Caleb Tucker-Raymond, statewide digital reference project coordinator describes how L-net staff have marketed this new kind of library service.
We have approached introducing people to our service and keeping them aware of it as the same task.
When we launched our pilot service in April 2003, our primary audience for marketing was libraries. We used local library conferences and consortial meetings to demonstrate the service and distribute bookmarks and promotional materials. We encouraged libraries to link to us.
At the time, our service was called Answerland, and we created bookmarks and postcards as promotional items. The postcards looked great, but we never had a plan for sending them to anyone.
Results were mixed. Partner libraries in our service were linking to us and telling patrons, but other libraries were not as much.
There was also a sense that many libraries did not like our name, as too "kid-like", and that they felt that funding was finite and the service wouldn't last very long, so why bother linking now? We changed our name to L-net in April 2004.
In September 2004, we distributed a promotional packet to all of our public libraries, including a cover letter, press release to send to local media, order form for promotional materials, and a list of other ways they could promote our service. We got this idea from Colorado's AskUsNow! service. Brenda Bailey-Hainer wrote about their strategy in Oregon Library Association Quarterly, Fall 2004.
Part of that promotion included contracting with BusinessWire, a national business news agency to distribute our press release. We were dubious because it was a national service and we wanted a local focus. No local papers picked it up that I saw, but it did land me an interview with a reporter from Government Technology, a national magazine. The interview was read by someone working on revising our local e-government portal, Oregon.gov, and we are now linked prominently there (bottom right of the Oregon.gov homepage).
In October 2004, we went from 40-48 hours per week to a 24/7 chat service. We contacted every library by e-mail, letting them know they should update their pages with hours information about us. It has made a huge difference.
That fall we partnered with the Oregon State Library and EBSCO, who toured the state to promote our statewide database license to EBSCO products. The trainers and presenters took about 5 minutes to tell about our service, give out brochures and emphasize that you could use it to get help with EBSCO.
In December 2004, we were awarded a significant marketing budget, $25,000. We had already spent some of it redesigning our website and contracting with a photographer to provide pictures of people using/staffing the service. We have used the pictures on our website and some promotional items.
Our marketing team created new promotional items, including two posters, bookmarks, pens and pencils. We had t-shirts made as promotional items for us to wear at library events and as raffle/door prizes.
We have continued to encourage people to link to us, and have continued to attend local library conferences. This past spring, people seem to know more about the service than they did before, and we were well received. It was an opportunity to demonstrate the librarian side of the service and invite them to upcoming trainings.
The marketing team also contracted with public transportation agencies around the state. We found a single agency that worked with public transportation in our four largest metropolitan areas.
We also put out a newspaper ad and have been actively talking to print and radio newsmedia to get public service announcements and press releases published.
All of this has added up to us getting a lot more use from all over the state (181 chat in September 2004, 1100 so far in April 2005). Our exit survey asks how people heard about the service, and the most popular answers (around 35% each) are saying from the library, the library website, or a teacher or librarian.
You can read more about our marketing team's efforts on our wiki.
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