How to Write a Marketing Plan A simple

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 Promotion Communication The Four Ps are variables controlled by the organization. Regardless of the forces at play in the market, these Four Ps are under your control. Together, they are referred to as the MARKETING MIX. You’ll apply the marketing mix to every goal you set.

Uncontrollable Variables • • State of the economy Legislative Actions (budgeting) Changes in the competitive landscape Unemployment Technology Changes Operational Costs List is practically endless

What is Marketing? Inputs • materials acquisition • mineral extracting Outputs Products ready to be delivered to customers and stores 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.

Promotion Elements Each of the following is a sub-set of promotion. • Advertising • Print Collateral • Public Relations • Direct Marketing • Personal Selling • Event Marketing • Sales Promotion • Online Advertising 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 extent of the economic utility their products or services provide.

FORM UTILITY Involves changing RAW MATERIALS or PUTTING PARTS TOGETHER to make them more useful. RAW MATERIALS: 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?

PLACE UTILITY This involves placing a product where a customer can purchase it. Businesses study consumer shopping habits to determine the most convenient and efficient locations to sell products.

POSSESSION UTILITY The 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 UTILITY This 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 • • Executive Summary A Competitive Analysis Mission, Vision, Values and Goals A Finance Plan A Marketing Plan A Production Plan A Facilities Plan A Human Resources 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? )

How this Process Works 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?

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 / Tactics Goal: 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 Q 2, 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.

Marketing Challenges The marketing industry is going through a rapid change from traditional methods to inbound marketing methods.

What is Traditional Marketing? • • Radio Television Newspapers Magazines • • Direct Mail Trade Shows Telemarketing Billboards, etc. 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 ID Abandonment 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? • CDs • Sirius XM • i. Tunes • Public Broadcasting • Streaming Internet • Spotify • Phone calls • Texting

Trade Shows • No longer a good source of B 2 B leads • Mainly attended by vendors and sales people • Travel expenses have eroded their effectiveness

Email Marketing • Spam filters • Legal issues • Poor open and click through rates (CTRs) • Inbox clutter

The First 50 Years

The Next 50 Years

Inbound Marketing • Driven by changes in consumer behavior, not by marketers • Average knowledge worker does 20 -25 Google searches each day • The blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook, Linked. In and You. Tube are replacing traditional media

Implications • 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 • Search Engine Optimization • Keyword Research • Link-building • Analytics (These are important but cannot be covered today. We’ll focus our attention on the next column. ) • Content creation • Blogging • Social Media integration • Promotion via Twitter • Email marketing

The new reality • >2, 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, Linked. In, You. Tube, etc. • Tweet the heck out of it to improve your Page. Rank

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 3 x 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 Q 2, 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 10 x 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 Linked. In

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.

10 things you should do when you get back to the library 6. Find three competitors to track – Read their blogs – Follow them through Google Alerts – Follow them on Twitter – You will learn from these competitors!

10 things you should do when you get back to the library 7. Find relevant Twitter users – Search by topic, location, or subject using hashtags (#) and start following people – Do not mass follow numbers of people – Follow back followers you think make sense

10 things you should do when you get back to the library 8. Find bloggers who write about your topic area – Subscribe to their feed and read them regularly – Leave valuable comments NO spam NO fluff or self promotion! Remember, you’re building relationships here, not selling!

10 things you should do when you get back to the library 9. Start re-tweeting good articles – Helps people expand their Internet presence – Behavior is noticed – Attracts followers Social media is social, so be social. (Can you handle these deep thoughts? )

10 things you should do when you get back to the library 10. Make a list of the top people in your industry – Convert into a blog post: “ 14 library rock stars I’d like to have coffee with” – List them, write a couple sentences about why, link to their profile pages or website – This helps others and increases the chances that they will visit your blog – A similar post can talk about books, music, speakers, etc. – just about anything!

How to Hire a Marketer Traits you want your marketing staff person to have in today’s changing marketing environment.

D. A. R. C. • • Hire Digital Citizens With Analytical Skills Who have some web Reach And can Create Content

Hire Digital Citizens • Digital Citizens were born web savvy or got very familiar with the web. They speak web fluently. • Digital Tourists were born analog and not too familiar with the web. They speak web with an accent. • NEVER assume recent college grads are digital citizens. They aren’t.

Questions and “Show me!” Ask your applicants to bring their laptop to the interview. Sit side by side rather than across the desk. Most applicants will claim to be web savvy. Test them with these questions and ask them to show you. • • • What RSS reader do you use? Can I see it? What blogs do you read? Can you show me? Do you have a blog? How many Twitter followers do you have? When did you last update your Facebook or Linked. In profile?

Hire Analytical Skills • Should be very familiar with Excel or a statistical software package • Should know Google Analytics and how to use the tool • Should understand keyword strategies involving long-tail keyword research

Hire for Web Reach • How many Linked. In connections do you have? • How many Twitter followers do you have? Do you talk about our industry on your Twitter account? • How often do you post to Facebook? • Do you have a blog? (True digital citizens will be part of online communities. Look at their bookmarks and how organized their desktop is. Don’t be afraid of gamers, unless they exhibit psychopathic behaviors. )

Hire Content Creators • Your candidate should have GREAT writing skills • Be great if they could shoot and post a video on You. Tube • Have they ever done a podcast or screencast? • They should be comfortable with blogging on a fixed schedule. (2 x a week minimum)

Hiring Tips • You probably won’t find someone with all of these traits, but look for them anyway. Make sure your candidate has either the coursework or experience to swim in the waters of online marketing. • Being able to take a selfie and post it on Instagram doesn’t qualify you as a digital citizen.

Thank you! John Murphy The Murphy Agency, Inc. 10 W. Streetsboro St. , Suite 205 Hudson, OH 44236 330 -342 -1255 www. themurphyagency. com