Libraries Unlimited
Libraries Unlimited Welcome Back Campaign
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Chalk + Ward are a valuable partner for our marketing team as they can offer us high-level strategic input to our campaigns, backed up with great creative design, media and digital marketing skills. For our ‘Welcome Back’ campaigns, which are very important for us post-Covid, it’s been great to work with Chalk + Ward to develop integrated campaign ideas and grow our brand awareness in the Southwest region.”
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In September 2021 we were chosen to work with Libraries Unlimited to develop their Welcome Back campaign, an initiative to let people know libraries were open after lockdown and to encourage users back!
The campaign was a success and saw people returning and spending time in their local library. Due to the positive impact the initial campaign had, we then developed a follow up campaign which ran for a month between March and April and was designed to widen the awareness and appeal of Libraries Unlimited.
The target audience was ‘All Adults 18+’ with the objective to further increase footfall into the libraries and subsequently increase the number of books borrowed!
We wanted to build on the previous campaign by amplifying the positive connection between the library and its users, so we focused on emotive messaging highlighting the joy of rediscovering books and reading, the social interaction that welcomes you at the library and how the library provides a special hub at the heart of the community with a wealth of free resources to benefit from.
The first step was to create the overarching concept
The concept we developed and ran last year was ‘Spread the Word’, with the supporting message ‘Libraries in Devon and Torbay are now open’ – simple and clear to pull people back through the doors!
We wanted to build on this by retaining the ‘Spread the Word’ concept so we developed a new overarching message that would encompass all the emotional messages we wanted to include. We created ‘There’s so much to discover at the library’ as the new lead campaign message.
The concept was developed as a multi-media campaign. We created new visual graphics for posters and social banners for promotion within the libraries as well as amplifying the message as a radio sign-off and through online marketing via Facebook advertising.
Then consider how to reach the audience
With such a large geographic target again across Devon and Torbay, radio is a strong and cost-effective way to reach the audience with great content. The first campaign introduced the voice of the library with an engaging introduction of ‘Hi, it’s me, the library!’ For this follow up-campaign, we recommended keeping the same introduction to build recognition and awareness and start creating an identity on the radio, also referred to as a “sonic brand trigger”.
We planned the media against current RAJAR figures for a one-month campaign targeting all adults and identified the stations that perform best for that audience.
We created 3 fun ads with the same voiceover artists as before to give a light-hearted, natural tone for the voice of the library and a genuine, friendly voice as the voice of Libraries Unlimited. The ads had real stand out due to the impactful introduction and delivered on booked impressions.
And of course, not forgetting social
To support the radio and engage with people online, we created a Facebook advertising campaign, targeting people via geography, demographics and with a genuine interest in books.
We developed a series of creative ads which were targeted to different interest groups, including Crime books, Romance, History, Ancestry, Politics and Book Clubs, along with some general ads for anyone interested in books!
During the campaign, we created additional ‘lookalike’ audiences to make the most efficient use of the media budget. These audiences are made up of users with similar demographics, interests, and behaviours to the audiences in our pre-selected audience pools but allowed for additional reach beyond interest targeting limitations.
The average click-through rate of 0.08% may seem low for a typical Facebook campaign, however most ads encouraged users to visit their library in person in line with the broader campaign objectives. To gain maximum awareness at the lowest cost, we also implemented bidding strategies which favoured impressions over clicks, avoiding the most competitive users with a frequent click history and helping to drive down CPM costs.
The Results
Between the 14th of March and 10th April, the Facebook Ads campaign generated 5,185,451 impressions from 378,497 users. The forecasted total audience size based on the selected interest groups was approximately 355,000 users, showing we reached beyond this figure while maintaining a significant impression frequency volume.
Throughout the campaign period, the activity generated a total of 1,928 website sessions directly from an ad click; 1,447 to the Devon Libraries website and 481 to the Torbay Libraries website. As expected, the majority of these sessions (over 90%) were from new users who had not visited the website before.
The client is still analysing footfall in the libraries and book issue numbers but as this campaign was targeting new users, there is also a high level of brand awareness which would have been achieved. We are starting to build a consistent marketing presence which will only help to fulfill the objectives over time.