Going Places with Youth Outreach - Angela B. Pfeil Smart Marketing Strategies for Your Library CONTENTS Preface vii Introduction 1 One What Is Marketing? 5 Two Marketing Materials 16 Three Outreach Is Marketing 29 Four Online Outreach 38 Five Selling Your Service 45 Six Preparing for the Presentation 63 Seven Tracking Outreach 71 Eight Successful Library Youth Outreach Programs 83 Nine Putting It All Together 95 Appendixes A Sample Outreach Programs 103 B Additional Reading 111 Selected Bibliography 113 Index 115 Preface Marketing and outreach to children have many similar characteristics.To perform each successfully, your library needs to have a specific plan of implementation that includes who you want to reach, why you should target that group, where the population will be served, what you will market, and when the effort will be implemented. There are many books on library and nonprofit marketing techniques as well as separate titles on outreach to youth. This book supposes that marketing and outreach are intertwined and should be pursued as such. It explores each of the steps required for creating and adhering to a successful marketing and outreach plan for children. Chapter 1 gives an overview of marketing as it pertains to libraries and, specifically, to youth services. Chapter 2 details the materials that all libraries need to have to successfully implement their marketing programs. Chapter 3 explores existing child-focused library programs that aid in meeting marketing goals and objectives and offers new ideas for outreach as marketing. Chapter 4 discusses using the library website as an important marketing and outreach tool. Chapter 5 delves into the specifics of selling library services to children, parents, and educators. Chapter 6 describes the four distinct parts of any outreach presentation and offers clear guidelines on perfecting each of these phases. Chapter 7 looks at efficient and effective ways of measuring the impact of marketing and outreach efforts. Chapter 8 reviews successful marketing programs from public libraries across the United States. Chapter 9 pulls all the information together using the “Core Competencies of Outreach” as described by author and young adult services consultant Patrick Jones. This book could not have been written without the unconditional love and devotion from Bob, Alex, Mom, Steve, Stefanie, and Valarie. My sincere thanks go to each of them for understanding the time I needed to write this book and for giving me the encouragement and support for getting it done. Through this book, I share my experiences, thoughts, and ideas about outreach as marketing. Each of my personal values and opinions has been shaped by the various positions I have held, including youth services librarian, community outreach librarian, virtual reference librarian, and cybrary manager. In all of these positions, I served youth outside of the traditional library setting and brought services to where they were. Youth services librarians, reference librarians, library administrators—or any library employee who is involved in planning, implementing, or evaluating services to children—will find this book helpful for understanding what is required of all library staff in order for youth services outreach efforts to be successful. This book provides an outline for a successful marketing and outreach effort. But even if your library cannot afford or chooses not to support some of the nontraditional ideas for children’s programming presented here, it is my hope that you will use what you can to make your library service to youth as successful as possible. Enjoy! Introduction Marketing to children often has a negative connotation. Our children are bombarded daily with advertising at school, at home, and on the road. Kids want what is being marketed, and adults quickly determine that the only lasting result of impulse purchases for children is a nation of overindulged children. Libraries have always been cornerstones for early literacy programs and have commonly served underserved populations, long before marketing to children became the thing to do. Excessive marketing to children has its consequences, and there is no doubt libraries offer important services for dealing with them. But libraries should also use the existing marketing information, whether it is simple market or demographic research, retail marketing plans, or consumer statistics, to launch full-fledged marketing and outreach efforts of their own. Libraries offer valuable programs, important information, and computer access in-house, but all of these products and services are available only to those existing customers who have transportation to the library. Marketing library services is more than just publicity and promotion. It’s more than just increasing circulation statistics. Marketing is a process that assists libraries in achieving user goals and priorities, satisfying the needs of their users, and attracting new users. In a day and age where budgetary restrictions are reducing staffing and services in many libraries, marketing is an essential tool for building successful relationships with the community. Marketing services to children may be the most powerful but underused part of a library’s marketing plan. Public and school libraries can provide services that benefit the development of children in all communities and from all backgrounds. Through marketing programming, literacy services, and library resources, libraries encourage children to read, to be lifelong library users, and to become responsible and effective users of information. Marketing your library’s information services to children will help you maintain and provide essential youth services; moreover, the successful, well-attended, and well-documented programs you offer will justify the requests for increased staff and finances necessary to reach your library goals. Ultimately, you can provide what the youth in your community need and, consequently, increase the productivity and usage of your department and library. Marketing services to children is not a new concept. For-profit organizations have already recognized the importance of children to the consumer market. Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University, and Margo Wootan estimate that $13 billion a year is spent marketing to American children—by food and drink industries alone. Food advertising makes up about half of all advertising aimed at kids.1 Children’s spending roughly doubled every ten years for the past three decades and tripled in the 1990s. Kids ages four to twelve spent $2.2 billion in 1968 and $4.2 billion in 1984. By 1994 the figure climbed to $17.1 billion, and by 2002 their spending exceeded $40 billion. Kids’ direct buying power is expected to exceed $51.8 billion by 2006.2 In the 1960s children influenced about $5 billion of their parents’ purchases. By 1984 that figure increased tenfold, to $50 billion.3 By 1997 it had tripled to $188 billion. It is clear that children are highly influential in what their parents purchase, and they can exert this same influence with library use. So, what does this have to do with libraries? Public libraries have always succeeded in attracting new users by using existing data and techniques from similar organizations, that is, “technique sharing.” The suggestion that public libraries adopt the best aspects of the typical successful bookstore is an example of technique sharing. Marketing should be no different. If current statistics show that “at six months of age, the same age they are imitating simple sounds like 2 Introduction ‘ma-ma,’ babies are forming mental images of corporate logos and mascots,” then the library must adopt a visible and attractive logo and mascot.4 If, according to recent marketing industry studies, “a person’s ‘brand loyalty’ may begin as early as age two,” then libraries have an obligation to be a part of this recognition.5 Libraries suffer greatly from budgetary restrictions. Too often, youth services catch the brunt of budget cuts, and the restrictions negatively affect the resources and staffing levels in youth services departments. The library suffers from not being able to provide the services and programming that are so cherished by its community, but a more devastating effect is the lack of education, attention, and nurturing that a library can offer to its young patrons. Marketing services is key to gaining reputability and trust within your community. Those who make decisions regarding your financial status, whether it is a board of directors or taxpayers, need to be shown the importance of libraries. Having a marketing plan in place, and making it your highest priority, will not only increase your internal statistics but also place value on your institution in the eyes of the decision makers. Marketing includes advertising, promotion, publicity, and public relations. The following anecdote helps illustrate this concept: If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying, “Circus is coming to Fairgrounds Sunday,” that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him through town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, and it makes the morning paper, that’s publicity. If you can get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. And, if you planned the whole thing, that’s marketing!—Author unknown Your library most likely provides children’s programming at some point during the year. Story times are a staple of the American public library tradition. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), during 2001, nationwide circulation of children’s materials was 653.9 million, or 37 percent of total circulation, and attendance at children’s programs was 51.8 million. The NCES does not delineate the constitution of “children’s programs” among inhouse programs, outreach programs, or school visits.6 The NCES does, however, classify Family Literacy and programs aimed at parents as Adult Literacy Programs, according to their report “Programs for Introduction 3 Adults in Public Library Outlets.”7 Although most youth services departments provide the Family Literacy programming, the purpose of those presentations is to hook the parent, not the child. This may be one of the reasons that NCES classifies them as Adult Literacy Programs. Going Places with Youth Outreach seeks to help libraries create, plan, and evaluate current and future youth marketing and outreach efforts. The purpose is to educate librarians on the marketing process as well as to empower them to try new ideas for reaching out to children. NOTES 1. Marion Nestle and Margo Wootan, “Spending on Marketing to Kids Up $5 Billion in Last Decade,” Food Institute Report, April 15, 2002. 2. James McNeal, The Kids Market: Myths and Realities (Ithaca, NY: Paramount Market, 1999). 3. James McNeal, “Tapping the Three Kids’ Markets,” American Demographics, April 1998. 4. James McNeal and Chyon-Hwa Yeh, “Born to Shop,” American Demographics, June 1993. 5. “Brand Aware,” Children’s Business, June 2000. 6. National Center for Educational Statistics, Library Statistics Program, “Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2001.” Available from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003399.pdf. 7. National Center for Educational Statistics. “Programs for Adults in Public Library Outlets.” Available from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003010.pdf.