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.