An Introduction to Marketing

Marketing is something I’ve been thinking about a fair bit these days; marketing myself as a new professional, marketing information services to users and more. For some in the profession, marketing is misunderstood to mean crass manipulation or something that evil corporations engage in. I’ve learned about marketing through some practical experience, reading in the field (e.g. the chapter on marketing in The Portable MLIS is a good introduction), reading Seth Godin’s blog, and The ‘M’ Word:Marketing Libraries: A blog designed to bring the wonderful world of marketing to librarians. If we develop create services that few people use, then what are we really accomplishing?

Learning from other efforts in the field is another good way to learn about marketing. Back in January, I had the opportunity to benefit from a presentation by Janine Schmidt, the Trenholme Director of Libraries at McGill University, (her presentation slides are available in a CASLIS Occasional Paper, starting on page 39). The approach used here is instructive; we start by observing the information habits of the users, their perceptions of the Library, and what they want out of the Library. Only after this background research is set up can you proceed to thinking about branding tools, strategies and so forth. One interesting, and possibly unique, idea involves requiring casual staff to wear t-shirts. Trying to figure out who is an employee when many (or all?) of your casual employees look like students might be difficult, after all.

Another slide raises the idea of “house calls” – visiting departments to promote library services and showing users how we can make their lives easier and more productive. I’m sad to say that I can’t recall a single in-class presentation from a Librarian in any of my undergraduate or graduate classes – well, maybe once or twice in my whole seven years of study at university. Getting agreement from professors should not be that difficult. If we say something like, “Hi Professor Jones, I would like to present to your Economics 101 (or History or what ever it might be) class for 10 minutes on the first day of class. I want to show them how library services and staff can help them learn better, write better papers and earn better grades.,” I cannot see too many academics turning us down. Then you go to the class, give a good presentation (reviewing Presentation Zen might be helpful in that regard), bring business cards and wish everyone well.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: “Marketing Today’s Academic Library,” by Brian Matthews
2. An Introduction to A Curious View of the World
3. Welcome to the Library; a case study on orientation