thewikiman

RSS

Why patrons are like marathon runners, and librarians need to serve refreshments on the hoof…

26 Aug

Library marketing guru Terry Kendrick describes the modern world as everyone rushing from A to B with their head down, and marketers having the near impossible task of trying to divert them over to come and talk about product X for a while.

So for us as libraries to market successfully, we have to show these busy people how we, as a library, can get them to B faster or better – and we have to do it without slowing them down in the meantime.

Excuse me, can I have a minute of your time to tell you about the hyrdational properties of water..? No? (Flickr CC image by greghauenstein)

I’d extend the analogy to a marathon runner running past the refreshment area – at the moment libraries are standing behind (metaphorical) tables shouting about what orange juices they have and what vitamins these contain; what we should be doing is running alongside people with a tray, telling them that our orange juice will help them reach the finish line quicker. (This encapsulates marketing rules 1, 2 and 3 from the previous post: market the service, not the content; no one cares about the how; and and market what THEY value, continue to do what WE value.)

- thewikiman

{lang: 'en-GB'}

12 Comments

Posted in Marketing

Three simple marketing rules all libraries should live by…

25 Aug

… but which so few do!

Image via Stock Xchange

Market the service, not the content.
Telling people about content puts the onus on them think about how they can integrate that content into their lives; many people simply don’t have time to analyse what we’re offering in that way. We should be making it explicit how we can help them so they need no imagination to understand it – and that comes from marketing services. To paraphrase the awesome Sara Batts, Content is, Services do. Doing is more useful to people than being, so when you have a very limited time in which to appeal to people with limited attention span, market to them what you can do.
No one cares about the how!
Can’t stress this enough: libraries are seemingly process focused, but the the rest of the world is focused on results. When marketing a service we should concentrate on what people aspire to, not the tools which will get them there. A classic example is databases: we say things like “we subscribe to X databases which you can access via the library catalogue” or, even worse, we name them individually. We market the features; what people want to know about is the benefits. Like Mary Ellen Bates says, the way to market databases is to say ‘we provide you with information Google cannot find’.
Market what THEY value, but continue to do what WE value.
The SLA’s Alignment Project unearthed some fascinating truths about what we as libraries and librarians think are important, and what our patrons and potential patrons think are important. There are marked differences, I’d urge you to read about it for yourselves. (To sum up, users put the emphasis on value-driven attributes, we put it on functional attributes. This is, essentially, points 1 and 2 above, mixed together.) But the key thing is this – it doesn’t mean the stuff we value isn’t important, it just means that it isn’t as valued AS highly by other people. So we continue to DO all the important stuff we value, we just concentrate the marketing on promoting the stuff THEY value.
.

You don’t need to be a genius to do this stuff, or to have huge marketing budgets, or even loads of time. It’s just a case of reconfiguring our existing efforts to acknowledge some simple rules.

Any that you’d add?

- thewikiman

p.s There is a part two of sorts, for this post, here.

{lang: 'en-GB'}

38 Comments

Posted in Marketing

How do you get feedback from library users? (Or, Beating Survey Fatigue…)

12 Aug

Are you overwhelmed with ennui when asked to fill in yet another feedback survey?

John Kennerly just drew my attention on twitter, to an article about how students are getting survey fatigue. (The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education, you can read it here.)

I’m really interested in how to get feedback – not just from students in academic libraries, but from all patrons for all types of libraries. My interest has been piqued recently because of:

Terry Kendrick pointing out in a marketing workshop that “…it’s no good asking people what their needs are; they’ll just come up with some guff to help you with your survey!”
Think about when you were last asked about your needs. What was your main driver in answering – expressing those needs, or just making the question go away? Even those with the best of intentions may come with answers just to try and help the surveyor, rather than truly delving into themselves to try and think about what they need. Plus, needs are based partly on what you know is possible – people might not mention stuff because they don’t even know it’s something the library has any ability to fulfil.
Stephen Abram mentioning at SLA2011 how much better the focus groups he ran went when he gave everyone a $5 Starbucks card and told them to spend it and bring a coffee and muffin to the meeting
I can imagine a million and one purse-string holders saying “We can’t afford to spend $50 on a focus group!” But actually that’s a pretty good use of $50…
The quote from Henry Ford that resurfaces fairly often
On the Model T Ford: “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d've said a faster horse…”
A recent revelation at work that a survey we hadn’t had time to publicise got more respondents than the previous year when we’d gone all out
Could be a coincidence, of course. But maybe there’s something in there about the psychology of trying to elicit feedback?
.

These are all interesting points, I think. So what are you doing to ascertain what your patrons are thinking? Is there something more reliable than surveys? And if you’re asking them via social media, how did you find out what social media platforms they used in the first place…?

All comments gratefully received!

- thewikiman

{lang: 'en-GB'}

24 Comments

Posted in Library Marketing

The biggest and most effective change I’ve ever made to the way I organise my work-load…

08 Aug

… has been to create a separate and specific To-Do list, entitled “Things Other People Are Waiting On Me To Do“. It seems a really small thing but trust me on this, you have to try it!

CC image from Flickr (by Carissa GoodNCrazy), click to view original

I really can’t emphasise enough how useful this has been. I can’t even fully explain why – I think it’s something to do with how it really focuses the mind. I always feel more comfortable working on stuff that is more general, or is a new idea / experiment, or that is specifically for me, when I know that other people aren’t waiting on me for stuff. Also, it allows you to prioritise effectively in those moments when you know you have only 20 minutes before a meeting: yes you could check your emails, or you could work on that presentation you have to give next week – but if you look down your Things Other People Are Waiting On Me To Do list and see a nice 20-minute sized task to complete, it feels like a really productive use of your time, which frees you up to concentrate fully on your own stuff later.

I personally divide my list into People in Music and People in TFTV (the two departments I look after as an Academic Liaison Librarian), People in the Library (meaning the rest of the staff here in the Information Directorate) and Information Professional People (which is a catch-all term I use for stuff I do professionally like talks and presentations, the book etc). Obviously to some extent, everything we do at work is for other people – but having a separate to do list with, say, ‘provide list of titles for X’, ‘order books for Y’ and ‘get back to Z about whatever’ and those kind of specifics is a really effective way of helping organise my work-load. This doesn’t replace my general to-do list, it runs alongside it.

I add things to it as soon as they come in – it’s a way of making sure I stay aware of the need to email someone back about something, rather than it staying in my mind for a bit and then slipping off my radar, for example. I have my list in Evernote, but it would work in whatever format you like your to-do lists in.

Try it! Seriously, give it a go. I’ve converted a couple of colleagues here, and although I think they thought I was just rambling when I first told them about it, they’ve since told me how effective it’s been for them too…

- thewikiman

{lang: 'en-GB'}