Promotional materials that libraries love and hate

Earlier this month we asked our library customers to vote for the promotional materials that they wanted us to produce to help them raise awareness of our online products. We’ve crunched the numbers and here are are the results.

The materials that you loved the most

• A4 Posters
• Small leaflets
• Bookmarks

The most disliked promotional materials

• Any kind of stickers
• A3 posters
• Wobblers

Thanks to everyone who contributed their opinions. There were a stack of really good ideas for other types of materials as well which I’ve listed below.

I have a Powerpoint I run regularly on an interactive whiteboard and ANYTHING that could be included on the IWB, either as part of the presentation or as a standalone so we could show something a bit different, would be great. Have you thought about embedding it within Library Management systems so that a search for Driving items would result in Theory Test Pro being one of the results and from their the student could link in? I can do this by simply cataloguing your website but maybe this could be something you look into? I use Eclipse.net and other popular systems in school are Alice and Heritage.

You can download our MARC records which can then be used to make Theory Test Pro appear on your catalogue. There are also lots of video walkthroughs of the system on the site. We’ve got a good clip on YouTube that you are most welcome to you.

Electronic versions of the A4 poster/small leaflet would be ideal,too.

Yes, Definitely. We’ll make electronic versions of everything available online. In the meantime, you can always download our latest materials

If publicity contains the Theory Test Pro web address, could it also say ‘or visit your local library website’, or similar, as some libraries, including ours, have all our subscriptions on one page so customers only have to log in once.

We’re going to include a link to our Library Subscribers page (for example: http://theorytestpro.co.uk/library_subscribers). This will take users to a list of all the current authorities subscribing to the service. This means you don’t have to print the name of your library’s URL on the thousands of flyers that you hand out. However, we’ll make sure that we provide a space for you to customise your own instructions for larger (and smaller print run) posters.

The small leaflets to have access instructions on the back re how to sign up etc.

We’ll definitely make sure we have clear sign up instructions on how to sign up.

I like the credit card sized promo cards. These have proved successful in promoting existing services.

This was recommended by a number of respondents, so we’ll definitely make sure we do something with this.

Large cardboard cutout – freestanding – which could be circulated round a group of libraries to draw attention to a promotion on learning to drive/new skills/help for students. Could be a figure or group of figures holding TheoryTest Pro posters or incorporate a leaflet holder. This would be eyecatching for when we do promotions to colleges or workplaces.

Mouse matts for use with public PCs

Great idea. It might be too expensive to do this time around, however we’ll include it in the next survey to see what support it gets. If it gets lots of support then we’ll find a way to produce it.