Marginalized Knowledge: An Agenda for Indigenous Knowledge Development and Integration with Other Forms of Knowledge

Marketing plans for academic libraries

The marketing plan that has been proposed by Reynolds (2003: n.p) involves the development of a promotional plan. Academic and research libraries, like every other institution and business, are increasingly aware of the opportunities and dangers that exist within their environment. Reynolds (2003: n.p) notes that libraries have to deal with the challenges and opportunities that exist. and, it entails librarians leading their organizations onto new plateaus of success.

Reynolds (2003: n.p) opines that conducting library user research is the first step in the overall marketing planning process, and the focus in this process is on the users of academic or research libraries. Here, the first important thing is to know who the customers are. Customers include graduate and undergraduate students, faculties, researchers, staff and administrators, community members, high school students, and others. It is also important for the library to know who the users and potential users of the library are. Each of the primary customers identified have a set of wants and needs in relation to the academic library. It is therefore crucial for the library to find out what these wants and needs are. Wants are things the customers would like the library to provide to improve comfort, such as the extension of services or areas of interest, whereas needs are basic things the library must provide in order to assist the customer in adequately accomplishing their information gathering goals, such as having a proper collection, an easy access system, personal support, and amenable facilities and equipment (Reynolds, 2003: n.p).
Having determined what customers need and want, the library’s management needs to develop and manage marketing strategies. Dibb et al. (2002:16) describe a marketing strategy as encompassing the selection and analysis of a target group - that group of people whom the organization wants to reach, and create and maintain an appropriate marketing mix, which is a ‘toolkit’ of product, place/distribution, promotion, price and people that will satisfy those customers in the target market.