Marketing Library Services for Teens - June 2, 2009

 

What is marketing?

            It is not PUBLIC RELATIONS.

            Public Relations is about making the library and its services visible.

            Marketing goes beyond that.

            Marketing is the process of getting customers to place a high value

                                    On services so they will support/consume them.

Marketing involves defining a target audience & planning specific strategies to make them value specific library services.

 

 

Marketing quotes:

 

 

Marketing tells a story that spreads. (seth godin) 

 

MARKETING is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread. (seth godin)

 

Regardless of money/staff shortcomings, libraries can:

            TELL THEIR STORY and Librarians can TELL THEIR STORY

            YOU CAN TELL YOUR STORY

 

                        In many ways, what we are marketing is YOU.

 

KATE SHEEHAN (librarian @ Darien PL)  – “Kindness is our chief export.”

 

            Know their community – leading to visibly better service

            By virtue of visibly better service, garner better library support.

 

GOOD MARKETING DOES NOT START WITH SELLING THE LIBRARY OR EVEN HAVING GOOD SERVICES TO SELL.  It starts with a RECOGNITION That Marketing is a PROCESS.

 

IT STARTS WITH EVALUATION AND PLANNING.

 

COMMUNITY ANALYSIS – Identify your customers/target groups & Identify your products.

 

4 P’s – Marketing Strategies : PRODUCT, PLACEMENT, PRICING, PROMOTION

            Product

                        What do you have that teens need?

                        What could you offer to get teens in the library?

            Placement

                        Where is the most effective location to provide and promote your product?

                         (think in terms of inside the library AND outside the library)

            Pricing

                        What is the cost in time and money to library?

                        What is the ‘price’ to the customer?

                        How can you get the most bang for the buck?

                        How should you evaluate?

            Promotion

                        How can you attract teens to your services?

                        How do you inform them of what the library has?

                        Find your power networkers – outreach, outreach, OUTREACH!

 

 

MARKETING SERVICES (as opposed to commidities/things):

            Customer gets something intangible

            Service may be based upon reputation

            Difficult to compare quality of similar services

            The buyer cannot return the service

 

 

ADD TO THE 4 P’s : PEOPLE & PROCESS

 

 

Rather than talk of goods and services, its sometimes helpful to talk of tangibles & intangibles.

            Libraries tangibles : materials, environment, programs

            Libraries intangibles: learning, self-development, assistance (reference interview, making obvious the unknown).  Kindness (kate Sheehan – our major export).

 

Walk through you library.  Do a Kindness Inventory.  What implicit messages do you see that convey/communicate Kindness.  Lack of Kindness?   Explicit?

 

CHARLES REVLON: in the factory, we make cosmetics, in the store we sell hope.

 

Someone shopping for a ¼” drill really wants a ¼ inch hole….  Think about that.  Someone looking for a book, or a teen looking for homework help, or a place to hang out, or a gaming program… what do they really want?

 

They want an experience : we have perhaps gone through the experience economy, preceded by the agrarian, industrial, service economies.  Now we seem to have passed into a networked or decentralized economy.  In the networked economy connection and communication are valued.

 

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!

            There are different segments of your teen community and different ways to reach them.

Tie in New ideas with more traditional ones : books are more important to some than games.  And vice versa.

  

Develop active and ongoing teen participation.  Get their input, Listen to them, Get them involved.

            Teen Advisory Boards

            Board Members

            Online surveys

            Focus Groups – we like humor, don’t like cheesy, appeal to boys as much as girls, etc…

            Don’t treat us like kids, more technology… or less! 

 

Don’t make assumptions!  Your teens may be different than other teens… 

 

Let teens generate content:  ITS NOT ABOUT US -- ITS ABOUT THEM.

            Contests, graphics, ads, videos, podcasts.  You provide the structure and turn them loose.

  

VIRAL MARKETING: word spreads because customers share it.  It is contagious.  WORD OF MOUTH STUFF.  People, including teens, talk about what surprises them, what provides an unexpected degree of value, extraordinary experience, thoughtfulness, KINDNESS.

 

Collaborate with other libraries, organizations, local businesses and vendors.

            Share ideas,

            Fundraise

            Economy of scale

 

A first step:  Your teen web presence: web page

            1. HAVE ONE!

            2. Draw them in

            3. Online outreach

            4. More than just words ; images, videos, games

            Make it dynamic

Contests.

 

WARNING: Don’t try everything at once.

WARNING: It doesn’t have to be perfect

WARNING: Know when its time to reassess and try something new

 

RESOURCES: YPULSE (Anastasia Goldstein) http://www.ypulse.com Daily news & Commentary about Gen Y for media and marketing professionals.

 

Y

ALSA website

www.yalibrarian.com

 

KNOWING THE LIBRARY, KNOWING THE COMMUNITY.

           

            Where are we now?

            Where do we want to go?

            How do we get there?

            How will we evaluate our success?

  

Internal – knowing the library.  KINDNESS INVENTORY.

            Identify assets and weaknesses (from staff to signs, collection, friendliness, etc).

Site review – from restrooms and reading chairs, desks, overcrowdedness, etc.  – should   include teens, ask their opinion. 

 

External – demographic trends, economic, educational.  Know organizations that serve teens, have a relationship with them.  What are the local teen interests; home school ratio, college matriculation rate, know how all the data compares to neighboring communities, and even neighborhoods in the community.