Developing Strategic Marketing Plans That Really Work: A Toolkit for Public Libraries

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "Developing Strategic Marketing Plans That Really Work: A Toolkit for Public Libraries", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 5, pp. 425-427. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710750653

For any practitioner who follows the marketing literature, especially discussion about marketing in and for library and information services, it is interesting to see how, bit by bit, marketing concepts and techniques have been integrated into mainstream library thinking. Marketing started by being something from another discipline to lay claims to, something to pay lip‐service to, even something that everyone said they did already. As a result, there was a tone of awkward special pleading as writers argued that marketing was easy and something natural for librarians. Mercifully, this coyness has gone, even though, as Kendrick recognizes, there is still scepticism and complacency out there (or, probably no better, a zeal for faddish acceptance).

Marketing literature (the Kotlers and MacDonalds and the rest) will always be the port of call for anyone seriously wanting the wider view, but something really practical, and practically real, has been in short supply. Rowley's Information Management added a lot, above all by factoring in customer relationship management and, best of all perhaps, prices and pricing policy (because underlying all marketing is cost, above all if we think of libraries generating income). Kendrick (trainer for CILIP and lecturer at the University of East Anglia) shifts the debate further along in the right direction by providing a toolkit for public libraries. You only have to read Anne Goulding's recent study of public libraries in the 21st century to realise that leadership and motivation seems in short supply, that managers still tend to scratch the boil of their own self‐confidence: leadership and innovation and a hard‐nosed acceptance of risk are qualities much needed in successful marketing in any organization.

Rightly, Kendrick reminds us that marketing is not just advertising and promotion (even though he has a lot of sensible things to say about marketing communications, and, better still, advocacy – because the stakeholders are political masters as well as users in the community). In fact, he really does take a toolkit approach in the sense that he does not just offer a lot of practical actionable advice but he makes and explains the case well about what integrated marketing is for the library. In this he moves from cliché to fact and from theory to practice.

So what is in the book? A coherent framework of marketing for libraries, good things about market research (surveys and focus groups and so forth), the inevitable SWOT analysis but given a credible dynamic for applying in libraries (in the style of de Saez), some challenging ideas and techniques on market segmentation and user satisfaction (driving through the effective decision‐making), connections to objectives and bench‐marking (because libraries do have competitors from charity shops that sell more and more books to discount book prices in supermarkets), and being media and public relations savvy (it is harder than it looks).

For the busy manager, who may or may not know all this, the book is attractive, ready for use, with useful advice and checklists, and at last a credible link with objectives and decisions. Its focus on public libraries is good, since marketing advice is often diffuse when applied to all and every type of information service. Following what Demos and others have said about public libraries, there is an implicit wake‐up call in the book, even though it never gets polemic. It contains simply techniques (like user satisfaction surveys that feed through to priority‐making, competitive benchmarking on mainstream criteria like range of material, speed of delivery, and knowledgeable staff, and market segmentation analysis by category like product, service, price, and partnerships). One or two more advanced ideas, too, like weighted scoring for relative attractiveness. Templates are provided in an appendix allowing managers to adapt things for themselves.

Facet have published a sensible and topical book here that moves beyond the merely “déjà vu” because it is so practical and uncondescending. One of many in the field, of course, and managers can go to the literature for themselves, but Kendrick brings a practical trainer's eye to helping people get to the meat. Ideal for in‐house training and development work in the library itself. One case‐study helps to make it credible, but more of them along the way would have made it even better – “one swallow does not a summer make” – but good for all that and well worth buying.