Many library workers have the best of intentions. They think they know their users very well, but they don’t. Many spend hours promoting events and programs, services, and resources, but there are so many “no shows,” or the services being promoted are not being used. This is simply because many library workers become heavily involved in marketing and promotional activities, but they fail to do their research. Marketing is often done backwards, or “upside down,” meaning that we engage in marketing activities and then follow up with assessment. This is known as upside down (or backwards) marketing. When engaging in marketing activities, library workers must study their users first to determine their needs, expectations, and desires. Data should drive your library’s marketing activities. In this 90 minute practical webinar, the presenter will describe the process of conducting market research and explain why it’s so important to study your audience first before endeavouring in costly and time consuming marketing activities.

Learning Outcomes:

In this 90 minute webinar, participants will learn how to:

• understand market research, and how it applies to libraries and information
• organizations distinguish between the concepts of market research and marketing research
• identify your target market and target audiences
• utilize primary and secondary research techniques to study your library community
• engage in self-assessment instruments such as a SWOT analysis and perceptual map

Presenter:
Mark Aaron Polger is an academic librarian and information literacy instructor who has been working in libraries since 1988. He received his MLIS degree in 2000 from the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada) and has worked as a librarian in public, hospital, and academic libraries. Currently, he is the Coordinator of Library Outreach at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York (CUNY). He has been deeply engaged in working in various library signage activities since 2012. He has written about library signage audits in journals and other publications and has presented nationally at library conferences.

In September 2021, he published Library Signage and Wayfinding Design: Communicating Effectively with Your User (ALA editions). He is also an accidental library marketer, as most of his professional experience as a librarian involves the marketing of library services and resources. His research interests include library marketing, outreach, and UX (user experience) design. Currently, he is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the open-access, peer reviewed journal Marketing Libraries Journal, which was launched in Fall 2017.

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