Social Marketing

Social marketing may mean a shift for you.

Instead of working hard with your staff to create programs and materials which you believe will be helpful and beneficial to the public...

And when people don’t come, or they throw your materials away, you call them...

• Social Marketing’s Distinguishing Features
• Case Studies:
  • Food Thermometer Education
  • Evaluating a Social Marketing Intervention: Cardiff Study

Definition: Key Concepts

• Uses commercial marketing techniques and concepts
• Brings about voluntary behavior change
• Targets specific audiences
• Focus on personal welfare and that of society

It focuses on one of the most important aspects of social marketing...voluntary change, which means that your clients have the right not to change, or not to do what you want

Social marketing is not coercive, although legislative advocacy may play a part

Social Change Strategy

• Promote healthy behaviors
  • Eat 5 a Day (NCI)
  • Breastfeeding (USDA)
  • Physical activity (RWJF and AARP)
  • Use of meat thermometers (USDA)
  • Hand washing (NIH)

Distinguishing Features

• Consumer orientation
• Marketing’s conceptual framework
• Data driven decision making
  • Segment audiences
  • Set behavioral objectives
  • Identify determinants to address
• Willingness to modify the product

Consumer Orientation

• Understand consumers’ perceptions of product
• Consumers’ aspirations

Exchange Theory

• Exchange time and effort for benefits
• Make an attractive offer
  • Create an awareness that the problem exists
  • Demonstrate the product’s benefits
• Help lower the price

The Four P’s: Product, Price, Place, Promotion

Product

• What we’re offering people
  • Commodity (tangible good or service)
  • Service
  • Behavior

Product Must Be:

• Solution to a problem
  • Benefits
  • Unique
  • Competitive
• Real:
  • Defined in terms of the user’s beliefs, practices, and values

Select a Product

• What is the behavior you want them to adopt?
• What are the benefits they will receive from the desired behavior?

Price

I hope we’re thinking about services now in a different light.

Now, we want to look at the price they pay for adopting the product we’re offering to them.

These costs may come in the form of money. PSI, for example, talked with teens and found that they should charge a quarter for the condoms in the vending machines. Teens said that was something they could afford (viewed it as pocket change). Charging something for the product also gave it value. The key is to determine the appropriate price, with the help of your target audience, of course.

The price may also come in the form of time, loss of self esteem, or embarrassment.

Loss of pleasure may be a very real cost to your target audience. Unlike Coke, which has a good taste, many of the products we’re offering ask people to give up things which taste good or which they enjoy doing.

The key is to see how your target audience view the price and the benefits, in order to lower the price and enhance the benefits.

• The cost of adopting the product
  • Money
  • Time
  • Pleasure
  • Loss of self esteem
  • Embarrassment
  • Psychic hassle
  • Others
• What must people exchange to get product benefits?

Place or Channels

The next P is place.

Here we consider, where will they be when they receive your message? What mood will they be in? Is that the right place? In addition, we are thinking about the appropriate place for distribution of your product.

For example, is the most appropriate place for a television ad for teens about using condoms, for it to show at the dinner table when the teen is eating with the family? You’d need to ask your audience this.

Consider finding the right place for a billboard, or a flyer about your program.

Next, think about, where are people most likely to go for your product?

Avoid creating a demand which can then not be met because the appropriate people aren’t available to fulfill the demand. For example, don’t tell people to call the health department to find out more about breastfeeding, when no one at the health department knows anything about breastfeeding.

• Where tangible products purchased
• Where people are in right frame of mind to attend to message
• Where service is provided
• Where people will act

Important Considerations for Place:

• Available
• Easy to find and use
• Appropriate
• Timely

Some of the important considerations for place include:

- will the product be available at the place you have instructed people to go/call; will there be enough to meet the demand

- is the place easy to use/access; don’t place a billboard in West Tampa for people to come to Carrollwood for prenatal care. That’s too much to ask.

- is the channel you have chosen for your message appropriate for that audience; you wouldn’t place a public service announcement for the elderly on 93.3 WFLZ, because they aren’t likely to listen to that radio station

- have you chosen the right time for your message to be delivered; you might better place your ad for senior citizens on TV, and if it’s for women, the best time might be during the afternoon soap operas.

The important thing is to ask your audience these questions. You can’t go wrong if you do.

Place

• Where is the behavior practiced?
• Where are the decisions made?
• Where will they be attentive to message?

Promotion

• What most people associate with social marketing
• More than advertising

Promotion is the final P social marketing takes from marketing. This is what most people associate with social marketing, but as you are now well aware, it is only one piece of the puzzle.

Promotional Strategy

• Policy developments
• Service delivery
• Program development
• Professional training
• Staff motivational
• Resource guide
• Consumer education
• Public information
• Public relations

Promotion

• Message design elements
  • Type of appeal
  • Tone
  • Spokesperson
  • Openings

Promotion has to do with the creation of educational messages which are memorable and persuasive.

We’ll talk more later about the important message design elements you need to consider, but they include:

• the type of appeal you will choose for your message
• the tone your message will take
• picking the appropriate spokesperson
• choosing the correct aperture for the message

Competition

• What competes with your product?
• How can you position your product to be more competitive?
• What image does it have among consumers?
• Can you enhance benefits?
• Can you lower costs?

Data Based Decision Making

• Formative Research
  • Select audience segment to target
  • Specific behavior to promote
  • Identify the factors that have greatest influence
• Answers used to design effective interventions around 4 Ps

First Decision: Whom Do You Hope to Reach?

• Do you have resources to reach everyone?
• Will they all respond to they same approach?

Segmentation: Marketing Model

• Marketers know they cannot appeal to all buyers in same way
• Identify priority populations
• Use combination of behavioral,attitudinal, and demographic data

Segment Audience Based On….

• Current behavior
• Readiness to change
• Desired benefits
• Perceived barriers or costs demographics
• Many creative segmentation schemes

Select Target of Opportunity

Criteria for selecting targets

• Size
  • Potential impact
    • Responsiveness
    • Need: incidence and/or severity
  • Reachability
  • For secondary audiences
    • Influence on primary audience

Identify Behavioral Objective for Each Segment Targeted

• Identify realistic goal for each audience segment
• Focus on behavior not knowledge
• Conduct research to assess response to recommended:
  • Length of time
  • Frequency
  • Other aspects of message

Identify Factors To Address

• Need to know which factors have greatest influence on behavior
• External Factors
• Internal Factors

External Factors

• Marketers focus on these first:
  • Product design features
  • Policies
  • Access
  • Skills
  • Cultural context

Internal Factors

• More difficult to change:
  • Knowledge and beliefs
  • Attitudes
  • Perceived risk
  • Perceived consequences
  • Social norms
  • Self efficacy

Findings Used to Develop A Social Marketing Plan

• Primary target segment(s)
• Behavioral recommendation
• Product strategy: what benefit to promise
• Pricing strategy: how to make affordable
• Placement: where to reach and remind audience
• Promotion: multifaceted approach with carefully designed communication plan

For more information

• Social Marketing Conference
  • June 18 -22nd at USF
  • www.hsc.usf.edu/publichealth/  Select continuing education
• Social Marketing Quarterly
  • Taylor and Francis publishers webpage
• cbryant@hsc.usf.edu