Marketing Plan

• Develop a marketing plan in the context of the larger, more encompassing strategic plan or business plan.. • We will develop marketing mix strategies and tactics to achieve each goal..

How to Write a Marketing Plan

A simple,

effective

strategy for

libraries.

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know It’s what we know for sure

that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

What is marketing?

Marketing is the management process by which goods and services move from concept to the customer It includes the coordination of four elements called the 4 Ps of marketing:

• identifying and developing a PRODUCT

• determining its PRICE (the value of anything exchanged)

• getting the product to the customer’s PLACE

• developing and implementing a PROMOTION strategy (often called marketing communications)

Four Ps | Four Cs

Product Concept Place Channel Price Cost

Uncontrollable Variables

• State of the economy

• Legislative Actions (budgeting)

• Changes in the competitive landscape

Everything but manufacturing.

What are a library’s products?

– Information sources that do not circulate– Products that circulate: books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, pamphlets

– Services and programs you offer– Room rentals

– Community events– Any others?

What role does price play?

• Fees for service (copying, printing, etc.)

• Fines for late returns

Is the concept of price important to you? Do you talk about it in meetings? How often do you talk about income or revenue? Are you focused on making money? Likely to be a tiny percentage of your

operating budget

What about distribution or place?

• One location or main with branches?

• Do you do community outreach?

• Bookmobile?

• Speakers bureau?

• Inter-library loan?

• Kiosks?

Is promotion important?

How you promote your products and services will be the guts of your marketing plan

Promotion is likely to be the most important variable of your marketing mix because it is the most easily controlled.

These elements constitute “traditional marketing.”

Today, more and more organizations are adopting “inbound marketing” strategies

Inbound Marketing

• A strategy developed in response to changes in

buyer behavior – how people shop and buy products and services

• Leverages the power of Google search

• Is focused on getting found online and maximizing the ROI of your website

• Positions your website as your marketing hub

(More on Inbound Marketing later.)

Terms are not interchangeable

“Great idea! How will we market that?”

“Great idea! How will we advertise that?”

“Great idea! How will we promote that?”

Why now?

Why do you need a marketing plan now?

What has changed in the last 20 years or so?Why are all nonprofits suddenly buying into marketing as a necessary business function?

Answer: Economics

• Marketing has its roots in economics

• The first marketing classes had to do with

distribution problems of dairy farmers

• Economics is the mother science of marketing

What is economics?

• Social science that analyzes and describes the

consequences of choices made concerning scarce productive resources Economics is the study of how individuals and societies choose to employ those resources: what goods and services will be produced, how they will be produced, and how they will be distributed among the members of society

Economic UTILITY

The VALUE producers and marketers add to raw

materials when they make them into a product and offer them for sale to the public

There are five types of utility Organizations are paid according the the extent of the economic utility their

products or services provide

When you cut down a tree and use the

lumber to create pencils, paper, furniture,

etc., the tree now becomes more valuable to the customer

TIME UTILITY

Time utility is having a product available at a certain

time of the year or at a convenient time of the day Value

is added when marketers make them available at the

right time.

What are some products that sell better during certain

hours of the day? Days or months of the year?

POSSESSION UTILITYThe exchange of a product for some monetary value is possession utility

Purchasing the product has given it added value.What are some ways you can purchase a

product?

INFORMATION UTILITYThis involves communication with the customer.

Sales people, displays, packaging and labeling,

advertising, sales brochures…

Anything used to encourage sales gives the product added value

Do you provide economic utility?

If you provide economic utility, you have something

to market!

To find what you have to market, you must start with your business

plan or strategic plan.

Elements of a Business Plan

The Marketing Plan

• Is that portion of the business plan that lays out the direction for the organization’s marketing

strategy

• A written statement of marketing objectives and strategies to support broader goals

• Explains who is responsible for managing

activities and provides a timeline for their

completion

Cascading Plans

• Start with your business plan or a recent strategic plan Your marketing plan must support the goals established with the strategic plan

• Develop a marketing plan in the context of the

larger, more encompassing strategic plan or

business plan

• Develop a strategy for each marketing mix

variable that comes into play for each objective

Marketing Plan Outline Eight Steps to Making a Meaningful

Marketing Plan

I The Executive Summary

• Outlines the who, what, where, when, how and why

of the marketing plan.

• Appears first but is written last.

• No need to be longer than a page.

• Describe how the plan was created Name committee members or contributors and describe that process for strategy development.

• Involve others – the plan should not be the product

of one person working along

II Library Description

• The section should describe the library’s role in

the community, its history, emerging trends,

products and services offered and its strategic

objectives

• Keep this simple Can be done in a few paragraphs

or one page unless you’re in crisis management

mode

• Creates a context for the plan for those who may not be familiar with your library

III Mission and Goals

• Mission, Vision and Values can be lifted from the strategic plan

• Using SMART goals, describe what the library’s objectives are for the coming year

• We will develop marketing mix strategies and

tactics to achieve each goal

IV Core Competencies

• What do we do exceptionally well?

• What makes us better than our competition?

• What kind of relationships do we foster with our service?

• What word or phrase do we own?

V Situation Analysis

• It is helpful (but not required) to do a SWOT

analysis of your library’s marketing capabilities to better understand your situation

• Some nonprofits pull together a marketing

committee consisting of non-staff members with specific marketing expertise

• Determine market research needs if you have them

VI Strategy Development

• Identify your target market: Who are we trying to reach? Be as specific as possible

• Message development: What do we want our

target market to know? Get your best writer to

craft an effective message

• Media selection: How do we get our message out?

• Budget allocation: How much can I spend?

(Your marketing budget reflects your library’s

commitment to marketing What does your budget say?)

1 Write out a statement of your first goal.

2 Write down how each element of the marketing mix

can be used to achieve the goal

– Do we need to make changes to our PRODUCT

offerings to achieve this goal?

– Do we need to develop a new PRICE strategy?

– Is achieving this goal dependent upon changes in

how or where we deliver our service? (PLACE)

– What PROMOTION strategy can we devise to

achieve this goal?

How this Process Works

VII Implementation

• Identify tactics

• Assign tasks

• Establish a timeline

• Execute the plan

• Set progress points

• Measure progress

• Make needed changes

• Quantify results

VIII Evaluation

• Did you accomplish your objective?

– If not, why not?

• Were there any unintended consequences?

• What did we do that worked?

• What would we do differently next time?

• What did we learn?

Example of Goal / Strategy

/ TacticsGoal: We will increase the number of library card holders by 6% by Oct 1, 2014

Strategy: We will develop a “Get a Card Today” promotion campaign and fully implement it in Q2, 2014

Tactic #1: Create posters for display in library for display by February 1

Goal / Strategy / Tactics

Tactic #2: Launch campaign with press releases to local newspaper, chamber groups and other civic organizations by Feb 15

Tactic #3: Create newspaper ads for placement as remnant space by March 1

Tactic #4: Write a PSA and meet with local radio station for airing by March 20

What is Traditional Marketing?

The traditional marketing playbook is broken

It’s increasingly difficult to get a good ROI

Using these methods Why are they less effective than they used to be?

People are tired of being

marketed to!

• Consumers are using technology to thwart

unwanted marketing messages that are an

interruption to their day

• “Interruption marketing” is unwelcome in today’s busy world

• Average person exposed to thousands of branding messages a day

• Look at the ways consumers are blocking out our messages:

Do Not Call Lists

In a country of 310 million people, we have 200

million phone numbers on the ‘do not call’ list

Caller IDAbandonment of land lines

We mute TV spots or use DVRs

We no longer sit through commercials Whoever has the

remote is in charge!

The incredible growth in the number of channels

available has resulted in audience fragmentation and lends itself to channel surfing during commercials

Radio Competition

What else do we do in the car or at work instead of listen to the radio?

Trade Shows

• No longer a good source

of B2B leads

• Mainly attended by vendors and sales people

• Travel expenses have eroded their effectiveness

The First 50 Years

The Next 50 Years

• Inbound marketing strategies have to be part of

your toolkit when promoting your library

• Inbound Marketing is centered around the concept

of attracting visitors to your website, converting some of them into leads, and turning leads into

patrons or library users

• Extremely cost-effective form of marketing!

• Everything on the Internet is trackable! This is a huge advantage over traditional marketing

Inbound Marketing Components

(These are important but cannot be

covered today We’ll focus our

attention on the next column.)

The new reality

• >2,000,000,000 searches a month

• A quarter of the searches are unique

• People are searching for YOUR programs and services right in your own back yard

How it Works

• Think like a publisher

• The Internet is the largest publishing platform in human history – use it!

• Create remarkable content!

• Push it out into the Internet using your blog,

Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc

• Tweet the heck out of it to improve your

PageRank

Write a blog post

• Adds a page to your website forever

• Tweet your blog post to your followers

• Some will re-Tweet to their followers, creating links to your website

• Google interprets inbound links as authority

• Your website rises in SERPs

• Post should be 400 to 600 words

• Add a photo and be sure you include ALT tags

The Call to Action (CTA)

• End every blog post with a CTA

• Provide a link to additional content

• Offer a free download of premium content

• Encourage some type of action

– See us today for a library card application

– Call today to register for the seminar

Why Blogging Matters

• More web pages means more authority

• Blogging 3x a week adds 156 pages of content to your site, bulking it up

• Don’t forget deep linking within your site

• Your content will spread throughout the Internet

as people share the link to your blog post

• Each page pays dividends for months and years

• Think of it like compounding interest

Tie Inbound Marketing to Strategy

• Create an inbound marketing campaign to support your strategy

– Write several blog posts with different angles

– Tweet the heck out of each one

– Push your content out through other channels

– Get guest bloggers to write for you

Goal / Strategy / Tactics

(Going back to our original goal, here is how you would add the

elements of inbound marketing.)

Goal: We will increase the number of library card holders by 6% by Oct 1, 2014

Strategy #1: We will develop a “Get a Card Today” promotion campaign and fully implement it in Q2, 2014

Tactic #1: Create posters for display in library for display by February 1

Goal / Strategy / Tactics

Tactic #2: Launch campaign with press releases to local newspaper, chamber groups and other civic organizations by Feb 15

Tactic #3: Create newspaper ads for placement as remnant space by March 1

Tactic #4: Write a PSA and meet with local radio station for airing by March 20

Goal / Strategy / Tactics

Goal: We will increase the number of library card holders by 6% by Oct 1, 2014

Strategy #2: Develop an Inbound Marketing Plan to achieve this goal

Tactic #1: Write a series of blog posts using the

blogging editorial calendar

Tactic #2: Push this content onto multiple platforms Tactic #3: Schedule Tweets throughout each week

Example of a blog post on the website.

(The same blog post put on a Facebook page.)

(Sample tweet promoting a blog post using bit.ly URL shortener.)

This is a data

visualization of the Internet The

brightest lights are the biggest websites

at the hub of many links You want your site to linked

to many others, rather than just being off by itself.

Google puts a

premium on

websites with

LOTS of content and frequent

updates.

Rules? What rules?

• You don’t need no stinking rules!

• Let staffers Tweet away

• Ask for guest bloggers from time to time

• Be spontaneous!

• You can schedule Tweets in advance

• Try to Tweet at least 10x a day

10 things you should do when you

get back to the library

1 Set up a Twitter account

– The name of the account should match your

domain name– Link to Twitter from your main page and from

your Twitter account to your home page

10 things you should do when you get back to the library

2 Set up a simple Facebook business page

– This is known as a fan page

– You’ll need to administer this off your personal page

– Add a description of your library, a photo and link back to your website

– This is easy to do Just follow directions

10 things you should do when

you get back to the library

3 Kick off a blog and start blogging

– Add Blog to your navigation menu

– You can use a free hosting tool like Wordpress but

DO NOT use their domain name

– create a subdomain if necessary to make sure you get the SEO authority (Example: blog.yourlibrary.org)

– ask several staffers to create one blog post a week

10 things you should do when you get back to the library

4 Write your first blog article and post it

– Shorten the URL using bit.ly

– Tweet to your follower(s) throughout the day– Post link to the blog on your Facebook page– Post link to the blog on LinkedIn

10 things you should do when you get back to the library

5 Set up Google Alerts for your library

– Set an alert up for your library

– Set one up for industry alerts

– Anyone can do this, but the marketing person should monitor this Why? Because marketing is always responsible for brand management