“If you can’t measure it, it’s just a hobby.” I’m always citing this adage of Jack Welch, former CEO of GE. In marketing, it’s not enough to do, it has to work. That’s where measurement comes in. And, for me, 2012 is all about that.
I’m asking these kinds of questions:
What do we want people to do when they walk in our doors ? From a marketing perspective, it’s not enough to open the doors and welcome people in (physically or virtually) and just hope people do stuff. What’s our goal for them? To check out one book? Two?
Think what would happen if we set a goal that every check-out transaction grew by one additional checkout! Can we set that as a goal for ourselves, develop a marketing plan to drive to that goal, then measure our results?
What do we want people to do on our website? We’re in the process of using Google Analytics to benchmark key behaviors that we want to drive. Then we will develop marketing strategies to push those behaviors. We’ll keep a dashboard that monitors our success on a daily basis.
And how awesome is this!? We have partnered with The Ohio State University to go deep into understanding what motivates kids and parents to participate in Summer Reading Club. Early results tell us that we are great at reaching kids who already like to read and who have heavily involved parents (duh). They are going to read anyway. But what’s our startegy to show that we can bring in reluctant or at-risk readers?
Now that’s impact and outcome.
What’s your measurement goal for 2012?
About Alison Circle
One way to measure how effectively a library is marketing itself is to count the number of patrons that show up for various library programs offered by the library. These include a variety of programs for adults as well as children. Music programs seem to do well. Authors like myself have much to offer in regard to programming as well.
Jacqueline Seewald
THE TRUTH SLEUTH
THE INFERNO COLLECTION
THE DROWNING POOL