Using Location in Marketing

We have established previously and clearly that the most effective marketing comes from determining first a knowledge gap that you can fill, and then subsequently the way in which you can fill it. In other words, form always follows function. In fact the best method or medium or strategy almost always emerges naturally out of the knowledge gap that we’re trying to fill or the message we’re trying to get across.

It is often the case that location can play a key role in delivering that marketing message. Think beyond the placement of ads and billboards, beyond reaching people on their phones and through the websites they frequent. Think rather about the places they often go, for reasons of convenience or comfort, or because they value them so highly: places where we can meet them naturally.

For many of our clients, the library is an ideal example. A lot of our prospects themselves are there frequently! As an added bonus, the library is a neutral, non-partisan ground, which puts people at ease and makes them more receptive. Where we might not set out to do something IN the library, it is still often the case that the library emerges as the perfect opportunity to reach a lot of our target market.

Consider 3 examples:

A medium-sized public university was trying to grow its presence in rural communities. Part of the strategy was to embed the university within these communities in organic ways. In some ways this was easier than more traditional marketing because there just aren’t as many opportunities for exposure in very small towns or cities. Obviously the target market was always going to include the local high school, but then the next most important cultural or community resources include things like a community center, maybe a longtime family-owned drugstore, city parks, museums… and often the library!

As part of our work with alumni of the Education program, we did an art contest with kids in the elementary school. The perfect prize was a formally published art project that the student and their family could proudly display. One of several media that emerged was a bookmark. We published the bookmark (branded on the back of course!), and credited the child in our announcement, and then distributed copies—where else?—at the library! We promoted each release via local social media, starting of course with the family of the student because they would be most excited and motivated to help us get the word out. This is a perfect example of how the opportunity (warmly welcomed placement in the library) emerged out of the initiative (close work with alumni teaching in the schools).

Leadership of the campus library at a large public university in an urban area was working to promote the role of the library in campus life and student success. The goal was two-fold. First they wanted to increase library usage (obviously). They wanted to increase library usage not just for books, and not even just for study, but for all of the other things the library offered (popular media, leisure, space for gathering and study). Emerging from that was the other goal, to emphasize the library’s role as the “other” community center on campus (in contrast to the campus or activity center, home of student social life).

An added benefit emerged in the opportunity to improve prospective student experience during a campus visit and tour, increasing student affinity during the recruitment process and improving yield rates for student college selection.

How did they do this? By addressing a national reading and literacy challenge!

The Woolston Inventive philosophy is to make people smarter. In effect, there is ample research that has found that reading, especially for pleasure, drops off once students go to college. There’s just so much to do, assignments, responsibilities, even reading for class… Thus reading for pleasure becomes the first casualty. And with so many college-going kids, reading used to be a favorite pastime—how sad that it goes by the wayside!

We developed the Keep Reading Jags program. The library stop is common to just about all versions of the campus tour. Leadership at the library developed “staff picks” (including from student staff) of eight books of popular reading. Providing staff picks is a popular tool for libraries anyway, everyone wants to see the list! And cleverly, the library leadership was able to identify a grant opportunity to help fund this initiative. Consequently, we actually procured copies of the staff picks to give to students. As part of the library stop on the campus tour, staff shared the list and invited students to choose a book to keep and take home, and read for pleasure at their convenience. This added almost no additional time to the tour, except now students and families were much more animated and engaged. And of course, the initiative helped with every version of all of these goals.

The final example was actually a bonus campaign for a long-time, collaborative client, the Nursing program at a university. They were already doing a number of successful things, and looking for easy opportunities to do additional promotion of the program. One thing that emerged from discussion was the annual Velveteen Rabbit Award given to a faculty member. The traits of the Velveteen Rabbit embody the qualities of a good nurse, and they recognized annually someone from the nursing faculty who exemplified this.

Well obviously, the Velveteen Rabbit is a book… let’s make a bookmark! One side of the bookmark summarized the book in the frame of those important, quality traits of the Velveteen Rabbit, the other side highlighted faculty winners of the award. We made the extra investment to make a bookmark that was more than a slip of paper but which also had a tail. Then we shared stacks of the bookmark with local libraries to distribute. Libraries are always happy to give out beautiful bookmarks like this, the campus library and city libraries both!

Obviously you have to make the situation ideal for the library too. In other words, we can’t just show up and co-opt their space or we’ll get kicked out! There are other examples too, both for libraries specifically but even more generally taking advantage of the qualities inherent to any space. These are just a few ways to illustrate the power that location can play in marketing efforts.