Defining Social Marketing
Social marketing began as a formal discipline back in 1971. Social Marketing is defined as the application of marketing concepts and techniques to the marketing of socially beneficial ideas and causes instead of products and services in the commercial sense. It involves all “4 P's” not just one, it involves coordinating product, price, place and promotion factors to maximally motivate and facilitate desired forms of behavior. Furthermore, it calls for marketing research and for preparation of a full marketing plan, strategy and budget to get initial sales and to reinforce the new behavior over time. Social marketing is being described as having 'two parents' - a 'social parent' = social sciences and social policy, and a 'marketing parent' = commercial and public sector marketing approaches. Furthermore, social marketing should not be confused with the “Societal Marketing” and “Non-profit Organization Marketing” concepts.
Social Marketing vs. Commercial Marketing
The primary aims of “social marketing” is “social good”, while in “commercial marketing” the aim is primarily “financial”, however, this does not mean that commercial marketers can not contribute to achievement of social good. The relationship between social marketing and more conventional commercial marketing may be described like the relationship between football and rugby. The two marketing disciplines have much in common and require similar training, but each has its own set of rules, constraints, and required skills. More importantly, being a good player in either disciplines may not necessarily mean being a good player in the other.
Evolution of Social Marketing
With the increasing practices of social marketing, a number of limitations were spotted in the approach like the problem that too often the social campaigns are the only step taken to motivate new behavior and by themselves are usually inadequate. And this problem is associated with inadequate research for the messages conveyed in the campaigns and lack of continuity and integration, as people do not know what to do after their exposure to a particular campaign message, for example; “Stop Smoking – it might kill you” does not help the smoker know how to handle the urge to smoke or where to go for help. Therefore, Social Marketing matured into a much more integrative and inclusive discipline that draws on the full range of social sciences and social policy approaches as well as marketing. It has moved from a narrow advertising approach to a broad social communication / promotion approach to accomplish its objectives, by adding a number of elements to overcome the previous limitations. The first element is “ Marketing Research ” – to learn more about the market and the probable effectiveness of the alternative marketing approaches, for example; the social marketers concerned with smoking would examine the size of the smoking market, the major market segments and the behavioral characteristics of each and the benefit-cost impact of targeting different segments and designing appropriate campaigns for each. The second element is “ Product Development ” – not sticking to the existing product and just trying to encourage people not to consume it, but rather search for the best product to meet the need of the desired new behavior, for example; developing the anti-smoking patches and gums that would help smokers fight their urge to smoke. The third element added is “ Use of Incentives ” - designing specific incentives to increase the level of motivation, for example; offering small gifts to villagers who show up for vaccinations or special discounted prices for people who do health checkups, after all, the sales promotion area is rich with techniques that the marketer could use to promote social causes. The fourth element is “ Facilitation ” - considering possible ways to simplify the effort needed by people to adopt a new desired behavior.
Applications of Social Marketing
Social marketing potentially can be applied to a wide variety of social situations and problems.
• When New Information & Practices need to be spread – situations when people need to be informed of an opportunity or practice that would improve their lives, for example; explaining to mothers the advantages of continuing to breastfeed their babies instead of switching them to less nourishing baby milk formula.
• When Counter marketing is needed – more increasingly companies worldwide are promoting the consumption of products that are undesirable or potentially harmful like cigarettes, alcoholic drinks and highly refined foods which have been proved to contribute to lung, heart, liver diseases and other problems. The large promotional budgets behind these products tend to cast off opposing views because unfortunately those who disagree are often too fragmented too few in number and lack the necessary resources to present their counter position. Accordingly, social marketing is viewed as the mean to present the other side of the story and encourage people to adopt more healthful behaviors.
• When Activation is needed – moving people from intention to action, since most people know what they should do, but they do not always act accordingly.
Examples:
• Health promotion campaigns:
• Anti-smoking
• Anti-drugs
• Family Planning & Birth Control Campaigns
• Others
Problems & Challenges in Social Marketing
William Novelli, a leading social marketing practitioner admits that “it's a thousand times harder to do social marketing than to do package goods marketing”. The difficulty lies in the following:
• Market Analysis Problems; The market is usually harder to analyze, because social marketers have less good quality secondary data about their consumers. They have more difficulty in obtaining valid, reliable measures of salient consumer attributes, and in sorting out the relative influence of various determinants of consumer behavior. They have more difficulty in getting consumer research studies funded, approved and completed in a timely manner.
• Market Segmentation Problems; Target market choice is more difficult as there is often public pressure to attempt to reach the whole market rather than focusing on the best target groups.
• Product Strategy Problems; Formulating product strategy is more difficult as the range of product innovation options is smaller.
• Pricing Strategy Problems; Social marketers have fewer opportunities to use pricing and must rely more on other approaches that would increase or decrease the cost to consumers of certain behavior.
• Channels Strategy Problems; Channels of distribution may be harder to utilize and control.
• Communications Strategy Problems; Communication strategies may be more difficult to implement as some groups may oppose the use certain types of appeals that otherwise would be very effective.
• Organizational Design & Planning Problems; Cause organizations are often backward in their management and marketing sophistication.
• Evaluation Problems; The results of social marketing efforts are often difficult to evaluate as it is often difficult to estimate the contribution of the marketing program has made toward the achievement of a certain objective.
Major Criticisms of Social Marketing
Not surprisingly, the increasing application of social marketing has been accompanied by questions about its legitimacy and possible negative impacts. One of the major criticisms of social marketing is that although ideas may be communicated more effectively with social marketing, those who have the dollars and power to use marketing techniques may communicate non-socially beneficial ideas and so social marketing could eventually operate as a form of thought control by the economically powerful. In this sense social marketing is seen as being manipulative and unethical as its giving power to a group to influence public opinion. Another major criticism claims that social marketing is self-serving. Some critics argue that some social marketers who are promoting a cause are also making a profit in the process like for example; bottled water manufacturers in France have backed efforts to influence the French people to reduce their alcohol consumption, and life insurance companies are encouraging people to follow healthy life styles, by exercising, installing smoke detectors, and following a healthy diet, in other ways reduce illness, accidents, premature deaths. Thus cutting insurance claims and increasing their company profits. So clearly, commercial enterprises will increasingly support social marketing programs as they see financial benefits accruing to their companies while they also promote beneficial social change.
Control of Social Marketing
Knowing that social marketing doesn't necessarily shape our beliefs and values, but for some extent it certainly does influence them, we could conclude that this power of influence should be controlled and regulated, because social marketing is a discipline with a number of direct as well as indirect social consequences with a potential for both favorable and harmful effects. In other words, its efforts should be controlled and regulated to limit the unfavorable consequences of the possibility of abusing it, and this could be done through the following actions:
• Self regulation
• Professional or industry regulation
• Government regulation
Future of Social Marketing
Social Marketing provides a difficult yet potentially rewarding challenge for members of the marketing profession. The outlook for social marketing is one of continued growth and application to an ever-widening range of issues and possibilities, as more and more cause organizations and government agencies will turn to social marketing in a search for increased effectiveness. Integrated social marketing campaigns would be the main approach to reaching objectives. There will always be an increasing need for more and better trained social marketers rather than simply social advertisers. Though at present many social marketers are outside consultants, a look into the future suggests that organizations may attract or develop their own “in-house social marketers”. It is thought that social marketing specialists, combining business marketing skills with traditional training in the social sciences will be working on a wider range of social causes with increasing sophistication. And advances in conceptualizing social marketing problems and in evaluating the impacts of social marketing programs will further enhance their effectiveness.
Working for Social Cause
“Alashanek Ya Balady for Sustainable Development (AYB – SD)”
Alashanek ya Balady Association for Sustainable Development (AYB-SD) is an Egyptian non-governmental organization (NGO). AYB-SD is inspired by Egyptian youth seeking the comprehensive development of poor communities in Egypt through various social, cultural, and economic projects. AYB-SD involves Egyptian youth from various educational backgrounds and cities in community development, whereby they can contribute to the alleviation of poverty and enhance the ethics and morals of the society through engaging them into the circle of development. In addition, community development will, in itself, empower and boost the ethics, morals, skills and life-knowledge of volunteering youth. The idea started in 2002, when group of students from the American University in Cairo (AUC), Cairo University , and Ain Shams University gathered to found AYB Association run by students. Those students valued the term "development", because they did not want to just give money, food or blankets for the poor and leave them after that. They wanted transformation, empowerment, and real change. The dream got bigger, and those founding students graduated and established AYB Association for Sustainable Development as a formal non-governmental organization. They even now replicate the model of development and encouraging other organizations to do development more than charity. |
