Fear not, my frustrated friends, for I am here to help. I have a few decades' worth of experience with libraries, technology, strategy, marketing, and communication. And I think I know the secret to avoiding the nobody-shows-up-at-the-program problem: Data.
But let’s back up.
Planning your program in reverse
I'll bet that most of you begin by thinking of a program idea, then set your date and plan everything, then you start to consider marketing, right? The secret is to work in the reverse order: First, look at marketing information, think of a program idea, then set your date and plan everything.
That might sound crazy, but hear me out. When you post on socials, use podcasts, make posters, and all that, you're really doing the "promotion" part of marketing, to build awareness and attract attendees. What you were never taught is that "marketing" involves much more than promotion. True marketing starts with getting to know your audience, understanding what they want and need, and then moves to deploying messages to tell them how the library can meet those needs. If you skip that part about studying the audience and its needs, then you're just guessing what people really want. And guessing isn't the best way to plan programs.
I believe strongly in two philosophies:
- Begin with the end in mind. Ask yourself, what should happen as a result of this program? That helps you plot the path from planning to success.
- Any data is better than no data. If your library doesn't have a marketing department to help feed it to you, just pick the low-hanging patron data yourself. Happily, there's a lot of it, and your director probably has a folder full already.
Library data sources for success
Here are some basic data sources and how they can help you create more-successful programs:
- An overview of cardholders. Ask for a list of cardholders from your ILS, sorted by basic demographics. How many children's cards are out there? How many cardholders over age 65? You need to know the make-up of the patron base to make sure you're planning a program that will have an audience.
- An overview of circulation stats. Are people borrowing historical books? Do teens still like graphic novels? Look at what's most popular to help attract a larger crowd. (Of course you can still offer activities for smaller, specialty audiences, but that presents a tougher promotional challenge.)
- Your library's strategic plan. Pull it out of a drawer or off the intranet and dig in. It's full of golden nuggets of data. It almost certainly contains an executive summary of all surveys, focus groups, and other research that was done to inform the final plan. That shows you what people want. For program ideas, also look at the plan's main goals. If your organization strives to raise local literacy rates, then perhaps more storytimes or school visits would help. If a goal involves getting tweens and teens more engaged, consider offering programs they need (such as certifications for babysitting or CPR) or classes they can lead (such as tech cafes, intergenerational meet-ups).
- Attendance stats from your last few years of programming. What's hot; what's not? Don't be afraid to give up less successful topics and pivot toward what works for your base. And if you don't keep attendance stats, by all means, start.
- Results from recent community surveys. Various organizations conduct surveys to see what residents like and dislike about their communities. Track down a couple recent ones. Check with municipalities, schools and universities, parks and environmental organizations, nonprofit membership organizations. Discover what people want and value in their lives. Gravitate toward those topics and you'll draw bigger audiences (especially if your timing and messaging are good). And doing your own informal survey can be as easy as writing a question on a whiteboard! (Survey caveat: Beware asking people what they're interested in. Interest does not equal attendance. Instead, ask people which topics or sessions they are most likely to actually participate in. Also ask for their most-available day and time.)
The actual promotion activity
Even when you're using proven topics, you still need to get the word out. So, once you've planned your class or craft or event, what's the best way to promote it?
Well, that depends on who you're promoting it to. You'll reach out differently to teens than you will to businesspeople. To determine the best way to reach your intended audience, look back at your data again. Surveys often ask a version of, "Where do you hear about the library's activities?" with multiple-choice answers like email, fliers, newsletter, Instagram, etc. This tells you what they read and scan online — and that reveals some of the best places for your promotional messages.
One of the most vital things for accidental library marketers to know is this: Sharing every message for every audience in every place is not the way to go. People get fatigued from the thousands of messages swirling around them every day. Ideally, you want to send promotions only to the group they apply to. (Email lists that are segmented by patron interest are powerful promotional tools.) That way, whenever people do get a message from you, it's usually something they're interested in. They won't consider your messages to be spam because they want to know what you're offering.
It comes down to this
All my advice can be distilled down to this:
- Begin with the end in mind by looking at basic patron data to make sure there is an audience for the program you want to plan.
- Use the same data to determine the best places to promote the program.
When you think ahead, make sure you have eager participants, and send your messages to spaces that the intended audience already looks, you're much more apt to draw a crowd to your program.
Kathy Dempsey wrote the popular how-to book "The Accidental Library Marketer" and founded her own marketing consultancy, Libraries Are Essential. She was the editor of Marketing Library Services newsletter for 30 years and the founding chair of the Library Marketing and Communications Conference, launched in 2015. In all endeavors, this subject matter expert strives to make marketing concepts more understandable and achievable.
Today, Dempsey is the director of continuing education for LibraryWorks, curating weekly webinars. She also gives her own presentations across North America, and she has a course available on Niche Academy (Library Marketing Made Easy). Find her on LinkedIn.
Outreach & Marketing is one of the nine programming competencies identified by ALA's National Impact of Library Public Programs Assessment (NILPPA).
This article is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services grant number RE-256725-OLS-24.
