Why you should market?
Do you really know how your information services are viewed within the organisation? Are they a support unit or strategic resource? To make sure you’re the latter (and stay that way) its necessary to apply marketing skills to your portfolio of responsibilities.
Marketing isn’t selling - its about communicating a perceived value and is focused on your clients’ needs.
Thrive to survive - alternative sources of information such as the Internet are on the increase whilst IT professionals (with much larger budgets) consider information management as another aspect of their job - particularly in implementing and managing intranets. The application of marketing techniques can help turn these threats to opportunities - to remind users of the value you provide in helping users choose the right information source and to strategically align yourself with IT and other influential departments and individuals.
Who you should market at?
Don’t spray and pray - target users (aka market segmentation). These should be:
- budget holders who have a say in your future existence and role
- early adopters/enthusiasts of the intranet
- champions of the information service that can represent you several levels up in the organisation
- Don’t forget existing users! - you need to market to maintain repeat usage of your services
Marketing tips
Keeping them informed - send email updates in HTML format, or if this is not possible, convert the information to webpages on your intranet (there are a wide variety of web authoring packages -e.g. MS Frontpage 98 - that automate most of the basic HTML codes, making life easier) and then only include a brief synopsis in the email - with hyper links back to the webpages you created
Branding - adopt a consistent style to your communication - e.g. the webpages you create for current awareness should always have the same look and feel and be clearly identifiable as having originated within the information department.
Communication
- adapt your communication style and vocabulary to suit your audience
- facilitate and encourage communication - all emails and webpages should contain contact details for the information centre - phone, email and contact name(s)
- be persistent - don’t be content with communicating the benefits and sitting back - proactively follow up
- remind users of the wide range of resources at your disposal
This type of strategic thinking will help to enhance the profile of information services , ensuring that they become essential to the role of profit centres within the organisation.
http://www.davidgreen.me.uk/articles/ftnov98.html
