Doing the background work

Step one on the marketing planning journey is to ask yourself - Where are you now? Where you are now is a function of where you've been.

This is where you get to sit back and reflect on where your library has been in the last planning period or beyond and documenting the influence of the past on your future direction. This includes specifying:

1. Values, vision and mission statements - which outline, in broad terms, what you have been doing, why and how you have been doing it, as well as where you are going in the future.


2. Description/History of your library - in broad general terms.


3. Key Performance Indicators - the description/history in statistical terms.


4. Reasons for producing the plan - the intention and outcomes, spelled out in clear terms, for producing the plan.

Again, it's all about asking yourself the right questions to set up a solid foundation to build your future on.

1. Values, vision and mission statements

• What are your library’s core values?
• What is your library’s vision?
• What is your library’s mission?

If you have values, vision and mission statements, then include them here to set the scene for your plan. If you don’t have your own, then you can use those of your parent organization or you can create your own. There is a range of sites that can help you with ideas for creating these statements as well as examples of them from other libraries.

2. Description/History of your library

• Who are you? (Organization)
• Where are you? (Distribution)
• What do you do? (Products and services)
• What have you achieved? (Milestones)
• What is your financial situation? (Finance/budget)
• What is your staffing situation? (Staffing)
• What are you really good at? (USP)

Set the scene for your marketing plan with a very brief description and history of your library. Include details like:

• Organization - Your library’s place in the council’s organisational structure - an organisation chart is useful.
• Distribution - Number, location and hours of service points - a map helps.
• Products and services - The main products and services that your library provides - perhaps a matrix of product/services by branch.
• Milestones - Significant milestones in your library’s history, e.g. when and where each service point opened, when particular service initiatives began (e.g. computerisation, special collections and services...) - a timeline would help.
• Finance/Budget - including: yearly budget over the past 5-10 years, grant funding, revenue raising activities etc. Is the situation improving, declining, static? How does this compare with other public libraries? - graphs and charts can help to communicate the meaning of the numbers.
• Staffing - including: no. of FTE (full time equivalent) staff (full time, part time, casual, librarians, library technicians, library assistants). Is the situation improving, declining, static? How does this compare with other public libraries? - again, graphs and charts can help to communicate the meaning of the numbers.
• USP (Unique selling points) - Anything unique about your library's service offerings? - don't forget pictures, remember the old adage about one picture being worth a thousand words.

3. Key Performance Indicators

• What are your KPIs?
• How have you performed over the past 5 or 10 years?
• Do you want to maintain or improve performance?

List your library's Key Performance Indicators. Summarise your library’s performance on these indicators over the last 5-10 years. Compare them to other public libraries - charts and graphs communicate well. Indicate the factors that are affecting your performance, positively or negatively.

If you are over or under achieving the standards for your KPIs, does this mean that

- the standards need to be changed?
- the performance needs to be changed?
- the indicators need to be changed?
- nothing needs to be done?

4. Reasons for producing the plan

• What is your intention/s for creating this plan?
• What outcomes do you hope to achieve by producing it?
• What time period will the plan cover?

Public libraries have not always felt the need to have marketing plans. It is important, from the beginning, to know and understand what your purpose is in preparing this plan. Here's two possible reasons to be going through the strategic planning process.

1. Meet corporate objectives - From the council's planning documents there should be some organisational goals/objectives/outcomes that your library is a part of the strategy to achieve.



2. Meet library objectives - Some of the general reasons that you might have for embarking on this planning process might be to:

- Focus on what is important
- Set clear direction and goals
- Set performance standards and measures
- Continuously improve your performance
- Involve and motivate staff- Respond to new challenges
- Respond to market research insights

A first up strategic marketing plan should tie in with your library's other planning documents as well as your parent council’s strategic and management planning timetable. Council strategic plans are usually over 4 years. Action plans for any given year will flow from an initial strategic marketing plan.

Whatever the reasons for doing it – know them, record them, evaluate them at the end of the plan's lifespan.

Sources of information

There's a range of information that you need to complete this section. Here's a few suggestions on where to get it.

• Your council's planning and policy documents
• Your library’s planning and policy documents
• Your library’s local studies collection for basic historical and descriptive information about your library.
• Your library's internal statistical data.
• Your library’s statistical returns for your State’s Public Library Statistics records
• NSW public library statistics for comparative information about other public libraries
• Other state’s public library statistics for comparative information about other public libraries.

Be ruthlessly honest, objective yet diplomatic in your appraisal of your past. At all times, we're all doing the best we can with the resources we have available both external material resources and internal psychological resources. The point here is not to brighten or darken the past. It is to illuminate the path to the future.

What's the structure and content of a marketing plan?

A strategic marketing plan is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. There's a lot of little pieces that have to be found and put together to make a coherent big picture. It can take a while to get all those pieces identified and in position, but when it's done, the final picture will look compelling.

A Marketing plan focusses on getting and keeping customers and the marketing programs for doing it. It still answers the three fundamental questions of strategic planning, which we've already explored:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to be?
3. How will we get there?

These overlay the underlying structure of a marketing plan which is built around the marketing process of:

* Analysis - of marketing opportunities and the attendant researching of target markets.
* Planning - of marketing objectives and programs or strategies.
* Implementation - the organizing and putting into action the marketing programs.
* Control - the monitoring, measuring and evaluating of the success or otherwise of the marketing programs

Here's the basic structure and content which we will explore in more detail in future posts.

Where are we now?

ANALYSIS

1. Executive summary – Presents a brief overview of the plan. This appears first in the plan but is actually prepared last, after all of the following.

2. Background – Presents brief history/description of the library (including KPIs and financial situation), its mission, vision and values statements and the reasons for producing the plan.

3. Current marketing situation analysis– presents relevant background data on current external and internal environments.

External environment - external forces and trends that pose opportunities and threats to your library including:

• demographic
• economic
• political/legal
• environmental
• social/cultural
• technological

Internal environment - internal marketing skills and knowledge and industry trends in those capabilities that highlight strengths and weaknesses in your library in the following areas:

• customers (including size and growth of market; customer characteristics, perceptions, behaviours, needs)
• products/services (including their pricing)
• promotion
• distribution channels
• competition (including competitor characteristics, comparison, strengths and weaknesses, objectives, strategies, evaluation)
• publics (including any group that has an actual or potential interest in, or impact on, your library's ability to achieve its objectives - financial, media, government, citizen action, local, general and internal publics.)

4. SWOT and issues analysis – identifies, with relevance to your library service, the main

• strengths/weaknesses
• opportunities/threats
• issues identified from the SWOT's matching of strengths and weaknesses to opportunities and threats
• key planning assumptions
• critical success factors
• key result areas

Where do we want to be?

PLANNING

5. Goals and objectives – Defines the plan’s financial and marketing goals,
• linked to the broader organizational mission statement,
• expressed as measurable objectives in terms of- usage volume,- market share,- cost/revenue,- consumer awareness,- consumer satisfaction etc.

How will we get there?

6. Marketing strategy – Presents the broad marketing approach that will be used to achieve the plan’s objectives, i.e.
• the 4Ps of marketing
- Product/Service,
- Price,
- Place (or distribution)
- Promotion (or marketing communication)
• and other strategic options that serve the 4Ps, e.g.
- segmenting, targetting, positioning,
- market research, etc.

IMPLEMENTATION

7. Action programs – Presents the special marketing programs designed to achieve the business objectives.

8. Projected budget – Forecasts the plan’s expected budget inputs and financial outcomes.

CONTROL

9. Controls – Indicates how the plan will be monitored, measured and evaluated.

The model for the plan is based on the work of American marketing guru Philip Kotler, SC Johnson and Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, from the following books:

Kotler, Philip; Brown, Linden; Adam, Stewart and Armstrong, Gary, Marketing 6th ed. Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest NSW, 2004, pp 120-159

Andreasen, Alan R. and Kotler, Philip, Strategic Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations, 5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River NJ, 1996, pp 100-101

There are many sites that can help you with marketing planning. Have a look at my del.icio.us bookmarks on planning to get you started. It's mostly about asking the right questions and then providing convincing, evidence based answers to them.

What's the difference between strategic planning and strategic marketing planning?

I used to get really confused about that, so I made a point of investigating the concepts and educating myself about them when I did my Marketing Diploma. I didn't want to end up like Dilbert's manager, above. i.e. a complete dill. Let's see what the experts have to say and then see what that means for public libraries.

According to Philip Kotler, strategic planning is undertaken at a number of levels depending on the size and structure of the organization. For the most complex organizations a hierarchy of strategies is required.

1. Corporate level (Corporate strategy)
2. Strategic Business Unit (SBU) level (Business strategy)
3. Functional level of SBU (Marketing strategy, Research & development strategy, Production & operations strategy, Finance & administration strategy, Human resources strategy)

1. Corporate strategy
involves decision making to:
* Define the corporate mission and vision
* Set objectives
* Define business portfolio strategy
* Deploy Resources
* Establish corporate values

2. Business strategy
involves decision making to:
* Define the business
* Set objectives
* Choose the product/market portfolio
* Establish competitive strategy
* Allocate and manage resources

3. Functional level strategy
involves decision making to develop:
* Marketing strategy - marketing goals and objectives, marketing strategies (customer, product/services, pricing, promotion and distribution)
* Research & Development strategy - technology, product development.
* Production and Operations strategy
* Finance and Administration strategy
* Human resources strategy

Kotler, Philip; Brown, Linden; Adam, Stewart and Armstrong, Gary, Marketing 6th ed. Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest NSW, 2004, pp 78-83

Public Library Strategic Plans

At the corporate level, your council's strategic plan will set the scope within which your public library will operate. Most importantly, it’ll define the council's vision and mission which your public library will be helping to achieve. It’ll also set out the structure of the organization, into directorates or divisions that is designed to best achieve this vision and mission.

At the business level, the broad concerns of the strategic plan are broken down into smaller units. These may be called business units, departments or whatever terminology your council uses.

From the business unit level, smaller functional units may be created.

Depending on the size of your local council and how it is structured, your public library could fit into the business unit or functional level of an SBU. If it's large enough to be a business unit, then, within the Strategic Business Plan, it could develop an overall Strategic Marketing Plan for the library and/or separate Marketing Plans for each product/service. In either case, the planning process is the same.

* create or reiterate a vision and mission that you are trying to achieve
* engage in rigorous situation analysis
* set goals and objectives to achieve
* design strategies to achieve these goals and objectives
* specify action plans, including budgets, for implementing these strategies
* specify feedback and control mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of the plans

A public library is dependent for its direction on the goals and objectives of higher levels of the organization. It pays to be aware of these higher level goals and objectives because, technically, they set the parameters within which the public library operates. At each level, the vision and mission can be further refined, if desired, so that your library can establish its own vision and mission. The main thing to remember when doing this is that it should fit well with the council's vision and mission. The current buzzword is that it should be “in alignment with” the council’s vision and mission.

Local Government Strategic Plans in NSW tend to be of 4 years duration, so your Business and Marketing Plans should mirror this. Within your Strategic Marketing Plan, your Action Plans can be organised on a yearly basis to create Annual Marketing Plans to mirror your council's yearly Management Plan.

Having done this, don't forget, these are living documents reflecting the real world. The real world changes, sometimes unpredictably, so be prepared to change your plans if necessary. If you've done your initial research well and created clear detailed documents, then any changes should be easy to incorporate.

Here are some examples of Public Library Strategic Plans and Marketing Plans. If you know of any more that you think would be useful here, by all means let me know and I will add them.

Here are some sites on planning in general that you may find useful, too.

Software

There is a range of software available to help you with business and marketing planning. Here’s a few that you might want to check out.

Masterplan Professional, CCH
Marketing Plan Pro, Palo Alto Software
BIZ Plan Freeware. This is a FREE Business Plan Guide and Template. The Word-based Template contains a detailed framework and structure for writing a business plan. It’s complemented by a comprehensive guide.