Paula Watson-Lakamp - Marketing Moxie for Librarians: Fresh Ideas, Proven Techniques, and Innovative Approaches

MARKETING MOXIE FOR LIBRARIANS

Fresh Ideas, Proven Techniques, and Innovative Approaches

PAULA WATSON-LAKAMP

Copyright 2015 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Watson-Lakamp, Paula.

Marketing moxie for librarians : fresh ideas, proven techniques, and innovative approaches / Paula Watson-Lakamp.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9781610698931 (pbk : alk. paper) ISBN 9781610698948 (ebook) 1. LibrariesMarketing. I. Title.

Z716.3.W382015

021.7dc232015001875

ISBN: 9781610698931

EISBN: 9781610698948

191817161512345

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Ive been at this marketing game a very long time. The reason why is because it is FUN! I love seeing happy, smiling faces coming away from a special event, to have a small child ask you about a book they saw on a display, or to have someone see your nametag at the grocery store and say, Wow, I cant believe all the things the library is doing! Keep it up! These make all the sleepless nights and crisis emails worth it. I have been very fortunate to have some wonderful mentors encouraging and teaching me along the way as well as plenty of anti-mentors who told me something couldnt be done, which of course made me want to do it even more! Many thanks to my social media mentor, Nick Armstrong at WTF Marketing (yes, you read that correctly) for keeping me growing as a marketer. Extra thanks to my husband, who has spent many hours toting chairs and setting up tablesthe poor man didnt know what he was signing up for by marrying meand my kids, who always smiled and waved while I left them at the fair booth while I ran to print more flyers. Thank you for your support, I love you all, and you have made my life the best special event ever.

Build it and they will come is an old adage that works for the world of libraries. The building of a library in a town has always been seen by townspeople that they have arrivedthat culture, civility, and democracy had come to their town and they were living, breathing members of that democracy. No matter if they had paved streets, running water, or outhousesthey had a library.

In most cases a library is an interesting semigovernmental entitynot quite a nonprofit, many times treated as the ugly poor cousin of a city government. Hey, you have to fill the potholes first, right? No two libraries seem to be organized or funded quite the same. The only thing that they all share is their fundamental mission to bring information to the massesthey were doing it way before Internet search engines! In order to be relevant in the next 100 years, libraries need to ramp up their marketing moxie! Begin to think like a business, not be complacent in being the poor cousin.

Libraries are a special breed of businessyes, I used the b word. We can no longer sit back and wait for people to walk through the doors in awe of the wonderful services we can offer them. Whether you call them patrons, members, users, or customers, you need to know who they are, how you can retain the ones you have, and how to get more of them.

Beginning with the basics, you will be able to use the information covered to start building your library marketing skills and see your way to ramping up your moxie to set your library apart from its competition.

Whether you are a standalone library on the Great Plains, a multibranch system on the East Coast, a one-person marketing office, a multiperson office, or a library director that has marketing added to their lengthy job description, its time to set up a plan for your library, and along the way, have some fun and dont take it all too seriously. This book will show you how.

In doing the research to build my own moxie marketing skills, I have read hundreds of books, white papers, and websites and attended webinars and presentations on all things related to marketing. There are many extremely wonderful resources on each of the topics that I have brought together in this book. Many business-type books are meant to be read from start to finish, but I have organized this book in such a way that the busy marketing person can look at the contents for a specific area of concern and dive right in to find a starting point, a reminder, or a tip or tactic that they can put to use right away and not have to finish the book first. I wrote this book to help the library marketing person who just received an email from their director that the board of trustees wants to see a 10 percent increase in circulation by the end of the year, and it is that persons job to make that happen!

So get started, dive in, dont panic, and remember that being a moxie library marketer is all about experimentation and fun!

Branding is for cattle, touts the poster that hangs in my office. The term branding was adopted many years ago by public relations and marketing professionals to try to put a handle on a group of thoughts around external communications.

Just like there are differences between marketing and public relations, branding is not just about your logo. Sure, having an awesome logo helps, but to understand the term branding in its fullest context, go with this definition by marketing expert David Newman (2013): A brand is a promise of an experience. Period. So you need to make sure you and your staff know what you are promising before you can try to communicate it to others. Your brand is the way you communicate to your customers, members, patrons, staff, whatever you want to call them. It is the way your members or customers know that in every branch they go into in your system, they can expect the very same thing, like going into a national fast-food chain that is in every state in the United States.

One person cannot be a brand manager; this is up to every single person in the organization. I have run across libraries in the same systems that, because of the way they are managed, have very different brands. Is the first thing you see when you walk through the door a sign about the rules, or are you welcomed by a volunteer greeter asking if they can help you? Many have very active childrens areas with things to climb on and tactile experiences to sing about. Others have lines of puzzles and quiet cubbies for book reading. If you have a three-year-old that has been cooped up at home for days during a snowstorm, which promise would you head for? The problem arises when the mom and child come in expecting to blow off a little steam, playing inside the giant book mobile or spinning the letter whirligig, and a staff member gives them the look. You know the looksomewhere between the shushing look of the past with the condescending look of