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MARKETING: SOCIAL MARKETING Social marketing uses marketing theories and techniques to influence behavior in a socially desireable manner. It differs from conventional product marketing in that the goal of the marketer is changing behavior, instead of maximizing sales. Social marketing has been used extensively in health and highway-safety programs. Fuel's principals have utilized social marketing in programs that successfully immunized Hawaii's school children (the Department of Health's Take 3 Hep B Program) and encouraged native Hawaiians to utilize services provided by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. In the development of social marketing campaigns, Fuel principals use research, media relations, partnering, coalition building, and print and broadcast media campaigns to bring about changes in behavior. Of these disciplines, it is especially important in social marketing to leverage a variety of research tools to identify the determinants of behavioral change and to develop interventions that effectively alter targeted behaviors. Like commercial marketing, the primary focus of social marketing is on the consumer—on learning what influences a target group's behavior. All successful marketing speaks to the consumer's perceived needs, not the product's features. Fuel draws on experience in developing product-marketing strategies, to design the standard elements of the marketing mix, the four Ps, in social marketing campaigns: 1. Product 2. Price 3. Place (distribution), and 4. Promotion To these four Ps, social marketing also adds three more Ps: Partnership. Social and health issues are often so complex that one organization cannot affect a significant change of behavior by itself and must team up with other organizations to be truly effective. Fuel communications can identify those organizations that share your goals and help you build an effective coalition. Policy. Social marketing programs can successfully affect individual behavior change, but sustaining such change can be difficult, unless the environment supports the desired change over the long run. Often, policy change is needed, and media advocacy programs, like those developed by Fuel, can be an essential complement to an effective social marketing program. Politics. The issues addressed by social marketing programs often generate controversy – just think about the recent campaign to ban smoking in work places and restaurants. Some campaigns must address complex issues, with many determinants of behavior, such as those promoting safer sex or seeking to reduce violence. Programs dealing with such issues often require the use of political diplomacy with community organizations to gain their support, to get access to the target audience or to neutralize potential adversaries. |
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