The Queen Anne’s County Library is a public library located in Stevensville, MD that offers a variety of community services in addition to routine book borrowing. This includes on-site events and classes for children, teens and adults, digital offerings and more. Due to the location of the branch and the demographics of Queen Anne’s County, we decided to push the robust digital library through public outreach as a means of procuring new library card registrations. Their impressive digital catalogue includes eBooks, audiobooks, music and movies that can be borrowed in person or instantly streamed through their Hoopla platform.
We took a fun approach in order to create a need and provide real-life applications for the free digital offerings the library provides. We decided that a public relations campaign combined with radio, Facebook and programmatic ads showing the expansive range of digital genres and offerings would be an effective way to target potential library registrants in this area.
We strategically chose to pitch a monthly byline series to local publications to showcase what “you can do with a library card.” We released themed articles relevant to the seasons: September “Free Romantic Fall Date Night Ideas”, October “Host the Best Halloween Party in Town”, and November “Plan the Ultimate Thanksgiving”. A custom image accompanied each byline, showcasing some of the popular titles referenced in each article.
The Kent Island Bay Times, Queen Anne’s County Record Observer and myeasternshoremd.com featured multiple articles for a combined reach of over 247,800. Digital impressions for this campaign were over 193,566. Our Facebook ads added another 144,034 impressions for a total of over 585,400 impressions!
Overall, our campaign efforts resulted in 128 new library card registrations from in 3 months. This is a 510% increase in new registrations over the average! We were extremely happy with the awareness generated by this public outreach campaign, along with the hard number of registrations.
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