Emerging Importance Social Marketing

Abstract: Social marketing can be best described as the systematic application of marketing to obtain specific behavioural objectives for a social good. Social marketing is so essential in such a way that it can be applicable for promoting merit goods, or for making a society evade demerit goods and therefore advancing the well being of society as a whole. Social marketing is currently enjoying an upsurge in popularity world wide. As the social marketing have some problems, the uses of social marketing needs to be balanced with the potential social and political consequences.

Introduction: Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing, along with other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good.[1] Social marketing can be applied to promote merit goods, or to make a society avoid demerit goods and thus promote society's well being as a whole. Examples of social marketing include the use of campaigns to encourage people not to smoke in public areas, use seat belts, or follow speed limits. Although "social marketing" is sometimes seen only as using standard commercial marketing practices to achieve non-commercial goals, this is an oversimplification. The primary aim of social marketing is "social good", while in "commercial marketing" the aim is primarily "financial". This does not mean that commercial marketers can not contribute to achievement of social good. Increasingly, social marketing is being described as having "two parents"a "social parent", including social science and social policy approaches, and a "marketing parent", including commercial and public sector marketing approaches

Applications: Health promotion campaigns in the late 1980s began applying social marketing in practice. Notable early developments took place in Australia. These included the Victoria Cancer Council developing its anti-tobacco campaign "Quit" (1988), and "SunSmart" (1988), its campaign against skin cancer which had the slogan Slip! Slop! Slap!.

WorkSafe Victoria, a state-run Occupational Health and Safety organization in Australia has used social marketing as a driver in its attempts to reduce the social and human impact of workplace safety failings. In 2006, it ran "Homecomings", a popular campaign that was later adopted in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, and named the 2007 Australian Marketing Institute Marketing Program of the Year.

DanceSafe followed the ideas of social marketing in its communication practices. On a wider front, by 2007, Government in the United Kingdom announced the development of its first social marketing strategy for all aspects of health. Two other public health applications include the CDC's CDCynergy training and software application,[6] and SMART (Social Marketing and Assessment Response Tool).

Social marketing theory and practice has been progressed in several countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and in the latter a number of key Government policy papers have adopted a strategic social marketing approach. Publications such as "Choosing Health" in 2004,[5] "It's our health!" in 2006; and "Health Challenge England" in 2006, all represent steps to achieve both a strategic and operational use of social marketing. In India, AIDS controlling programs are largely using social marketing and social workers are largely working for it. Most of the social workers are professionally trained for this particular task.

In the U.S. the Washington D.C. based organization "Men Can Stop Rape" Anti-Rape Movement have successfully used social marketing in anti-rape posters and other media targeting a rapeprevention message at boys and young men.[8]

A variation of social marketing has emerged as a systematic way to foster more sustainable behavior. Referred to as Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) by Canadian environmental psychologist Doug McKenzie-Mohr, CBSM strives to change the behavior of communities to reduce their impact on the environment
[9]

Realizing that simply providing

information is usually not sufficient to initiate behavior change, CBSM uses tools and findings

from social psychology to discover the perceived barriers to behavior change and ways of overcoming these barriers. Among the tools and techniques used by CBSM are focus groups and surveys (to discover barriers) and commitments, prompts, social norms, social diffusion, feedback and incentives (to change behavior). The tools of CBSM have been used to foster sustainable behavior in many areas, including energy conservation,[10] environmental regulation
[11]

and recycling

Steps in Social Marketing Planing: Social marketing entails identifying the desired target audiences and engaging them through social media in authentic ways. It is most effective when the strategy is methodically planned and staffed to include: Content Marketing Plan Blogging Strategy Search Optimization Marketing Integration Tracking and Measuring Results

Social Marketing Takes Team Effort An effective social marketing strategy requires a team approach. It starts with your business objectives. It continues with your content, listening and engagement. Your team needs to knowledgeable about your products and authentic in their online engagement with your community.

Know Your Objective You can achieve desired social marketing results across multiple social media channels with campaigns that align with your business goals and leverage relevant content.

Integrate Your Marketing Strategies Social marketing isnt about applying yesterdays marketing strategy to social media. Social marketing is about meeting your target audience where they are online in social channels. It may include blog content engagement, social networking and mobile marketing. It may utilize popular social channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube. The mix of these social channels in your social marketing strategy will depend on your content and engagement strategy. Learn more about integrating marketing plans.

Track and Measure Your Results Measuring the results of your social marketing strategies is important to understand whats contributing toward the achievement of your strategic goals. We use Internet marketing and social monitoring tools to measure key performance indicators including:

Leads from specific calls-to-action Social marketing reach Social marketing engagement Social marketing sentiment Brand reputation Growth of community (fans and followers) Influence of members of your community Social sharing of your content Subscribers to your content

Closed loop marketing from prospect to customer via CRM integration Learn much more about measuring online results.

Using social media in B2B and B2C marketing requires a strong commitment to a strategic plan, a team approach, and use of social media analytic tools to measure progress. Social marketing campaigns are rarely an overnight success. Some of the viral stories that get mainstream attention are entertaining, but rare and usually pertain to a consumer product with mass appeal. Marketers must focus social marketing efforts on building trust, credibility and authentic engagement over a sustained period of time. B2B and B2C communities have no tolerance for fluff and sales tactics in social media. Successful marketers produce great content and engage their community socially with proper use of calls-to-action to build relationships and nurture those relationships in relevant manners into viable sales opportunities.

Importance of Social Marketing Its becoming more and more apparent how much influence social marketing has on the world. Yesterday a local news agency reported on how the republicans were using social marketing in response to comments made by Democrats during the convention. With the Presidential Election so close, everything is being done to get every vote possible. Just to give a little insight into how social marketing is shaping the future of elections lets look back to the last presidential campaigns. On Election Day in 2008, there were 1.8 million tweets. Now, Twitter representatives say that many tweets are sent out every six minutes and are expected easily surpasses the total tweets in 2008. On Tuesday, there were more than 28,000 tweets per minute during Michelle Obamas speech at the Democratic Convention. That number is more than double the tweets per minute during Mitt Romneys speech last Thursday.

The pure fact that these two Presidential campaigns are utilizing social marketing to promote our future commander and chief should tell you something. The numbers back themselves: 56% of Americans have a profile on a social networking site. This is up from 52% just last year, and 48% in 2010. How high can this climb? Certainly, there are sizable chunks of the populace that will never join a social networking site, but its amazing to consider that significantly more Americans (12 years old and up) have a social networking profile than do not. Another

interesting statistic says that 47% of Americans say Facebook has the greatest impact on purchase behavior (compared to just 24% in 2011). The most amazing part of Social Marketing is its usability. Virtually anyone can utilize this avenue to market their business, brand or service. So, why arent more businesses utilizing social marketing? The answers always seem to come back the same: People dont know how to use things like Facebook and Twitter as a marketing tool, or they dont have the time to sit down in front of a computer. There is a solution for those of you that fall into either of those categories and it starts with us.

Our trained technicians can assists you in increasing your customer traffic, ROI and overall profitability. Since 1999 weve helped boost sales for companies like Mrs. Fields, Pepsi, CareerBuilder.com, Dish Network, ADT and more. But, dont think that big business is all that we know about. Our teams have taken corporate strategies and applied them to small business clients, helping them achieve maximum growth. Local Results is currently becoming an all inclusive internet marketing presence. Handling clients total online presence from creating a website to posting in Facebook and managing your.

A study reveals that 47% of Americans say Facebook has the greatest impact on purchase behavior

Problems in Social Marketing: 1) The behaviour is always right Because Social Marketing is a model of practice not a theory of behavior, it has no way of critically assessing the clients assumptions. Social Marketing almost invariably assumes the clients prescribed behaviour or action is right, just, appropriate, and do-able. As a result campaigns are often based around remarkablely shallow and simplistic behavioural prescriptions. So we have: Just think. (the AFLs anti-alcohol-violence campaign); Quit now before its too late (Australian Governments tobacco campaign) Slow down stupid. (Queenslands anti-speeding campaign).

Social Marketing takes it as given that the particular behaviour should be adopted and can be adopted. It does not ask whether the prescribed behaviour make sense, whether it is capable of being adopted or whether it needs to be reinvented, matured, debugged, or replaced with an entirely different behaviour. For instance, Californias anti-drug campaign has now abandoned the typical Just dont do it or Talk to your kids approaches and opted for a far more subtle Dinner makes the difference approach, where the behaviour is simply to have dinner with your kids. This requires a fundamental re-think of the problem and the solution. We simply do not see this in typical Social Marketing programs where the funding agencys assumptions reign supreme. Incidentally, this is where the design profession is making a tremendous contribution to social change efforts.

2) Context blindness Because of its intense focus on the individual, Social Marketing tends to neglect context. Context, as we discussed, is central to the adoptability of behaviours. Its more than a cursory consideration of the 4 Ps: product, price, place, promotion. Instead the entire contextual

system needs to be the subject of strategizing and modification, including physical infrastructure, service design, place design, management and regulatory systems. Getting these right is usually what makes or breaks a change program, as weve seen in tobacco control, road safety, pollution control and littering.This work can onlybe done by multi-disciplinary teams using a systembased approach. Silos tend to enforce dysfunction here,and busting or bypassing silos is a prerequisite for effective systemic interventions. Again, its easy to see how design thinking can make avaluable contribution to the mix.By the way, this is not nearly as hard as it sounds. For a rapid method for identifying doable interventions in a whole system, see How to make a theory of change.

3) Crop spraying Social Marketing, as almost universally understood and practiced, is about efficiency: the most people reached at the least cost per head.This inevitably leads to a focus on mass media advertising. Thisapproach treats people as isolated individuals and sprays them from afar with messages the same way a crop duster sprays a crop of canola. But who still thinks that human societies change this way?Fifty years of Diffusion of Innovationsscholarship and more recent

social network studies (notably the remarkable work of Nicolas Christakis and James Fowleron the diffusion of obesity, happiness and smoking cessation through social networks) demonstrate that decisions to adopt new behaviours travel primarily along social networks of people who know and respect each other, on a wave of conversations, and mass media has very little to do with it. The programs that are likely to influence voluntary behaviour change are therefore those based on fine-grained, conversational, local approaches (like facilitated workshops, forums, field days and the like). Unfortunately, the advertising agencies that win big budget Social Marketing campaigns have no incentive to share this insight with their funders.

4) Claim creep What really changes the world, the message or the product? The guru of marketing, Philip Kotler, says Good marketing is about setting up expectations and fulfilling them... This assumption is continually reiterated in his thinking and its common in Social Marketing too. You dont have to think too deeply to realise this claim is delusional. Marketing can set up expectations but it cant fulfillthem. Its products and behaviours that fulfill, or fail to fulfill, expectations.And its scientists and technical experts who design those products or behaviours, whether theyre health boffins or agricultural scientists or whatever. Good marketing is always the last link in a long chain of professional efforts, not the whole story.

5) Theory fetish Its a fine thing to have our thinking expanded by psychological and change theories, but its another thing to arbitrarily impose a particular psychological theory on real people leading complicated lives in the real world. Its quite common to see social marketing and health promotion programs introduced with a statement that this program is based on the Transtheoretical Model or the Health Belief Model or Social Learning Theory, or whatever. Excuse me, but this is crazy.The theory of change that informs a program should come from one place only the reality of peoples lives, and it will be very different for every set and every setting and every moment in time. Generic theories and models can help us think better as change agents, butonly by getting to know people face-to-face and listening intently to their stories can we begin to construct solutions to their needs. Even Craig Lefebvre, an ardent defender of Social Marketing, is clear on this whenhe writes that One principle that

distinguishes the best social marketers, I believe, is an unrelenting understanding, empathy and advocacy of the perspective of our priority population or community that is not slanted by what the theory or research evidence does or does not tell us.

6) Power blindness Social Marketing campaigns tend to be one-sided exercises in power by government-employed professionals who decide what behaviours are wrong, what behaviours are right, who needs to change, and what they need to know. Only problem is: people HATE being given advice by strangers about how they should behave. Social Marketing doesnt even begin to have answers for the waves of denial and resistance that are evoked by well meaning attempts to tell people how they should live their lives. See, for instance, the literature on psychological reactance and the Boomerang Effect Social Marketing programs have figured out a way to remain oblivious to denial and resistance: they prefer to evaluate their efforts at the level of awareness rather than behaviour. Awareness, however, cuts both ways. Awareness mayhelp drive change, but it is just as implicated in driving people to do the opposite to what they are told. Theres plenty of evidence, for instance, that marketing efforts may reinforce good behavior amongst those who are already doing the right thing, but drive greater denial and/or resistance amongst the actual target audience.

7) Individual focus The focus of Social Marketing campaigns is the atomised individual. Yet community organisation is one really effective method of achieving change. When change comes from a communitys own collective efforts it is likely to be more appropriate, more credible, and more sustained than when it comes from government. If a teeny fraction of the giant Social Marketing media budgets was spent on supporting people to organise and empower themselves to care for their own health, environments and communities I think we would witness far more deep and abiding change than through any conceivable marketing campaign.

8) Message Fetish Lastly, Social Marketing has message fetish embedded deep in its genomes. Marketing has always bee n an art of mass communication. It is concerned, above all else, with language and

image. It will always be, for better or worse, about the magic of the message. Its hopelessly infected with the assumption that the right form of words is the key to the human psyche. If it was that easy wed all long ago have been living in paradise (or, more likely, hell). It just aint that way.

Conclusion: The uses of social marketing needs to be balanced with the potential social and political consequences in order to overcome the problems faced in it. Some good examples of social marketing scenarios include people being advised to follow speed limits when driving, to smoke in areas where smoking is allowed instead of public places where people could be harmed, and to utilise seat belts when riding vehicles for the purpose of safety. Also, social marketing can be present in health promotion campaigns. As a result, positive messages social marketing will become instrumental in forming a better and safer community for everybody through the spread of a huge number of positive messages.