A nice side to marketing!

I always thought that marketing was selling a product to make money out of it. I recently discovered that there was also “another side” to marketing, a nice one this time: Social marketing. Social marketing was born as a discipline in the 1970s; it uses the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviors.

Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society. It is generally used in health care programs.

As in “regular” marketing, social marketing focuses on the consumer’s wants and needs instead of trying to persuade him/her.

Social Marketing uses the 4 Ps used in consumer marketing and adds 4 more Ps, which gives us the 8 Ps of social marketing:

1. Product: in social marketing the product can be but is not necessarily a physical one. (Physical product: condoms, service: medical exams, practice: breastfeeding etc.)

2. Price: it refers to what a consumer has to do to get the product. The price can be money (to buy the product) but also time (to get a medical exam).

3. Place: it describes the location where the consumer can get the product. It can be a store, a clinic, a moving bus etc.

4. Promotion: it refers to do ways by which a demand for the product is created (advertising, PR, media advocacy…)

The following Ps are specific to social marketing:

5. Publics: all the people that are involved in the program. It includes the target audience as well as any audience that can reach them or have an influence in their involvement in the program.

6. Partnership: since a social or a health issue cannot be dealt with by only one institution. Partnerships are created between all or some of the actors that play a role in the fulfillment of the program.

7. Policy: the implementation and the success of a program can only happen if there is a policy change accompanying it. An adequate policy can help make a program sustainable.

8. Purse Strings: most organizations that develop a social marketing program need funds to do so.

Here are some examples of social marketing videos that were made for The Partnership for Drug Free America: