Cultivating Connection by Caring: Using Empathetic Marketing to Reach Distance Students and Ease Library Anxiety

Abstract

“Feeling overwhelmed and stressed about your research papers? The librarian can help!” Empathetic marketing is the latest marketing trend—showing students how you can meet their core emotional needs. Meeting these needs assists in building connections between students and the library staff, helps ease library anxiety, and provides information about library services in new ways. While all college students experience similar needs, distance students have some unique experiences, feelings, and needs that should be addressed and met. Using empathetic marketing to reach distance students proves to them that we know about these needs and can help meet them. This session will define empathetic marketing, show examples of empathetic marketing, and demonstrate ways that libraries can incorporate empathetic marketing in their outreach endeavors to distance students.

Learning Outcomes: Define empathetic marketing in order to apply its principles to reaching students. Identify empathetic marketing techniques in order to incorporate them into outreach endeavors to distance students. Explain how and why empathetic marketing techniques can help alleviate library anxiety.