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Objectives
To understand the definition of Social Marketing
To understand the Social Marketing and its concepts
To describe the 4P's in Social Marketing
To describe practical applications of Social Marketing
Social marketing is a process that applies marketing principles and techniques to create, communicate, and deliver value in order to influence target audience behaviors that benefit society as well as the target audience. (P. Kotler, N. R. Lee, & M. Rothschild, personal communication, September 19, 2006)
In its most elemental form, social marketing is the application of marketing principles and techniques to foster social change or improvement.
As indicated in the definition, several features are essential to social marketing:
• It is a distinct discipline within the field of marketing.
• It is for the good of society as well as the target audience.
• It relies on the principles and techniques developed by commercial marketing, especially the marketing mix strategies, conventionally called the 4Ps—product, price, place, and promotion.
As Kotler and Lee (2008) emphasized, “social marketing is about influencing behaviors”; “[s]imilar to commercial sector marketers who sell goods and services, social marketers are selling behaviors” (p. 8). As they elaborated, social marketers typically try to influence their target audience toward four behavioral changes:
(1) accept a new behavior (e.g., composting food waste), (2) reject a potential undesirable behavior (e.g., starting smoking)
(3) modify a current behavior (e.g., increasing physical activity from 3 to 5 days of the week), or (4) abandon an old undesirable one (e.g., talking on a cell phone while driving)
Social marketing principles and techniques can be used to benefit society in general and the target audience in particular in several ways. There are four major arenas that social marketing efforts have focused on over the years: health promotion, injury prevention, environmental protection, and community mobilization (Kotler & Lee, 2008).
include tobacco use, heavy/binge drinking, obesity, teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, fruit and vegetable intake, high cholesterol, breastfeeding, cancers, birth defects, immunizations, oral health, diabetes, blood pressure, and eating disorders.
that could benefit from social marketing include drinking and driving, seatbelts, head injuries, proper safety restraints for children in cars, suicide, drowning, domestic violence, gun storage, school violence, fires, injuries or deaths of senior citizens caused by falls, and household poisons.
include waste reduction, wildlife habitat protection, forest destruction, toxic fertilizers and pesticides, water conservation, air pollution from automobiles and other sources, composting garbage and yard waste, unintentional fires, energy conservation, litter (such as cigarette butts), and watershed protection
that could benefit from social marketing include organ donation, blood donation, voting, literacy, identity theft, and animal adoption
Many programmes are constructed by experts and policy planners who attempt to drive the behaviour changes they desire down through populations. This approach is influenced by political as well as by professional assessments of risk and solutions, but does not always include citizen/patient/consumer insight research.
As a consequence the targeted people may misunderstand these interventions or view them as irrelevant and end up rejecting the proposed solutions.
Social marketing approaches can be used to help engage end-users in the development, implementation and evaluation of policies and programmes.
This is done by integrating insights from individuals, those that influence them (influencers) and other concerned people (stakeholders) into planning and implementation processes. This is further informed by social marketing research, evidence-based practice and the use of social-behavioural theories.
Adopted from the commercial sector is the marketing mix, also known as the 4Ps: product, price, place, and promotion
Price
Product
These four key elements of social marketing are central to the planning and implementation of an integrated marketing strategy. Each of these four components should be present in a marketing plan. However, it is the science of correctly using these elements in combination with one another that provides the effective “marketing mix.” To have an effective social marketing program, we must have a product developed based on the consumers’ wants, needs, and preferences, priced realistically, distributed through convenient channels, and actively promoted to customers.
Promotion
Place
Think about a tangible object or service you can provide to support or facilitate behavior change. Can you offer a new product/service or adapt one that already exists? Product examples include in-home blood pressure monitoring kits, improved HIV tests, journals to plan and track food intake, cessation counseling.
Consider interventions that would decrease the costs to the individual of taking the desired action (not only monetary cost, but emotional, psychological and time costs). List out the “price” or barriers for your audience segment to carry out the desired behavior, then brainstorm interventions to diminish those barriers. For example, instituting a walking club program at the workplace for those who cite lack of support and lack of time as barriers to regular exercise.
Think about where and when the audience will perform the behavior or access the new or adapted product/service. How can you make it convenient and pleasant (even more so than the competing behavior)? Examples include placing condom vending machines in bar restrooms, offering help lines that are available 24 hours a day, having breastfeeding consultants check-in on new mothers after they leave the hospital. Also think about your “sales force” – the people that will take your program to the audience. Consider the need for peer educators, counselors or others who can make your program or its activities more accessible.
Use your market research to determine the communication channels and activities that will best reach your audience to promote the benefits of the desired behavior. What advertising or public relations media do they pay attention to (e.g., radio, newspaper, postcard racks)? What special promotional items would they use (e.g., water bottles, refrigerator magnets, notepads)? What special events do/would they attend (concerts, health fairs, conferences)? How can you include influencing audiences? Be sure to promote the Product, Price and Place features that you want the audience to know about.
1. Define the problem,purpose and focus
2. Conduct a situation analysis
3. Select target audiences
4. Set marketing objectives and goals
5. identify factors influencing behaviour adoption
6. Craft a positioning statement
7. Developing marketing mix strategies: the 4 P's
8. Outline a plan for M&E
9. Establish budget & funding
10. Implementation & management
Any social marketing campaign for public health needs a clearly determined public health problem, which might be a severe epidemic (like COVID-19), an evolving issue (like the increases in teen smoking), or a justifiable need (like public education on the prevention of hepatitis B).
When defining the public health problem, it is critical to identify the campaign’s sponsor(s) and summarize the factors that led to the rationale and decision for developing such a campaign. The rationale and decision are based on sufficient research data, epidemiological or scientific, in order to substantiate and quantify the problem defined.
Once the public health problem is defined, a purpose statement is needed to make it clear what impact and benefits that the social marketing campaign, when successful, would generate.
A focus is determined to narrow down the scope of the social marketing campaign to best use the resources available, maximize the campaign impact, and ensure the campaign feasibility. The campaign focus is selected from a number of options that have some potential to help achieve the campaign purpose.
Typically, a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is conducted at this step to provide a quick audit of organizational strengths and weaknesses and environmental opportunities and threats.
At this step, you will also conduct a literature review and environmental scan of current and prior campaigns, especially those with similar efforts, and summarize their major activities conducted, major effects achieved, and major lessons learned.
A target audience is quite like the bull’s-eye; it is selected through segmentation, a process to divide a broad audience (population) into homogeneous subaudiences (groups), called audience segments. An audience segment is identified and aggregated by the shared characteristics and needs of the people in a broad audience, including similar demographics, psychographics, geographics, behaviors, social networks, community assets, and stage of change.
It is ideal that a social marketing campaign focuses on one primary target audience, but secondary audiences are often identified, based on the marketing problem, purpose, and focus of the campaign defined earlier.
An estimated size and informative description of the target audience(s) is needed at this step. An ideal description of the target audience will make you believe that if a member of the audience walked into the room, you would “recognize” her or him.
A social marketing campaign needs clear marketing objectives and goals. Specifying desired behaviors and changes in knowledge, attitudes, and/or beliefs, marketing objectives always includes a behavior objective—something you want the target audience to do as a result of the campaign (e.g., to choose healthy foods and/or beverages available at vending machines).
Before positioning your social marketing campaign and establishing the marketing mix strategies for the campaign, the social marketer needs to take the time, effort, and resources needed to understand what the target audience is doing or prefers to do and what is affecting its behaviors and preferences.
Specifically, barriers, benefits, competitors, and the influencers need to be identified at this step.
A positioning statement describes what the target audience is supposed to feel and think about the targeted behavior and its related benefits. A positioning statement, together with brand identity, is inspired by the description of the target audience and its barriers, competitors, and influencers.
It differentiates the targeted behavior from alternative or preferred ones. Effective positioning will guide the development of the marketing mix strategies in the next step, helping ensure that the offer in a social marketing campaign will land on and occupy a distinctive place in the minds of the target audience.
The traditional marketing toolbox contains four major devices: product, price, place, and promotion.
The 4Ps should be developed and presented in the following order, with the product strategy at the beginning of the sequence and the promotion strategy at the end. Promotion is at the end because it ensures that the target markets become aware of the targeted product, its price, and its accessibility, which need to be developed prior to the promotion strategy.
It is essential to have a clear description of the product in a social marketing campaign, at core, actual, and augmented levels. A core product comprises the benefits that the target audience will experience or expect in exchange for performing the targeted behavior, or that will be highlighted in a social marketing campaign (e.g., a healthier life and the reduction in the risk of becoming obese or overweight). An actual product is the desired behavior, often embodied by its major features and described in specific terms (such as healthy foods or beverages available at vending machines).
A price strategy sums up the costs that the target audience will “pay” for adopting the desired behavior that leads to the promised benefits. These costs could be monetary in the real sense, such as those for tangible goods and services. Most of the time, however, social marketers sell behaviors that require something else in ex- change: time, effort, energy, psychological costs, and/or physical discomfort.
Place is largely where and when the target audience will be encouraged to perform the desired behavior and/or to obtain tangible products or services associated with the campaign. As in commercial marketing, place can be regarded as the delivery system or a distribution channel for a social marketing campaign. Strategies related to the system or channel management need to be provided here to ensure that they will be as convenient and pleasant as possible for the customer to engage in the targeted behavior and access related products and services.
Information on product benefits and features, fair price, and easy accessibility needs effective and efficient communications to bring to the target audience and inspire action. Promotion strategy is needed to maximize the success of the communications.
begins with the determination of key messages, continues with the selection of messengers and communication formats and channels, moves on to the creation of communication elements, and ends up with the implementation of those communications.
A plan for monitoring and evaluating a social marketing campaign is needed before final budget and implementation plans are made.
Measures fall into three categories—output measures for program activities; outcome measures for target audience responses and changes in knowledge, beliefs, and behavior; and impact measures for contributions to the plan purposes (e.g., reductions in obesity as a result of many more people buying healthy foods and/or beverages due to a social marketing campaign).
The budgets for a social marketing campaign reflect the costs for developing and implementing it, which include those associated with marketing mix strategies (the 4Ps) and additional costs anticipated for monitoring and evaluation. In ideal objective-and-task budgeting, these anticipated costs become a preliminary budget, based on what is needed to achieve the established marketing goals.
When the preliminary budget exceeds available funds, however, options for additional funding and the potential for adjusting campaign phases (such as spreading out costs over a longer period of time), revising strategies, and/or reducing behavior change goals need to be considered.
At this last step, the planning for a social marketing campaign is wrapped up with specifics on who will do what, with how much, and when. In a nutshell, an implementation and management plan is aimed at transforming marketing strategies into specific actions for those who are involved in the campaign.
It functions like a concise working document to share and track planned efforts. So, to some, this section of the planning is the “real” social marketing plan or even a “stand-alone” piece that they will share internally. More often than not, a social marketing plan is for a minimum of one year of activities; ideally, it can be designed for a two- or three-year time span.
The Department of Health (DH) in England uses strategic social marketing thinking to tackle lung disease. Also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), it currently kills over 30,000 people every year. That’s a higher death rate than breast and prostate cancer combined − but most people have never heard of it.
The key to early prevention and treatment of lung disease is behaviour change among those affected or ‘at risk’. The strategy has a two-pronged goal: to reduce people’s risktaking activities and encourage them to take up more health enhancing behaviours; or to recognise and act on the symptoms.
2.7 million people have the disease without knowing it, so the biggest challenge is how to achieve earlier diagnoses. Also, 75 per cent of cases are caused by smoking, a notoriously difficult behaviour to shift. Simply raising awareness would not be enough.
DH identified the ‘segments’ or groups of the population who are at risk, using insight and data to establish how best to design interventions for changing, adapting or sustaining individuals’ behaviour. This approach ensures that behaviour change activities fit tightly defined population segments and local needs.
The strategy’s segmentation model unusually grouped individuals into overlapping segments, based on their lifestage, social and environmental factors, job status and social group, and health motivation. These segments are then engaged by the individuals and organisations best placed to do so – depending on whether they have well-established communications channels, provide services to or are ‘trusted’ partners in the eyes of the particular segments.
The programme developed a quick reference risk model to help planners and commissioners understand how a ‘one size fits all’ approach would not work. As an individual progresses along the spectrum of risk, different interventions will be required in order to deliver different changes in behaviour.
The strategy recognises that the environment in which lung disease services are provided is complex. Understanding the different ‘drivers’ and motivations for providers and other partner organisations is as important as understanding those of target populations. Consequently, the strategy highlights a range of benefits for partners of early identification, including better patient self management, cost-reduction and efficiency
In West Dallas, Texas, efforts to increase the use of child car seats and safety belts among the Hispanic population kept failing. Just 19 per cent of young Hispanic children were placed in car seats, compared to 62 per cent of children from other groups. This led the Injury Prevention Center of Greater Dallas (IPCGD) to try a new approach.
Research with the target audience revealed insights that enabled the IPCGD to greatly increase their programme’s effectiveness. As well as barriers such as lack of language skills to interpret safety information and lack of awareness of the law, they found that mothers had a fatalistic attitude towards road safety. They tended to believe that their children, and therefore their destinies, were ‘in God’s hands’, causing them to not appreciate the importance of child safety seats.
This led the programme developers to ask local priests to bless subsidised car seats before they were distributed to families. Alongside free traffic safety and child safety seat training workshops, community action with mothers and a police woman, and demonstration events, this helped the intervention to achieve impressive results. By 2000 (after just three years), car seat use rose to 72 per cent − outstripping use across the other communities combined by three per cent.
Notably, this approach did not work when the IPCGD applied it to the African American community. It was only effective for the Hispanic community, based on the unique insights from their particular circumstances.
In January 2019, Gillette launched a social media campaign aiming at a modern interpretation of manhood.
The short film posted exclusively on YouTube depicted several cases of men struggling with traditional masculinity that Gillette itself used to glorify: the fear to show their emotions, sexual harassment, bullying others.
Then the film shows several examples of positive masculinity, such as standing up for others, caring for your loved ones, and so on.
The campaign was clearly inspired by the #MeToo movement.
On their Instagram, the company also posted positive male role models with short stories about their journey in the world:
Organizers.
Community leaders.
Non-profits’ CEOs.
The short film that launched the campaign has over 30 million views.
The #GilletteAd hashtag reached more than 150 million people in one month, according to Awario (disclosure: I work for Awario), a social listening tool.
The Instagram posts related to the campaign gathered around 800 likes and 50 comments, which is higher than usual for Gillette.
Why Did It Work?
This campaign managed to tap into an extremely relevant and widely discussed issue.
It juxtaposed the previous branding of Gillette with a new one and showed the willingness to change.
At the same time, it was also quite controversial – some people didn’t agree with how the short film portrayed men and thought that it was offensive.
They even started a #boycottgillette hashtag, however, it only took up around 3.5% of all the conversations around the campaign on social media.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=282528847294942