Remember that William Carlos Williams poem? 
His response to the Charles Demuth painting of the number five? That title came to mind as I started to write this post, this time about another resource I’ve found that might be of use to you: A Five-Step Approach to Creating a Marketing Strategy.
I’m a member of the American Marketing Association, which has a bounty of resources for marketers. They have local chapters that you can join where you can share ideas, get help for translating marketing concepts into library vernacular and follow trends. Their website is full of white papers, webcasts, resources and studies.
While looking through their site, I found this five-step how-to that you might find useful. In an earlier post I offered up our marketing plan to any who was interested and heard from many of you. That made me think that libraries are hungry for help when it comes to writing and delivering on a marketing plan.
I’ll give you the sneak peak at the five steps:
Step 1: Understanding the market climate and marketing strengths and weaknesses
Step 2: Developing a marketing strategy
Step 3: Building a marketing plan
Step 4: Implementing the plan
Step 5: Monitoring the success of the plan
The article goes on to talk about what goes into a plan and to discover customer segments. At my library we have done a great deal of customer segmentation, which eventually became the driver of our strategic plan. I’ll dive into that in greater detail in an upcoming post.
About Alison Circle
