Engaging your Community through Active Strategic Marketing: A practical guide for librarians and information professionals

Now more than ever, libraries must find ways to engage with their communities in order to demonstrate the value they create and deliver. Engaging your Community through Active Strategic Marketing is a comprehensive resource that provides an overview of best practice strategic marketing, with advice on how to implement effective marketing activities in libraries and information services with the best chance of success. It takes each element of the strategic marketing domain and outlines both current marketing best practice and its detailed application in the library and information sector. It includes a set of tools and techniques to help reflection and progress towards effective marketing. Whether it is raising awareness of resources, increasing library use or demonstrating value, this book will help libraries from all sectors achieve their goals, communicate their benefits and present a clear and consistent image. Coverage includes: strategic marketing planning understanding users and potential users identifying value and grouping users for marketing activity understanding stakeholder management to support marketing activity crafting messages identifying effective marketing channels digital marketing evaluating the response to marketing activity. Engaging your Community through Active Strategic Marketing is a must-read for library and information service directors and managers in all sectors. It will also be useful for all library and information professionals interested or involved in the strategic planning or marketing of library services and students of library and information science, particularly those taking library management or marketing modules.

Table of Contents:
Figures Tables Introduction 1. The need for a professional approach to engagement Defining engagement and strategic marketing Outline of this book 2. Strategic marketing planning for engagement Identifying planning goals and processes to achieve them The engagement story 3. Ambition: the basis for all activity Vision, mission and values How to write a statement of ambition for your library 4. Understanding users and potential users Defining the marketplace Understanding existing users Understanding and engaging potential users Profiling your potential library community Survey research Focus groups Researching user experience and satisfaction Understanding competition 5. Identifying value and segmentation Creating segment-specific value propositions for stakeholders Options for segmenting stakeholders Effective segmentation is not easy... Value propositions by segment 6. Managing stakeholder engagement Three elements of a stakeholder management programme Engaging employees 7. Making choices and creating engaging offers Priorities Engagement objectives Engagement strategies Creating offers for users, potential users and stakeholders The marketing mix Engagement and customer relationship management as a strategy Finalising engaging offers for specific segments Some other aspects of marketing strategy for engagement 8. Crafting engaging messages How often should users be contacted? Should library marketing communications be general or event driven? Options for a communications mix Communications strategies The return on marketing communications investment Do users and potential users respond to library communications? Marketing communications at different stages of the user life cycle Event-driven and segment-specific marketing communications messages Media kits Writing copy for marketing communications Promotional activity 9. Effective marketing channels for engaging messages Non-digital methods of marketing messages Traditional media In-library messaging 10. Digital channels and engagement The pivotal role of the library website Library blogging The major social media How social media platforms support libraries’ engagement activities Social media policies and guidelines Practical hints for writing engaging social media posts Digital support for engagement strategies 11. Evaluating the response to engagement activity Evaluating engagement outcomes from social media presence and participation Evaluating employee engagement Reporting evaluations and assessments 12. How to give marketing and engagement the best chance of success References Recommended reading Index

About the Author :
Terry Kendrick has over 30 years’ experience of delivering information and marketing training courses. Originally qualified as a librarian, Terry has run his own information and marketing training and consultancy company – Information Now Ltd – which was established in 1989. He specialises in strategic marketing planning facilitation and training, strategic risk management, management consultancy skills, internet search techniques and competitive intelligence. In addition to information activities Terry has in the past been Director of the MBA Programme at the University of East Anglia and Director of Executive Education at Leeds University Business School. In his freelance information and marketing activities Terry has worked on projects in over 20 countries. Terry is a CILIP Onsite trainer, presenting a number of tailored programmes for organisations. He has also written articles on marketing planning and is the author of Developing Strategic Marketing Plans That Really Work: A toolkit for public libraries (2006).