order to be successful marketers, we need to understand and utilize word-of-mouth techniques and focus our attention on building strong, significant relationships with our patrons who will spread the word on our behalf.

The second post illustrates how work spaces can foster (or hinder) creativity. What's most interesting (other than the very cool workspace featured) is that if you go to the Idea Sandbox site mentioned in the post, you'll find the corporate site of a guy who has worked in marketing for Disney, Aramark, and Starbucks. His site is pretty neat, and provides links to creative resources and other good stuff for getting into an innovative mindset. It warrants a bookmark. And, guess what, he offers a blog too!

Blog book of interest

You may be interested in this book review from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge. The book in question is called, Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. The reviewers state, "The authors show how blogs are now changing organizations and explains how readers can use blogs for a variety of business purposes, especially marketing and public relations." Looks like it's worth a read!

Showin' patrons some love

MarketingProfs.com put out a special Valentine's Day newsletter (cute!) with articles that may be useful in making patrons sweet on us and our libraries:

• 10 Ways to Love (and Respect) Your Customers
• Not Just Sweet Nothings: Writing Words of Love to Your Customers
• Branding: All You Need is Love [about your own personal brand]
• Marketing Challenge: Let's Give 'Em Something to Talk About

[MarketingProfs also offers an RSS feed]

A micro-marketer in a macro library: Challenges and possibilities

The word “marketer” doesn’t appear anywhere in my job title; I don’t organize massive PR events; I don’t design logos or orchestrate major branding initiatives. In fact, a lot my work doesn’t quite fall under the marketing rubric in the old-fashioned, traditional sense, and yet, despite all this, I am a marketer. More specifically, I am a micro-marketer in my macro library, and I suspect I am not alone. In effect, even if it’s not widely recognized, everyone in the library is micro-marketing all the time. However, marketing on the micro scale is fraught with challenges, but it also opens up some unique opportunities that we should seize for the benefit of the macro library.

Let me back up for a moment and explain why it is that I, and in all likelihood you, are a marketer. Modern business textbooks define the marketing concept as the idea that all of an organization’s efforts should be directed at satisfying its customers. Aren’t you, in your position, attempting to satisfy patrons in all you do (I bet you are!)? In my work, I have been charged specifically with designing services [products] for undergraduates [target market] and promoting [advertising, etc.] those services to them. This charge as written is one way of saying I'm a librarian-marketer without really saying it, and I’m sure most if not all of you have some similar responsibilities in your job descriptions. Whether we know it (or like it) or not, we are all a part of the wide world of marketing, but for those of you who are like me and live near the bottom of the library hierarchy, there is very little we can do to direct the efforts of the entire organization, as the marketing concept definition suggests. So, for those of us who are in this marketing quandary, here are some of the challenges we face and possibilities we can seize:

• Challenge: I can’t decree marketing strategies. I can’t say to my colleagues, “this is how we should position ourselves, this is how we should brand ourselves, and this is who we should target,” and so on. Possibility: I can decree marketing strategies for my area of responsibility. We can decree, for example, that we will give the absolute best service possible in all of our areas of responsibility be they reference work, collection development, or technical service. We can set high standards for our performance, which make our services [products] the best they can be, which is the most critical marketing task there is. We can also devise mini-marketing plans for ourselves and for the tasks spelled out in our job descriptions.


• Challenge: I can’t define the mission or brand. Most of us inherit the mission, vision and values of our libraries. Hopefully, those values were an important part of why we chose to work at our libraries in the first place, however, we can’t just opt to alter them when we see fit. Possibility: I can live the mission or brand. If your mission emphasizes providing equal access, you can make it a point to reach out to underserved groups, for example. A mission/brand is only as good as the people who live it and fulfill its promises. A lofty vision that is not sincerely put into practice is easily seen through and disregarded.


• Challenge: I can’t make library-wide decisions. Closely related to Challenge #1, I can’t decide for the library what path it should take and what the priorities should be. Possibility: I can inform library-wide decisions. The low-man-on-the-totem-pole position gives us a nice vantage point and allows us to interact with and observe our patrons on a daily basis. All of these points of contact grant us valuable insights into our patrons’ needs, which we can collect and communicate to those responsible for decision-making on a larger scale. To do this, we must be active observers and make it a point to get out into our communities and talk with our supervisors.


• Challenge: I can’t determine what services the library provides. While some of us can design services that fall under our purview, for the most part we inherit the suite of services already in place and library-wide service design and management is out of our hands. Possibility: I can provide tangible evidence of service quality. Library services are intangible products. As such, every piece of tangible evidence patrons perceive reflect on the services we give. The way we answer the phone, our facial expressions, class handouts, the cleanliness of our facilities, the quality of our signage and furnishings all influence how patrons view the services we offer, and so we need to make sure each is well-managed and well-maintained.


• Challenge: I don’t have much influence on the management of library activities on the big scale. Some of us have very little bearing on how our libraries carry out their business and how they manage operations. Possibility: I have a lot of influence on the management of library activities on the small scale, and small things count big! Oftentimes, it is the smallest of things that make the biggest impressions on patrons. Thank you notes, timely follow-ups, an extra effort when patrons are in a bind, and informal lunches can mean the difference between patrons’ apathy and enthusiasm toward the library.

I realize that not all of you have these same exact concerns to the same degree, but the point here is to not be discouraged when you feel microscopic in the macro library. There are always avenues, however small, to put sound marketing principles into practice. And, who knows, it might be those very micro-marketing efforts that have the greatest impact on the library as a whole.

I’d like to hear about other challenges/possibilities you perceive, and I’d also be interested in what challenges/possibilities those higher up the totem pole experience as well.

Marketing is more than you think...A LOT more!

According to BusinessWeek Online author Steve McKee, marketing isn't just something, it's everything! McKee's opinion piece discusses how the best laid marketing plans can be undermined if they're not followed through in every level of an organization. In one example that hit home for me, he discusses how he noticed a Crystal Springs Bottled Water truck driving along spewing toxic fumes, which countered the company's own clear, crisp and sparkling clean brand image (I've had similar experiences with extremely rude, reckless drivers cutting off potential customers in company vehicles! Argh!).

I was happy to see this article because it demonstrates that marketing isn't something you do, it's a way of being in an organization. I think about how libraries add coffee bars and cushy chairs to create welcoming environments, but what good are those efforts if staff are not equally welcoming and our buildings are laden with "Do Not" signs? To be effective, a marketing orientation needs to permeate the entire library organization in everything we do. All of our actions, promotions, and services are embedded with messages, each signaling something about who we are to our patrons. It's important that one aspect is not contradicting what another is saying, or what we intend to say, so that patrons can instantly identify with our libraries and our missions.

Camp out, read a book

A school librarian at Dade County Elementary School advertised her library's book fair with the theme Camp Read A Book by filling the school with the sounds of the great outdoors. Inside the library, she set up a camp scene complete with a tent, camping chairs, a grill and a hammock. The idea behind this advertising campaign was to promote turning off the TV and video games in favor of reading a book.

Putting the "I" in branding

An article from Forbes.com today called Brand Me reveals what it is that teens want in a brand - individuality. Teens are no longer interested in what's cool, they want what's "them." This means that companies are opening up the marketing process to teens and allowing them to take ownership of their brands. As the article describes how companies are reaching out to today's teens, "The key to going after those dollars? Playing to teens' interactive desires by involving them in the marketing process, according to Marshall Cohen, chief analyst with the NPD Group. "They're engaging the brand rather than endorsing the brand."" Because of this, marketers are shunning the old standby of mass marketing campaigns, and instead holding local events and allowing teens to customize products (check out the slide show Teen Brands: Now and Then for an illustration of these new strategies).

Libraries too can (and many do) open up their brand to patrons who crave a personalized experience and a greater relationship with our institutions. I think marketing is all about relationships and every interaction with our patrons is an opportunity to "live the brand" (to use marketing-speak) and make meaningful connections. Ideally, these relationships should be two-way dialogues that foster conversation and community.

Short-term blog for long-term marketing gain

There was some interest in our library's Black History Month Blog project, which debuted last year, so for those of you who are interested in this kind of project from a marketing standpoint, I thought I'd give you a brief overview now that it's underway again.

Our Black History Month Blog highlights all kinds of information related to Black History Month, including items from our collection, campus events, biographies, television programming, web sites, a "Picture of the Week," exhibits, etc. in celebration of Black History Month. Library staff are the main authors of the posts, but we have made an effort to reach out to the campus by contacting departments and student organizations who may have something to share on the topic and we invited them to draft posts or add their comments per our guidelines.

As far as the marketing value goes, I think the jury is still out on how effective this approach is, but I think it has a lot of potential. After heading this project up for the second year, I can say that it usually starts out slow with little involvement from the campus community, but as the month progresses and there is greater awareness and word-of-mouth about the blog, we tend to get more participation. I was pleased to see that this year, I had some immediate responses from student groups who wanted to share information about upcoming events. The drawback of this short-term approach is that as momentum builds, the project comes to an end. However, there are also lots of positives: A short-term project could be ideal for librarians who don't have the staff or resources to commit to a long-term blog; choosing a timely topic can demonstrate the library's relevance; the topical approach lends itself well to encouraging conversation. Last year, I talked to some students about how they found out about the blog, and they told me that their professors mentioned it in classes and directed them to check it out. This was very encouraging to me and demonstrated that the blog generated some buzz.

In terms of promoting the blog itself, a button that links to it is displayed prominently on the VCU homepage (you may need to hit refresh a couple of time to see it on the bottom of the page), on the VCU Libraries page, our Black History Month events page, and there is an RSS feed to it on our various profile pages (like this one) and related research guides (like African American History). We also promote it on listservs and the usual stuff.

While I didn't initially approach this project as a marketing tool (although I did try to employ some marketing concepts in working on it), a short-term, topical blog could certainly be a marketing avenue worth exploring. If you would like any more information about this project, you know where to reach me.

Worth another look: Marketing Malpractice

A while back, I mentioned an article from the Harvard Business Review by authors Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall called, "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure." The authors' basic premise is that marketing should center around the job consumers want done for them, rather than the consumers themselves. I've had a chance to read the article in its entirety and am convinced that the ideas presented are worthwhile for marketing libraries. I'm so excited by the possibilities the authors discuss that I'm giving the article a second look in this post, but hope to continue to explore this different way of thinking about marketing. Here are some of the ideas from the piece that I'm taking away with me and why I'm enthusiastic about this approach:

• Marketing by the job would mean that the center of the marketing mix would be a particular service, rather than a particular target market. Therefore, all marketing efforts should seek to better understand what it is that people want to get done, instead of the demographics of our patrons, etc. However, it appears that we would still have to have a good understanding of our patrons and their behaviors so that we can fully understand, as the authors propose, the social, functional and emotional dimensions the job is needed to fulfill. Doing so means radically rethinking how we go about segmenting markets and how we approach market research. As the authors simply state, "Turn off the computer, get out of the office, and observe."
• The authors argue that people hire products/services NOT organizations. I like this way of thinking because it prompts us to continually examine the value of our services, rather than rest on the status quo. This line of thinking calls into question those who believe the library should continue to exist just because it has in the past. Instead, we need to prove our value daily by helping people get jobs done.
• According to the article, brand equity (the value of a brand in the minds of consumers) is built when consumers find a product that does the job and talk about it with others. Brand equity is not built by advertising! As the authors assert in one example that, "Advertising clarified the nature of the job and helped more people realize that they had the job to do...The fact is that most great brands were built before their owners started advertising." For me, this is a crucial point. Marketing isn't about newsletters, e-mail lists, or posters, it's about services. In order for the library to build a better brand as has been discussed a lot in library circles these days, we should not be looking at ad campaigns and slogans, but at what services we have to offer and how we can make them better and more relevant.

I hope if you get a chance, you will review this article and come to your own conclusions about its merit for libraries. This is a new way of approaching marketing in that it alters some of the most basic ingredients in the marketing mix and, in my mind, encourages us to focus on the most important marketing goals without getting sidetracked by irrelevant details.

Empowering fans through funnel flipping

It's All Good points to a free e-book by marketing guru Seth Godin called Flipping the Funnel: Give Your Fans the Power to Speak Up (see the Non Profits edition). I haven't read it yet, but based on other Godin works I've read, he's very entertaining and innovative with ideas that have great potential for libraries. In this 18-page booklet, Godin explores the use of social communication technology to gather feedback from users (marketing is a two-way street, after all!).

The Super Bowl of advertising

Whether you root for the Seahawks or the Steelers, you can always cheer for the great ads that are interrupted by the occasional field goal or touchdown (just kidding, football fans!). The Super Bowl offers a perfect opportunity to see what some of the best brains in advertising have come up with and to learn from them. Try keeping an eye out for who the target audience may be and how advertisers try to lure them in, including what language, imagery, social references and emotional hooks they employ.

SuperBowl-Ads.com has a sneak peek at upcoming ads and the latest news. Or, you can stop on over to adverlicio.us for its online collection of Superbowl ads (via AdRants). TV advertisers are a little nervous these days about reaching the masses they were once able to, so looking at news coverage of their evolving strategies like this use of microsites as extensions to commercials can inspire some creative ideas.

You may also want to read how Steelers fans are taking the marketing ball on behalf of their team and running with it by creating their own photos, videos and slideshows! (Oh, the possibilities for libraries!).

Have a good weekend and happy ad-watching!

What's on the horizon for academic types

What's on the horizon in academia, you ask? The 2006 Horizon Report (PDF) tries to answer with its projections about what emerging technologies will have the most impact on teaching and learning in higher education. For you academic-types in the audience, this report helps to inform our marketing efforts, and it's just plain interesting material for all librarians to look over. The report describes four key trends having to do with the increasing acceptance of social computing, mobile and personal technology for service delivery, individualization of services, and the need for collaboration.

[Thanks to Steven Bell's post on the ACRLog for pointing out this helpful research! You should see his original post for his comments about the lack of librarian involvement on the Horizon Project Advisory Board that put together this report, and his call to action. A good example of the need to market ourselves/services on a large scale!]

2006 John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award winners are in!

ALA announced the winners of the 2006 John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award. Winning entries will be on display at ALA in New Orleans. Looks like some very creative stuff here! Congratulations to the winners.

Extreme Makeover: Library Edition - now online

OCLC's Community site now links to talks from the OCLC Extreme Makeover Symposium. You can also access its reports and Advocacy resources here too. For details, see It's All Good.

A new take on teens

Brand New Day points out a new study carried out by an ad agency on teens. Some of the results may surprise you. (Did you know, for example, that, globally, teens' #1 priority is spending more time with Mom?!). I don't know anything about the ad company that conducted the research or their methodology, so you may want to approach the results with a critical eye, but they certainly are interesting!

What's in a service?

Two helpful articles appeared today from MarketingProfs that are specifically aimed at service providers:

• Four Factors That Distinguish Services Marketing - All librarians should know the fundamental characteristics of services marketing as compared with product marketing. There are important differences and this article lists each and gives some good advice about how to manage them.
• Marketing Challenge: How to Sell Services - Readers sent in their replies to help one marketer who had trouble adjusting from product sales to service sales. The advice they give is sound for librarians too!

Remember: memories make great marketing

A North Carolina library is celebrating 100 years of serving its community. As part of the celebration, patrons gathered to recount their memories of the library and what it means to them, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. These walks down memory lane were videotaped and "Library Memories" cards were placed throughout the branches so others can share their experiences.

Patrons' stories are among the most compelling marketing messages you can share. Honest, heartfelt experiences from one patron to another are much more effective than library-sponsored promotions alone. You may want to consider making space on your Web page or newsletters for patrons' quotes, comments, and stories about what the library means to make your marketing more compelling.

Avoid a marketing boo-boo - Use a brand-aid!

An ask-the-experts feature in today's USA Today called, Time for Some Brand Aid, has great insights for those of you seeking to develop a strong brand identity (and who isn't'?). The author, lawyer Steven Strauss, gives 4 very good steps toward creating a recognizable brand:

The first step is to understand how you are currently perceived. For this, be sure to check out OCLC's perception survey results.

The second step is to define your unique selling proposition. Libraries offer so much that can't be duplicated in the same way elsewhere, but my sense is that we're not doing the best job of explaining how we're different. It's nowhere near good enough to just try to imitate Google or anyone else as a marketing strategy, but we need to hone in on what makes a library a library and make those our selling points.

Step three, according to Strauss is to figure out what our clients' expectations are. I recently had an interesting conversation with a marketing professor here at VCU about the pros and cons of ServQual (from which the widely-used library survey LibQual is derived). One of the weaknesses of ServQual that concerns marketers is that while it does a good job of highlighting the gaps between expectations and actual service experience, it doesn't weight those expectations so it's difficult to know how important a particular expectation is. Furthermore, it doesn't account for the fact that some expectations are not realistic to begin with. So, I would add that in addition to identifying and meeting patrons' expectations, we may also need to readjust some of those expectations that are unrealistic.

Step four is about making our brand personal so that patrons can identify with actual human beings rather than a large organization. (Right on!)

Strauss makes some other good points that are definitely worth saving and using, so give it a read.

K.I.S.S.

The advice "Keep It Simple Stupid" has served many a marketer well throughout the ages. After reading this article in Fast Company (via Micro Persuasion) back in November about how Google and other tech companies have been thriving by presenting the complex as seriously simple, I decided to give some thought as to whether or not we librarians are really the "simplifiers" of the information world and if this is one of our best strategic marketing advantages. Now that I've seen this concept tossed around on the ACRLog (see Sense and Simplicity via this post about rebranding), I thought it was time I took a stab at my own post about the subject.

Since this cropped up on my radar in November, I've been keeping an eye out for how simplicity manifests itself in the marketplace. On my way home during the holidays, the airport terminal featured an ad from Panasonic (I think) that said something about simplicity with a picture of a baby and the product (ok, I was rushing to catch a flight and I haven't been able to find that ad anywhere since, so if anyone has seen it, please let me know!). More recently, you've probably all seen Citibank's new Citi simplicity Card, which offers, well, simplicity, in credit services. Heck, there's even a book out there called Simplicity Marketing. Needless to say, the idea of simplicity is not new to marketing and it's becoming increasingly compelling as our lives in general get more complex.

But is simplicity what librarianship is all about? Is our job to present the complex world of information searching as something so simple a baby can do it? And, is doing so ultimately a good marketing strategy? I don't think so. In fact, marketing in this way could harm the profession. After all, if we strive to make our services appear Google-esque, we could be obfuscating a big chunk of our competitive advantage - our collections' depth and sophisticated organization. The complexities of our databases and services are what give users control over their searching. I'm not saying that we need to make our offerings overly-complicated and intimidating, but that we need to let patrons' needs guide what shape our marketing takes and they don't all want simple. (It's true!)

When people embark on the hunt for information, there are a lot of factors that dictate how much info they want and how detailed they want it to be (motivation, experience level, etc.). Novices, most of the time, will want simple. And not only that, but because they lack experience and everything that comes with it (vocabularies, mental models and so on), they probably can't process anything too detailed. For example, I'll probably be looking for a new car in the near future, and when I go out looking for information about cars, I won't even look at engine specs and all of that, because, to me, it's incomprehensible. On the other hand, most experts dig the details. They don't shy away from complexities, they dive right into them. And, because they've been around the block, they can actually understand what they're taking in. I think of hardcore Star Trek fans here. You know, the ones who can speak Klingon, discuss the features of hundreds of different phasers and recite episode scripts by heart. No amount of minutiae is too minute for those folks.

Does all of this translate to library services marketing? I think it does. When I first began teaching library instruction to new Honors students, I approached them like most other students new to the library. I didn't want to overwhelm them so I kept things very simple. InfoTrac-esque, if you will. Well, I soon learned that simple doesn't cut it with these kids. They were bored to tears and had a been there, done that attitude. I could sense that they were not impressed with what the library had to offer because they'd seen and mastered it all before and we weren't giving them anything new to sink their teeth into. So, in future classes, I started throwing out all the bells and whistles. I've heard audible "oohs" and "ahhs" when I've shown databases like PubMed where they could use MeSH headings, combine sets and explode terms. They ate it up! They were expert enough to be able to build on the basics and craved more depth from their instruction. For this group, the fact the librarians understood and could help others master the complex was a huge selling point for library services. I learned then and there to never assume that users want simple. They want to achieve a sense of satisfaction and confidence that they can accomplish what they need to do at the level they want to do it. I also suspect that my Honors kids got a bit of an ego boost by getting an inside scoop on how the databases "really" work. (Buyer behavior lit is full of great articles on this kind of thing, by the way).

Complex is not bad when it gets you where you need to go. In fact, the complicated aspects of information searching can actually be attractive to those seeking challenge and greater control. Simple, on the other hand, can be tragically inadequate when we have complex requirements and high expectations. In order to market our services effectively, our approach should be sufficiently layered to accommodate every task from the simple to the complex and should showcase our expertise in both arenas. It's that simple.

WOMBAT presentations now online for you WOMers

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association recently completed its WOMBAT (Word of Mouth Basic Training) conference and you can now get the presentations free online without registration! [By the way, isn't it nice to know that librarians aren't the only ones who are acronym-happy?!]

I've breezed through some of these and I can tell you that there is plenty to be found here that is relevant to library-types. There are heaps of how-to's and a cache of case studies. Here are just some topics to whet your appetite for WOM goodness:

• How to Use Online Feedback To Improve Your Marketing
• How to Motivate Fans, Advocates, and Evangelists
• How to Create Great Blogs That Get People Talking
• Word of Mouth 101: Core Strategies and Tactics
• Measurement 1: Measuring the Impact of Word of Mouth
• How To Use Amazing Customer Experience and Product Design To Get People Talking

You can get to all the presentations by following the WOMBAT post and using the links to Day One and Day Two agendas. Bon appetit!

Rebranding an industry - OCLC symposium scoops

The Shifted Librarian blogged about the OCLC Symposium: Extreme Makeover - Rebranding an Industry with highlights from the talks. Very interesting and nice to see librarians taking some cues from the larger marketplace. Also, check out other bloggers' takes on the event. From what I gather, OCLC will also be making the symposium available via podcast for those of us who couldn't be there.

Free market research reports, anyone?

KnowThis.com has free, I repeat free, market research reports and other research material listed on its site. Beginning this month, KnowThis features a new report each week. This week's featured report is A Comparison of Wal-Mart and Target Shoppers. While this one may be off the mark for librarian purposes (albeit very interesting!), it may be a good idea to check in on this listing when it's updated to see if anything relevant to us is featured. As always, you can peruse KnowThis' Market Research, Internet Marketing Research page for useful resources.

Update: The PDF for the Wal-Mart/Target report is linked from the Focus on Market Research Reports page. They just updated the weekly report. Now, there is one up about Hispanic retail shoppers. Very neat!

Going the way of the Dodo

The hubbub in the marketing world is all about the demise of traditional advertising and the rise of more targeted alternatives. Take a gander at the NYT account of the recent Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) conference (WOMMA's WOMBAT blog has some conference scoops too) and this ClickZ article on below-the-line marketing for just some examples of what people are talking about. Librarians are natural connectors and could (and do) excel at using some of these less-traditional methods.

Hitting a moving target

The New York Times featured an article yesterday that everyone should read called, A Generation Serves Notice: It's a Moving Target. It's about young 20-somethings who are not only adept at using technology, but who also manage to skillfully elude traditional marketers. The article also describes how technology is changing the social culture of young people and what impact that has on marketing. Very interesting and important since we librarians are serving and will continue to serve patrons with this kind of intimate relationship with technology and all of the social and psychological implications it entails.

Be your own trendspotter

Trendwatching.com's recent newsletter gives you the tips and digital tools you need to spot trends amongst consumers (patrons). The object of the game is not to spy, but to become more keenly aware of patron's perspectives. By building your own Virtual Anthropology shortlist, you can keep your eyes open to what's going on "out there" (you know, outside of library?). Give it a try!

People judge web sites quickly (as if we didn't know)

I'm sure most of us in the library biz know that most people make very quick decisions in judging Web sites, but did you know how quick? Turns out, they spend one-twentieth of a second (according to CNN report of a recent study)! One twentieth! That, says CNN, is less than half the time it takes to blink. The marketing implications of this finding are substantial: How can you prove to patrons in one-twentieth of a second that your web site is a good place to be and worth at least a couple of blinks? Unfortunately, the study didn't come to definitive conclusions on what makes a good site, but clearly aesthetics an important draw for Web surfers.

Where ISN'T Google?

Google is not only a force to be reckoned with in the library world, but it is making huge strides into the advertising world too. I bring this up as an FYI for those of you who are more broadly interested in Google and/or marketing, but the buzz is that Google is getting in the game of not only selling web ads, but now magazine and newspaper, radio and possibly TV ad space (see BusinessWeek for the full scoop). Because Google is such a prominent player in our information landscape, it might be worth keeping an eye on its ventures since they may become important developments for our marketing efforts and for our patrons.

[Update: Here's another example of how Google is making waves in advertising.]

Pushin' and pullin' - getting services to patrons

In the never-ending challenge of getting products and services to the end consumer (in our case, getting services to patrons), marketers rely on two distribution strategies: push and pull.

Pushing products involves persuading other people in your distribution channel to make a product available (no end-customers involved). Example: Widgets Inc. marketers give Retail Store Inc. a portion of profits if it stocks its shelf full of New Widget Thing.

A pull strategy means appealing to consumers directly so that their demand persuades retail outlets carry a product. Example: Customers get coupon for a tube of Revolutionary New Toothpaste and go to Grocery Store Inc. to find it (they'd be pretty disappointed if it weren't there!).

You get the idea. So why should we care?

It may be important to think about whether or not to use a push or pull strategy depending on who you're trying to reach. As an example from here in a university setting, my target group is undergraduates and I spend a lot of time reaching out to them directly. I go to fairs, attend events, and design new services for them. But, after a while of doing this, I started thinking, why do students use our services? Answer: To complete homework assignments (yes, for other things too but this is a biggie). Who gives them these assignments? Answer: Their instructors. Therefore, to get more students to use our services, I should appeal to instructors (middlemen) to create more library research assignments (a push strategy). Make sense? It does to me, which is why I hope to focus more of my efforts on targeting faculty who work closely with undergraduates, but you can also see how this might work in other contexts. In public libraries, the most obvious example I can think of would be appealing to parents to reach their children.

Sometimes, the best way to get to your target patrons is through their middlemen.

Don't focus on the customer/patron (?!)

A fascinating article ("Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure" from the Harvard Business Review) was discussed in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge recently and it is definitely worth a read! The author, Professor Theodore Levitt, [CORRECTION: The authors of the excerpted HBR article are Professor Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall. The authors were inspired by Prof. Levitt's statement, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!", which prompted them to write this article. My apologies for any confusion.] challenges the intuitive assumption marketers make that they should focus on market segments and the consumers that they consist of when devising or revising new products and services. As user-centered librarians, this seems like common sense. Of course, we want to know all about what makes our patrons tick so that we can serve them better. Well, Levitt the authors tell us to refocus our attention from consumers themselves to the jobs they want to get done. In other words, according to Levitt's their logic, we shouldn't be designing services to fit the 18-24 year-old, male, commuter student demographic, but rather to fit what people who walk through our doors and use our stuff want to get done at the library.

The article cites an example of one researcher who studied what "jobs" customers wanted to get done by purchasing milk shakes. He came up with two results: 1. Customers wanted to keep themselves entertained and full on their drive into work and 2. Customers wanted to appease their children. Knowing this, the restaurant could make product changes to accommodate the jobs milk shakes are "hired" to do. For job #1, the restaurant can make getting shakes on the go easier and make the shakes more entertaining by thickening them and adding fruit (if this makes no sense, read the article for a full explanation). Furthermore, making these changes requires that marketers understand the social, functional and emotional dimensions the job is meant to fulfill.

This idea has important implications as we think about marketing libraries. Of course, we do some of this already without necessarily thinking about patrons' needs in terms of "jobs," but we do tend to go along with the traditional marketing techniques of dividing up our target populations into segments instead of jobs sought. If you go along with this idea (and I think it has merit), then it would entail examining what patrons are trying to accomplish by using the library instead of who our patrons are. Hmm...food for thought! Also, Levitt the authors note, that this approach results in broader markets than those defined by product-categories. Just think of all the jobs patrons seek at the library that we can reasonably imagine (socializing, quiet reflection, doing homework, educating children, learning new skills...) and you can see the large number of service implications this approach entails. I'll have to pull the full article and give this some more thought, but if you have ideas to share, I'd love to hear them!

To blog or not to blog, that is the marketing question

With rise of all kinds of social technologies, companies (and libraries, I might add) are trying to figure out how best to take advantage of the opportunities they present. Articles on the topic pour in everyday. Here's some of the more interesting ones I've collected lately:

The Boston Globe online summarizes steps companies like Disney have taken into the wild world of podcasting in its article "Companies Catch on to Podcasts' Marketing Power." In the piece, experts suggest that to be effective, podcasts can't just be press releases. Rather, they need to demonstrate an understanding of the audience and teach them something of value (and it doesn't hurt to be entertaining!).

In destinationCRM.com's article, "A New Marketing Medium," the author describes how companies are using blogs to open up the lines of communication between them and their customers. As the author states, "Companies can use blogging to indirectly fine-tune their marketing messages through social interactions. With other customer communication avenues, companies may be using the wrong language or addressing the wrong audience, but blogging enables faster feedback and a more strategic understanding of where the market is heading." Most interestingly, one expert gives 4 steps for achieving success with blogs. The first 3 are what you might expect (find influencers, listen to people, engage people in dialogue), but the 4th is especially exciting: give people authority - a scary prospect for many companies and libraries too! So, who's doing it right? One expert claims General Motors does because the company listens to customer concerns and explains in detail, from the company's perspective, why problems exist, what's being done to solve them, as well as revealing some inside scoops.

So, is blogging for everybody? Not necessarily, some say. Bad candidates are those who are very limited in what they can say, those who want complete control, and those who must wait a long time for approval to post. The MarketingProfs article does a good job of pointing out many of the considerations potential bloggers should make.

For you librarians who have already taken the blogging plunge, check out this MarketingProfs article about how to keep your content fresh!

Doing a good job of using these kinds of social software can generate new relationships with our patrons and teach us a lot about problems people have and how we can address them!

[Update: There are many libraries out there that are blogging/podcasting. For examples of blogs, check out this list from Blogwithoutalibrary.net. Ohio University and Western Kentucky University Libraries are but a couple of libraries that have ventured into podcasting in the form of library tours!]

Kiddin' around

The Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) is putting together a Kids! @ your library campaign that will provide promotional items, sample press materials and other resources to get all school-age children into the library. The campaign is scheduled to launch in the fall of 2006, but a Campaign Fact Sheet (PDF) is available now and a KIDS! @ your library program is set for the 2006 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans on Sunday, June 25, 2006, 1:30-3:30 p.m. Check out ALSC's site for more details.

More on Marketing 2.0

As you may recall, I recently blogged about Advertising 2.0 and social networks. Since then, I've stumbled upon an plethora of interesting examples and discussions on this issue that I thought I'd pass along.

WOMBAT has a couple interesting "how-to" articles about word-of-mouth and social technologies. Brand-building Through Converts and Fanatics gives 5 tips for creating fans around brands [libraries], including how to create communities and interaction. The other article, Listening to the Blogosphere, provides another set of 5 tips that allow marketers [librarians] to get a feel for what people think about their products/services. Reference librarian Amanda Etches-Johnson of blogwithoutalibrary.net is exploring this market research opportunity via Google's Blog Search as she describes in her post. Basically, she keeps an ear to the ground by setting up a search for instances of the word "library" in the titles of posts and retrieves them through an RSS feed. Neat!

Aaron Schmidt of walkingpaper.org has taken Marketing 2.0 a step further by attempting to integrate his library into the online social community MySpace. In his post, he describes his library's foray into MySpace and the pros and cons of doing so. VERY interesting stuff! I hope he'll keep us updated on how this initiative goes.

If you still need proof as to whether Marketing 2.0 matters, academic-types may be interested to know that organizers for the HigherEd BlogCon slated for April 2006 are seeking programs on Marketing and related subjects that concern social networks, consumer-generated media and evaluation of blogging and podcasting efforts among other topics 2.0-ish. (Here's the call for presenters, if you'd like to share your marketing know-how).

While I'm not a huge fan of the term "Marketing 2.0," I am a fan of the possibilities these techniques present so I'll be sure to keep an eye on these trends.

Feed me, Seymore!

For those of you who may be wondering, there have been some issues with one of my main feeds. Namely, it doesn't work. I have no idea why Bloglines is having trouble with it, but you may want to subscribe to this feed to get around the problem. Thanks!

Beyond puppies and babies

An opinion piece in BrandWeek yesterday asks (and answers) the question, "Is advertising too emotional?" The author argues that yes, advertising has gone overboard with inducing feeling but not backing those feelings up with product information that results in sales. I'll admit that I'm a sucker for an ad with puppies (I know I'm not alone here), but I rarely remember what those kinds of ads were for to begin with. One of the reasons advertisers are so keen on emotion is that they hope to use positive emotion as a sort of mental shortcut for consumers. So that when consumers see an adorable puppy, they will think: puppies=good and cute=warm fuzzy feelings=warm fuzzy feelings about product=I will buy the product. This is an oversimplification of a piece of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (shown here) that says there are basically two ways people decide on whether or not they're going to buy a product: 1. Through careful thought and analysis of product benefits and features or 2. By relying on a shortcut (a heuristic) like puppies. When consumers are either unable or unwilling to think too much about whether or not they'll buy a product (when's the last time you carefully weighed the pros and cons of bar soap?), option #2 may be a good bet. But, as the BrandWeek article points out, it may be possible to go too far.

The so-what part: When creating library ads, you may want to think about how motivated or able your patrons are to evaluate your service. Detailed service descriptions may be more palatable to the experienced researcher than the novice. Also, you may want to read over the BrandWeek article, which poses some good points about how to both communicate the value of your service while not boring people to tears.

IFLA deadline fast approaching!

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions seeks applications for its 2006 International Marketing Award. The Award aims to:

• Reward the best library marketing project worldwide each year
• Encourage marketing in libraries
• Give libraries the opportunity to share marketing experiences

The deadline, January 15, 2006 is coming up soon! Details can be found on IFLA's site. Good luck!

The year's best marketing sites

KnowThis.com has unveiled its 2006 picks for best marketing Web sites (KnowThis.com is still at the top of the heap for me). Some sites were on the list last year, but there are lots of newbies and sites that have gotten a heck of a lot better since the previous year. Read 'em, enjoy 'em, and bookmark 'em!

Advertising has a 2.0 version too!

You have probably all heard about the Web 2.0, but advertising has a newer, better version too! Marketers are keenly aware that traditional approaches (TV and radio spots, mailings, banner ads and the like) are not cutting the mustard anymore. Instead, marketers are looking to enter into the vast social networks, on and offline, that are bubbling up thanks to people's almost constant connectivity. What's the Advertising 2.0 approach then? Word-of-mouth. Take a look at this article from ClickZ. It's a brief but very good take on what exactly word-of-mouth means and how it is scalable, remixable, and encourages participation. The author, Dave Evans, asserts that the time has come to take advantage of social networks to get honest marketing messages through the clutter by working with consumers. I agree that librarians should also make their presence known in these social circles to remain relevant. I'd also recommend you read the Evans' previous article on the consideration-cycle marketing, which focuses on post-purchase word-of-mouth and how customers generate their own marketing messages. As Evans states, "Ultimately, it's about reaching consumers through an invited presence in social networks. Marketers must launch great products that offer true value and engage potential customers in genuine conversation at the critical consideration point in the buying cycle. Combine consideration-cycle marketing with your current programs, and collect the dividends of a connected world." I'll be very interested to see how librarians make use of these techniques as advertising evolves.

Marketing is code for customer service

It's a perennial problem of mine that when I mention my interest in marketing to my colleagues, and even non-librarian types, I notice that many of them will cringe a little, roll their eyes slightly, and then nonchalantly shuffle away. Of course, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but I have definitely noticed a hesitancy to embrace the marketing concept, and it's noticeable enough that it makes me wish that there was another less loaded term for what is nothing more than just a strategic, common sense way to address people's needs.

But what, really, is the word "marketing" loaded with? For librarians, I think it might sound too sales-ish, which is a direct affront to our core values of free and equal access to anyone and everyone regardless of their social or economic status. We don't sell things, we provide services after all. Right?...Wrong! OF COURSE we sell things! We sell the idea that information literacy is an important skill to have; we sell our expertise as information providers; we sell our values of privacy and equal access to information; we sell our buildings as community hubs and we sell our collections. We sell all the time, everyday, and we even profit from it. We count our profits in terms of gate counts, circulation, positive word-of-mouth, repeat users and yes, even money in the form donations and special taxes. Moreover, there's nothing wrong with this. You can call "selling" persuading, convincing, or educating, and you can refer to "profits" as higher usage, bigger budgets, or an information-literate public, but it's all the same thing.

Still, this makes some feel a bit icky, so maybe we do need a better word. When I think of marketing, I think of service. Marketing begins and ends and begins again with understanding what patrons need. Then, it involves finding the best way to fill those needs and explaining (advertising or promoting) how we can help. This is serving the public, and it's noble work. It also happens to be marketing, but we can go ahead and call it customer service if that means we can openly talk about it without sacrificing any warm fuzzies. Or, we can embrace marketing for what it is and be proud of it. After all, if people don't understand what we do or why it's beneficial to them, they'll stop coming in our doors. If that happens, libraries, just like any other organization, will be out of business.

Don't get me wrong, I don't intend to dismiss anyone who is critical of some of the really awful marketing practices that go on out there (and there are plenty!), but it doesn't have to be a necessary evil. Marketing can actually be a public good when it focuses on best interests of those we serve, which is really what marketing is all about anyway.

The marketing crystal ball says...

What would the new year be without a bevy marketing predictions? No fun! That's what! Fortunately, Forbes.com writers pitched in with their predictions for 2006 with one writer offering forecasts in the areas of advertising and marketing (here). Some of the standouts for librarians are:

• Marketers as entertainers: Marketers will create movies, videos, concerts, you name it, to grab people's attention. I can believe this one. Just think about all the time we spend trying to plan entertaining programs, tutorials, blogs and podcasts!
• Marketers will expose their brands in entertaining ways. I blogged about this trend, Tryvertising, a while back. An example of this would be pushing kitchen appliances via a cooking class. There may be potential here for librarians to insert their services in unexpected places!
• Marketers will take advantage of social networking sites like MySpace.com to engineer word-of-mouth campaigns There's already a huge interest in social software amongst librarian-types. Aaron Schmidt had a nice post about this topic a while back along with some ways librarians can get going with these tools.

Happy New (Marketing) Year!

Marketing library services bibliography

Elsevier has put out a terrific annotated bibliography on the topic of library marketing. Marketing Library Resources: An Annotated Bibliography (2005, 20p., PDF) describes helpful literature on the following topics:

• Strategic Planning
• Environmental Scanning
• Customer Service, Media Relations and Public Relations
• Outreach and Liaison Efforts
• Marketing Digital Resources
• Development and Fundraising
• Relationship Marketing
• Evaluation

Good stuff! Many thanks to Steven Bell for passing this along!

Saying one thing but doing another?

All of us who have conducted focus groups and the like know that the information gathered from those sessions can be highly suspect. People are not always consciously aware of why they make some consumption decisions, which makes getting at perceptions and motives tricky business. Also, it's easy for participants to say one thing even though their behavior says something very different. One advertising agency network is taking a stab at addressing these shortcomings using a sociological approach. DDB has recently launched SignBank, a service that collects and processes bits and pieces of cultural change and their meaning in order to tease out trends. According to the New York Times, trained DDB "sign-spotters" get out into their communities and report back trends or "signs" to SignBank that are collected and analyzed. Interesting!

The So What: Librarians too might want to think about ways to gather more information on behavior as opposed to pouring over survey and focus group data alone. Next time you're cruising the stacks, try actively observing what's going on all around in order to pick up on important trends or needs.

Side note: DDB did make some marketing predictions for the coming year, noting that consumers will demand more specialization and, in contrast to other predictions that state consumers will want to call the shots when it comes to products and services, DDB thinks that consumers will seek out guidance and leadership. If these prove true (and I believe they already are to an extent), these trends will mesh perfectly with librarians promoting their expertise and specialized services in the information world!

Happy holidays!

I am off to the great Buckeye State and to my family, and I won't be returning until early January 2006! During that time, I'll either be posting a heck of a lot more or a heck of a lot less. I wish you all the best during the holiday season.

I'll leave you with this terrific article from the University of Michigan's University Record, which features an interview with a professor who explains the rituals and psychology surrounding holiday gift-giving. Marketing and buying decisions are always less about the stuff being consumed and more about how customers feel about and perceive those exchanges. Some holiday food for thought!

Best wishes!

Battle of the brands

Looks like IU and Ball State are squaring off in the branding arena, according to this article. Ball State is touting its Intel ranking as Most Unwired Campus with its Cutting Edge Cool campaign, while IU is celebrating its Newsweek designation as Hottest Big State School. Most interesting in this article is the importance of word choice in the ad campaigns. A Ball State freshman thinks his school is "trying too hard" and explained that if you have to say you're cool, you're probably not, a sentiment shared by another student mentioned in the piece who wasn't crazy about the wording, but enthusiastic about the overall campaign. Hmm... Did Ball State not test this slogan out on its target market?! While I don't know for sure how Ball State developed the slogan, it's a good opportunity for a general reminder: The only cool that matters is what your patrons think is cool, and overlooking their points-of-view is definitely not cool.

Hallelujah! More on customer evangelism.

Micro Persuasion had a nice post about what I would agree is a terrific article from U.S. News & World Report by James Pethokoukis on how to create a force of customer evangelists who will sing the praises of your company (library) and spread their enthusiasm to others.

This is an important trend in marketing we need to keep in mind, or, better yet, act on! Promotion via evangelism is a perfect marketing strategy for librarians in particular because it's all about building authentic, two-way relationships with patrons and communicating your vision and passion to them, which I've found most librarians are eager to do anyway. In fact, many companies now have designated "evangelists" in their ranks (!!). One such evangelist who works for TechSmith (software developer responsible for products like Camtasia), says that her job is all about relationships. As the author says, "What does she do for these people to help them keep and spread the faith? She tries to reply to each and every E-mail, forwards problems or complaints to product specialists, invites the customer evangelists to groups beta-testing new products, and, of course, supplies the occasional tchotchke." This is about more than just touting the benefits of the library. Even though every staff member performs a marketing role, wouldn't it be wonderful if every library who had one person devoted to spreading the word like this?

I bet for many of us, we already have a good sense of who are best customer evangelist candidates are, such as frequent users, members of advisory boards, etc. But do we give them the rhetorical, technological and other tools and support to help them pass on their enthusiasm to others?

If you want to learn more about this significant trend, get more info from those who wrote the book on the subject! Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba also created a discussion guide to supplement the book and their blog has a section of Essential Reading to explore.

Marketing to today's undergrads

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian points to 2 absolutely fascinating articles on what drives today's undergraduate market (here and here). It's amazing to me how sophisticated these spenders are, but also how reckless they can be.

The first article from BusinessWeek concerns the MySpace phenomenon and how students use online social networks to connect in the real world. Marketers are trying to get inside these potentially lucrative communities, but doing so requires new and more subtle approaches. Ads that scream "I'm trying to sell you something," won't fly, and instead have to be skillfully woven into the context of the community. Students are very keen on picking up sales pitches, and won't tolerate it.

As natural connectors, information-providers, and community builders, these online worlds would seem to be a logical fit for libraries. To some degree, this is already happening with blogs and the like, but we ought to remain aware of the fact that for our younger patrons, the virtual and real worlds are not all that separate, which should impact our marketing approaches.

The second article is all about undergraduates' conspicuous consumption habits. Students today are spending heaps of cash (well, a lot of credit anyway) on dining out, lattes, and electronics. Some may place the blame on marketers for student's penchant for consumerism, but after reading the article, it's clear that some of this trend comes from students' readily-available cash flow (a.k.a. mom and dad). In fact, lots of marketers out there are concerned with quality of life issues (for in-depth details on Quality-of-Life Marketing, see this article by Dr. Joe Sirgy). Whatever the reasons, students are clearly more savvy and demanding when it comes to consuming products and services, which we see plenty of signs of at our service points. For example, for many undergrads I've worked with, I've noticed that waiting a day or even hours for a book to become available is like waiting for an eternity. Consumption that goes on outside the library certainly impacts what we do and how we do it, as these articles show.

Public library marketing briefs

A few tidbits about how some public libraries (mostly from the Chicago area) are marketing away:

• School libraries target students' interests: Details how one librarian turned a corner of her school library into a "Coffee House" and snuck in some info literacy too!
• Meadows library is tailored to city: The importance of understanding the demographics of your patron base is highlighted here.
• Community Library makes pitch to teen readers: Neat marketing and programming ideas from how one library celebrated Teen Read Week, which included talks from a comic book writer, a video game playoff, and an Open Mic Night.
• Library strives to be heart of community: This library features a used book store, cafe, gift shop and a conveyor belt/item sorter for returned books. Why? As the library director said, "We're no longer just a place to come and find books...People expect there to be more activity, instruction, education and enrichment."
• Patrons share library pride: The Des Plaines Public Library is a hopping place, due in no small part to its outstanding collections. One patron even said the library had a better DVD collection than Blockbuster. This library seems to know who its competitors are and are stepping up to them.

Marketers are taking over the world (and you're one of them!)

Did you know that everyone in your library is a marketer (including you)? Well it's true! I was glad to see this article from MarketingProfs that describes how everyone on staff is performing a marketing function of some sort. This is also why internal marketing is so important and should be a part of your strategy. The author's remarks sum it all up: "Weave the work of the marketing department into the daily lives of all employees: Make sure everyone knows core messaging and value propositions; teach everyone to think like a marketer; provide easy mechanisms for people to report market feedback and needs into the marketing department." Exactly!

Cool nametag!

Scott Ginsberg wears a nametag 24/7/365 to make him and his self-created brand more approachable. His exploits are detailed in his Hello, my name is BLOG blog. His posts drive at how to be an effective communicator and from what I've read so far, it's fascinating! A summary of his thoughts on what makes a brand approachable is on WOMBAT, an offspring of WOMMA. The name tag idea and the subsequent homemade personal brand intrigues me because as librarians, we don't just "sell" our services, we sell ourselves. Our personalities are just as much a part of our service transactions as our nifty databases and spiffy books. How we present ourselves personally can make a lot of difference in whether or not patrons come back.

On a somewhat related note, WOMBAT is now digestible in podcast form.

Thinking outside the car

Thanks to Steven Bell for his thoughtful comments on my last post. He's dead on about reading outside of the library literature to generate creative ideas. In fact, Steven has an actual "keeping up" philosophy that is immensely useful for recharging your creativity. In his comment, he states, "I think many of the creative ideas simply come from being influenced by something you read or see, and morphing that idea into something new for your environment."

This thought stuck with me and came to mind when I read over a blog post sent to me by my colleague Dan Ream (always on the lookout for the unique and/or unusual!). The post is from a blog run by VCU's very own (and very renowned) AdCenter. The post features a picture of a guy driving around with a Starbucks cup glued to the roof of his car. When people try to warn him that he's driving around with a cup of coffee up there, he smiles, waves and says, "Happy Holidays from Starbucks." Now, if that's not taking something from out there in the environment and morphing it into a new idea, I don't know what is. This driving advertisement just took a regular ol' cup and displayed it in such a way that just its placement drew heaps of attention. Messing around with context and turning the ordinary into the unusual is a terrific marketing tactic and one that I know we can put to good use in libraries.

Creativity is key, the rest is just details

The more I have thought/pondered/obsessed/wondered about marketing, the more I have come to realize just how important creativity is in the marketing process. Think about it: great marketing is contingent upon coming up with breakthrough (a.k.a brand-spanking-new and creative) ways to meet people's needs. That is incredibly tough work considering that most people's important needs are already met, most of the time anyway, and that marketing has been honed to such a science that odds are if you can think if it, it's already been tried.

Which leads me to a post on my favorite blog of all-time: Creating Passionate Users. I had been wanting to write up a post about creativity, and Kathy (author) already did it (and much better than what I could have done)! Kathy wrote an insiteful post, Creativity on speed. The gist of her point is that "When you're trying to make creative breakthroughs, slowing down gives the rational part of your brain all the time it needs to stop an idea before you're barely aware of it. When it comes to building/creating/playing something you didn't even know you were capable of, speed is your friend." This was surprising to me, but a relief as well since I have no problem finding shortages of time to test this out. She also references an interesting article written by a movie sound guy entitled, On Being Creative, which ends with the following 3 tips for being creative:

• "Learn your craft thoroughly."
• "Begin each project with few assumptions about the methods you will use. Let the needs of the project, most of which you won't know until after you've gotten your feet wet, determine your approach. [I can vouch for this one!]"
• "Experiment as early and as often and as inexpensively as possible. Make lots of mistakes when mistakes are cheap." [I'd love to see this encouraged by more organizations!]

This post dovetails with a previous one from Kathy that has to do with adding sliders (basically, a metaphor for finding breakthrough opportunities). She concludes the post with tips for finding new sliders, which essentially help you to think outside the sliders (you'll get it when you read it). Her posts are long, but they're the only long blog posts I actually digest completely because they're just so great.

I'd really like to hear what strategies you use to get your creativity in gear. Any tips or resources you'd recommend? I know you're out there doing creative things, so come on and share what works!

[Update: I found a web site (CreatingMinds.org) that has collected some creativity-enhancing tools and described how and when to use them. Maybe you'll find it useful too.]

[Another update: I just noticed that the current issue of Marketing Treasures has an article devoted to brainstorming techniques.]

Time to perceive how we're perceived

Hurray! I've been waiting for this to be available online for a while and now it is! OCLC's report,Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005), is up and ready for viewing! I've only heard an overview of this report from our University Librarian and haven't read it yet, but now you know what I'll be doing today! This kind of research is absolutely invaluable to us as we try to find the best way to position our services so that they pop up on users' already cluttered radar. Ok, enough of reading this post - go ahead and check out the report. :)

[Update: George Needham, Vice President of Member Services at OCLC, et al. speaks up about this report and the 2003 Environmental Scan on Talking with Talis (MP3, 44 mins.). (Found via AcademicPR listserv).]

Take the Google taste test

Seth Godin pointed out an interesting experiment going on where customers blindly search 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) and choose which results seem most relevant. Google is ahead in with 42% of votes, but it is interesting to see that Yahoo! (31.18%) and MSN (26.82%) are holding their own. Seth suggests that the reason for this is consumers' perceptions: Consumers buy into the idea that Google is better because it seems better due to things like design, etc. Marketing, and particularly marketing intangible services like libraries, is largely about managing perceptions, a fact that's important to keep in mind as we think about what image we're putting out there for patrons.

"Cultural Programming for Libraries" - a PLA preconference

The ALA Public Programs Office announced a PLA National Conference preconference event called, "Cultural Programming for Libraries: Linking Libraries, Communities and Culture." The event will "prepare library staff to conduct high-quality humanities programs for the public, and will take place Tuesday, March 21, 9 am - 5 pm and Wednesday, March 22, 9 am - Noon in Boston. Advance registration for the PLA conference and related discounts will be available through January 11, 2006. To register, visit www.placonference.org."

See the PLA preconference brochure (PDF) for more info.

Libraries finding a niche as community builders

Every marketing success story involves people finding a niche that they are uniquely able to fill. In the case of Los Angeles public libraries, that niche is the role of community-builder. A local news article describes how LA libraries have achieved a 70% boom in usage over the past 10 years. Despite seething racial tensions and a destructive arson fire that damaged over a million books, the libraries have experienced a renaissance due to sound market research, creative programming, and a lot of hard work! Librarians initiated more than 180 neighborhood meetings to assess what the community would like to see in their new library buildings and designs. Once built, librarians took to the task of addressing the most pressing of its patrons needs: a sense of community. One way they did this was by initiating "Coffee and Conversation," a library program that invites anyone to stop in and talk about what's hot in the news. Librarians also help new immigrants adjust to life in LA by offering popular citizenship classes and collecting needed foreign language materials. Matching up needs and services is marketing in a nutshell, which is what this article touchingly illustrates.

Better to blog?

Does Your Company Belong in the Blogosphere? is the question asked in the recent Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Articles on the topic of corporate blogging are increasingly common, but this one is especially good. As the author describes, there are three major benefits to company (institutional/library) blogs:

• Influencing the public "conversation" about your company [library]
• Enhancing brand visibility and credibility
• Achieving customer intimacy

The author also gives helpful advice for getting the best use from your blog, all of which are good (have a distinct focus and goal, feature an authentic voice, etc.). One interesting example comes from Sonyfield Farm, an organic yogurt company that hosts various blogs directed at different target audiences including blogs like Baby Babble, Strong Women Daily News, the Bovine Bugle (check out the pics!), and Creating Healthy Kids. This targeted approach is the way for libraries to go, in my opinion, and there are lots of creative ways we could segment our market of users, other than the traditional categories of teens, adults, etc. For example, if your library is in a particularly scenic locale, why not write a blog featuring information resources for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts?

Open source lessons from Amazon & Firefox

If I hadn't been behind in my blogging last week, I would have mentioned this "wow" news from Amazon.com that was picked up by some Church of the Customer posts (here and here). Basically, Amazon is rolling out this wiki feature that allows customers to create and edit product information, which, it's hoped anyway, will be more valuable and robust than the current Reviews. The feature is pretty hard to find, but the COC posts have some screen captures to illustrate what they're up to. More recently, COC talked about another Amazonian innovation: threaded discussions. Gets you thinking about what we could do with the good ol' catalog, doesn't it?

These new developments are some of many marketing maneuvers designed to get patrons in on the act (for regular readers, you already know I'm a fan of this approach). Take Firefox's latest open source marketing campaign that asks avid users to create and submit video testimonials (phase one). The second phase of their campaign will invite students and professionals to send in their ads. Neat!

¿Sabes español?

The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA) announced in a press release last week that Hispanic print and television advertising grew a significant 4.7% between 2003 and 2004. Hispanic buying power also reached $686 billion in 2004, according to the release. Whew! Odds are, many libraries are feeling the effects of this population's growing needs. In fact, last week the San Bernardino County Library launched its bilingual iBistro system, which allows patrons to locate and request items in Spanish as well as English (article here).

In order to keep up with the growth of the Hispanic population, it's important to stay current with relevant market research. The AHAA has a fantastic PowerPoint presentation (pdf) available that describes this market's demographics, purchasing behavior, where the group gets its information as well as marketing implications--fascinating!--not to mention, very useful for your own marketing efforts. There is a lot of opportunity for librarians to get in early on serving this growing group of current and future library users!

Basic training for spreading the word

Check out this great new blog from WOMMA called WOMBAT (Word of Mouth Basic Training).

Found on Candi's great LibTalk blog.

Hit the perfect PR pitch

WebProNews had a fairly decent article about achieving positive results with PR for people who are not PR experts. Essentially, the article describes how to move beyond tactics to a PR strategy. "When you adopt the core PR strategy discussed in this article, you are then free to move beyond tactics and pay closer attention to the perceptions and behaviors of your most important external audiences, the very people who could hold your professional success as a manager in their hands." The point is to select the appropriate vehicle for your audience in order to do one of three things: "Change existing perception, create perception where there may be none, or reinforce it."

Heaps more marketing news cropped up this week that I'm going to have to get to next week so stay tuned...

Corporate librarian wrap up

In honor of the last day of "corporate librarian week," I was poking around on SLA's Website and found an interesting division that may be useful for marketing purposes. The Advertising and Marketing Division of SLA "is concerned with the collection, retrieval, and dissemination of information devoted to advertising, marketing, and related disciplines, and in the management of libraries and information centers in these areas." To that end, they have a lot of interesting resources on their Webpage including The Branding Resource and Web Resources.

A blog called Data Obsessed written by a librarian working in a consulting firm in New York caught my attention because of its insights into issues particular to corporate librarians' work. While not every post is directly related to corporate libraries specifically, the author does highlight items that can influence marketing planning in those settings. Plus, it's just fun to read a blog from the coporate/special library perpective.

Finally, if you haven't bookmarked Marketing the Corporate Library, you may want to do so. A number of the resources I pointed out this week came from there and it seems handy.

Since every week is corporate librarian week for those of you in business settings, I'll try to keep an eye out for helpful marketing tips just for you and pass them along as I find them. :)

Let's get real

To continue our corporate librarian marketing theme, take a peek at this article called Marketing: Realistic Tips from the SLA. The author runs the research and consultancy firm MarketBase (check out the author's recent publications from the firm's site for other goodies). The tips concern ways to make time for marketing, budgeting, and writing a marketing plan. As the author concludes, "Whether you're working on a shoestring budget or with sizeable financial and staff resources, dedication to the marketing process and to creating a marketing plan will make a difference. Those in the know agree that this is an investment for a successful future."

Be sure to look at the references for other helpful sources too like a marketing bibliography and how to write a marketing plan.

This just in from Singapore

The National Library Board, Singapore, has launched two interesting initatives.

The first is a promotional campaign, Drop Everything and Read, that highlights the library's doubling of loan limits (check out the great poster!).

The second is a new book blog called High Browse Online. The blog features book reviews, librarians' picks, readers' contributions and library events. The posts have a nice tone to them and seem to do a good job of personalizing the library.

Thanks to Ivan Chew (a.k.a Rambling Librarian) for making me aware of these terrific efforts!