Case Studies of Web Marketing Success in Libraries

Web marketing in libraries often sounds abstract until you see it working in a real institution. A promotional video here, a personalised information product there, and suddenly a library that students walked past every day becomes a resource they actively seek out. Two cases stand out for showing how libraries turn online tools into measurable engagement: the University of Bergen Library in Norway, which used multimedia video to make its resources visible, and the Learning Resource Centre at the Indian School of Business, which built customised digital products to serve students directly. Studying both side by side reveals what good library web marketing actually looks like in practice.

Why libraries need web marketing at all 🔗

A common problem runs through academic libraries everywhere: students and faculty often have no idea what the library offers. Expensive databases sit unused, journal subscriptions go unread, and skilled librarians remain invisible. Researchers studying academic library marketing have noted that challenges like a lack of awareness of library programs or resources, or poor understanding of librarian roles, can be addressed through marketing. The internet changed how libraries could respond to this. Instead of relying only on notice boards and orientation sessions, libraries gained tools like websites, videos, social media, and email to reach users where they already spend their time.

Web marketing for libraries is not about selling in the commercial sense. It is about connecting users with resources they did not know existed and making the experience of finding information easier. The two case studies below approach this goal from different angles. Bergen focused on awareness and visibility through video, while ISB focused on personalisation and direct value through information products. Together they cover the two main jobs of library web marketing: getting noticed and staying useful.

The University of Bergen Library and the power of video 🔗

The University of Bergen is one of Norway’s leading research universities, and its University Library holds faculty-like status within the institution. Like many large academic libraries, it faced the challenge of communicating the breadth of its services, from literature searching and reference management to navigating copyright, to a student body that did not always know these supports existed. The library provides help so users can enhance generic academic skills, including literature searching, source assessment, managing references, and understanding plagiarism. The question was how to make students aware of all this.

Video became a natural answer. The university itself has invested heavily in promotional video as a communication medium, and academic institutions across Scandinavia use such productions as an important medium for introducing new generations of students and communicating their roles and purposes to the outside world. For a library, a short multimedia video can do in ninety seconds what a printed brochure struggles to do in several pages. It can show the physical space, demonstrate online resources, and put a human face on the librarians who provide support.

Why video works for libraries 🔗

The Bergen approach reflects a wider, well-documented trend in academic library marketing. A library video serves as a visual marketing strategy that promotes library services and information literacy. The benefits are concrete. Industry guides for academic librarians list several gains from video, including increased student and faculty engagement, marketability for the library’s resources, awareness by key members of the school, and the provision of more instructional material.

Video also has a practical advantage in how people consume content online. A large share of internet traffic now comes from video, which makes it a powerful way to draw users toward a library’s website and services. When a library hosts a promotional video on YouTube and embeds it on its own site, the same piece of content works across multiple channels at once.

The lesson hidden in the data 🔗

The most useful insight from research on library promotional videos is also a warning. A study of how libraries use YouTube found that while library professionals make up a significant portion of viewers, creators can increase viewership by the intended audience if they frequently and strategically feature the video on websites, campus communication vehicles, and social media. In plain terms, making a good video is only half the work. If a library simply uploads a video and waits, mostly other librarians will watch it.

This is the real takeaway from the Bergen case and similar efforts. A promotional video is not a one-time event. It must be actively distributed and repeatedly surfaced where students actually look, on the library homepage, in orientation emails, on the institution’s social media, and inside the learning management system. The video is the asset; the marketing is what happens around it. Successful library video projects elsewhere have shown that collaboration with campus faculty and other departments plays a large role in developing an effective video campaign, because those partners become channels that carry the message to students.

The Learning Resource Centre at ISB and the power of personalisation 🔗

The Indian School of Business, with campuses in Hyderabad and Mohali, takes a very different but equally instructive approach. Its library, called the Learning Resource Centre or LRC, sits at the heart of the academic centre and holds more than 60,000 printed books, over 2,500 e-books, more than 2,000 e-journals, and a large set of market research and company databases. For busy management students, the sheer volume of resources is itself a barrier. They simply do not have time to dig through dozens of databases to find what matters for an assignment or a placement interview.

The LRC’s response was not a video or an advertisement. It was to build its own digital information products that deliver relevant content directly to students. This shifts library web marketing from “look at what we have” to “here is exactly what you need.” The centre recognised that its stakeholders, being pressed for time, were unable to use the wealth of resources for their academic and decision-making purposes, and designed customised products to close that gap.

Global InfoWatch as a flagship product 🔗

The LRC’s flagship info-product is called Global InfoWatch. It was conceptualised in 2008 and launched in early 2009 with the objective of providing up-to-date information on business schools in India and across the globe, along with industry trends and market research updates to help students with their assignments and projects. Importantly, the product was launched only after thorough beta testing and customisation based on stakeholder feedback. The library did not guess what students wanted; it asked and tested.

Global InfoWatch tracks data on success parameters such as admissions, b-school profiles, placements, executive education, and intellectual contribution across other business schools. For a management student deciding how to position themselves or a faculty member benchmarking the institution, this is genuinely useful intelligence delivered in one place.

Personalisation as the marketing strategy 🔗

The most forward-looking part of the ISB case is how the product handles personalisation. Under the Global InfoWatch umbrella, sub-products like the Placement Guide and Industry Watch give specialised updates on recruiters, industry news, and market trends. These products give students an edge during placement interviews by making the latest information accessible on a single platform in a personalised way, where students can set their preferences and modify their interests dynamically over time.

This is web marketing in its most refined form. Rather than pushing one message to everyone, the library lets each user shape what they receive. A student interested in consulting sees different content from one focused on finance. Additional sub-products such as a Course Guide, Quick Clips, and Newsletters extend the same idea across the student journey.

Involving users in creation 🔗

One detail in the ISB case deserves special attention because it explains why these products succeeded. The LRC extensively involved its stakeholders in creating the products, from conceptualisation and design to beta testing and promotional campaigns, and the products succeeded primarily because they were user-centric, directly benefited the target segments, and were user-friendly. When users help build a product, they become its first marketers. They understand it, trust it, and recommend it to peers.

This co-creation approach turns marketing from something done to users into something done with them. It is a model many libraries overlook, often launching services in isolation and then wondering why uptake is low.

What the two cases teach together 🔗

Placed side by side, Bergen and ISB illustrate the two complementary halves of library web marketing. Bergen shows the outreach half: using engaging multimedia to raise awareness and pull users toward the library. ISB shows the service half: building personalised digital products that deliver ongoing value once users arrive. Neither alone is enough. A brilliant video that leads to generic, hard-to-use resources will not retain users, and excellent personalised products that nobody knows about will not be used.

Both cases share three principles worth carrying into any library context. First, meet users where they are, whether that is YouTube and social media or a single personalised dashboard. Second, distribution matters as much as creation, since even the best content fails without strategic promotion across multiple channels. Third, involve the user, because feedback, beta testing, and co-creation produce services people actually want. These principles align with broader research recommending that libraries engage in marketing activities and that library workers develop marketing competencies as a core part of their professional skill set.

For libraries operating with modest budgets, the encouraging part is that neither case required enormous spending. Effective library video projects elsewhere have relied on identifying and using the library’s existing resources and expertise as the foundation for the project. The investment is in thinking carefully about users and committing to consistent promotion, not in expensive technology.

What do you think? If your library could only invest in one of these two approaches first, raising awareness through video or building personalised information products, which would create more value for your particular users? And how might you involve your own student community in designing a service so they become its first promoters?

References

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0099133323000836
2. https://www.uib.no/en/ub
3. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20020317.2023.2259825
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/video-library
5. https://blog.bccresearch.com/the-beginners-guide-to-video-for-academic-librarians
6. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ959604
7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262889594_One-minute_video_Marketing_your_library_to_faculty
8. https://www.isb.edu/learning-resource-centre/lrc-resources