Competitive School Libraries: Making the Library the Student Destination of Choice
Written by Mali Jorm, Teacher Librarian, Melba Copland Secondary College
Mali is presenting in the Capacity Building School Libraries Conference, 16 & 17 June 2023 at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre
School students have limited self-determination when it comes to their school day. One of the biggest choices they have is how to spend their break time or free periods. Marketing a school library competitively to encourage students to choose to spend that time in the library is an effective way of maintaining student engagement with library services.
Successful library marketing involves a clear understanding of your goals, intended outcomes, and the techniques you plan on using. The 6 steps to a successful school library marketing strategy are:
Defining your library’s brand
Identifying your target audience/s
An evaluation of the advertising channels available to you
Utilising emotional branding
Creation of a defined advertising campaign
Evaluation of the campaign
At Melba Copland Secondary School (MCSS) we have developed a highly successful marketing strategy over the last 6 years, with a strong, clearly defined brand that has enjoyed successful buy-in from the student population.
Step 1: Defining your brand
Do you already have an established library brand? Do your students know what your brand looks like and what it stands for? Is your messaging positive, consistent and visible?
Every brand has ‘brand equity’, also known as brand awareness. Libraries in general have strong brand equity, but does your school library have strong brand awareness in your student population?
Tomcik (2015) champions an easily adaptable method of comparing ideal brand attributes with actually perceived attributes. To begin, library staff brainstorm a list of ideal library attributes. Staff can consider the library or school’s mission statement, how the library positions itself in the school community, and the library’s strengths and weaknesses. Because this is an ideal list, it can be aspirational. The staff suggestions can then be curated into a short list of the 4-8 key themes that best represent the library’s brand. An example list could include terms such as reliable, adaptive, welcoming, up-to-date, and responsive.
Once the ideal list is finalised, it’s time to survey your student population to find out what words they associate with the library. Tomcik (2015) suggests asking students what words they would use to describe the library if it was a person.
Comparing the ideal list with the student responses will highlight which aspects of your brand persona are already evident to your customer base and which ones are not. This is also an opportunity to reconsider your ideal list, as your students may provide some terms that they value that you had not considered. These attributes will be particularly powerful to help you identify how to market your library to your student population as a desirable destination.
Step 2: Identifying your target audience
To successfully market our libraries as desirable places to be, it’s important to identify exactly who the target audience of our campaigns are. The student population of a school is made up of hundreds of overlapping and interconnected groupings. Duke & Tucker (2007) recommend identifying as many distinct student sub-groups as possible, and keeping this list readily available for future targeted marketing.
The sub-group we are currently targeting at MCSS are users who once had high library use but now do not. Our research shows that our students have the highest library engagement in Year 7, which drops off as they progress through the school. We have identified a sub-group that still reports strong positive feelings towards the library but attends less frequently, to try to re-engage with using a campaign that targets their specific interests.
Campaigns to improve library engagement have traditionally focussed on increasing the number of new users (Kendrick 2006). However, new customers are difficult to acquire, and research by Smit et al. (2007) suggests that libraries “should invest in developing the lifetime value of existing customers”. Rewarding and engaging loyal library users can result in students who have a high degree of investment in their relationship with the library. These students can become influential brand advocates, who seek to promote the library positively to other students and defend it from detractors (Singh & Rinchetta, 2019).
An interesting phenomenon we have witnessed at MCSS is that because of our consistent use of key slogans associated with the library (such as ‘All reading is good reading’), students who are brand advocates will promote the library to their peers using some of the same phrases as we do. We had not actively planned for this to occur, but it has helped create consistent positive messaging around the library to new and younger students.
Step 3: Evaluating your advertising channels
Schools usually have several advertising channels already established, however, many of these channels are aimed at parents or the general public rather than students. Library staff can brainstorm existing channels that reach the student population as well as identifying innovative channels that may work for your school community. Evaluate which channels have the highest engagement, and if in doubt survey your students to find out.
Duke & Tucker, (2007) advise that advertising materials must be seen or heard at least seven times to make an impact. This could be achieved through high repetition of a single channel, such as posters placed all over the school, or by advertising through several channels simultaneously.
We have learned that our students at MCSS have very low engagement with email (this is an interesting contrast to the general population, where opt-in email lists are considered a very powerful tool), and that they respond well to multi-channel campaigns that offer immediacy. We run most of our campaigns with a combination of visual advertisements, a striking display as they enter the library, and face-to-face promotion that allows students to engage with the campaign immediately rather than at a later date.
Step 4: Utilise emotional branding
Emotional branding is a powerful technique that can help you connect deeply to your students. Most advertisements utilise informational or transformational messaging strategies (Lee & Burns, 2014). Informational strategies focus on facts and the logical benefits of library engagement e.g. “80% of students report focusing better on their studies when in the library”. Transformational messaging focuses on emotion and feeling e.g. “Nothing says cozy like curling up with a new book on the library lounge”.
Both techniques can have value depending on the target audience and the service being promoted, but transformational messaging is also associated with increased positive feelings towards a brand as well as improving the perceived credibility of a brand (Lee & Burns, 2014).
Emotional or transformational branding moves the library away from being a building or even a service to being an experience. Highlighting the personal connections between the library and students and the positive emotions that being in the library makes them feel is the strongest way to market library engagement.
At MCSS we ran a brand awareness campaign that used a ‘What do you meme?’ game format to allow students to match statements relating to the library with popular meme templates. We scaffolded the task so that the possible combinations of statements and images all reflected positive, emotional connections to the library. The campaign was received positively by students, and allowed us to showcase our services with warmth, humor, and emotional connection.
Step 5: Create a campaign
Identify what you would like to promote to the students - is there a particular strength that you think students aren’t aware of? Is there a sub-demographic of students who you think might not be aware of a service that you offer? Would you simply like to promote some positive brand awareness for the library?
Duke & Tucker (2007) offer several suggestions for successful library campaigns: use short text, consistent messaging and humor. It’s also important to focus on the benefits, not the features of your services. For example, instead of promoting that the library has ‘seven bookable study rooms for student use’ (a feature), focus on the benefits that comes with that feature eg. ‘students can enjoy uninterrupted focus in a private study sanctuary’.
Another useful technique is using a ‘call to action’. Calls to action push your students to engage with the campaign in some way. For example, during our yearly Library Lovers Day promotion at MCSS, instead of viewing a static display of popular books, we invite students to nominate their favourite book from last year by writing it on a heart, which becomes part of the display. This is a particularly strong call to action as it also provides high observer value - students view other students writing on hearts and are encouraged to become involved. Students also like to come and find their heart on the wall, pointing them out to their friends and driving further engagement.
Step 6: Evaluate your campaign
After your campaign has run, it’s time to evaluate its outcomes. Did your campaign reflect the core brand persona of the library? Did it reach the target audience? Duke & Tucker (2007) suggest evaluating your student engagement in the following ways: brand or campaign awareness level surveys, student satisfaction surveys, participant/program/service user counts, resource usage counts, and informal observations/social listening.
Not all of your campaigns will be successes, but they will all offer the opportunity to learn more about your student demographic and what speaks (or doesn’t) to them.
Encouraging students to spend their limited free time in the library is a challenging prospect, but utilising professional marketing techniques to drive engagement offers improved outcomes, establishes protocols for future marketing campaigns and offers structured opportunities for feedback and reflection.
Mali is presenting in the Capacity Building School Libraries Conference, 16 & 17 June 2023 at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre
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