Julie Edwards: Welcome everyone. I see some of you starting to join us. Thank you so much for
Julie Edwards: joining us this afternoon. We'll get started here in just about a minute, but I wanted to welcome everyone and let you know if you would like. You can hop over to the chat and say, Hi, let us know where you're from. We do publish the Chat Transcript on our blog with this many librarians in a room.
Julie Edwards: There's always great information that goes back and forth, and so you don't have to use the chat if you don't want to. But if you would like to hop over there and say, Hello! Please feel free to let us know where you're joining us from Pennsylvania. Coming in first today. Hello!
Julie Edwards: Hi, Wisconsin!
Julie Edwards: Hey? Canada! More Canadians! Hi, Wyoming! My old State. I worked in Fremont County.
Julie Edwards: Hi, Colorado, Illinois. Wow! Lots of people joining us. Hello, Massachusetts! Hey? Florida!
Julie Edwards: Trinidad and Tobago! Welcome welcome Hi! Utah! Hey! New Hampshire. hey! Connecticut, North Carolina.
Julie Edwards: hey! New Jersey, Indiana, so many people joining from all over. Welcome! Welcome! Thank you all for joining us. It is the top of the hour, and so we will go ahead and get started with this webinar.
Julie Edwards: My name is Julie Edwards. I'm a librarian and instructional designer with Niche Academy, and I would like to welcome you to this webinar on library marketing one. One.
Julie Edwards: before we get started. I'd like to briefly introduce niche Academy. We are an easy to use all in one learning platform to help libraries create and deliver effective training and measure learner success. Our platform is the perfect tool for libraries looking to increase your E resource usage move programming, including your story times online and deliver and track training for staff development.
Julie Edwards: If you're interested in finding out more about our platform chatting with a member of our team or hearing what colleagues in other libraries say, I will drop a link to our website in the chat. So you can check us out further.
Julie Edwards: We are recording this webinar and I will make the recording slides and Chat transcript available on our blog after the webinar. You'll all get an email directly from me when that's available. So check your emails in a couple days.
Julie Edwards: If you'd like you can turn on closed captioning at the bottom of your screen on zoom. Please continue to chat with each other in the chat box. There are a lot of people in the webinar today, though, up over 350 now. So if you have a question from Mark Aaron, please put that in the question and answer box.
Julie Edwards: It's not unusual for things to get lost in the chat. And so if you put them in the QA. Box. I'll do my best to moderate that at the end of the webinar.
Julie Edwards: This webinar series is part of our commitment to solving bigger problems together and providing continuing education in the library world. I'm so happy that you've joined us today, and I will drop a link to our previous webinars. I'm sorry our upcoming webinars into the chat box as well. I will also drop a link to Mark Aaron's previous webinars with us. He's done several. They're all fantastic.
Julie Edwards: and I'll provide you access with those in the chat box. So without further ado, our presenter today is Mark Aaron Polgar.
Julie Edwards: Mark Aaron is an academic librarian, information, literacy, instructor and coordinator of library outreach at the College of Staten Island City, University of New York, where they coordinate marketing and outreach activing campus community partnerships and assist in the assessment of library services and resources.
Julie Edwards: Currently, they're a Ph. D. Candidate in the graduate School of Education at the University of Buffalo, State, New University of New York. They're also the founder and editor in chief of the Open Access peer review, journal, marketing libraries, journal, and the author of 3 books, library signage and wayfinding design, library marketing, basics, and engaging diverse learners, teaching strategies for academic librarians. I am so thrilled to have Mark Aaron back, and I will turn the presentation over to them.
Mark Aaron Polger: Thank you, Julie, for a great great introduction, and thank you all for your time in choosing to attend this webinar for niche Academy. So this webinar is only gonna be about an hour. And it's really gonna be a quick introduction to library marketing. And it's based on my 2019 book library marketing basics published by Roman and Littlefield, with a beautiful, beautiful purple cover. Anyway, yeah.
Mark Aaron Polger: it's always nice to fight for a good cover so this is my contact information. And I'm just gonna give a really quick introduction to what I do and who I am. So here goes
Mark Aaron Polger: hopefully, you saw the agenda. So these are the agenda items. We have a lot of items. I'm going to try to go really quickly and swiftly and smoothly. I'm going to try to speak
Mark Aaron Polger: also, slowly, I want, I'm gonna be covering a lot of a lot of ground. So this is the agenda and a quick introduction. So my, you know, as Julie mentioned, my name is Mark Aaron Pulgar. I'm also, I'm also Canadian. So shout out to the Canadians who have decided to attend this niche Academy, Webinar, thank you. I am originally from Montreal, Canada.
Mark Aaron Polger: and I work at the City University of New York. and I'll talk a little bit about and that institution in a few moments. My job title is coordinator of library outreach. I promote library services to specific targeted groups. For many, many years my target audience were specifically first year students.
Mark Aaron Polger: But my my role has expanded. So I really focus on a variety of different target audiences
Mark Aaron Polger: and some of the things that I do is I help promote different library events. And they're worth credit. And that kind of credit is we call that clue credit, which is basically college credit for first year students. So that's that's why we call it clue. It has an acronym. But it's it's specifically first year credit. And we offer that across campus. And we also we, we develop different types of library events for for these first year students.
And we also promote these library events also for faculty. And we use social media specifically targeted to faculty and staff.
Mark Aaron Polger: and some social media platforms seem to attract students like Instagram. But other social media platforms are mostly targeted to the faculty and staff, and I just want to mention that what I'm going to be talking about in this particular webinar applies to both
Mark Aaron Polger: academic and public libraries. So I'm not excluding public libraries. I'm just introducing myself, that's all. In terms of promoting both physical and virtual exhibits that's primarily targeted to the community. We are a public institution. So that means we're open to the public. And we're also targeting faculty library tours are primarily targeted to first year students
Mark Aaron Polger: as well as incoming students and high school students. So we have specific target audiences. I'm really hoping the audio is good.
Mark Aaron Polger: We teach an information literacy course. And that's also it's open to everyone. But it's targeted primarily to first year students. And of course, we have fundraising initiatives that are targeted to alumni in the community, and then we have. We used to have a newsletter which is now a blog, and that is again targeted to faculty and staff, not students.
Mark Aaron Polger: And then, finally, I am a liaison or a subject librarian. My liaison responsibilities are psychology, and I am the primary. You know, Pr person, the communication person at the point of contact. The liaison I call it the bridge that connects the library to that specific academic department, and we primarily target a faculty and graduate students not so much undergraduate students.
Also. Lastly, I am my role. All involves both internal as well as external outreach external outreach to the community, to local area high schools, the public library and internally, my role as outreach librarian. Also. I'm I'm kind of a liaison to the office of it, of admissions and recruitment.
Mark Aaron Polger: the center for global engagement, which is our center for international students. So that that's kind of a sums up a little bit of my role and a little bit where I work. So I work at the call to Staten Island, which is one of the 25 campuses of the City University of New York. We are the largest public
Mark Aaron Polger: urban university in United States. Csi, which is the acronym for call to Staten Island. We are comprehensive. College. That means that we offer associates degrees all the way through doctoral degrees.
Mark Aaron Polger: and we are primarily a commuter campus, which means that we only have about one to 2 of residences, and we have we've had up to 13,000 students. The enrollment goes up and down over 248 campus. We have one library building that is, 30,000 square feet.
Mark Aaron Polger: with 14 full time library faculty and 10 adjuncts or part timers, and we have as up as up to 65 staff. That was probably before the pandemic. I think the the number has gone down a bit, and that would be 65 in total staff.
Mark Aaron Polger: And of course, I, as I mentioned, we teach an information literacy course in our department.
Mark Aaron Polger: And also J Julie, and and whoever's please interrupt me. If I'm going too fast, I wanna make sure that I'm not. And I wanna make sure that I'm succinct. But also, you know, not going too fast. So really II wanna be able to define true marketing in my own words. So marketing is all about connections.
Mark Aaron Polger: It's about developing relationships and connections between developing services resources. And I'm not going to use the word products really, but really focusing on the connection of services and resources that we have in the library with specific
Mark Aaron Polger: target audiences which are known as segments. And we? Wanna, it's all about making those kind of connections sort of like playing matchmaker. But what's important is that these connections are informed by market research, meaning that although we're all very well intentioned.
Mark Aaron Polger: our marketing decisions are informed by data whether it's qualitative or quantitative data, that data informs our decisions
Mark Aaron Polger: and those marketing decisions are informed. And they're strategic, based on data that we have received.
Mark Aaron Polger: And so in terms of like creating an event or creating promotional material, or whatever your marketing endeavor is, it should always be created, based on information and based on data that we've received in order to push that marketing, going forward
Mark Aaron Polger: so traditionally marketing in the traditional commercial sense, is informed by the 4 P's and the 4 P's are place.
Mark Aaron Polger: product, promotion and price. I'm gonna focus more on nonprofit marketing, which is more relating to services so as opposed to traditional marketing, which is based on products. I'm gonna focus on on the the nonprofit sector which II would argue, is more related to services marketing. So the marketing cycle which I got from I've learned a lot from my friend and colleague, Kathy Dempsey, who also wrote a book on on
Mark Aaron Polger: the the whole process of marketing. The marketing cycle is first
Mark Aaron Polger: conduct market research to learn about your community whether that's a survey, whether that are focus groups or a community needs assessment or whether that's interviews. You need to learn about your library community. And that's market research. Then.
Mark Aaron Polger: when you're informed with this, with this plethora of data, then you can actually go and start dividing your users into different groups known as segments and segments are the different user groups. I'm gonna I'm gonna kinda show you different kinds of segments both in a public and an academic library. I just wanna make sure that my audio is good.
Mark Aaron Polger: Once you've divided your users into segments, then you can identify those segments, and you can kind of engage in different marketing activities and endeavors and different practices.
The fun part is is all the different kinds of promotional activities. So you're promoting using different materials. You're promoting, using different campaigns, events.
Mark Aaron Polger: activities, messaging, sometimes paid advertisement. So that that's the fun part of marketing, all of all of the fun activities. Again the events, the materials, the promotions, the newsletters, the calendars the different types of activities that the big, you know, strategic kind of campaigns. So again, that's that, I would say, is the fun stuff.
Mark Aaron Polger: And then you want to make sure to follow up with different assessment tools that will measure how successful the particular marketing campaign is. So those are evaluation tools. And that's that's where you also want to follow up with surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, one on one semi-structured interviews, etc., to to kind of to kind of gain. Some understanding whether that marketing campaign has is, you know.
Mark Aaron Polger: is successful.
Mark Aaron Polger: and the reason why it's called a marketing cycle, is. It's you're starting all over again by by, you know, by conducting market research. So again, you know, market research, where you're kind of gleaning data. And you're and you're learning about your library community that happens both at the beginning and the end. So that's why it's cyclical.
Mark Aaron Polger: Okay?
Mark Aaron Polger: So services marketing, which is sort of what I think of as library marketing, marketing for nonprofits is unlike traditional marketing, which focuses on the 4 Ps services, marketing focuses on 7 P's, which are which more are product.
Mark Aaron Polger: price. place. promotion. people.
Mark Aaron Polger: physical evidence and process. So that should not should be 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
Mark Aaron Polger: So again, I just re repeating myself, services. Marketing is more expansive because it is more grounded in a nonprofit type of context, unlike product marketing, which is more connected to corporations. Because we're not. We're not really selling products. We're selling. We're it's not about selling. I'm I'm gonna use the word selling in a in a non, in a like a non-commercial sense.
Mark Aaron Polger: it's for us it's all about experiences and services. It's not really so much about products, even though we do. We do have products in the library. But it's not the same. It's it's it's a little bit different.
Mark Aaron Polger: So I've actually kind of coined. This, this, this infographic or this graphic, known as the marketing umbrella. So the marketing, umbrella marketing being the large concept, is really composed
Mark Aaron Polger: of different parts or different components, and very often library workers complete marketing with promotion publicity. Pr, but they're different. And I would say that the marketing umbrella is the overhanging larger concept, and all of the spokes of the umbrella would be underneath marketing, so that includes communications
Mark Aaron Polger: right? So that would include signage and brochures and posters and flyers and bookmarks, and the Newsletter, and the annual report. And that's communications. Then you have paid advertising. Most people know, that is, and then you have promotions, and that could be, you know, word of mouth. It could be social media. It could be a press release. It could be I. It also falls under signage. It could be
Mark Aaron Polger: any type of way of communicating information by raising the awareness of specific library services and resources. So that's promotions, which, again is, is a very, very broad broad category promotions is also known as Markom marketing communication. So usually, when you see the words markom or marketing communications that's usually aligned with the broad term of promotions.
Mark Aaron Polger: public relations, public relations. A is is cut, not that it's disappeared, but public relations, which is very much connected to publicity. I would say that they're kind of sort of like cousins. Public relations is how an organization communicates strategically by always providing a favorable image of their organization. So it's controlled communications
Mark Aaron Polger: very different than publicity. Publicity is just more organic, natural communications that happens right? So publicity would be, you know, if if a library appears in a newspaper, it it is it's mentioned, it's discussed. There is an article in, you know, and again in a newspaper or magazine about a library that's publicity. It's making people aware public relations is different because it's controlled, it's controlled by by a publicist.
Mark Aaron Polger: and it's controlled, and it always has to be showing a favorable image of that particular organization. So it's a little bit different than publicity
Mark Aaron Polger: outreach.
Mark Aaron Polger: I would define outreach as all about the relationships that you developed with different communities, both
Mark Aaron Polger: both inside and outside the community. So I'm I'm in an academic library. So the way that I conceptualize it is that I have internal outreach where I'm developing relationships within the campus, within the different departments. And the external outreach is, I'm developing partnerships and collaborations outside of campus. So if you're in a public library, you you might have that kind of internal out
internal external tension or connections. But II for me, because I work in an academic library. II clearly divide outreach in terms of internal and external.
Mark Aaron Polger: and then finally, advocacy, I would say, that's like being a cheerleader. It's how do you speak highly of your organization? I think all of us must be advocates. We must advocate
Mark Aaron Polger: for our roles as library workers and also advocate for libraries. So it's how how we how we speak about our profession, how we speak about libraries to other people. It's being the cheerleader, it's and it also is connected with an elevator pitch or an elevator speech. It's it's how you basically how you show off what you do, your profession, your professional life, and and also where you work.
Mark Aaron Polger: Okay? And that's all part of marketing the marketing iceberg principle.
Mark Aaron Polger: This is based on Ernest Hemingway's concept of the theory of omission which. And I'm going to just simplify it. Basically. And I'm saying basically a lot. I apologize. The marketing iceberg principle is that most of our marketing is invisible. The library user, our patrons
Mark Aaron Polger: only see the fun stuff they don't see.
Mark Aaron Polger: and they don't know about the strategic planning, the marketing plans, the strategic plan
Mark Aaron Polger: the policies, the market research.
Mark Aaron Polger: the the segmentation, the the most patrons they don't know, and they're not familiar with what happens behind the scenes. Most patrons or most library users. They just see the fun stuff right? The marketing is the fun. It's what we show, right? So in this particular visual, what I'm showing is that we see the the tip of an iceberg.
Mark Aaron Polger: But what's below? The water is tremendous amount of planning and strategy. That goes into our marketing activities, and that is known as the the marketing iceberg principle that again, we only see a tip.
Mark Aaron Polger: and what and what is visible is what most library users see in in a way that you know most of our work is is pretty much behind the scenes and invisible.
Mark Aaron Polger: so themes of true marketing. So here are the 4 types of components of what conceptualizes true marketing. True marketing has to involve marketing market research, which means studying your users. That's really really important. II have lots of examples that we that I've I've received from feedback where we do a lot of these different market like marketing activities.
Mark Aaron Polger: And we have no attendees. No one shows up. Why is that? Because we didn't conduct market research
Mark Aaron Polger: to examine and study our audience. We haven't figured out, you know. Do they even want that event? Do they want that program?
Mark Aaron Polger: And library workers think they? They think they think we know that. You know, they think they know what library users want.
Mark Aaron Polger: So it's like we were trying to predict
Mark Aaron Polger: our library users, behavior, feelings, experiences, preferences. But really we don't know. And we're potentially wasting time and energy by having a library event. Nobody shows up. Nobody even is, you know, is interested. And it's really because that missing piece
Mark Aaron Polger: which is so fundamental in the the marketing process is conduct market research. And however assessment tool you're going to use, whether it is a survey, whether it's, you know, a questionnaire that you mail out to people's homes, whether it's an online survey, whether it's a printed, printed questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, whether it's Mini questionnaires, whether it's focus groups. Conduct
Mark Aaron Polger: the research to learn about. You know your your audience, your community. Okay?
Mark Aaron Polger: Another thing, too. You can't market to everyone. It's impossible marketing should be selective. and your marketing is different to your different audiences. So that's known as market segmentation. My, and I think a lot of us, if we I've we're I've been at my at my school for 15 years, so I'm very aware of the different segments, and I'll show you that in a few moments. So if you've been at your institution, your public library, or your academic institution. If you've been there for a long time, you know your segments, but also, if you haven't, you have to be able to to learn about your segments and identify them.
Mark Aaron Polger: So your segments are the different user groups that use your library. Then, finally, you have to be able to create this operational document. Or I would say, like, A roadmap
Mark Aaron Polger: known as your marketing plan.
Mark Aaron Polger: And and II give webinars on marketing plans. They're super easy. Your marketing plan could be like, really basic and very broad. It can cover a year or 6 months. Or you can have a marketing plan for a specific event. Right? So, for example, let's say, for public libraries. In the summer you have a summer reading program.
Mark Aaron Polger: Yeah. You might want to have a marketing plan for your summer reading program but you also might. So that's something specific. But you can also have a marketing plan that's very broad, and that covers the entire calendar year, you know. So the marketing plan informs
Mark Aaron Polger: your assessment.
Mark Aaron Polger: the different evaluation tools that you're gonna use. But it informs your marketing in a very strategic, cohesive and consistent way, where you're just not marketing freely, you have guidelines. And this focuses on messaging.
Mark Aaron Polger: branding
Mark Aaron Polger: the types of communication tools that you're using a consistent visual. Again, as I mentioned, branding, where you have a consistent visual look and feel for your marketing activities and your your messaging.
Mark Aaron Polger: So the marketing plan is again more like an operational document that just strategically informs your marketing activities so that it's done in a structured, systematic cohesive and consistent way.
Mark Aaron Polger: Finally, the last thing.
Mark Aaron Polger: the fun stuff, the marketing activities. So those are all the materials that you create, the different promotional materials, whether you're creating bookmarks, pliers, annual reports and reports serve as both promotional and they serve as an advocacy type of material. Right? So annual reports have multiple purposes.
Mark Aaron Polger: Your website, your website is educational. It's informational. But it's also a marketing tool, right? So a lot of different materials, whether they are physical materials or whether they're digital material materials, serve with different purposes. So again, opening up our idea that
Mark Aaron Polger: the different materials that you create serve as both marketing pieces and they have marketing purposes, but they also have informational, educational, and and they also have a purpose for advocacy as well. So that includes materials, events. You're practicing that elevator speech also known as an elevator pitch
Mark Aaron Polger: which should be no more than 30 s developing a press release
Mark Aaron Polger: specific programming when you're implementing the programming as opposed to promoting it social media websites, signage as well. I forgot to mention signage. But signage is a very important marketing tool. It's also educational. It's also informational that signage has so many functions as well as finally as paid advertising. So I would say, that's the that's the fun stuff
Mark Aaron Polger: so very quickly. Market research that you have to be able to study your market, all of your users
Mark Aaron Polger: to understand their identity, their preferences, their characteristics, their needs, and their desires. And when I've mentioned that a lot of library marketing is upside down. It's because a lot of library workers do the marketing first.
Mark Aaron Polger: and then they ask for feedback after, and that's upside down. You need to. You need to be able to to get the feedback and get the data, whether it's qualitative or quantitative. You need to get that data first.
Mark Aaron Polger: and that would inform how you're gonna start connect conducting your marketing activities. And so that's why it's really important that the assessments has to be done both before before and after it has to be. It has to kind of sandwich your marketing activities, so we must send to your users first and then pursue marketing activities.
Mark Aaron Polger: And of course, our marketing decisions should be data driven very, very important. Okay, so here's some data sources. I've split them up into primary and secondary primary is what's in your library? Right? So that means the data that you glean from your library that would include focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, or surveys, you know.
Mark Aaron Polger: again, survey being the broad term. A questionnaire is a type of survey. I can go into this. I have. I've done webinars on different research methodologies, but a lot of people say surveys. Survey is the broad term, and a questionnaire is a type of survey participant observation as well as original research, like doing a case study of your particular library.
Mark Aaron Polger: Secondary source data is outside the library. So that would include census data, community survey data, my favorite
Mark Aaron Polger: pew pea W. Pew Research Center, which has so many freely available questionnaires with with data. And it's so amazing again, so just just Google Pew research, PEW. As well as looking at reference books which are a little bit outdated. So what I use is, I use census data.
Mark Aaron Polger: and I use the Acs, which is the American Community Survey, which comes out once a year.
Mark Aaron Polger: The census only comes out every 10 years. But in between. There's a lot of different census data sources that come like the A/C economic census every 5 years. Acs is every year. So there's a lot of different surveys that the census website sponsors. That provides data in between the 10 years of the census. And again, II can't
Mark Aaron Polger: be beyond recommend the Pew Research Center, which has so many amazing non-governmental data known as an Ngo. And they're they are a think tank. They're nonpartisan, nonpolitical. So they give you factual information about your community.
Mark Aaron Polger: There's also neighborhood data. So you can actually search the census website and plug in your Zip code to learn more about specific neighborhoods, because, you know, because communities are really different. I live. I live in New York City, and we have so many neighborhoods and so and they're all very, very, very different.
Mark Aaron Polger: And so the public libraries. This is, you know, an obvious thing. The public libraries have to reflect the neighborhood, and so, in a very diverse city like New York City. Each public library has their own identity, and that informs the different marketing activities that would be done for that specific community. Okay.
Mark Aaron Polger: so this is a swot analysis, which is a really wonderful self assessment technique that you can do in your library. And this is an example of a swap. So again, swat is SWO. 2 ot. Apologies.
strengths.
Mark Aaron Polger: weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is a self assessment method, and this is just one example to do a swat analysis for reference services in a public library. It's really easy. You just basically split into the S.
Mark Aaron Polger: WOT. And here are some examples, again, restraints in a public library providing high quality, reliable information, teaching at the reference desk
Mark Aaron Polger: offered in different modalities, teaching users how to avoid plagiarism. And again, library users won't waste your time finding, you know, garbage information, and also especially both in a public or academic library, is that we're really empowering users by teaching them both information and media literacy. Right? So again, it's really about empowerment. The weaknesses
Mark Aaron Polger: budget cuts a decline in general reference questions, a lack of resources, a lack of money, a lack of support, and a lot of library workers might be frustrated with sitting at the reference desk, and not getting the same kinds of reference questions that we might have received, let's say, 20 years ago, some of the opportunities, internal and external partnerships. So whether you're in an academic or a public library.
Mark Aaron Polger: Partnerships are always an amazing opportunity. I've given the example here for an academic library, internal partnerships with campus departments, academic departments. But again, if you're in a public library, you can also have partnerships with the community centers. I was thinking. Day cares elementary schools, high schools. There are so many different opportunities in a public library to create these partnerships and opportunities, and this would help
Mark Aaron Polger: strengthen the importance of reference to the reference desk service at both a public library as well as an academic library. So again, I I've divided up into both internal and external partnerships. Finally, threats.
That would be, you know, that's kind of obvious Google.
Mark Aaron Polger: Wikipedia, Youtube, Facebook.
Mark Aaron Polger: Netflix. Twitter or X
Mark Aaron Polger: Amazon, you know. And then, of course, fake news. That's that's a threat. So I I've given examples of
Mark Aaron Polger: of of this swot analysis that would apply to both a public and an academic library, because they're slightly different. But I think that reference services is something that both public and academic libraries share in terms of of kind, of doing a reflection and and doing this really simple assessment, this self-assessment of of a swot analysis. Okay?
Mark Aaron Polger: So I'm just gonna briefly talk about different different sources of market research data. So when you're conducting market research, and you're trying to get data and you wanna go beyond your library, you can go to the census. So again, census every 10 years. The Acs is every year. So that means the census website has much a lot of data beyond the census.
Mark Aaron Polger: So again, the Acs is an annual survey. So it's it's a portion of the population of the United States. And there was also the Us. Census also administers 130 other surveys. So it's again, it's free. And it's definitely recommended because it will inform you about your specific community.
Mark Aaron Polger: Pew Research Center, as I mentioned, Pew Research Center is nonprofit, nonpartisan, non ideological. And it is an Ngo. It's a non-governmental organization that conducts, surveys and it publishes the results for free it publishes, it conducts research and 9 main areas, Us. Politics and policy, journalism and media
Mark Aaron Polger: Internet and technology, science and society, religion and public life, Hispanic trends, global attitudes and trends, social and demographic trends and research methodology, so especially, specifically social and demographic trends. That will be very helpful for your public library highly recommend pew
Mark Aaron Polger: Nielsen. So Nielsen media, this, this analyzes television audience data as well as consumer data collection for in the areas of food podcasting sports finances and innovation. And Nielsen. I think that some parts of Nielsen are subscription based, and some are free. So I'm just letting you know that Nielsen Media, some of the information's free. Some of it isn't.
Mark Aaron Polger: Finally, the A. NES. The American national election studies, which are national surveys that are distributed to us voters, both before and after each Presidential election it was founded in 1,977, and it's coordinated by Stanford University and the University of Michigan. So again, the reason why I'm showing you this is that it provides
Mark Aaron Polger: freely available data, that is public opinion, and it focuses on public opinion voting as well as voter participation and voter behavior. And that would inform your marketing activities because it reflects the you know, more demographic demographic information about your community.
Mark Aaron Polger: The Gss. Which is the general Social Survey is founded by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Center in 1972, and it really focuses on societal change. And again, the information is freely available, and it really relates to information relating to demographics. So I again, I wanna emphasize that demographic data is what you're really seeking in in both a public and an academic library.
Mark Aaron Polger: So because you really wanna look at the different characteristics of the users that you're serving. So I always think when I'm thinking about segmentation, which I'm gonna come to that very, very soon.
Mark Aaron Polger: I'm thinking mostly on on demographic segmentation. There are different kinds of segmentation. I'm going to go to that soon. But again, demographic segmentation is for me the easiest. My background is sociology. So I'm interested in in in the demographics.
Mark Aaron Polger: Gallup, Gallup polls. So again, the Gallup website is partly free, and Gallup is a research consultancy. So there are Gallup, public opinion polls and politics and social and economic issues. And there's also the Us. Daily, political and economic survey. And some of the of the information from the Gallup website is, is not free. There's world polls as as well as us daily polls.
Mark Aaron Polger: And so there's a variety of of content and a lot of rich information on the Gallup website. But I just as a as a just as an Fyi some of the information is free and some of it is behind a paywall or subscription. So they're also Gallup. Public sector reports.
Mark Aaron Polger: Specifically, the world happiness report. The Gallup. Global emotions go. The Gallup global Findex databases, American views. The Us. Healthcare cost crisis, creativity and learning, 5 conditions, assessment, forging pathways to purposeful work
Mark Aaron Polger: and facing the future. Us. Uk and Canadians call for unit. So those are different types of reports that collect both qualitative and quantitative data that would help inform you on making strategic marketing decisions for your specific communities.
Mark Aaron Polger: Okay, now, we're gonna come to market segmentation. I'm doing well on time. Yay, so you can't market to everyone. Your marketing cannot be blanketed to everyone. Right years ago, years ago, my my chief librarian asked me to to do the marketing for all the databases. You can't do that if your library has hundreds and hundreds of databases. You can't
Mark Aaron Polger: promote all of your databases because you have to focus on being selective, and you have to focus on which databases need promoting.
Mark Aaron Polger: and to which target audience, right? So always think about the different user groups that you're serving.
Mark Aaron Polger: And your users are different. They have different needs. And so I'm going to show you both examples. There that's called a segmentation tree.
Mark Aaron Polger: where you're splitting your users into different segments or different pieces. And I'm gonna show you an example of the segments in both a public library and the segments and an academic library. You have to split them up because, everyone is different, and your messaging
Mark Aaron Polger: the materials that you use, your promotional materials. The way that you speak.
Mark Aaron Polger: your communication strategies and your communication practices need to be tailored
Mark Aaron Polger: to that specific audience. My example as an academic librarian, I have different marketing to undergraduate students, graduate students first year students and faculty as well as alumni
Mark Aaron Polger: and the community I mean, everyone's different. So not only do I wear different hats.
Mark Aaron Polger: I say different things. I explain different things. I use different language. And it's just because I have to be very mindful that I'm serving different target audiences.
Mark Aaron Polger: Now, I wanna just mention if for those of you who have an interest in ux. Ux is also known as user experience, user experience. They use the word persona persona is similar to a segment. I would say that as a segment is more broad and a persona is more specific, but they are similar. A persona which is often used like in in user experience. Design
Mark Aaron Polger: is a fictional representation of a person, whereas a segment is a broad group of people. So here are the possible segments in an academic library. And again, there's there's so many. This is just a broad, you know, faculty, whether it's full-time faculty adjunct faculty staff
Mark Aaron Polger: undergraduate students and even undergraduate students. There's many segments of undergraduate students, international students, students with disabilities, graduate students, alumni community. Even within those very broad segments. There's even more segments that go beyond the these very broad segments.
Mark Aaron Polger: Now, in a public library we've got people, or who are unhoused or home insecure. You have library trustees, donors, staff parents, guardians, teachers, babies, toddlers, children, preteens, teenagers, seniors. We've I mean, II didn't even list like
Mark Aaron Polger: college students, even college students use the public library. So there are a lot of different segments, and I'm sure that I've missed segments. But even under those different broad segments, or even sub categories of segments. So that means that your marketing needs to change and be a little bit
Mark Aaron Polger: to tweaked or adapted according to the needs, wants, and desires of those specific target audiences. I'm doing good. I have 20 min left. I'm doing good on time.
Mark Aaron Polger: Here are the different types of segments. So again, my favorite demographic segments that relates to really kind of understanding the characteristics of your users based on age, gender, identity, population, sexuality, occupation, race ethnicity, or education level. But you have other types of segments. There are geographic segments, psychographic, behavioral, generational.
Mark Aaron Polger: and cultural. So that means that your your marketing activities. You need to be mindful of the complexity of the different types of segments in your library. But I guess my favorite. And what a lot of people they really focus on number one, which is demographic segmentation.
Mark Aaron Polger: Now, here's some fun examples of marketing activities. This is the fun stuff. So creating events which I'm responsible. So I'm responsible for working with my chief librarian in creating the event, but also promoting it. So I am more like the promotion person.
Mark Aaron Polger: And so the event is created by by a group of people, and that also includes exhibits whether they're physical exhibits or virtual exhibits.
Mark Aaron Polger: It's as the promotion person we're we're doing the planning. So again, we're planning, you know. You know, a month or a few months.
Mark Aaron Polger: and we're the type of event is informed by the market research that we have gleaned from our users. So that means that the event
Mark Aaron Polger: that we are are are creating and implementing and delivering and promoting is based on what our users want us to create. We're not just creating the event because we we want to. It's been informed, communications that relates to calendars, newsletters, the news blog websites, brochures, flyers, signage, whether it's physical signage, whether it's digital signage.
email marketing, which we often call email blast. But it's email marketing. So that's all the communications, and there's much more. But communications, is it? It also is relates to promotions, raising awareness, raising, visibility.
Mark Aaron Polger: warm word of mouth marketing that relates to you know, the elevator pitch
Mark Aaron Polger: speaking those one on one. Conversations
Mark Aaron Polger: very, very powerful. Press releases annual reports. fundraising materials. friends of the library.
Mark Aaron Polger: or you know. So we, I'm in an academic library. We have friends of the college, and we have friends of the library. So again, you know, it's it's it's clearly different and paid advertisements. Academic libraries don't typically engage in paid advertisements. My understanding is public libraries do that more. But that's also part of marketing, library, tours.
Mark Aaron Polger: library, orientations, workshops, as well as information, literacy, instruction, and finally in service where we leave the library, and I will go. You know I will go outside the library and make visits outside the library that's in service, and that all also can comprise both internal and external outreach.
Mark Aaron Polger: Okay, so, wrapping up. I can't believe I finished on time because I was rushing
Mark Aaron Polger: so we will definitely have time for questions, because normally I go on and on and on and on, and run out of time. And that's that's a problem of mine. So I wanted to go swiftly, not too quickly, but at least not be rushed. So I'm really really glad that I'm kind of concluding and finishing on time.
Mark Aaron Polger: Marketing is about making connections. Marketing is not a bad word.
Mark Aaron Polger: A lot of library workers think that marketing is a bad word. It's not about money, it's not about products. It's not about selling.
Mark Aaron Polger: It's about playing a matchmaker making connections between our wonderful assortment of services, resources, and all the things that make up
Mark Aaron Polger: our physical facility and everything that's on our website, right? So the website is our digital home and our physical facility has a lot of wonderful physical touch points the furniture, the service desks.
Mark Aaron Polger: the signs, the programming, the chairs.
Mark Aaron Polger: the Internet, the Wi-fi, the computers, the books. Obviously the books. So marketing is about making those connections between products and services with specific targeted groups. And it's all about kind of meeting them where they're at and making those again matchmaking right? Making those connections.
Mark Aaron Polger: Your marketing activities should always be informed by market research not to be confused with marketing, research, marketing, market marketing. Research is research about marketing.
Mark Aaron Polger: Your marketing should be informed by market research doing research on your users.
Mark Aaron Polger: Your users are different. They have different needs, desires, expectations, wants.
Mark Aaron Polger: different preferences, different characteristics. Your marketing needs to be tailored and specific.
Mark Aaron Polger: You can't market to. Everyone
Mark Aaron Polger: always start with market research before you, you actually plan your marketing activities, which I call the fun stuff. And as I've given the example, try to use both primary data that's in your library and secondary external data, such as the census and different community surveys, different regional surveys.
Mark Aaron Polger: statistics
Mark Aaron Polger: the Acs. The American Community survey pew, right? Gallup polls.
Mark Aaron Polger: Nielsen ratings. There's a lot of different, freely available data sources that provide mostly quantitative. But you can also get a lot of wonderful qualitative data by interviewing your users right and always incentivize like, give them an incentive. If you have funding, give them an incentive. We have pens.
Mark Aaron Polger: Our students love pens.
Mark Aaron Polger: no books.
Mark Aaron Polger: chocolate candy highlighters, you know. There's a little bit
Mark Aaron Polger: little mini staplers. So it just depends. Right? So ask
Mark Aaron Polger: ask library users what they want. What do you think? Library users at your library ask for? They ask for a pen, right? You know, if you have a lot of money. Give them an Amazon gift card, you know. Give them a gift card. You know we're we're we're just urged to give them food, but you know sometimes, if they do a a survey, we might give them chocolate like little chocolate that we got from Costco a little kinda like kinda like Halloween Candy.
Mark Aaron Polger: Your data should inform your marketing decisions and the marketing cycle involves assessment
Mark Aaron Polger: before and after marketing activities. That's why it's called the marketing cycle.
Mark Aaron Polger: So a lot of the things that I'm sharing with you today
Mark Aaron Polger: can be found in my book, library Marketing Basics, which was published in 2019 before the pandemic.
Mark Aaron Polger: I am working on another book where I'm looking at online library marketing, post pandemics. So my library marketing basics, which is on Amazon.
Mark Aaron Polger: it's published by Roman and Littlefield. It was published in 2,019 before the pandemic. But I am working on on. I have a book contract to work on a book
Mark Aaron Polger: post pandemic. So
Mark Aaron Polger: I'd like to thank you for your time. I know that I saw 525 attendees, which is amazing like, really, really, amazing, specifically, just take a picture of that. That's pretty amazing to see the number of attendees.
Mark Aaron Polger: I'd like to thank you for for your time and thank you for for attending at today's webinar. If there are any questions, I'm just gonna look in the QA. Looks like, there are 19 questions. But the amazing thing is, I finished early. So I'm hopefully, Julie will be very happy.
Julie Edwards: Yeah, there's so many great questions. Thanks. I'm I'm happy. I finished on them, because usually III run out of time. So okay, I'm gonna just go through the questions. If that I've I've organized some of them so that we're getting a lot of the same type of questions. And I do wanna remind everyone that first of all, Mark Aaron, you're getting a lot of thank yous and happy people in the comments
Julie Edwards: for all of you who have attended. I will be sending the recording slides and the chat and audio transcripts in a few days. So look out for those. As for questions, let's get through as many as we can. We're getting many questions about your best tips or top tips for conducting market research like if you had to narrow it down. What
Julie Edwards: what are your top successes. Where should people start first?
Mark Aaron Polger: Okay, okay, so when you're okay, I'll just when you do qualitative research.
Mark Aaron Polger: you don't need a huge sample. So you don't need hundreds of people. Right? So again, especially when you think about Ux, user experience, like, I think that having, you know, a focus group or individual interviews of like 5 people like 5 people will will give you data saturation. You'll get an idea. So especially if you're doing
Mark Aaron Polger: qualitative research, asking open ended questions that always start with you know who, what, where, when, why, or how, and not being obsessed with having a large sample. Now, of course, for a survey when you're doing like a questionnaire. And you're collecting quantitative data. This is my recommendation.
Mark Aaron Polger: Do not give an online survey because they will not complete it right? If you give them a link. they're going to lose it, and they're not going to complete it.
Mark Aaron Polger: Have a survey, and this is my recommendation, have a survey slash questionnaire on paper.
Mark Aaron Polger: Do mini ones with only 3 questions. So, in other words, at my library we have, let's say.
Mark Aaron Polger: 10 different kinds of questionnaires. Each questionnaire only has, like 3 questions. So nobody is gonna like fall asleep, or the, you know, cause we want them to complete the questionnaire. So let's say each questionnaire has 3 or 4 questions.
Mark Aaron Polger: so have many questionnaires with 3 or 4 questions, have them on paper.
Mark Aaron Polger: enter them on a database. So you get the data electronically. Do not give it a web-based questionnaire. They're not going to complete it. And that's just again. That's just my own personal opinion, my own professional opinions, my experience right? And ask
Mark Aaron Polger: like, ask like, you want to have a mix of qualitative in your focus groups and interviews, and maybe like quantitative
Mark Aaron Polger: on, on, on your questionnaires. So those are couple of things, you know. Don't don't ask so many questions. I would say, be consistent in always conducting assessment. Don't just do it once a year. Always do assessment and do different kinds of assessments. So have you know usability studies for your for your website card sorting for your website.
Mark Aaron Polger: having observational research. I don't mean like observing your users in a creepy way, but you know, just see, you know, in in a very casual way, how do your users
Mark Aaron Polger: navigate through your library?
Mark Aaron Polger: But that's in, for that's very important, because that will inform you know. that will inform your science that will inform a lot of the ways that people navigate through the building.
Mark Aaron Polger: If you have, if you have, if you have reference which a lot of us have reference, whether you have online reference, text reference, telephone reference in person reference.
Mark Aaron Polger: analyze the questions.
Mark Aaron Polger: what are people asking you if they keep on asking you the same question.
Mark Aaron Polger: It means that you should create an FAQ. If if you have an FAQ, most library websites have fa ques. So you know again, the data that you get if somebody keeps on asking that, you know the same question over and over.
Mark Aaron Polger: make a sign.
Mark Aaron Polger: Clearly, there's there's like there's a gap in knowledge. Make a sign, add it to your FAQ. Right? So, in other words.
Mark Aaron Polger: be very mindful of the data that you do get a lot of a lot of libraries, both public libraries and academic libraries are obsessed with getting data. But what's really important is you have to use that data, use that data
Mark Aaron Polger: for a reason. Right? So for example, we analyze our chat transcripts.
Mark Aaron Polger: and that helps us develop our FAQ, right? So we use spring chair right? And we belong to a consortium for our our online reference. And I'm giving. I want to give a practical example that
Mark Aaron Polger: we look at the questions and that populates our FAQ. Page. So I mean, I know that sounds like common sense. But I think it's important that we want to be very mindful of. You know. What are people asking at the desk?
Mark Aaron Polger: Right? And that would also help us in creating signs? We don't wanna just create like random signs. Right? Cause? Then you have hundreds and hundreds of signs. And then that creates a context of like of disruption and noise when people come to library, and they're overwhelmed by signs, which is, which is, you know, really create. I wrote a book I wrote a book on library signage. And you know what's really important, is there? There hadn't been
there hadn't been any books on library signage since 1976, so I'm really glad that II kind of filled in the gap. But what's really important is that you know we we love to create signs, but a lot of our signs. You know. They're not friendly. They're not, you know. They're passive, aggressive. They're sarcastic. They're punitive.
Mark Aaron Polger: scare library users. How they feel about that sign. How do they feel? What are their preferences? What is going on in their mind when they are reading that sign?
Mark Aaron Polger: Great? So so again, always ask your users, because that will inform you to create a welcoming environment that is pleasant and I and I hate to use the O over, use the term user friendly. But you know, a user experience of, you know, pleasant and welcoming and psychologically not anxiety producing. If you have hundreds of signs, you're gonna get the the Li library users. Your patrons are gonna feel anxious.
Mark Aaron Polger: They're gonna feel that the library is suspicious of them. We're distrustful.
Mark Aaron Polger: We don't want to be distrustful. We don't want to be mean, spirited. We want to be welcoming and friendly. so I hope I've kind of answered your the question. I mean, I hope I've provided with some summit, some practical advice.
Julie Edwards: Julie, have II hope I have. Yes, great! Thank you.
Julie Edwards: People are asking, How do you avoid echo chambers, either because the same people are showing up and responding, or because you can't get enough people to respond to your focus groups or surveys
Julie Edwards: any tips there.
Mark Aaron Polger: II think so. II mean, as I mentioned, I'm in academic library. So it's it's hard. It's hard when you have the same people always respond. II mean, I don't know if I have a solution to that, but I know that for for us we just try to be creative by try to go to different parts of of campus that I mean, I I'm in academic library, so, you know, like, so to get out of the library to try to reach
Mark Aaron Polger: different users who may not use a library very much so we're we're trying to to capture, you know, you know, because a non user, a non user is a segment.
Mark Aaron Polger: Right? So even though you know, they're they're considered a non-user, you know, they might. They might convert to being a user. But that's a segment that's a segment. So I don't know if I have the definitive answer. But I think it's just trying to be creative to try to tap into, maybe going to like so for in a public library, you know you you might wanna go to the Mall. I I'm J. I'm just throwing that out there. You might wanna go to the, to the closest shopping center or mall
Mark Aaron Polger: near your library to to capture users who may not use the library, or may use library very, very little, but you'd be able to get data from them right? So again, it's just, it's just an example. Go going to, you know, a community center going to a a daycare, a public school somewhere that is somewhat connected to libraries, right?
Mark Aaron Polger: And maybe tapping into a a potential target audience that may not use a library. But they there's potential that they may use a library, and you may be able, you may be able to get both qualitative and quantitative data from them, and I don't know if I've answering the question. But I'm trying to be creative.
Julie Edwards: No, that's great. Thank you.
Julie Edwards: let's see, there are some questions about how do you know whether your marketing has worked? What do you do to assess it?
Mark Aaron Polger: You you, you conduct evaluation, you do evaluative types of assessments after the marketing. So I had mentioned that assessment has to be done before and after. So the assessment before informs
Mark Aaron Polger: what type of marketing campaign your like, what your marketing campaign will look like. But that's based on assessment before. So really, the decision makers are not library staff. It's your users, I would argue. It's your users who push your marketing decisions when your campaign is finished right? Because a marketing campaign always has a beginning and an end. You, you wanna be able to
Mark Aaron Polger: create those again, creating new new interview protocols and new surveys or or questionnaires and new focus groups to measure how the the fe, the efficacy, and how successful or not successful your marketing campaign was after the marketing campaign ends.
Mark Aaron Polger: So you'd you'd want to be able to create new types of assessments after the marketing
Mark Aaron Polger: campaign.
Julie Edwards: That's why it's called. That's why it's called a marketing cycle. Love it, love it.
Julie Edwards: that brings us right up against the hour. So Mark Aaron, thank you. Please. Email me, please. Yeah. If anyone has any questions, any follow up. I'm excellent with email. I'm so good with email, very responsive. Email, me, Mark Aaron dot Polger, 87@login.cuny, cuny.edu, I'm really really good with email. My website is right there. It's Marker and polger.com.
And thank you so much, Julie, for this opportunity to have people come to listen to me. Talk about library marketing 101. Thank you so very much.
Julie Edwards: Thank you so much, and thank you all for attending. There are a lot of happy people in the chat. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week wonderful! Next few weeks we don't have a webinar next week. We're celebrating the, I think we're many libraries are off next week. And so please join us for the the next webinar. You can check it out on our blog niche Academy. Blog. Thanks again, everybody, and thank you. Mark Aaron.