What Is Social Marketing And Why Is It Changing The Way America Does Business?

by
David Pascal

What is social marketing?

Social marketing applies tested proven-effective business marketing techniques to achieve beneficial social goals. According to many reports it's the most effective way to reach those goals.

Social marketing works. Social marketing can raise private funds and public consciousness. It can turn people away from destructive and self-destructive activities to positive and constructive behaviors. It can help corporations and businesses integrate into communities in mutually rewarding ways. It can make a profit, while profiting others. Social marketing is a way to shape society without coercion.

Social Marketing Is Not What You Think It Is

Most people have a very poor understanding of social marketing. Because most people also have a very poor understanding of marketing itself.

Say "marketing" and the general public thinks of ads, or of salesmen hawking a product. And while advertising and sales may well be elements of the marketing process - or may not be - they are a very inaccurate picture of what marketing is and does. Or of its power in shaping what people and societies do.

The best example of how marketing operates (and why social marketing is a profound development of it) may be a concrete example. Start with pure marketing. Imagine for a moment that you decide to sell a new product. A new soft drink, for example. How do you go about it?

If you go about it badly, what you do is first come across a new product.

Let's assume a soft drink developer leaves an existing soda pop company and approaches you with a new drink. You taste it and you like it and so you assume others will like it. You invest a million dollars in purchasing bottles and labels and in the end have several thousands of bottles of New Pop. You create ads and hire salesmen and send them out. At this point you expect the orders to come in, and make you a fortune.

Only the orders do not come in. And your company and your investment are wiped out.

Why?

Because you have only created a product and advertised it. You have not studied the market for that product.

Nor have you found out what it is that that market wants or desires, nor what it needs to facilitate making a purchase. You've operated in the dark. You haven't used any of the wealth of information contained within the market that can maximize the chances of you making a sale.

A Marketing Approach

How would the above product be handled if it were properly marketed?

First, you would not simply assume that a new product was needed or desired, much less invest in its creation, unless you knew that there was reason to think that the public would be willing to buy such a product. Marketing always begins with research. A marketer would examine the target public's existing soft drink purchasing habits and practices.

What sorts of soda do they drink now? Where do they purchase it? How much? How often? What other products will you be competing with? What are their prices? What parts of the market purchase more than others? Do people aged 18-25 buy and drink three times as much as people aged 65-75? What flavors sell more than others? Do 'diet' brands outsell brands high in sugar or carbohydrates?

Marketers study all relevant available existing material on purchasing habits. Then they go out and get further information that specifically addresses what kind of product the public might actually want.

For instance, the marketer will send out surveys to a statistically significant sample of the public. He asks them what aspects of their current soft drink they most like, what they least like, where they purchase soft drinks, why they prefer one brand over another, and so on. He asks what they might like to see available in a soft drink.

Imagine that this has been done. What your survey of the marketing situation has told you is that it's extremely unlikely, with your limited start-up resources, that your new soft drink will be immediately featured at McDonalds or Burger King or any major outlet. Smaller stores or health food stores may offer it, and there's always the possibility of internet sales, but initially your new drink will only be presented to a niche market segment.

You've surveyed your public, and what you find, unexpectedly, is that many of them are moved by health concerns. They drink diet soda in large numbers because they're concerned with obesity.

You learn that many pop drinkers are concerned about artificial sweeteners - that saccharine may cause cancer, and aspartame, neurotransmitter damage.

You learn (say) that many soda drinkers are also caffeine coffee drinkers, and that the favorite flavors of newly introduced brands are fruit-based - cranberry, apple, peach, in that order.

At this point you are able to develop the product: not a product that you necessarily like or that you assume the public will like, but a product that reflects what the purchasing public will actually like - a product that reflects their desires and satisfies them.

Because the public wants low-calorie drinks but is concerned about dangerous artificial sweeteners, you use a low-calorie sweetener that is organic and has no record of negative side effects, such as Splenda.

Since the public rates certain flavors the highest, you produce a Cranapple-flavored drink.

Since that particular public favors caffeine, you add caffeine to the product and label it a 'health pick-me-up' drink.

Possibly you've had the idea of making the drink vitamin-enriched, asked the interviewed public whether they'd like a soft drink high in vitamin content, and they've said yes. So you add vitamins to the drink.

Result? A drink that gives the public just about everything they want in a drink. A drink, in other words, that is hard for them to resist. Because it satisfies all their criteria for what they want.

Now that is only one element of the marketing mix - Product. The marketer then goes on to assess other elements such as Price (how much is the public willing to pay for the product?), Placement (where will they be able to purchase the drink and who will make it available?), and Promotion (where will they hear about it? What will they hear about it? What will the product's packaging look like? What will it's 'brand identity' be - a health drink? A 'science' drink? A pick-me-up brain-booster drink?)

Virtually the entire method of marketing is to reduce or eliminate guesswork. So all the information needed to make the best possible decision is gathered through research, interviews, and focus groups. And when the solution that is most likely to work becomes apparent, that is the solution that is chosen.

Moreover - and this is no small part of the power of marketing - that solution is not then simply applied blindly. Ideally it is tested beforehand on smaller experimental target audiences. Before going nationwide, the approach is tested in this city, in that city. Once the process begins, it's monitored throughout, and feedback is solicited.

Is it selling? Where? Where is it failing to sell? What factors account for the difference? How can the product (or price or promotion, etc., be modified so as to maximize the product's success?) Are the sales goals realistic? Are they being reached?

A marketing approach is one that continually and systematically monitors the results that the product and the product's presentation gets. An approach that adjusts the product and repeats the process until the maximum effectiveness is achieved.

Marketing Is Not Advertising

Now it is obvious that this approach is not at all like the common perception of marketing. Marketing is not some huckster trying to sell some product to the public that that public doesn't want or need. Sales are generally an eventual element of marketing, true, but the core is rooted in research, dialogue, psychology, sociology.

"Give the people what they want," may be a central axiom of marketing. But the heart of marketing activity is data: finding out what the people want, and making it available to them in the most effective way.

Consider another example. Politics. A candidate wants to win an election. He has people engaged in political marketing find out the peoples' concerns. Their main concern is the economy? He addresses the economy. They fear terrorism? He proposes measures that will reduce terrorism. They want a candidate who resembles themselves? He emphasizes that he's lived in the area for twenty years (and, perhaps, de-emphasizes that he was born in another state and educated abroad.)

Essentially, this politican finds out what the voters want, re-configures how he presents himself till he appears to be what they want, and monitors the results he's getting with his approach and tweaks it till he succeeds.

And he generally does succeed. In a recent survey it was reported that over 98% of Congressional elections were won by the candidates with the most money.

It's not because those candidates spent their money on staff parties. The money went to pollsters, public relations agencies, events planners - marketing people, in short. Who looked at the information and scripted the speeches and crafted the images that the voting public was most likely to respond to. And so they did.

The Social Marketing Difference

Now this last example brings us to one of the most asked questions about marketing. Does the marketer simply reflect public preferences and satisfy them? Or can the marketer market new preferences and new choices? Marketing can get people to want Coca-Cola. Can it get them to want peace? Tolerance? Healthy lifestyles? Charitable activities?

The results to date demonstrate that the answer is yes, and social marketing is the emergence of a collection of methods that embody that answer.

What then is social marketing? Social marketing is the practice of using effective marketing techniques to improve individual lives and to better society as a whole.

Social Marketing In Practice

How does social marketing work in real life? Let's take the same sort of example.

Imagine that you're working for Planned Parenthood and you want to reduce unwanted pregnancies. How do you do it?

If you take the pre-marketing approach, essentially what you try to do is present your notion to the public. You decide to have a college rally to 'raise women's consciousness,' say. Posters are made. The newspapers are notified. Email announcements are sent. On a given day, people are told to rally at a particular spot. People arrive. Speeches are made. Refreshments are given. Everyone goes home.

Consciousness, presumably, has been raised. The people involved in the rally presumably feel good about what they've done. Everyone involved is happy.

But has it worked? Have pregnancies been reduced? We don't know. The question isn't even addressed.

How might a social marketer have done it?

The marketer would first, as always, started with research. Which part of the target market in the target area have the most unwanted pregnancies? Census data might be of value here. Suppose the answer is that teenage women in specific low-income areas have unwanted pregnancies at the rate of 60-70% and that women in highest-income bracket have unwanted pregnancies at the rate of 2%.

Obviously, if a rally were to be suggested, it would be best to place posters in low-income areas. It would be reasonable to try to get or recruit people living within those areas to help arrange the rally. It would make sense to skip the email announcements - the very poor don't have computers and may not read at all, much less read their email. It might make sense to try to find women who have already had unwanted pregnancies and make a point of educating them to prevent a repetition of it.

In short, you go to the market that needs the product.

Do price, placement, and product have a spot here? Certainly. If someone is to refrain from getting pregnant, there are certain activities that they have to not do, or certain activities that they have to do to compensate. Birth control pills, condoms, vasectomies and surgical operations are options that can reduce unwanted pregnancy. They are products. They have prices. Some are available free or at low cost, some are not. Some are available in certain locations, and others are not.

And promotion? Imagine that the social marketer learns that the group that is at highest risk is girls at the ages of fourteen to sixteen in the lowest-income area of a particular city. The marketer is able to get a mailing list of the names of all such girls, and determines that the majority attend two or three high schools in particular zip coded areas.

Rather than holding a rally, the marketer involves a respected local teacher or figure in the area to come in and address the girls' classes, giving them the specific message that birth control devices are available at no cost, with complete privacy, at such-and-such an easily accessible location.

At the same time, letters are sent to the households of all the girls at most risk, asking the parents to realize the problems the family as a whole could be facing, and pointing out various solutions sponsored by Planned Parenthood, beginning with counseling.

Would this work? Perhaps the major difference and benefit of taking a social marketing approach is that one would actually know.

The social marketer would continue to monitor and interview the target market throughout the process. If unwanted pregnancies went down, if birth control usage went up, if the number of parents and daughters coming in for counseling rose, measurable data would directly show whether or not the intervention was working, and what elements of it working best or not. And one could modify or improve the approaches till one found precisely the approach that accomplished the desired goal.

One can 'raise consciousness' instead, but how high and how long and even what it means are fundamentally unknowable.

The Social Marketing Model

The social marketing model, then, works very roughly as follows:

1. You define the problem you want to solve in measurable behavioral terms. Not 'better public response' but more purchases, more donations, etc.

2. You gather as much information as you can on the existing situation, either by gathering pre-existing material or by further, targeted, methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, etc.

3. Having gathered the information, you formulate interventions that get subjects to engage in the desired social behaviors, or increase the likelihood that they will do so.

4. You monitor the results, and adjust the intervention in accordance with the results, till the target goal is achieved.

Social Marketing Works. Social Activism Doesn't.

The evidence from social marketing efforts is in. Modern society has now developed the means and technologies to effectively shape social behavior.

The question becomes, what behaviors do we want to shape?

What kind of a society do we want to build?

What do we want people to do?

Current applications of marketing are uncoordinated and inefficient, often trivial, sometimes destructive. The soda pop example is a good case in point. Dozens upon dozens of companies spend billions upon billions of dollars developing and selling dozens upon dozens of varieties of soda pop. Some contain cancer-causing additives, others neurotransmitter-jamming sweeteners. Many are low if not totally lacking in nutritional content. Healthier alternative drinks are pushed aside, as indeed are many of the companies that make them, as the pressures of competition force them into collapse.

Is the public served? Yes. Badly.

This book is not intended to be a scholarly treatise. I want to explain the general principles of social marketing so the average reader understands it, and understands why he should support it.

I would also like it to be a hands-on manual for active social marketing on a grassroots level. At present social marketing is something professionals do for governments and corporations. Sometimes, to good effect. But private organizations are beginning to apply its principles as well. Small grassroots groups can do so too.

If their aims are to succeed, they will have to. Social marketing works. Social activism doesn't. If social activism hopes to reach its goals, it's going to have to use or incorporate social marketing approaches. It's that simple.

Most socially active groups have failed because they've tied their activism to an outmoded top-down model in which governments frame laws and disburse funds and that is presumed to be the end of the problem.

Only it isn't. Because the laws are not monitored to see if the laws work or not. Or if the funds are effectively spent or wasted, or if the effort isn't adjusted when the results clearly are poor, or if there are noticable results at all.

Effecting positive social change means using methods and techniques that work. The methods and techniques that work are being summarized in the emerging discipline of social marketing. It can make our world radically better -- or worse.

Depending on the attention we give to it now.

-- David Pascal

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