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Building Social Marketing into Your Program
Copyright 2007 by Nedra Kline Weinreich, President
Weinreich Communications
First-time social marketers often feel overwhelmed by
the rigorous market research processes they see in other
large-scale programs. They may hesitate to incorporate
social marketing activities into their own programs,
unsure whether they have the resources and expertise to
undertake such a project. The following ten tips are
designed to help those new to the field to understand
the basic principles of social marketing, with practical
suggestions on how to implement these concepts in any
type of program.
1. Talk to your customers.
The key to effective social marketing is talking
(and listening!) to the people you are trying to reach.
Social marketing is a customer-driven process. All
aspects of your program must be developed with the wants
and needs of the target audience as the central focus.
In order to learn what your customers want, you must ask
them!
A little ingenuity may be necessary to find cheap and
easy ways of gathering information. It may be as simple
as going to where the people are and talking to them.
For example, sit out in the reception area and talk to
people waiting to use your services. Go to the local
mall to talk to teenagers hanging out there. Go to the
laundromat and talk to people as they wait for their
clothes. Ask them if they know of your organization and
what you offer. See how they talk about experiences they
have had with your issue and find out what they need to
help them use your services or perform the behavior
you're promoting. You'd be surprised at how willing
people are to talk about themselves and how delighted
they are to be asked for their opinions.
2. Segment your audience.
Good marketers know that there is no such thing as
selling to the general public. Men and women, adults and
teenagers respond differently to particular approaches.
To be most effective, you need to segment your target
audiences into groups that are as similar to each other
as possible and to create messages specifically for each
segment. Typical attributes for segmentation include
sex, age, geographical location and race/ethnicity.
You can also segment your audience by behavior. For
example, rather than targeting all teenagers, a smoking
prevention program might focus upon African American
girls between the ages of 12 and 18 who have never
smoked. A smoking prevention program for middle-aged men
who are ex-smokers would use a very different approach.
Of course, people still vary greatly within these
segments, but the more specific you can get, the greater
your potential impact.
The audience segments targeted may not always be the
same people your campaign addresses. If your research
shows the people you want to reach are more likely to
listen to their family members or doctor, you may have
more success with a message to those secondary groups
urging them to talk about the issue with the person
whose behavior you ultimately want to change. A
nonprofit organization may have several audiences it
needs to address: its "customers," its donors, the
media, policymakers and the board of directors. Each of
these groups requires its own marketing strategy.
3. Position your product.
In social marketing, our products are often hard to
promote because of their high "price." Products like
behaviors and attitudes require longÐterm commitments
and do not sell as easily as a bar of soap or a car. The
cost of a social marketing product often includes a
person's time and effort (to attend a class or use
services), giving up things he likes (high fat food),
embarrassment or inconvenience (buying and using
condoms), or social disapproval (resisting peer pressure
to smoke). To counteract factors working against
adoption of the product, we need to acknowledge these
potential problems and address them.
Your product positioning determines how the people in
your target audience think about your product as
compared to the competition. Just as various cigarette
brands bill themselves as the freshest, the most fun,
the most athletic, the least expensive, the classiest,
or the most feminine, your product needs to be
positioned in relation to the alternatives.
Product positioning is usually based on either the
benefits of the product (what will it do for me?) or
removal of barriers (how difficult is it for me to do?).
By talking about your product with the target audience,
you can learn the benefits they value most and the
barriers they foresee. For example, women may feel that
breastfeeding is a way to bond with their babies, is
healthier, and makes them better mothers. However, they
may also think that breastfeeding doesn't fit into their
lives, is difficult to do, and is painful. In this case,
a program could either promote and reinforce the
positive aspects of breastfeeding or provide ways to get
around the barriers, by explaining how to work
breastfeeding into a busy schedule and teaching the
proper way to do it to avoid discomfort.
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4. Know your competition.
In the commercial sector, successful companies watch every
move their competitors make. They know their selling
environment intimately and are ready to react as soon as
conditions change. Social marketers also need to be aware of
the competing messages pulling on their target audiences.
Your product's competition may be another product, such as
french fries versus fruit, or it may be nonperformance of
the behavior you are promoting; inaction is nearly always
easier than adopting a new behavior. Your product must be
more attractive than the alternatives to be accepted.
Just as Coke creates its marketing strategies based on what
Pepsi is doing, we can take advantage of our competitors'
tactics to promote our own products. Many successful health
campaigns against tobacco and alcohol have parodied the
well-known cigarette and beer slogans, creating ads that
grab our attention because of their new twist on familiar
images.
Other environmental factors may also affect people's
reactions to your program. Political changes may require new
approaches, news events may change the context in which
people hear your message, and work done by other
organizations in your field may affect how you portray your
message. You must be able to monitor these changes in the
environment and adjust your program accordingly.
5. Go to where your audience is.
People will not go out of their way to find your message.
You will need to put your message in places your target
audience will encounter. When you talk to your customers,
ask them where they get their news, what radio stations they
listen to, where they go in their free time.
If you learn that your target audience tends to read the
local newspaper, place your ads there and work with that
paper's reporters to get coverage of your issue. If the
people in your audience are the ones who do the grocery
shopping, work with local supermarkets to put information on
healthy eating in their stores. If the people you are
targeting like a particular type of music, go to rock
concerts and pass out your materials. Bring a mobile
mammography van to people's worksites.
You can research the audience demographics of local media
outlets (i.e., television, radio, newspapers) in order to
match your target group's characteristics with their
favorite media. The only limit to reaching your audience is
the extent of your creativity.
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6. Utilize a variety of approaches.
Social marketing involves much more than television
advertising campaigns. The most effective programs use a
combination of mass media, community, small group and
individual activities. When a simple, clear message is
repeated in many places and formats throughout the
community, it is more likely to be seen and remembered.
A social marketing program might contain television and
radio spots, print ads, a community event, a poster contest,
giveaways of your products or coupons for your services, a
toll-free hotline for individual counseling or referrals, or
classes on your topic offered in the community. The variety
of approaches you use will depend on your program's budget
and what will be most effective with the target audience. No
matter what you do in your campaign, try to stick to one
main "look" and slogan, or people may not realize all the
pieces are from your organization. Consistency and
continuity are key to a successful campaign.
7. Use models that work.
As with any field, social marketers design programs using
the most effective and useful models available to them. In
one model that incorporates elements of several
well-established health behavior theories ("Stages of
Change"), people move through several steps in a continuum
before adopting a new behavior.
In the first stage, precontemplation, a person may not feel
at risk for the condition or think the behavior is relevant
to him. People at this stage must first be made aware of the
problem and possible risk factors to move to the next stage,
contemplation. To move from contemplation to action,
messages should promote the benefits of performing the
behavior and minimize the perceived costs. In this stage,
the behavior should be portrayed as something that many
other people do and agree with; skill-building messages and
demonstrations of the behavior by others similar to
themselves will help them move to action. Once they have
tried the behavior, the last and often most difficult stage
is maintenance. Motivational and reinforcing messages are
necessary to prevent relapse to the contemplation stage.
This model provides a useful framework for segmenting the
target audience. A program could address people in each
stage over a period of time or select just those at a
particular stage of the process.
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8. Test, test, test.
All of the products, promotional materials, and services you
develop for your program should be tested with your target
audience to gauge their potential effectiveness. Social
marketing recognizes that the customers are the experts on
what works best for them. Even the best minds on Madison
Avenue test their ideas with their consumers (and
consequently avoid spending lots of money on concepts that
don't work).
One of the methods most associated with social marketing is
the focus group. This involves bringing together 8 to 12
people with particular characteristics relevant to the
program and leading them through a focused discussion on a
given topic. Focus groups can be used to learn how people in
the target audience think about the issue and why, the
language they use to talk about the issue, and their
reactions to messages or materials you've developed.
Surveys are a more generalizable method to find out people's
knowledge, attitudes and behaviors regarding a particular
topic. They work best when you have very specific questions
that don't require the respondents to explain their answers
(e.g., "yes" or "no" questions). These donÕt have to be very
complicated, but do require care in administration and
interpretation.
9. Build partnerships with key allies.
Just as the power of a choir derives from its union of many
voices, a powerful message requires groups throughout the
community to come together in a coordinated effort.
Organizations concerned with your issue can sing the melody
along with you, while other groups--the media, schools,
businesses, government agencies--can provide the harmony,
complementing your efforts through their involvement. By
pooling resources with other organizations working toward
the same goal, you can have a greater impact as well as
access to new audiences.
Build connections with key people and organizations who have
the potential to bring attention and credibility to your
program. You can develop beneficial relationships with the
reporters covering your issue at key media outlets; pitch
stories to them with a fresh news angle, provide them with
fact sheets or lists of experts they can contact for their
stories, and be available when they call for information.
Include your local politicians in activities to help them
understand and support your issue. Invite businesses to
sponsor your projects, exchanging positive corporate
publicity for their financial support. Other potential
allies include professional associations, local service
organizations (e.g., Kiwanis, Rotary Club), religious groups
and existing community coalitions.
10. See what you can do better next time.
The cornerstone of social marketing is
evaluation--determining what you accomplished so you can use
that information to improve your program. Evaluation occurs
throughout the social marketing process. As you develop your
program, you need to test and refine your messages or
products with members of the target audience. When the
program is implemented, you need to monitor activities to
assess whether they are occurring as planned. How many
brochures were disseminated? How many media "hits," or
mentions of your program, did you achieve? Are the people in
your target audience the ones who are using your program?
The answers to these questions will let you know whether you
need to make adjustments while you have the opportunity to
do so.
The big question, though, is: Did you make a difference?
There are two ways this can be answered. One way is to see
whether members of the target audience engaged in the
desired behavior as a result of the program. This can be
determined quantitatively through survey research with the
people who participated in the program or who were exposed
to the message.
A second way requires a longer-term perspective,
investigating whether performing the behavior induced the
desired change (e.g., a reduction in related mortality
and/or morbidity). The actual impact of a social marketing
program is difficult to assess accurately. Can a public
service announcement reduce mortality from heart disease?
Probably not, but many such efforts can combine
synergistically over time. The only way to establish a
cause-and-effect relationship between your social marketing
program and changes in behavior and health outcomes is to
conduct a community intervention study. At whatever level
you perform evaluation, the information gained should be
used to improve your program in the future.
This article originally appeared in the July 1995 issue of
the Social Marketing Quarterly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Nedra Kline Weinreich
President
Weinreich Communications
821 Via Casitas
Greenbrae, CA 94904-1832
(415) 925-9009
info@social-marketing.com
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