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MARKETING LIBRARY SERVICES
Put Data Before Decisions
by Kathy Dempsey
| I firmly believe that anybody who decides on, plans, and executes programs, classes, and special events should study data before deciding what to offer, whom to offer it for, and when, where, and how to offer it. |
Library staffers make countless decisions every day, on a variety of topics. To make up their minds, they usually seek information. If your question is, “Should I buy this new title?” you should read reviews and check statistics to see how much the author’s other titles—and related ones—circulate. If deciding whether to renew a database license, look at usage stats and prices to determine ROI. If you’re in a university, check whether it’s requested or required by any professors or departments. If the question is, “Should I offer this particular program?” then determine how time-consuming it would be. See whether you have the physical or digital space for it, and see if you could do it at no cost. Often, more-expensive things (such as databases) require more data to support a decision. Is that part of why I don’t see program planners seeking out data very much? Many programs are free or inexpensive, so if they don’t draw a crowd, it costs the library just a few dollars, if anything. I read lots of online chatter from people who work as if programming is just hit or miss, and it’s OK if nobody shows up, because that happens to everyone. But it doesn’t have to be that way—and, really, it shouldn’t work like that. If you do a little homework before deciding what to plan, it can make a big impact on your event’s attendance and success.
Data-First Thinking
I firmly believe that anybody who decides on, plans, and executes programs, classes, and special events should study data before deciding what to offer, whom to offer it for, and when, where, and how to offer it. In library groups online, I constantly see staffers lamenting, “This event sounded so great! So, I worked to make it happen, but hardly anyone showed up.” The person then asks how others deal with the disappointment. Sometimes, they ask if the event could’ve been promoted differently. Rarely, however, do I see them asking if they chose the right event in the first place. In my marketing mindset, that’s one of the most important questions.
Who remembers that 1989 movie Field of Dreams? The star kept hearing a mysterious voice saying, “If you build it, he will come.” I feel like that happens a lot in program planning. “If we plan something that’s really fun/trendy/popular/unique, everyone will come.” Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily true.
The inconvenient truth is that something being fun or unique does not guarantee attendance. So many elements are involved in creating a successful program, and popularity of the topic is just one. Another is timing. Something might be very cool now, but by the time you plan, promote, and execute an event around it, people might be tired of it. Even if it’s still a hot topic, you might mistakenly schedule it for a time that doesn’t work for the audience. For instance, if you want to help local Girl Scouts get their sewing badge by having an event in your makerspace, then don’t hold it on the same night as a nearby cooking class, the monthly babysitting-certification session, or another event that competes for your audience.
When planning library programs, you don’t need to wrack your brain to think up new ones all the time. If you’re tracking and reviewing the right data, you can extrapolate a list of potential classes and events that your population will participate in and value. Data can reduce the guesswork.
Know the Who, What, When, Where, and Why
Successful event planning has a lot in common with the formula for successful promotion: You need to understand the who, what, when, where, and why/how early in the game. The trick to doing that is looking back at data before looking ahead to your event.
Whom Should You Create a Program For?
It’s smart to plan for a defined target audience instead of the general “everyone.” Don’t always fall back on your core audience-age segments (children, young adult, senior citizens, etc.). In addition, think of groups that have common interests: e.g., new parents, business owners, local sports coaches, first responders. Ask your colleagues who interact with users: Who is asking for specific classes or events? Look at feedback, suggestions, and requests from your service population.
Here’s a major tool people forget to consult—their strategic plans. Whatever your library’s overall goals are for the next few years, your programming should support them. It’s likely that at least one goal will be about attracting more cardholders from particular communities. To help with that, you can design classes or events that appeal to those groups, and, of course, targeted marketing messages are an integral part of the planning.
Strategic plans are rich documents to mine for ideas about whom to reach out to and what to offer them. They’re also useful to programmers and communicators for the research they contain. If you don’t have the time or tools to conduct your own studies on what your population wants, then use the already done, fairly recent research that’s behind your plan. This research often includes surveys (in-person and online), focus groups, personal interviews, and local-area studies and statistics. So, if you want to find out what certain demographics want from your library, sit down and dig into the appendixes of the plan, where all of the responses are. In the same fashion, keep your mission statement top of mind. It can be a very useful guide when deciding what sorts of events (and partners) are appropriate for your library to be associated with.
Pro tip: When you propose a program that directly supports your organizational mission and goals, you have a better chance of getting it approved and funded.
What Should the Program Be About?
When pondering your next program, don’t ask yourself, “What have I read about lately that I can build a program on?” or “What would be new for us?” Instead, rely on your data. Hopefully, you’ve been gathering some via the classic post-event survey question: “What other activities would you like to participate in at the library?” Definitely look back at attendance numbers for similar programs across the past few years to get a feel for what did well.
However, you can’t rely solely on responses from people who’ve already attended a program. Ideally, you want to attract new participants. So, again, go back to your strategic plan to see what topics were requested most often and by whom.
One useful aspect of the research that consultants or corporations complete as they embark on the strategic planning process is the demographic data. At the very least, surveys ask people to select an age range, an ethnic affiliation, and maybe a gender. These insights are golden. They allow you to pin down which audience segment wants what. For instance, parents might be asking for more tutoring or test-prep services for their children. College students might be hoping for extended hours during midterm exams. In a corporation, engineers might be requesting classes on how to pull useful reports from complex online sources. In each case, if enough people ask, that data points you to a program you could plan and a target audience to promote it to.
The strategic plan data might also include responses to gauge the popularity of specific current programs, collections, and open hours. This can guide various library departments in choosing what to do more or less of. Ascertaining what’s less useful for your users is also vital, because cutting down on that can open up time and resources to do more of what users do want.
In addition, ask your marketing department staffers for any data about audience needs and requests that they may have gleaned from their own communitywide surveys, focus groups, or partner meetings or any local school or government reports they read. Sometimes, the marketing staffers can help you gauge interest in something by using their analytics to see how many people opened an email promotion or engaged with a social media post on a topic.
Pro tip: Take an honest look at what didn’t draw a crowd and what people are not asking for. Check whether that data jibes with your own attendance records, post-event comments, or other evidence. Don’t spend time on events that aren’t useful or often requested.
When and Where Should a Program Take Place?
If the only thing you do when deciding on a date, time, and place is look at your own library calendar, then you’re missing vital data. Check other local calendars to see when your target audience has somewhere else to be. For instance, avoid having a class for business owners on the same night as the monthly Chamber of Commerce meeting.
Also, don’t be afraid to deviate from the norm. Maybe your location always hosts tutors for students between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If the service isn’t used a lot, consider trying a different time and/or place. Those hours might seem like obvious choices, but students who participate in sports and other after-school activities can’t make it then. Has anyone made comments or suggestions about it? (Do they have an opportunity to?) Look into switching one of your afternoons to an evening session or even a Sunday afternoon. Also, is your library convenient for students to get to? If not, can you partner with a YMCA or YWCA to have your tutors there, if that’s a popular, convenient location? Again, your marketing staff could have useful data.
Why and/or How Should an Event Happen?
Best practices indicate that it’s important to specify a why for every event you plan and for every piece of promotion you put out for it. This is the opposite of deciding what program to have based on what the planner feels is interesting, fun, or easy. Instead, choose what’s important to your service population. What is valuable enough to make them spend their time and effort participating in it? If it’s possible to offer it in some form, give it a try. If you can’t point to a specific, data-based reason to hold an event, then maybe you should skip it.
The Reality of Event Planning
I realize that some of you need to make choices based on what’s physically and fiscally possible in your organization. I don’t want you to feel guilty if you don’t have a dedicated staffer who can dig into all sorts of data every time you need a fresh event. In such situations, I suggest at least talking with the director—who should be hearing from board members—to ask about their professional priorities. Also, consider your mission statement. That will give you some indication of what to spend time on and what to put in a Maybe Later folder.
When people are calling for classes that are beyond your library’s capabilities, don’t give up. Look for partner organizations whose members are seeking something similar. By combining their data with yours, you may be able to narrow down the topic, the target audience, the location, and the time/place. Plus, you’ll potentially benefit from having extra staff, expertise, space, promotional help, and funding. No matter what events your library puts together, adding data to the mix at the beginning increases your chance of offering something that people will value and will be able to take advantage of.
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