Middletown Library Tests Mobile Market With App Campaign

The App has been available for the more than two months but getting the word out about it has not been an easy task.

Through a grant with Library LinkOut NJ, the Middletown Township Public Library looked to go viral with their own app, available in iTunes and on the Android Market, which allows library goers to access the latest books, movies, and music, and even put holds on desired materials all from the convenience of a mobile device.   

Principal Librarian of Borrower Services Kevin Unrath took to the web, the Middletown train station and library advising the new app using three different methods.

With each method, Unrath established an authentic web address for each campaign to track the advertisement's activity.

After collecting that data for the first two months, Unrath found that the “most successful” way, which the library advertised, was through Facebook ads and Google Ads.

The library spent $506, $6 more than their projected budget, on advertisements for two months. They received 424,588 impressions, the number of pages where your ad appears, and 943 conversions, the number of clicks through on that ad. This advertisement cost about $0.54 per conversion.

The train station advertisement cost the library $1,130 for two months. An estimated 78,000 people pass through the train station but of those thousands of people, 27 train station travelers went to the link advertised on the board. This form of advertising cost about $41.85 per conversion.

“We had an advertisement at the train station where people would walk by because they didn’t have an interest,” Unrath said. “But when we advertised through Facebook and Google Ads we were able to attract some people using the keywords they searched.”

The last form of advertising the library used was through in house advertising with flyers, rugs and glossy book marks displaying the advertisements and links for the ebook and library website. The total cost of this project came out to be about $1,857.

About 60,000 people visited the library over the past two months. Of those 60,000 people, 432 clicked onto the link. This equates to be about $2.45 per conversion.

“Internet advertising has its pros and cons because it is a lost cost of entry and you have the ability to target a very specific demographic,” Unrath said. “But the downfall is that people without the Internet cannot see your ad.”

In this case, however, the targeted demographic for the campaign was smartphone users ages 45 and under, who are most likely to own a smart phone making the online strategy successful, Unrath said.

Those interested in downloading the app, can search “Middletown Township Library” in smart phone's application store.