Marketing the Library
Course
Marketing Plans [3:45]
Learn how to effectively structure a school library marketing plan, including how to set actionable goals and objectives to improve awareness of your library's offerings.
Goals and objectives are your road map on how you will be successful. They are the "what" and "how."
Let's explore this in more detail. A marketing goal is what you want to accomplish in terms of increasing awareness or use of the library. Do you want more participation in your lunch book club? Are you looking to collaborate with more teachers in your school? Perhaps you want to increase circulation of nonfiction materials in the library. The goals will be specific to your library and should tie into the larger goals of your school and district. But whatever they are, articulate them at the start.
The objectives will follow the goal and are the steps for how you accomplish each goal. In the example goal of increased use of nonfiction materials, your objectives might include featuring nonfiction in more places in the library's physical and digital spaces.
Make sure that your goals are achievable and measurable. For example, answering what percentage you want to increase nonfiction circulation by allows you to determine if you've met the goal at the end of the campaign.
The action plan is your "to do" List. It includes specific tasks and describes what, who, and how they will be done. It also discusses the resources needed to accomplish them. This is a key section to the marketing plan. As you continue watching the lessons in this workshop, you'll gain ideas for what types of actions will fit in here.
Remember to consider the costs. You can have some great goals and objectives, but the costs could make them prohibitive. For example, if you are working on marketing your nonfiction collection, it might include arranging for an author visit from a nonfiction author. If in it's an in-person visit, the costs will be high. Maybe you can arrange for a Skype session instead to keep costs down.
This brings us to the budget section of the marketing plan. This is a list of the cost of the marketing activities and resources you are describing in the plan. Remember to include the cost of staff time, printing and copying, and any other expense areas.
Once you have the goals and objectives, action items, and budget mapped out, write up an executive summary that provides an overview of the plan. This will go at the beginning of the document and helps the reader to gather a basic understanding of the plan as a whole. It can be used to present goals to stakeholders like teachers, administrators, parents, and students.
The summary will often include the following: Introduction to Library, Library Mission Statement, Marketing Goals and Objectives, Key Stakeholders, Summary of Recommended Strategies.
You can start creating your own marketing plan, including goals and objectives, action items, budget, and the executive summary, by using the planning template provided in the this lesson's activity.
A marketing plan helps you strategize and create an effective roadmap to market your library and measure its success over time. Learn more about effective goal setting by reading "How Smart Are Your S.M.A.R.T. Goals?" by Mary Frances Zilonis and Chris Swerling in the Resources below, then complete the Reflect & Practice activity.
Thinking about the particulars of your library, then use what you learned from the video and the Zilonis and Swerling article to fill out pages 3–5 in the Marketing Plan Template.
MLA Citation
Editorial Team, SLC. "Marketing the Library: A Marketing Plan for Your Library." School Library Connection, October 2018, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2174897?learningModuleId=2174884&topicCenterId=2247902.
Entry ID: 2174947
Additional Resources
About the Authors
Email: rmorris@schoollibraryconnection.com
Twitter: @rebeccajm87.
MLA Citation
Editorial Team, SLC. "Marketing the Library. Marketing Plans [3:45]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, October 2018, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2174897?learningModuleId=2174884&topicCenterId=2247902.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2174897?learningModuleId=2174884&topicCenterId=2247902
Entry ID: 2174897