Sara, tell us about your educational background.
My experience prior to working at the County Library was in marketing and communications for the arts and social services nonprofit industries. I have a B.A. in music performance, then I went back to school a few years later and earned an M.F.A. in arts administration with a focus on marketing.
What is your marketing background? Do you have formal training, or are you an accidental marketer?
I am an accidental marketer who went back for formal training. My first marketing job was as a receptionist for a sales team where I helped out with direct mail, marketing collateral, and trade shows. I built on those skills organically over a few years before I knew I wanted to turn it into a career I could grow and advance in. I decided to pair my marketing and communications experience with my arts background and go back to school for a degree that would help me on that path.
I spent almost 15 years in arts marketing, working in symphony, opera, and ballet companies with increasing responsibilities before joining the County Library as its head of marketing in February 2020.
How large is your department?
Our marketing department has a staff of eight, including myself. We have a project manager who also does design work, two graphic designers, two PR coordinators who also run the social media accounts, a print production specialist, and a photographer/videographer. All of the positions are full-time.
How many staffers are at your library?
Approximately 550 in the whole organization. We have 18 full-service branches, departments for systemwide outreach for all ages, administration, technical services, and facilities.
What percentage of the total organizational budget is dedicated to marketing?
Marketing personnel, supplies, advertising, and program support account for 1.6% of the library’s annual operating budget.
What was your most successful library campaign?
We had a great time with our All-Star Winter Reading program in January and February 2023. The 2023 NBA All-Star Game was hosted in Salt Lake City in February. Knowing that tickets were out of reach to most residents, our county mayor and county council allocated money to support other free and low-cost activities and events. We had an existing Winter Reading program during a similar time frame, so we quickly jumped on the idea to make it basketball themed.
Since we had additional partners and resources and were part of a big community buzz for the event, we were able to leverage increased press coverage and community awareness into increased participation for the program. All-Star Winter Reading participation was double the previous years, and completion of the program increased as well.
This was a fun program that had a high level of patron, press, and leadership excitement, and it led to connecting to different members of the community in new ways. One of the perks of completing the reading challenge was being able to attend an event preceding All-Star Weekend to meet local sports team mascots and some of the visiting team mascots. This ended up being a well-attended, high-energy event that television media was excited to cover. We also had a high number of attendees sharing the experience on social media. Many of our branches also had a drawing to give away the promotional standups of basketball players. We had a higher number of parents entering to win those standups, especially the fathers.
We submitted this program for the John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award, and we were thrilled that it won in 2024. We were fortunate to have a national event taking place in our community, but I think this program could scale to any community and any sports team that would be willing to collaborate.
What was your biggest challenge? What did you learn from it?
Due to the scale of the larger NBA All-Star events, we had a number of partners, collaborators, and resources involved in our reading program. These included new staff in our county mayor’s office and the Utah Jazz for our program, but also work with our Parks and Recreation division to promote other basketball and sports content, camps, and classes. Many of these were new to us, and instead of building trust through shared projects over time, we just had to jump in and trust that everything was going to work out.
An example of this is how we helped create a series of life-sized standups and actual-size shoe prints of Utah Jazz basketball players. This was an early idea to support our in-branch promotion. To avoid the challenges of negotiating rights with the team and players to create and print them ourselves, we shared the idea and request with a county staff member who was the contact with the Utah Jazz. Since we didn’t have a direct contact at that time, we had to trust that they would show up in time to be delivered to branches.
That was a great lesson in learning to let go of the need to control everything. Definitely prepare thoroughly, and have a contingency plan, but after that, trust your collaborators to do their part, and don’t waste time worrying.
What technology has helped you reach new audiences?
Although it is not a new technology, I am a huge believer in the value of earned and paid broadcast media to reach existing and new audiences. This could be the traditional broadcast television channels in your area, but it can also be public broadcast networks, talk radio, community radio programs, and podcasts. It takes time to identify and research available outlets and then build relationships for segments and coverage, but over time, that work is going to be a more reliable method of getting the word out to a targeted and local community.
How do you think library marketing was affected long-term by COVID-19?
I think the past few years have definitely seen an acceleration to digital media that would have been adopted more slowly without the pandemic. But I think this means we’ll continue to market through more and more channels to meet the behaviors of many different audiences. A good example is a flier for a program: Twenty years ago, it would have been one printed flier that was posted, mailed, or left out for distribution. Ten years ago, it would have been a flier that was printed and posted and left out for distribution, but also a digital file to attach to a Facebook event or email. Today, that program flier will be crafted into social media content, emailed, posted as a digital flyer on a webpage, printed and left out for distribution, and posted, plus people will take pictures as their own digital content.
This also leads me to think about segmentation and how it balances with the library value of privacy. These days, most people expect that they will receive an experience that is already tailored to their preferences, whether that’s an online shopping cart, streaming movie suggestions, or one-button ordering of my perfectly customized sandwich. Since all of these tools rely on user data, what ways will library marketing tools keep up with these trends and audience expectations while still being watchdogs of the public’s right to privacy?
Discuss some of your productive partnerships.
We have a large number of program partnerships with other agencies in our county and with local nonprofits. These partners are a great way to expand the experiences that patrons can have at the library and in their community. They also provide an avenue to drive attendance to our branches and to increase attendance to our programs when they participate.
Because we are part of county government, we have a number of other divisions that collaboratively support and promote our events and programming. At any given time, we might have upcoming events on display screens at performing arts centers, program fliers available at senior centers, or librarians doing storytime at a recreation center pool.
We also have some long-time television media relationships that have been great at boosting our awareness with the community. We have monthly morning show appearances where we highlight upcoming events in entertaining and educational ways. Since we make these segments interactive and fun, the show’s staffers are eager to have us back regularly. I believe these relationships are also valuable when we are pitching more serious news stories to the stations.
What guidance would you give a fledgling marketer?
It’s always the same advice: Reach out to someone and ask questions. This industry is built on access to information, and marketers are almost always a friendly and supportive bunch. Whatever question you have or problem you’re trying to solve, someone else has already made steps down that road. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t be willing to share results and insights with a colleague. So don’t be afraid to email or call another library marketer, whether they are in your city or state or on the other side of the country. The flip side of that: Pay it forward, and be available in the future when a colleague reaches out for advice or help.
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