How to Promote Your Company’s Research Resources

Research resources — such as databases, e-books, journals, SaaS products, and more — are an important investment for many companies. These products can help employees conduct in-depth research using reputable source and exclusive content. Unfortunately, these resources can often be overlooked or forgotten, leading to low usage and ROI. 

To ensure that your resources are being properly utilized, you must promote them throughout your company. Follow the steps outlined below to create a simple marketing program for your corporate research resources.

Step One: Craft Your Plan

In order to launch an effective promotional campaign, you must begin with a plan. Create a document that outlines the following information:

• Who is my audience? Explore questions such as: Are there specific departments that I will target? Should I focus on new employees, or will this campaign work for existing employees? Do I need different messaging based on experience? Be specific with your audience.
• What is my message? Create a short and simple message for your campaign. Remember that it is more effective to show employees how these products can help them, as opposed to just listing out what the product does.
• What tactics will I use? Tactics refer to the vehicles and channels you’ll use to get your message out. Some examples include email, social media, blog posts, website, etc.
• What is the timing of my campaign? Decide when you want your campaign to begin and end, and how often you plan on sending out communications.
• What are my goals? Be prepared to measure the success of your campaign using metrics. A good starting goal could be to increase usage by a certain percent.

Step Two: Create Custom Content

Once you’ve completed your plan, you will have an idea of exactly what types of content you will need and when. It is important that you create a variety of content that can reach employees on many channels. For example, you can send a message in an email, but it may not reach everyone. Cover all your bases by echoing the same message in a LinkedIn post and a poster that you can hang in the company breakroom.

Some examples of popular and effective content types include:

• Email blasts conveying a simple message and sent on a regular schedule
• Videos that can be posted to your company’s internal intranet site
• PowerPoints that can be used independently or in training sessions
• Webinars that help employees solve a problem in real-time
• Flyers that are printed and disseminated to employees
• Social media posts that raise awareness with a fun tone

If possible, create custom content for your employees. Simply adding your company’s logo and colors will help employees associate the materials with your organization. To get started, you can visit EBSCO’s support site EBSCO Connect to browse pre-made promotional materials for many of our databases.

Step Three: Launch Your Program

With the planning and content creation complete, launching your program should be simple. You will want to stick to your original plan outlined in step one, but you should also be flexible. Monitor your campaigns as much as possible and adjust as you see that some tactics are performing better than others.

Step Four: Keep Employees Informed

Promoting your resources is an ongoing project. Ideally, you want to communicate with your employees on a regular cadence — whether that is once a week or once a quarter. Create a campaign calendar so that you can plan your communications months in advance. You should also be sure to create new materials and make company-wide announcements whenever there is a change or update to existing products or processes.
Revisit your original plan on a regular basis — quarterly is recommended. See what updates should be made and how you can keep the communications with your employees ongoing.

EBSCO is Here to Help

As an EBSCO customer, you already have access to promotional materials for many of our products. Browse our help site for logos, flyers, user guides, email templates and more. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, reach out to your EBSCO sales representative for guidance.