NCompass Live - April 10, 2024 http://nlc.nebraska.gov/ncompasslive/ Libraries have been offering programming for decades, and in many cases the model has been, "Let’s plan a program, promote it, and see who shows up." This approach hasn’t changed much, even with social and technological changes, not to mention the pandemic and streaming programs. Program planning with a marketing mindset starts with identifying your customer’s needs and wants, then developing programs and services to meet those needs and wants. We’ll discuss how to use research – quantitative and qualitative – to plan and market programs that will engage your customers. We’ll talk about "bundling" programs and services for different audience segments. We’ll also cover how this more strategic approach can save time and resources for your library. Presenter: Cordelia Anderson, Library Marketing and Communications Consultant, Cordelia Anderson Consulting.

1. @cordeliaba
#librarytraining

4. Topics Covered
Part 1: A Marketing Approach to
Planning Programs
Part 2: Best Practices for Marketing
Programs

5. Part 1: A Marketing Approach to Planning
Programs

6. What’s the Problem?
 The traditional approach to library programming – “plan it
and they will come” – is not always effective.
 Programs that are successful often rely on serendipity,
“super library users,” and foot traffic.
 When programs are not successful, it is often viewed as a
failure of marketing.

7. “The best way to make
things better is to make
better things.”
– Seth Godin, seths.blog

8. A New Method For
Planning
That begins with the end in mind.

9. What Is Your
Library’s
Product?
 Hint: it’s not a program.
 It’s a person whose life
was improved or
changed by your
program.
 OR a community that is
better because your
library exists.

10. Old Planning Method
Get Program
Idea
Schedule
Program
Promote to
Audiences
Deliver
Program
“Let’s plan a program, promote it, and see who shows up.”
In other words, it starts with your idea.

11. Planning With a Marketing Mindset
Identify a Need
Develop
Program to
Meet the Need
Explain How it
Meets that
Need
Target the
Right
Audiences
Deliver it
When/Where
They Want It
“Start with a need, want, or problem that needs solving.”
In other words, it starts with your customer’s needs.

12. Promotion vs. Engagement
Promotion is a Megaphone Engagement is a Relationship
Relationship
Message
Feedback
Sender Receiver

13. Starting With Audience Needs
Yields Greater Engagement
Relationship
Message
Feedback
Sender Receiver
And a more
meaningful
relationship between
them and your library.

14. Marketing
Defined
The management function
that identifies human
needs and wants, offers
products and services to
satisfy those demands,
and delivers products and
services to customers.

15. Planning Method
Research
Planning
Implementation
Evaluation

16. Add in Marketing
Research
•Identify your customers’
needs, wants and
problems
Planning
•Offer programs to satisfy
their needs or solve
their problems
Implementation
•Deliver programs where
and when customers
want them
Evaluation
•Evaluate your program
and use that to make it
better

17. How to Use Research
To plan programs that meet your customers’ wants and
needs.

18. Start With Your
Customers
 Who are they?
 What are their needs?
 What are their wants?
 What problems do they face?
 What are their biggest barriers to
participating fully in your
community / on your campus?
 Where do they go for non-library
programs?

19. Qualitative Research
Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing
non-numerical data to understand concepts, opinions, or
experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights
into a problem or generate new ideas for research.
Examples:
 Written Feedback
 Spoken Feedback
 Open-ended Questions and Answers
 Focus Groups

20. Qualitative Research:
Feedback From Across
The Desk
 This is a great source of
information about customer
wants and needs!
 How can you gather this
information?
 How can staff feel empowered to
share this with leadership?
 When you are closed, your “desk”
is phone, website and social
media.

21. Qualitative Research: “Suggest a Program”
Forms, Suggestion Boxes, etc.
 If you don’t already have a form on your website,
create one! Have it routed to the appropriate people.
(Adults, Teens, Children’s)
 Surveys are another great way to get suggestions.
 You can also make paper forms when you fully reopen
in person, as long as you have a system for gathering
and reviewing them!

22. Qualitative Research: Programs That
Are Already Popular
 People “vote with their feet” by attending programs
they like.
 There’s nothing wrong with repeating programs that
are popular, especially if it increases access for more
people.
 Look for programs with large attendance, full
registration or waiting lists. For recorded programs,
look at the # of people viewing them.
 Look at feedback from people who attended the
programs. What did they like about it?
 Replicate them across different platforms, locations or
formats.

23. Qualitative Research:
Community Scan
 What are the biggest problems in
your community? How can you help
solve them?
 What are the equity and social justice
problems in your community? How is
your library addressing them in its
programs, policies and services?
 What are the large community
initiatives that the library can help
with?
 What popular programs are being
offered by other organizations in your
community? Can you partner or
complement them?

24. Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is the process of collecting and analyzing
numerical data. It can be used to find patterns and averages,
make predictions, test causal relationships, and generalize
results to wider populations.
Examples:
 Demographic Data (Ex: Census)
 Customer & Borrowing Data (ILS)
 Usage Data (Statistics)
 Survey Data
 Partner Data
 Analytics – Which online platforms are the most popular,
accessible?

25. Quantitative
Research:
Census Data
Census data can help you learn
more about your community,
such as:
 What is the age distribution
in your community?
 What nationalities live in
your community?
 How many people live above
or below the poverty line?
 Where are the largest
concentrations of people?

26. Quantitative Research:
Surveys
 Pick your type: convenience sample (online) or
statistically representative sample (usually by phone).
 Survey before the program: Ask customers what their
biggest needs are, what kinds of programs they want,
where and when they want programs delivered.
 Ask them which platforms (Facebook Live, Zoom,
YouTube) are the most popular and/or easiest to
access?
 Survey after the program: Ask customers about the
quality of the program (rating scale), convenience of
location and time. Let them make program
suggestions!

27. Now What?
Identify
• Identify
your
customers’
needs,
wants and
problems.
Offer
• Offer
programs
to satisfy
their needs
and/or
solve their
problems.
Deliver
• Deliver
programs
where and
when
customers
want them.
Evaluate
• Evaluate
your
program
and use
that to
make it
better.

28. Offer programs to
satisfy their needs
and/or solve their
problems.
 This is the fun part! Get creative.
 Focus on ideas that address the needs and wants
you’ve identified.
 Try “prototyping,” or trying small-scale pilots of new
programs. If you don’t succeed, fail fast and move on.
 Try pairing programs with other similarly themed
offerings.
 Look to partners who are trying to meet the same
needs and trying to solve the same problems. Offer joint
programs with those partners and cross-promote!

29. Deliver programs
where and when
customers want
them.
 Make your programs as accessible as possible. Don’t
make people jump through hoops!
 Record programs and make them available later. Later
views still count as program attendance!
 Only limit attendance if it’s absolutely necessary.
 Experiment with different times and days to see what
works best for customers.
 Go where your customers are! You don’t have to
deliver the program in your library meeting room. Go out
onto the floor, outside the walls, or even better, outside
of the library! Offer to go where there are existing,
motivated or even “captive” audiences. (Ex: company
meeting)

30. Evaluate your
program and use that
information to make
it better.
 Get feedback from attendees.
 Give them a short survey to complete during the
program or afterward or both! Don’t passively leave the
surveys on a table, hand them out and give participants
a moment to complete them.
 Use feedback from attendees and staff to strengthen
the program.
 If the program is not getting much attendance, it might
not be addressing a need. Or it might be at the wrong
time. Be open to changing or starting over!

31. Additional Questions to Ask
 Is your library the right organization to meet this need
or solve this problem?
 Is someone else already doing it?
 Are they doing it better, less expensively, more
conveniently, or more accessibly than you can?
 Do you have a unique value proposition that makes
you the best organization to deliver this program?
 If you can’t answer these questions favorably, go back
to the drawing board!

32. Benefits of This Approach
How it can save time and resources.

33. A Marketing Mindset Saves Time
 Library staff time has a cost! Calculate the true cost
of your program by adding up the value of the staff
time and dividing it by the number of people who
watched or participated.
 If you’re truly meeting a need, or solving a problem,
you don’t have to work as hard!
 Instead of inventing lots of “new” programs, why not
replicate and reuse the ones that are already
popular?

34. A Marketing Mindset Saves
Resources
 How can your staff time resources best be used?
 If you are saving time previously used to create and
market programs that aren’t needed, what else can
you do?
 Staff will feel more motivated if they know their
program is needed, attended and cherished.

35. Part 2: Best Practices For Marketing
Programs

36. Begin With Your Audiences
 Customers
 Current Library Customers
 Past Library Customers
 Future Library Customers
 Segments
 Age
 Geography
 Interests
 Community Audiences
 Community Residents
 Community Partners
 Community-Serving Orgs & Nonprofits
 Other

37. What Do You Know About Your Audiences?
 In Part 1, we discussed
using research to learn
about your audiences so
you can develop
programs with their
wants and needs in
mind.
 That same research can
give you insight into how
to market the program to
them!
Who are they?
What are their needs?
What are their wants?
What problems do they face?
What are their biggest barriers to participating fully in your
community / on your campus?
Where do they go for non-library programs?

38. How does your library
get information to
your audiences?

39. Three Strategic Functions
Marketing Public Relations Customer Engagement

40. Marketing and
Public
Relations
Public Relations: “the management
function that establishes and maintains
mutually beneficial relationships between
an organization and the publics on whom
its success or failure depends.”
Marketing: The management function that
identifies human needs and wants, offers
products and services to satisfy those
demands, and causes transactions that
deliver products and services in exchange
for something of value to the provider.

41. Customer
Engagement
“Customer engagement” is the
ongoing interactions between
company and customer, offered
by the company, chosen by the
customer.
-- Paul Greenberg
If you start with your audiences
and focus on building a
relationship with them, marketing
is an opportunity for customer
engagement.

42. In Other Words,
Marketing and
Public Relations are
All About People!

43. People-Centric
Marketing
 Create programs and
services that meet their
needs.
 Communicate the value and
benefit in a way that
resonates with them.
 Make it easy for them to find
and attend your program!

44. The “Hub and
Spoke” Model
For Digital
Marketing

45. Website
Email
Social
Media
Advertising
In-Branch
Promotion
(ex: flyers)
Your website serves as the “hub”
of information for customers and
stakeholders.
The “spokes” - tools like email, social
media, advertising and flyers - meet
potential customers where they are and
send them back to the website for more
information.

46. Where Are Most
Customers Looking For
Information?

47. Website
 Ensure that your website is easy to navigate, and that
your program calendar is easy to find.
 Avoid having too much content on the home page.
 Rather than trying to fit everything on the home page,
make your website easy to search.
 Put yourself in your customer’s shoes!
 Make program titles easy to understand.
 If you offer the same program at multiple branches, use
the same program title and list them together so the
customer can see all of their options.
 Remove outdated content.

48. Social Media
 Keep it simple! Unless there’s an explicit reason to create a
Facebook event, such as a co-sponsor, have your post go
back to your website “hub” for information & registration.
 Use an appealing visual that depicts what people can expect
from the program.
 Try paid social media advertising to reach new audiences.
 Social media advertising is affordable, easy, and you can target
it to people most likely to be interested in your program.
 Don’t have a budget for it? Think about what you are spending
on flyers and posters. Redirect those funds to digital. Digital is
cheaper than print.
 Facebook & Instagram: A targeted “boost” for as little as $20
can get you in front of new audiences.

49. Email Marketing
 Automatically “opt in” all
customers to email marketing.
 Many libraries made the shift in
COVID-19 and had few to no
unsubscribes or complaints
from customers.
 Ensure that you are CAN-SPAM
compliant: easy unsubscribe
link, mailing address, relevant
content.
 Update privacy policy if needed.

50. Search Engine
Optimization
 Ensure that your library’s
information is up-to-date on
sites such as Yelp, Google
Business, etc.
 Check Google Maps to see if
your locations are listed
correctly.
 Make sure your website is
search engine optimized for the
right keywords.
 Consider creating a blog with a
strategy to use SEO keywords.

51. Final Tips
 Calendars of Events: Most people look for events online!
Libraries spend far too much time on printed event calendars (top
left). Spend your time and money on strategies like good content,
tools that help you segment and reach your audiences, and
creating a positive experience.
 Social Media Images: Engaging pictures will get much more
attention than Canva graphics (bottom left). Try for an 80:20 ratio
of pictures to graphics.
 Program Promotion: We love library programs, but they are just a
small part of what your library does. Rebalance your marketing to
include spaces, staff expertise, services, resources and
collections.

52. Connect With Me
Cordelia Anderson
www.cordeliaandersonapr.com
cordelia@cordeliaandersonapr.com
calendly.com/cordelia-anderson
Twitter: twitter.com/cordeliaba
Facebook: facebook.com/cordeliaandersonconsulting
Facebook Group facebook.com/groups/librarymarketingcac (275+
members!)
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cordeliaanderson