Social Marketing

Social marketing is an approach used to develop activities aimed at changing or maintaining people’s behavior for the benefit of individuals and society as a whole.

Combining ideas from commercial marketing and the social sciences, social marketing is a proven tool for influencing behavior in a sustainable and cost-effective way. It helps you to decide:

  • Which people to work with
  • What behavior to influence
  • How to go about it
  • How to measure it

Social marketing is not the same as social media marketing. Social marketing is not Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, though a social marketing campaign may include social media.

Social marketing is a systematic and planned process. It follows six steps: Getting started, scope, develop, implement, evaluate and follow-up.

Behavior

The goal of social marketing is always to change or maintain how people behave – not what they think or how aware they are about an issue. If your goal is only to increase awareness or knowledge, or change attitudes, you are not doing social marketing.

Benefits People and Society

This is the value – perceived or actual – as it is defined by the people who are targeted by a social marketing intervention. It is not what is assumed to benefit them by the organization that is trying to encourage the behavior change.

A Social Marketing Approach

Even if you don’t take social marketing any further, just considering these four questions will add value to your projects and policies.

  1. Do I really understand my target audience and see things from their perspective?
  2. Am I clear about what I would like my target audience to do?
  3. For my target audience, do the benefits of doing what I would like them to do outweigh the costs or barriers to doing it?
  4. Am I using a combination of activities in order to encourage people to achieve the desired action?

How Social Marketing Helps

Policy: social marketing helps to ensure policy is based on an understanding of people’s lives, making policy goals realistic and achievable. Policy example: water rationing in Jordan

Strategy: social marketing enables you to target your resources cost-effectively and select interventions that have the best impact over time. Strategy example: lung disease strategy in England

Implementation and delivery: social marketing enables you to develop products, services and communications that fit people’s needs and motivations. Delivery example: child car seats in Texas.

Why Use Social Marketing?

It ensures that policy is based on an understanding of people’s lives, making policy goals realistic and achievable. The social marketing approach allows you to target resources cost-effectively, enabling you to select interventions that have the best impact over time. Finally, it enables you to deliver products, services and communications that fit people’s needs and motivations.

Nancy Franke Wilson, our principal, received a certificate in Social Marketing and Health Communication from The Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy of the City University of New York (CUNY). The CUNY is home to outstanding leaders in Social Marketing including R. Craig Lefebvre and P. Christopher Palmedo.