Guidelines for Libraries of Government Departments - IFLA

need to produce a written "Marketing Policy" for their library which includes a
strategy to achieve the overall target of efficient and effective marketing and
public relations work.
This marketing policy must comply with the guiding principles of the authority as
well as its corporate identity, corporate culture, corporate communication and
corporate design. The government library must be familiar with all of this and
take it into consideration.
When developing a marketing policy for the government library, it is also
essential to make use of general management and marketing knowledge. This
will enable the creation of a marketing policy and a marketing plan based on
stakeholders interests.
The marketing cycle starts with the definition of tasks and functions (as stated in
the corporate philosophy of the organisation). This should lead to a consensus
between the decision-makers, on the one hand, and the government library, on
the other hand. This is followed by market research and an analysis of the
resources and the definition of the marketing objectives. The final stage of the
marketing cycle is the success-related quality control or evaluation which can in
turn form the basis for a new, rewritten definition of tasks and functions regarding
the marketing activities of the authority library.
A marketing and promotion plan should be developed and implemented as part
of the planning and on-going operation of the service. Such a plan is the
concrete instruction for carrying out the marketing policy using knowledge and
techniques to enable the government library to fulfill their marketing policy. The
plan must be based on market research and resource analysis as well as the
objectives of all marketing activities of the government library.
13.3 Market research and resources analysis
13.3.1 Market research—Who is the primary target audience
Although the users of a government library are generally defined by the function
of the organisation, and, therefore, quite homogeneous, in most cases one can
still identify different groups of users.
The target audience (government employees) or other users of the services
provided (which sometimes could be the general public as well) should be
determined and marketing activities should be appropriate to that audience.
Government employees, as members of the target audience, should be included
in the planning and evaluation of the marketing plan.
The library now has to obtain a thorough understanding of what the research
behaviour of the respective user groups is like, what information they need and
what kind of service they prefer. See Section 4 on “Identifying and meeting
needs of users” for more information on this topic. It is also useful to consider
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