Mediaboss Marketing

One example of a social campaign. The Ad Council produced this campaign to get kids to brush their teeth. Ad Council

Updated November 09, 2015.

For many nonprofit managers, marketing equals fundraising.

But your organization exists for more than just bringing in donations. By using social marketing methods for behavior change, you can boost the effectiveness of programs and activities that are the reason your organization exists to make a difference.

Social marketing uses the same tools and techniques of commercial marketing, but its purpose is to bring about positive health and social change.

The bottom line for social marketing is behavior change.

Social marketing, as described here, is different from using social media to communicate or peer-to-peer and consumer-generated content.

Indeed, this social marketing has been around for over several decades, used to address issues around the world, from family planning, to HIV/AIDS, to breast cancer screening.

When social marketers develop a program strategy, they consider the same elements of the marketing mix as commercial marketers.

However, the social marketing mix has to be adjusted to take into account the unique nature of the products and environments with which they work.

What does the social marketing mix look like, and how is it different from the Four Ps that commercial marketers use?

The social marketing product is not usually a tangible item although it can be (condoms, for instance).

Social marketers sell a particular behavior. While you may be promoting a life-saving or life-improving practice, quite often social marketing behaviors are things that people don't particularly want to do, such as eat more fiber, conserve water, exercise, or get a colonoscopy.

To address this issue, you must use the same tools as commercial marketing to promote the product's benefits based on the target audience's core values. Show them how using the product helps them become the person they want to be.

While adopting the product may have a monetary cost, more significant price considerations are social and emotional costs.

These include:

The strategic issue is to figure out how to reduce the "price" as much as possible and make it easy and stress-free to perform the behavior.

How will you make the product available? How and where can people perform the action? Where can they get the product?

The idea of a camera's aperture is relevant here.

Just like a camera's lens opens and shuts very quickly to let in the light when you take a picture, you have only a small window of opportunity to get your message through to the target audience at a time and place they can act on it.

Your potential participants will not go out of their way to look for your messages. You need to go to them and provide the opportunity to learn quickly and easily about the product and perform the behavior.

Promotional approaches for social marketing do not differ much from those used by commercial marketers.

One key difference may lie in the types of target audiences addressed. Many are not the kinds of consumers that a for-profit business would even consider going after.

They may be low-income, unable to speak English, difficult to find, and uninterested in making any changes in their lives.

Social marketers must be creative in the ways they promote their products to these hard-to-reach populations.

And because of the inherent challenges faced by social marketing programs, I have added four more Ps to the social marketing mix

When planning and managing a social marketing campaign, you must take into account all of the people who can affect the success of the program, such as the external publics, the target audience, groups that influence the target audience, policymakers, the media, and others outside the organization.

Just as important, there are the people within your organization that you must convince or inform.

For instance Board members and management staff must approve your plans. Even the receptionist who answers the phones needs to know what to do when someone calls in response to your campaign.

Many social marketing issues are so big that one organization cannot address them. That's when you need partners to pull off a particular campaign.

Potential partners include organizations (other nonprofits, government agencies, and businesses) that have one or more of the following attributes:

Government or organizational policies can act as a catalyst for social change on a large scale.

When policies provide an environment of support for a particular behavior, people are much more likely to make that behavior change and stay with it.

For example, nonsmoking workplace policies make it easier for smokers to quit by ensuring that they do not see others lighting up around them, thus removing social cues to smoking.

Unlike businesses, many nonprofit organizations cannot automatically set aside a percentage of their revenue for marketing activities.

Social marketers must be creative and proactive in seeking funding for their campaigns from sources such as corporate partners, foundations, donations, and government agencies.

Use the social marketing mix to go beyond fundraising. Use marketing to make an impact on the lives of the people your organization exists to serve.

Read the original:
How Nonprofits Sell Behavior Change with Social Marketing