Photo courtesy Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library

This week, I’ll be able to see the world’s largest bottle of catsup. (Ketchup? Catsup? Is there a difference?)

When I learned that I’d be speaking at Reaching Forward South in Collinsville, Illinois, I Googled the area. That’s how I discovered the city is home to a 170-foot water tower shaped like a catsup bottle that just happens to be on the National Registry of Historic Places. It’s even got its own website and fan club.

If you’re like me, you do some strategic planning when you go on a trip. You decide to rent a vehicle or research public transportation. You purchase airline or train tickets and book a hotel. You pick restaurants to sample and decide which tourist attractions you’ll visit.

Some people just land in a city and let fates carry them where they may. (No shade from me. You do you!) I prefer planning because I don’t want to risk seeing or experiencing the best the area has to offer.

A plan, on vacation or in the library, sets clear goals and outcomes. It ensures your time, money, and energy are spent on the most valuable things. It gives you direction and purpose.

Marketing for a library works best when the promotions are tied to a library’s overall strategic plan. But that’s not always as easy as it sounds.

What is the difference between a strategic plan and a marketing plan?

A strategic plan defines targets and objectives for the entire library organization, including facilities, human resources, reader services, youth services, outreach, and more.

A marketing plan outlines your initiatives to support your library’s strategic plan. It clearly defines the collection items, programs, and services you’ll promote, who you’ll target, and how you’ll target them to reach your library’s overall goals.

In a perfect world, every library would have a strategic plan with clearly defined objectives and goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely (SMART).

But…

If your library lacks a strategic plan, has a strategic plan that’s very vague without clear goals, or is in the middle of creating one (that can be a lengthy process), you may feel stuck and directionless. How do you know what you should be promoting?

What to do when you have very little direction

You can ask your library director or board of directors what they want to accomplish. Without a strategic plan as a guide, you must understand the director’s and the board’s goals.

Even basic statements like “We want to increase program attendance by 25 percent” or “We want to make sure every child has a library card” will guide your marketing.

If you don’t feel comfortable approaching senior leadership, ask your supervisor to step in. Stress the importance of a cohesive plan for moving forward in all areas of your library. This really is the cornerstone of your work.

Once you know the goals of your library, it’s time to create your marketing plan. 

Step 1: Define your marketing goals. 

Lay out exactly how you’ll help those overall library goals be reached.

For example, let’s say your library has a goal to partner with schools to ensure all third graders in your town are reading at grade level. Your marketing goal might be:

Increase the participation in our library’s 3rd-grade reading program by 25 percent within the next 12 months, as measured by the number of 3rd-grade students enrolled and actively engaging with the program materials and resources.

Step 2: Write down what you know about the community you serve.

Marketers call this a “situation analysis.” This will give you a starting point for your strategy. Ask yourself:

  • What does your typical cardholder do with their card?
  • Where do they live?
  • How do they view your competitors?
  • How does your library currently fulfill a unique position in your community?

Step 3: Create a list of all your tactics and assets. 

Write down all the channels you use to promote your library. This list should include every social media platform you use, every website your library owns, and every print publication you send out, plus emails, print collateral, influencers, in-person events, press releases, podcasts, and videos.

Step 4: Set goals for each tactic and asset. 

Let’s say one of your goals is to make sure job seekers in your community use career resources at the library. And let’s say you have a print newsletter that you send every quarter to all the residents of your community.

Look at the specific marketing goal you created in step one. Underneath that, you might write:

“In each issue of our newsletter, we will feature a cardholder who used our library’s services to advance their own career, such as by taking our GED course or using our online job resume builder. We’ll do at least one story on library work as a career. Every quarter, we’ll highlight a service or program that will help our cardholders reach their career goals.”

Step 5: Populate an editorial calendar for the next 12 months.   

Now it’s time to plan content topics and themes for each month that will work to reach your goals. Planning a calendar for a full year makes it easy to coordinate promotions across channels. And it will help your supervisor and coworkers to understand what you’ll be doing, when, and why.

You may end up moving things around as you go through the year. That’s okay!

Step 6:  Measure success and failure. 

Accurately document the results of every promotion you do. This will help you to adjust your strategy next year.

Sometimes you won’t have a clear understanding of what’s working and what’s not working until you see the actual results in numbers on a paper in front of your nose.

One final note of encouragement

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t reach all of your goals. Marketing is an experiment. Sometimes the stuff you do will work, sometimes it won’t. Don’t repeat the things that don’t work! Spend more energy on the things that do work.

P.S. You might also find this helpful

Branding for Your Library: Stand Out From the Crowd With Smart, Strategic Placement of Your Brand

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