Combining Education PR and Digital Marketing Puts Global Library Nonprofit in the Spotlight

For the re-launch of OCLC’s signature resource, WorldCat.org, CSG built a custom go-to-market plan around public relations and digital marketing.

Finding the Perfect Balance with OCLC

OCLC — a global library nonprofit that shares technology, research, programs, and resources with more than 10,000 member libraries — engaged Communications Strategy Group (CSG®) to generate awareness and new user accounts during the redesign and re-launch of the nonprofit’s flagship website, WorldCat.org. The site connects online searchers to OCLC’s member library catalogues, allowing people around the world to explore billions of library resources with ease.

With expertise in education public relations, education digital marketing, and education influencer relations, CSG was able to combine the three tactics to help OCLC not just raise awareness of WorldCat.org, but also convince audiences to stick around.

The Strategy

We started by developing a custom go-to-market strategy for WorldCat.org with audience research, behavior design and customer journey mapping. With their WorldCat.org promotions, OCLC hoped to achieve four goals:

Increase sticky traffic on WorldCat.org
Generate new WorldCat.org user profiles
Create new reading lists from WorldCat.org users
Gather data to identify successful strategies and inform future campaigns

Figuring out where OCLC’s audiences resided, what motivated them, and what their online habits were illuminated several paths to the company’s objectives. CSG’s education strategists recommended a cross-channel, interdisciplinary campaign built on three pillars:

Public Relations

Digital Marketing

Influencer Engagement

And we identified two distinct opportunities to apply those disciplines:

Branded Promotions

To emphasize the new features of WorldCat.org and the website’s value for all lifelong learners

Timely Promotions

To engage communities passionate about a particular topic, field, event or hobby at the time when they were most receptive

The Execution

Over the next year, CSG executed the WorldCat.org go-to-market strategy for OCLC, leveraging multiple channels and activations to make the campaign robust, resilient and rich in actionable analytics. With seven timely campaigns — including Earth Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Women’s History Month — and tactics ranging from digital marketing to traditional education PR, we put a spotlight on WorldCat.org among the audiences most likely to use it.

Paid Media Tactics:

Programmatic display and native
Paid Social – Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest
SEM

Influencer Tactics:

Testimonials and recommendations to niche audiences
Social media channels and blogs

Earned Media Tactics:

Press releases
Media outreach

The Payoff of Education PR and Digital Marketing

Over the course of the campaign, CSG’s omnichannel education PR and digital marketing efforts brought in exactly what OCLC hoped it would: increased sticky traffic, new WorldCat.org users, new reading lists and support from high-profile academics, organizations and influencers.