The art of social marketing

17 Aug The art of social marketing

Most often we’re in the business of helping clients sell or promote goods or services but when it comes time to work with our not-for-profit clients we often become social marketers and the product we’re marketing is human behaviour.

It’s when we help clients get people to change a behaviour – recycle more, give more, speed less, follow rules, practice, care more, etc. We’re applying our traditional marketing knowledge to help our clients sell a behaviour that benefits society. Essentially swapping the exchange of goods and services with the exchange of behaviours.

While the range of campaigns can vary from health, to the environment, to safety, all successful campaigns or pieces of work have seven steps in common.

1. What is the problem? To get to the solution we need to know the problem. In detail. Sometimes it is multiple problems that need to be broken down and addressed piecemeal. Is it a lack of awareness of the problem or its scope? Is it too hard or too big to tackle alone? Are there barriers like time and cost?
2. Define the problem – we need to set clear objectives and ones that can be measured. Improving behaviour on the road is too broad and what would we measure?
3. Who are we talking to? The target audience is the individual or group whose behaviour should change. It helps to use both demographic and behavioural measures to determine who we are talking to. We really want to know what they think, how they feel, what they do, who they listen to and how we can engage them; as well as things like age and what they do for a living. As in all marketing, the more you know about your target audience the easier it is to talk to them. Formal research is golden – what are the wants, needs, daily lives, and behaviours of our target group? Where do they hang out? Who do they trust? What do they watch, read? Do we need to break down the audience and have different campaigns for different audience segments? Don’t assume everyone behaves like you.
4. What do we want people to do – what’s the desired target behaviour? The goal of social marketing is always to inform people about voluntary strategies they can use to change their behaviour. While the change is voluntary, done well we want the swap to look feel effortless and look like a no brainer!
5. Strategies for change – in addition to the traditional marketing pillars of product (behaviour or action), place (where), price and promotion (the what – social media, events, etc), social marketing also adds in the concepts of exchange and competition. Exchange refers to what gives when we take on the new behaviour or the costs and benefits of the swap, while competition is all about what is standing in the way of taking on the new behaviour – what competes for our time, attention and energy?
6. When it comes to executing the plan we like to make sure whatever we do is Soon, Certain and Positive – it’s got to be timely, it’s got to feel decisive and lastly we’re more likely to engage with something positive – don’t we all want the carrot over the stick? Swap nudging for shoving and hugging for smacking!
7. Test and measure. There’s no easy and real time measure of people through the door and sales totals to show whether the campaign is working, so often behaviour change programmes have long term goals and harder to measure outcomes of success. So user testing, focus groups, surveys and the like are key to see if you’re on the right track and need to make any changes to your strategy.

Keep an eye on our social media channels for some of the mahi we’ve done to help clients with their social marketing campaigns and let us know if you want to test any ideas out with us.