Promotion ideas, from within & without librarianship

Another in an occasional series of posts about vendors helping libraries promote their wares.

From EBSCO
The library database vendor EBSCOHost has created a series of Marketing Tools, like nice icons for various EBSCO products (both as gifs for the Web & other formats for print), links to marketing tips on external web sites, and some nifty special event kits.

One "out of the box" idea for EBSCO / libraries: leave flyers for the new Home Improvement database at town hardware stores & even Home Depot; promote the Auto Repair database with flyers at local car parts stores ... you get the idea. Why not?! Here's the tag line: "Fixing your car? Read how @ your library ... @ home ... for free!"

From Gale / InfoTrac
Gale's Customer Resource Center offers some interesting ideas, including ... adding a Gale search box directly on the library's home page, and showing journal covers on the home page which lead users directly into journals in Gale (I could see this being very handy for Consumer Reports ... and hey! why don't we put journal covers or logos into the OPAC the way we do book covers? but I digress). For school & public librarians, the suggest offering training materials and product information for parents. Some of the ideas are pretty basic, and they don't say _how_ to do some of the fancier stuff, like posting a Gale search box on your library page, but it's a nice start.

There is also some interesting material over at their Technical & Training Resources page. More info. on their AccessMyLibrary program, which is on my list to investigate. They also offer logos for their databases.

Looking at the logo for What Do I Read Next, I wonder ... could we put flyers for our Reader's Advisory databases in ... bookstores? Why not? Telling readers what else they might like should / could lead to more book sales in addition to circulations. And isn't that all good?


From Apple
Finally, we take a look at Apple. We look to them for all kinds of things, like the iPhone, for instance, but how about for marketing our training opportunities? A new Apple store opened in my 'hood on Saturday (see photos in Flickr), and they've done some good things for me.

First, they sent me an email telling me this. I've bought things from them before, and they know my zip code. Smart to tell me they're opening ... and offering me a free Apple t-shirt if I'm one of the first thousand people there on Saturday. Of course I will be!

They also sent me a list of their training opportunities. See the full descriptions for all of their workshops ... and look at the schedule for the sessions at my store. Nicely laid out, clearly marked. As always, nice design.