Dee Dee Rogers, RRT Chair, welcomes attendees
with speaker Sara Laughlin (center) and
RRT Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect Linda Evans (right).

Lynn Hambric presents the 2003 Outstanding Texas Reference Source Award for
Toxic Plants of Texas: Integrated Management Strategies to Prevent Livestock Losses
to Dr. John Reagor, to whom the book was dedicated.

Linda Evans, RRT Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect,
introduces speaker Sara Laughlin (right)

Sara Laughlin, Sara Laughlin & Associates, Inc.,
presents her tips on marketing reference services.

Summary notes:

Identify a marketing challenge in your library: a target market, an underutilized service or a potential new service.

Four Ps of Marketing:

• Product (programs and services that the library provides for its customers)
• Price (what it costs to produce the library's products and any user fees that are assessed)
• Place (how products and customers are connected; distribution channels)
• Promotion (how the library communicates with its customers, relating details on how customer needs have been identified and what responses have been developed to meet those needs)

Talk to our customers (environmental scan). What is going on in our customers lives (external environment)?

Marketing Audit Step 1:

• Step 1: Review your mission
  • Who?
  • Gets what?
  • For what purpose? [Value]
• Step 2: Review your current audience
  • How many are there?
  • How many are currently your customers? [Market share]
  • What benefits (outcomes) are they receiving?
  • How satisfied are they?

Marketing Audit Step 2:

• Step 1: What product or service do you have to offer?
• Step 2: Review your current product/service results
  • Inputs
  • Outputs
  • Outcomes (important)
• Step 3: Identify gaps for improvement

Marketing Audit Step 3:

• What's going on in your customers' world?
• Key motivating factors for library use (feelings):
  • Love to read
  • Save money
  • Treated well and feel good at the library
  • Relax and find something unexpected
  • Additional conveniences that make it easy to use the library (parking)
  • Free, safe, entertaining, and educational family place
  • Meeting place
  • Access to technology
  • Can keep up with community affairs

Marketing Audit Step 4:

• Who is your competition?
• Key barriers to library use:
  • Parking
  • Limited hours
  • Behavoir of teens outside the library entrance (audience conflict)
  • Local bookstores and the internet
  • Limited time
  • Intimidated by the building and technology
  • Use is not in the family's history
  • Lack of transportation

Price (What does the product/service cost?):

a. Total customers in target market
b. Customers currently using the service
c. Number of transactions per year
d. Cost per year (staff, overhead, equipment, materials)

Market penetration=Customers currently using the service divided by total customers in target market.

What benefits does the library offer?

• Features vs. Benefits
  • Get to feelings: What can you do for me to solve my problem or need?
  • Usually, your existing publicity materials are high on features and low on benefits
• Focus on customer motivators

What "place" will your product/service occupy?

• "place" includes physical space, time of day, season, and position in relation to your competitors
• Consider when your customer will experience a need.
• Consider when your customer is available to hear your message.

Focus your message:

• Customer will consider "is this me?"
• Must reach identity at start of message
• Get message to where your customers are

Promotion=Placing the library and its products/services in the best possible light in the eyes of our customers.

Audience evaluates marketing success stories

Marketing success stories:

a. Who was the target audience?
b. What was the library's product?
c. Identify the place
d. Describe the main elements of the library's promotion
e. What results did the library get?

Reach your customers through benefits/feelings.

--Summary notes from John C. Hepner

Copyright ©2003, Reference Round Table, TLA
Send comments and suggestions to: Beth Thomsett-Scott, BScott@library.unt.edu
Last Modified: July 2003