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Marketing approaches in Norfolk libraries

The Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library is the busiest library in the country. Visitors have remained at over 1.5m, and issues at over 1.1m since 2005/06. Some of this has to do with the library being in the centre of Norwich, in a landmark building, but largely its success is due to Norfolk Library and Information Service’s approach to marketing.

The Service focuses specifically on the questions: who is using and not using the library, what do they want, and what does the library do to support their needs? Community profiling, consultation and data analysis are used to help answer those questions.

As Jennifer Holland, Head of Norfolk Library and Information Service at Norfolk County Council explained: “Marketing isn’t just about advertising in the right place – the service offer has to meet peoples’ needs.

"Our activity programme, and the way we deliver our service is targeted at specific market segments while also ensuring we are linking in to council and county-wide priorities. An example of this is our approach to reading groups – the Millennium Library supports a large number of reading groups but puts extra effort into those for groups identified in the community profile as our target audiences – such as parents with small children, people reading books in translation, children and young people, people with sight disability, people with mental health problems.

Groups are also encouraged to organise events for themselves, with the library offering support. Anime, Manga, Dungeons and Dragons and Yu Gi Oh events are all held in the library and organised and managed by young people. “

Public involvement

Another aspect of the market segmentation is the involvement of people in service development. Young people were involved in the design and stocking of the children's library at the Millennium Library. They now help with recruitment as well as stock selection; disabled groups advise on adjustments to make services more accessible and local gay and lesbian community representatives advise on the selection and display of stock.

The library is regularly mystery-shopped by people from target groups and as a result services are continuously improved. An example is a family history course run through the medium of BSL after the local Deaf Society gave mystery-shopping feedback.

Norfolk Library and Information Service constantly innovates to keep up with trends. It has adopted the Living Library model which has attracted a variety of new users, both as ‘books’ and readers.

The Millennium library also uses social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and increasingly the service is using marketing tools such as Mosaic to find out more about its customers.

Jennifer Holland added: "The service never stands still. We have an annual marketing plan which takes into account changes in communities and keeps an eye on trends. We regularly monitor use of services and take action when things aren’t going as expected. The whole service, including layouts, guiding, furniture, events and stock are continually reviewed to reflect the changing needs and expectations of customers.”

November 2009