Building Social Marketing into Your Program
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.
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.
