#SharetheLove Event at the Library Highlights Marketing Strategies

The library strives every semester to engage students not only with its resources, but with the staff and the space as well. While we do displays and regular post to our social media outlets, we also host events that are not only creative and fun, but utilize marketing strategies too.

The marketing team for the library consists of Amanda Sullivan, a Research and Instruction Librarian, and two fabulous student workers, Katherine Gaitens and Quinn Ostendarp, who have both have taken numerous marketing classes. Their classes have helped them to use marketing strategies when brainstorming ideas for the library. While they always display their creativity with our signage, posts, and events, behind the fun times and eye-catching visuals, they have put into to practice these learned strategies, like brand awareness, to meet our marketing goals and objectives.

The main objective of brand awareness is to create a positive association in a customer’s mind when the brand is thought about or discussed. In the library’s case, we want our students, faculty, and staff to have a positive experience every time they walk through our doors or access our resources online. We have tried to cultivate our brand so what comes to our patrons’ minds is that the library and staff are welcoming, educational, interesting, creative, caring, and the space creates a positive atmosphere on campus. For Valentine’s Day we decided to host an event that would encapsulate all of these things we want the library to represent.

Gaitens took the lead on managing the event and came up with a theme around #SharetheLove. She wanted the event to focus on appreciation of people in someone’s life. Not only did students get to focus on appreciating their family and friends by picking up some of our give aways, they also got to feel appreciated by the library when they picked up something for themselves. Gaitens and Ostendarp decorated a table with some incredible crafts Gaitens designed and then they constructed. The centerpiece was a tree made out of conversation hearts and on the table were scattered red hearts and stickers mixed in with candy and the giveaways.

Gaitens and Ostendarp worked hard on making takeaways for the students that consisted of cute little mice made of Hershey kisses and lollipops shaped liked flowers with sentiments such as “You are loved” and “To the moon and back.”  Elizabeth Calanagh, a sophomore, and Jessica Jackson, from Media Services, both exclaimed how cute the Hershey kiss mice were for gifts.

For healthier options, clementines were put into bags with tags on it saying “You’re a cutie” and apples had tags around their stems that said “You’re the apple of my eye.” Sarah Massey, a graduate student in nutrition, said “I love that healthy options were included in such a cute way at this event.” Other students also said they appreciated that healthy options were available. Many students like Aneyla Arroyo, Maria Ariza, and Baileigh Jones, expressed how the event brightened their days and they loved the effort put into it and thanked us for our thoughtfulness.

By making all of these wonderful gifts, Gaitens hoped that students would post them on social media and tag us. Also we hoped to get some new followers and we did! One of the pictures was so perfect, it was reposted to the main Meredith College Facebook page, leading our post to get even more likes and shares. As students have asked us to do this again next year, we are planning to do more targeted promotion for the event, especially to students who may not come to the library. We hope that by posting flyers around campus and asking for the event to be posted on the main college’s Facebook page before, and on the day of, we will get even more visitors next year.

If you would like to read more on marketing strategies and branding, check out the below titles available through the library.

• Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Strategies
• Sticky Branding: 12.5 Principles to Stand Out, Attract Customers, and Grow an Incredible Brand
• 60-Minute Brand Strategist : The Essential Brand Book for Marketing Professionals
• The Activation Imperative : How to build brands and business by inspiring action