Two Approaches to Winning over New Customers - Are Libraries Making Good Use of Both?
Seth Godin discusses how changes in your product can grow your market share. Some grow your market a brick at time - it's the cumulative effect of a number of small changes that finally add up to being compelling reason to switch or buy.He also describes "game changers" type innovations that provide a compelling reason to switch now. He uses Apple's new Time Machine that will be released with Mac OS X 10.5, code-named Leopard as an example of a "game changer". The Time Machine software that will effortlessly let us roll back through time and see our stuff.
The key is the lack of effort. The default backup configuration will probably be just fine for 98% (give or take a few percent) of users. Without effort, our important stuff will be preserved. Most of us don't want to be bothered with configuring backups and if the figures in this article are correct, 96% of Mac users don't back up their files.
What are some of the "game changers" for libraries? What are some of the bricks? Are we future focused when we think of market share? What matters to millenials?Is a usable web site a "game changer"? Perhaps that's just a brick in the wall? But what about a hard to use library web site? Is that a "game changer"?
Is the lack of a federated search engine a game changer when researches can pop over to Google Scholar or Live Academic and search many resources at once? In what way is the game changed or not changed when people discover materials on other sites and come to libraries as convenient or perhaps just inexpensive fulfillment systems?
Is NCSU's Endeca catalogue a game changer for discovering scholarly materials?
Is wifi access in the library another brick in the wall in terms of creating an inviting and useful research space? Would delivery of print materials right to the faculty member's office be a "game changer" in terms of services?What new features or services are we adding that will make it "too painful" to not use the Library? What is the free prize inside libraries?
Tags: library | marketing | library
